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[
"Jodie Foster",
"1965-1975: Early work",
"What was Foster's first role?",
"Foster's career began with an appearance as the Coppertone girl",
"What year was she the Coppertone Girl?",
"in a television advertisement in 1965,",
"What was her next appearance after that?",
"a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D.,",
"What year was her appearance on Mayberry?",
"in 1968"
] | C_67bd39d220a84618b8cdda8de3fe429e_1 | When was her first movie role? | 5 | When was Jodie Foster's first movie role? | Jodie Foster | Foster's career began with an appearance as the Coppertone girl in a television advertisement in 1965, when she was only three years old. Her mother had originally intended only for her older brother Buddy to audition for the ad, but had taken Jodie with them to the casting call, where she was noticed by the casting agents. The television spot led to more advertisement work, and in 1968 to a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., in which her brother starred. In the following years Foster continued working in advertisements and appeared in over fifty television shows; she and her brother became the breadwinners of the family during this time. Although most of Foster's television appearances were minor, she had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969-1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), and starred opposite Christopher Connelly in the short-lived Paper Moon (1974), adapted from the hit film. Foster also appeared in films, mostly for Disney. After a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), playing a girl who becomes friends with a boy, played by Johnny Whitaker, and his pet lion. She was accidentally grabbed by the lion on set, which left her with permanent scars on her back. Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid". Foster has said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her: "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!' I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'" CANNOTANSWER | a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), | Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (born November 19, 1962) is an American actress, director, and producer. Regarded as one of the best actresses of her generation, she is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award. For her work as a director, she has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. People magazine named her the most beautiful woman in the world in 1992, and in 2003, she was voted Number 23 in Channel 4's countdown of the 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time. Entertainment Weekly named her 57th on their list of 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time in 1996. In 2016, she was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star located at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard.
Foster began her professional career as a child model when she was three years old, and made her acting debut in 1968 in the television sitcom Mayberry R.F.D. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she worked in several television series and made her film debut with Disney's Napoleon and Samantha (1972). Following appearances in the musical Tom Sawyer (1973) and Martin Scorsese's comedy-drama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), her breakthrough came with Scorsese's psychological thriller Taxi Driver (1976), where she played a child prostitute, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other roles as a teenager include the musical Bugsy Malone (1976) and the thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), and she became a popular teen idol by starring in Disney's Freaky Friday (1976) and Candleshoe (1977), as well as Carny (1980) and Foxes (1980).
After attending Yale University, Foster struggled to transition into adult roles until she gained critical acclaim for playing a rape survivor in the legal drama The Accused (1988), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won her second Academy Award three years later for the psychological horror film The Silence of the Lambs (1991), where she portrayed FBI agent Clarice Starling. She made her debut as a film director the same year with Little Man Tate. She founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, in 1992. Its first production was Nell (1994), in which Foster also played the title role, garnering her fourth Academy Award nomination. Her other successful films in the 1990s were the romantic drama Sommersby, western comedy Maverick (1994), science fiction Contact (1997), and period drama Anna and the King (1999).
Foster experienced career setbacks in the early 2000s, including the cancellation of a film project and the closing down of her production company, but she then starred in four commercially successful thrillers: Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005), Inside Man (2006), and The Brave One (2007). She has concentrated on directing in the 2010s, with the films The Beaver (2011) and Money Monster (2016), and episodes for Netflix television series Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards, and Black Mirror. She received her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for "Lesbian Request Denied", the third episode of the former. She also starred in the films Carnage (2011), Elysium (2013), Hotel Artemis (2018), and The Mauritanian (2021), the last of which won Foster her third Golden Globe.
Early life
Foster was born on November 19, 1962 in Los Angeles, the youngest child of Evelyn Ella "Brandy" (née Almond 1928-2019) and Lucius Fisher Foster III, a wealthy businessman. She is of English, German and Irish heritage. On her father's side she is descended from John Alden, who arrived in North America on the Mayflower in 1620.
Her parents' marriage had ended before she was born, and she never established a relationship with her father. She has three older full siblings: Lucinda (born 1954), Constance (born 1955), and Lucius, nicknamed "Buddy" (born 1957), as well as three half-brothers from her father's earlier marriage.
Following the divorce, Brandy raised the children with her partner in Los Angeles. She worked as a publicist for film producer Arthur P. Jacobs, until focusing on managing the acting careers of Buddy and Jodie. Although Foster was officially named Alicia, her siblings began calling her "Jodie", and the name stuck.
Foster was a gifted child who learned to read at age three. She attended the Lycée Français de Los Angeles, a French-language prep school. Her fluency in French has enabled her to act in French films, and she also dubs herself in French-language versions of most of her English-language films. At her graduation in 1980, she delivered the valedictorian address for the school's French division. She then attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut where she majored in African-American literature, wrote her thesis on Toni Morrison under the guidance of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and graduated magna cum laude in 1985. She returned to Yale in 1993 to address the graduating class, and received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree in 1997. In 2018, she was awarded the Yale Undergraduate Lifetime Achievement Award.
Career
Career beginnings
Foster's career began with an appearance in a Coppertone television advertisement in 1965, when she was three years old. Her mother had intended only for Jodie's older brother Buddy to audition, but had taken Jodie with them to the casting call, where she was noticed by the casting agents. The television spot led to more advertising work, and in 1968 to a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., in which her brother starred. In the following years Foster continued working in advertising and appeared in over 50 television shows; she and her brother became the breadwinners of the family during this time. She had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969–1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), and starred opposite Christopher Connelly in the short-lived Paper Moon (1974), adapted from the hit film.
Foster also appeared in films, mostly for Disney. After a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), playing a girl who befriends a boy, played by Johnny Whitaker, and his pet lion. She was accidentally grabbed by the lion on set, which left her with scars on her back. Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid".
Foster said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her: "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!' I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'"
1970s: Taxi Driver and teenage stardom
Foster's mother was concerned that her daughter's career would end by the time she grew out of playing children, and decided that Foster should also begin acting in films for adult audiences. After the minor supporting role in Alice, Scorsese cast her in the role of a child prostitute in Taxi Driver (1976). To be able to do the film, Foster had to undergo psychiatric assessment and was accompanied by a social worker on set. Her older sister acted as her stand-in in sexually suggestive scenes. Foster later commented on the role, saying that she hated "the idea that everybody thinks if a kid's going to be an actress it means that she has to play Shirley Temple or someone's little sister." During the filming, Foster developed a bond with co-star Robert De Niro, who saw "serious potential" in her and dedicated time rehearsing scenes with her.
She described Taxi Driver as a life-changing experience and stated that it was "the first time anyone asked me to create a character that wasn't myself. It was the first time I realized that acting wasn't this hobby you just sort of did, but that there was actually some craft." Taxi Driver won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival; Foster also impressed journalists when she acted as French interpreter at the press conference. Taxi Driver was a critical and commercial success, and earned her a supporting actress Academy Award nomination, as well as two BAFTAs, a David di Donatello and a National Society of Film Critics award. The film is considered one of the best in history by the American Film Institute and Sight & Sound, and has been preserved in the National Film Registry.
Foster also acted in another film nominated for the Palme d'Or in 1976, Bugsy Malone. The British musical parodied films about Prohibition Era gangsters by having all roles played by children; Foster appeared in a major supporting role as a star of a speakeasy show. Director Alan Parker was impressed by her, saying that "she takes such an intelligent interest in the way the film is being made that if I had been run over by a bus I think she was probably the only person on the set able to take over as director." She gained several positive notices for her performance: Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated that "at thirteen she was already getting the roles that grown-up actresses complained weren't being written for women anymore", Variety described her as "outstanding", and Vincent Canby of The New York Times called her "the star of the show". Foster's two BAFTAs were awarded jointly for her performances in Taxi Driver and Bugsy Malone. Her third film release in 1976 was the independent drama Echoes of a Summer, which had been filmed two years previously. The New York Times named Foster's performance as a terminally ill girl the film's "main strength" and Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune stated that she "is not a good child actress; she's just a good actress", although both reviewers otherwise panned the film.
Foster's fourth film of 1976 was the Canadian-French thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, in which she starred opposite Martin Sheen. The film combined aspects from thriller and horror genres, and showed Foster as a mysterious young girl living on her own in a small town. The performance earned her a Saturn Award. In November, Foster hosted Saturday Night Live, becoming the youngest person to do so until 1982. Her final film of the year was the Disney comedy Freaky Friday, "her first true star vehicle". She played a tomboy teen who accidentally changes bodies with her mother, and she later stated that the film marked a "transitional period" for her when she began to grow out of child roles. It received mainly positive reviews, and was a box office success, gaining Foster a Golden Globe nomination for her performance.
After her breakthrough year, Foster spent nine months living in France, where she starred in Moi, fleur bleue (1977) and recorded several songs for its soundtrack. Her other films released in 1977 were the Italian comedy Casotto (1977), and the Disney heist film Candleshoe (1977), which was filmed in England and co-starred veteran actors David Niven and Helen Hayes. After its release, Foster did not appear in any new releases until 1980, the year she turned eighteen.
1980s: Transition to adult roles
In 1980, Foster gained positive notices for her performances in the independent films Foxes and Carny (1980). The same year, she also became a full-time student at Yale. She later stated that going to college changed her thoughts about acting, which she had previously thought was an unintelligent profession, but now realised that "what I really wanted to do was to act and there was nothing stupid about it." Although Foster prioritized college during these years, she continued making films on her summer vacations. These were O'Hara's Wife (1982), television film Svengali (1983), John Irving adaptation The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), French film The Blood of Others (1984), and period drama Mesmerized (1986), which she also co-produced. None of them gained large audiences or critical appreciation, and after graduating from Yale in 1985, Foster struggled to find further acting work.
Foster's first film after college, the neo-noir Siesta (1987), was a failure. Her next project, the independent film Five Corners (1987), was better received. A moderate critical success, it earned Foster an Independent Spirit Award for her performance as a woman whose sexual assaulter returns to stalk her. The following year, Foster made her debut as a director with the episode "Do Not Open This Box" for the horror anthology series Tales from the Darkside, and starred in the romantic drama Stealing Home (1988) opposite Mark Harmon. The film was a critical and commercial failure, with critic Roger Ebert "wondering if any movie could possibly be that bad".
Foster's breakthrough into adult roles came with her performance as a rape survivor in The Accused (1988). Based on a real criminal case, the film focuses on the aftermath of a gang rape and its survivor's fight for justice in the face of victim blaming. Before making the film, Foster was having doubts about whether to continue her career and planned on starting graduate studies, but decided to give acting "one last try" in The Accused. She had to audition twice for the role and was cast only after several more established actors had turned it down, as the film's producers were wary of her due to her previous failures and because she was still remembered as a "chubby teenager". Due to the heavy subject matter, the filming was a difficult experience for all cast and crew involved, especially the shooting of the rape scene, which took five days to complete. Foster was unhappy with her performance, and feared that it would end her career. Instead, The Accused received positive reviews, with Foster's performance receiving widespread acclaim and earning her Academy, Golden Globe and National Board of Review awards, as well as a nomination for a BAFTA Award.
1990s: Box office success, debut as director and Egg Pictures
Foster's first film release after the success of The Accused was the thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991). She portrayed FBI trainee Clarice Starling, who is sent to interview incarcerated serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in order to hunt another serial killer, Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb (Ted Levine). Foster later named the role one of her favorites. She had read the novel it was based on after its publication in 1988 and had attempted to purchase its film rights, as it featured "a real female heroine" and its plot was not "about steroids and brawn, [but] about using your mind and using your insufficiencies to combat the villain." Despite her enthusiasm, director Jonathan Demme did not initially want to cast her, but the producers overruled him. Demme's view of Foster changed during the production, and he later credited her for helping him define the character.
Released in February 1991, The Silence of the Lambs became one of the biggest hits of the year, grossing close to $273 million, with a positive critical reception. Foster received largely positive reviews and won Academy, Golden Globe, and BAFTA awards for her portrayal of Starling; Silence won five Academy Awards overall, becoming one of the few films to win in all main categories. In contrast, some reviewers criticized the film as misogynist for its focus on brutal murders of women, and homo-/transphobic due to its portrayal of "Buffalo Bill" as bisexual and transgender. Much of the criticism was directed towards Foster, who the critics alleged was herself a lesbian. Despite the controversy, the film is considered a modern classic: Starling and Lecter are included on the American Film Institute's top ten of the greatest film heroes and villains, and the film is preserved in the National Film Registry. Later in 1991, Foster also starred in the unsuccessful low-budget thriller Catchfire, which had been filmed before Silence, but was released after it in an attempt to profit from its success.
In October 1991, Foster released her first feature film as a director, Little Man Tate, a drama about a child prodigy who struggles to come to terms with being different. The main role was played by previously unknown actor Adam Hann-Byrd, and Foster co-starred as his working-class single mother. She had found the script in the "slush pile" at Orion Pictures, and explained that for her debut film she "wanted a piece that was not autobiographical, but that had to do with the 10 philosophies I've accumulated in the past 25 years. Every single one of them, if they weren't in the script from the beginning, they're there now." Many reviewers felt that the film did not live up to the high expectations, and regarded it as "less adventurous than many films in which [she] had starred". Regardless, it was a moderate box office success. Foster's final film appearance of the year came in a small role as a sex worker in Shadows and Fog (1991), directed by Woody Allen, with whom she had wanted to collaborate since the 1970s.
Foster next starred in the period film Sommersby (1993), portraying a woman who begins to suspect that her husband (Richard Gere) who returns home from the Civil War is an impostor. She then replaced Meg Ryan in the Western comedy, Maverick (1994), playing a con artist opposite Mel Gibson and James Garner. According to film scholar Karen Hollinger, both films featured her in more "conventionally feminine" roles. Both Sommersby and Maverick were commercially successful.
Foster had founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, a subsidiary of PolyGram Filmed Entertainment in 1992, and released its first production, Nell, in December 1994. It was directed by Michael Apted and starred Foster in the titular role as a woman who grew up isolated in the Appalachian Mountains and speaks her own invented language. The film was based on Mark Handley's play Idioglossia, which interested Foster for its theme of "otherness", and because she "loved this idea of a woman who defies categorization, a creature who is labeled and categorized by people based on their own problems and their own prejudices and what they bring to the table." Despite mixed reviews, it was a commercial success, and earned Foster a Screen Actors Guild Award and nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her acting performance.
The second film that Foster directed and produced for Egg Pictures was Home for the Holidays, released in late 1995. A black comedy "set around a nightmarish Thanksgiving", it starred Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. The film received a mixed critical response and was a commercial failure. In 1996, Foster received two honorary awards: the Crystal Award, awarded annually for women in the entertainment industry, and the Berlinale Camera at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival. She voiced a character in an episode of Frasier in 1996 and in an episode of The X-Files in early 1997.
After Nell (1994), Foster appeared in no new film releases until Contact (1997), a science fiction film based on a novel by Carl Sagan and directed by Robert Zemeckis. She starred as a scientist searching for extraterrestrial life in the SETI project. The film was a commercial success and earned Foster a Saturn Award and a nomination for a Golden Globe. Foster next produced Jane Anderson's television film The Baby Dance (1998) for Showtime. Its story deals with a wealthy California couple who struggle with infertility and decide to adopt from a poor family in Louisiana. On her decision to produce for television, Foster stated that it was easier to take financial risks in that medium than in feature films. In 1998, she also moved her production company from PolyGram to Paramount Pictures. Also in 1998, asteroid 17744 Jodiefoster was named in her honor.
Foster's last film of the 1990s was the period drama Anna and the King (1999), in which she starred opposite Chow Yun-Fat. It was based on a fictionalized biography of British teacher Anna Leonowens, who taught the children of King Mongkut of Siam, and whose story became well known as the musical The King and I. Foster was paid $15 million to portray Leonowens, making her one of the highest-paid female actors in Hollywood. The film was subject to controversy when the Thai government deemed it historically inaccurate and insulting to the royal family and banned its distribution in the country. It was a moderate commercial success, but received mixed to negative reviews. Roger Ebert panned the film, stating that the role required Foster "to play beneath [her] intelligence" and The New York Times called it a "misstep" for her and accused her of only being "interested ... in sanctifying herself as an old-fashioned heroine than in taking on dramatically risky roles".
2000s: Career setbacks and resurgence in thrillers
Foster's first project of the new decade was Keith Gordon's film Waking the Dead (2000), which she produced. She declined to reprise her role as Clarice Starling in Hannibal (2001), with the part going instead to Julianne Moore, and concentrated on a new directorial project, Flora Plum. It was to focus on a 1930s circus and star Claire Danes and Russell Crowe, but had to be shelved after Crowe was injured on set and could not complete filming on schedule; Foster unsuccessfully attempted to revive the project several times in the following years. Controversially, she also expressed interest in directing and starring in a biographical film of Nazi film director Leni Riefenstahl, who did not like the idea. In addition to these setbacks, Foster shut down Egg Pictures in 2001, stating that producing was "just a really thankless, bad job". The company's last production, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2002. It received good reviews, and had a limited theatrical release in the summer.
After the cancellation of Flora Plum, Foster took on the main role in David Fincher's thriller Panic Room after its intended star, Nicole Kidman, had to drop out due to an injury on set. Before filming resumed, Foster was given only a week to prepare for the role of a woman who hides in a panic room with her daughter when burglars invade their home. It grossed over $30 million on its North American opening weekend in March 2002, thus becoming the most successful film opening of Foster's career . In addition to being a box office success, the film also received largely positive reviews.
After a minor appearance in the French period drama A Very Long Engagement (2004), Foster starred in three more thrillers. The first was Flightplan (2005), in which she played a woman whose daughter vanishes during an overnight flight. It became a global box office success, but received mixed reviews. It was followed by Spike Lee's critically and commercially successful Inside Man (2006), about a bank heist on Wall Street, which co-starred Denzel Washington and Clive Owen. The third thriller, The Brave One (2007), prompted some comparisons to Taxi Driver, as Foster played a New Yorker who becomes a vigilante after her fiancé is murdered. It was not a success, but earned Foster her sixth Golden Globe nomination. Her last film role of the decade was in the children's adventure film Nim's Island (2008), in which she portrayed an agoraphobic writer opposite Gerard Butler and Abigail Breslin. It was the first comedy in which she had starred since Maverick (1994), and was a commercial success but a critical failure. In 2009, she provided the voice for Maggie in a tetralogy episode of The Simpsons titled "Four Great Women and a Manicure".
2010s: Focus on directing
In the 2010s, Foster focused on directing and took fewer acting roles. In February 2011, she hosted the 36th César Awards in France, and the following month released her third feature film direction, The Beaver (2011), about a depressed man who develops an alternative personality based on a beaver hand puppet. It starred Maverick co-star Mel Gibson and featured herself, Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence in supporting roles as his family. Foster called its production "probably the biggest struggle of my professional career", partly due to the film's heavy subject matter but also due to the controversy that Gibson generated when he was accused of domestic violence and making anti-semitic, racist, and sexist statements. The film received mixed reviews, and failed the box office, largely due to this controversy. In 2011, Foster also appeared as part of an ensemble cast with John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz in Roman Polanski's comedy Carnage, in which the attempts of middle-class parents to settle an incident between their sons descends into chaos. It premiered to mainly positive reviews and earned Foster a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress.
In 2013, Foster received the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards. Her next film role was playing Secretary of Defense Delacourt opposite Matt Damon in the dystopian film Elysium (2013), which was a box office success. She also returned to television directing for the first time since the 1980s, directing the episodes "Lesbian Request Denied" (2013) and "Thirsty Bird" (2014) for Orange Is the New Black, and the episode "Chapter 22" (2014) for House of Cards. "Lesbian Request Denied" brought her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and the two 2014 episodes earned her two nominations for a Directors Guild of America Award. She also narrated the episode "Women in Space" (2014) for Makers: Women Who Make America, a PBS documentary series about women's struggle for equal rights in the United States. In 2015, Foster received the Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award at the Athena Film Festival.
The fourth film directed by Foster, hostage drama Money Monster, premiered out-of-competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2016. It starred George Clooney and Julia Roberts, and despite mixed reviews, was a moderate commercial success. The following year, Foster continued her work in television by directing an episode, "Arkangel", for the British sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror (2011–).
As the decade drew to a close, Foster continued to mix acting with directing. She starred together with Sterling Brown in the dystopian film Hotel Artemis (2018). Although the film was a commercial and critical disappointment, Foster's performance as Nurse, who runs a hospital for criminals, received positive notices. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle's stated that "not enough can be said about the performance of Foster in this film. She brings to the role a quality of having seen the absolute worst in people, but also the suggestion that, as a result, she accepts them on their own terms and knows how to handle any situation." Rick Bentley from Tampa Bay Times declared Foster's performance one of her "best and most memorable performances." The same year, Foster co-produced and narrated Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018), a documentary on one of the first female film directors.
2020s: Current work
Foster directed the finale of the 2020 science fiction drama Tales from the Loop. Her next project was the legal drama The Mauritanian (2021), in which she starred as the lawyer of a prisoner (Tahar Rahim) at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Foster won a Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her performance. At the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, Foster received the Honorary Palme d'Or for lifetime achievement.
Personal life
Foster met producer (then production coordinator) Cydney Bernard on the set of Sommersby (1993). They were in a relationship from 1993 until 2008 and had two sons (born in 1998 and 2001) together. In April 2014, Foster married actress and photographer Alexandra Hedison after a year of dating.
Foster's sexual orientation became the subject of public discussion in 1991 when publications such as OutWeek and The Village Voice, protesting against the alleged homophobia and transphobia in The Silence of the Lambs, claimed that she was a closeted lesbian. While she had been in a relationship with Bernard for 14 years, Foster first publicly acknowledged it in a speech at The Hollywood Reporter'''s "Women in Entertainment" breakfast honoring her in 2007. In 2013, she addressed her coming out in a speech after receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards, which led many news outlets to describe her as gay, although some sources noted that she did not use the words "gay" or "lesbian" in her speech.
John Hinckley incident
During her freshman year at Yale in 1980–1981, Foster was stalked by John W. Hinckley, Jr., who had developed an obsession with her after watching Taxi Driver. He moved to New Haven and tried to contact her by letter and telephone. On March 30, 1981, Hinckley attempted to assassinate U.S. president Ronald Reagan, wounding him and three other people, claiming that his motive was to impress Foster. The incident attracted intense media attention, and Foster was accompanied by bodyguards while on campus. Although Judge Barrington D. Parker confirmed that Foster was innocent in the case and had been "unwittingly ensnared in a third party's alleged attempt to assassinate an American President", her videotaped testimony was played at Hinckley's trial. While at Yale, Foster also had other stalkers, including a man who planned to kill her but changed his mind after watching her perform in a college play.
Foster has rarely commented publicly about Hinckley. She wrote an essay, "Why Me?", which was published in 1982 by Esquire on the condition that "there be no cover lines, no publicity and no photos". In 1991, she canceled an interview with NBC's Today Show when she discovered Hinckley would be mentioned in the introduction and that the producers would not change it. She discussed Hinckley with Charlie Rose of 60 Minutes II'' in 1999, explaining that she does not "like to dwell on it too much ... I never wanted to be the actress who was remembered for that event. Because it didn't have anything to do with me. I was kind of a hapless bystander. But ... what a scarring, strange moment in history for me, to be 17 years old, 18 years old, and to be caught up in a drama like that." She stated that the incident had a major impact on her career choices, and acknowledged that her experience was minimal compared to the suffering of Reagan's press secretary James Brady, who was permanently disabled in the shooting, and died as a result of his injuries 33 years later, and his loved ones: "Whatever bad moments that I had certainly could never compare to that family."
Filmography and accolades
See also
List of American film actresses
List of American television actresses
List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees – Youngest nominees for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
List of LGBTQ Academy Award winners and nominees – Best Actress in a Leading Role winners and nominees
List of actors with Academy Award nominations
List of actors with two or more Academy Award nominations in acting categories
List of actors with two or more Academy Awards in acting categories
References
Footnotes
Citations
Bibliography
External links
Jodie Foster in the online catalogue of the Cinémathèque Française
1962 births
Living people
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
Actresses from Los Angeles
American child actresses
American film actresses
American film producers
American television actresses
American television directors
American voice actresses
American women film directors
American women film producers
American women television producers
Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan
BAFTA Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles winners
Best Actress Academy Award winners
Best Actress BAFTA Award winners
Best Drama Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
Best Supporting Actress BAFTA Award winners
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
Cecil B. DeMille Award Golden Globe winners
David di Donatello winners
European Film Awards winners (people)
Film directors from Los Angeles
Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead winners
LGBT actresses
LGBT film directors
LGBT television directors
LGBT actors from the United States
LGBT people from California
LGBT producers
Lycée Français de Los Angeles alumni
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Television producers from California
American women television directors
Yale College alumni | true | [
"Aisha Abimbola (December 19, 1970May 15, 2018), born in Epe, Lagos State, was a Nigerian actress and a Yoruba movie star.\n\nEarly life and education \nAbimbola was from a Muslim family and later converted to Christianity, the religion she practiced till the time of her death. In a New Telegraph interview, she said her desire to be an actress stopped her from becoming a pastor.. She married Victor Ibrahim Musa, and the marriage was blessed with two children. Aisha attended her secondary education at Ebute Elefun High School and was the Head Girl of the ‘1994 set’. she later attended Lagos State Polytechnic (LASPOTECH) where she graduated with HND in Catering and Hotel Management. and did her youth service in 2002.\n\nCareer \nAbimbola started her journey into the movie industry when Wale Adenuga Productions came to LASPOTECH for a shoot. She walked up to the Director - Antar Laniyan and asked him for a role. Fortunately for her, the director was waiting for one of the casts and the role was given to her. This was like manna sent down from heaven. She did her best in that role which eventually landed her into more roles. However, a role in the movie Omoge Campus by Bola Igida turned everything around for her. This movie placed her on the stardom of talented actresses in 2001. She easily and talentedly interpreted her roles in indigenous and non-indigenous productions swaying her fans with her skills. At a point in her career, she ventured into movie production with her debut on a movie titled T’omi T’eje in 2016. This was presented in Atlanta and the music was performance by King Rokan.\n\nSelected filmography \n No Pain\n No Gain\n Awerijaye\n So Wrong So Right\n Omoge Campus\n Kamson and Neighbours\n\nAward \nCity People Entertainment Award for Yoruba Movie Personality of the Year – 2015.\n\nDeath \nAbimbola died of breast cancer in a hospital at Canada. Her death threw the entire movie industry into a dark mood. She was 46 years. She had two kids whom her best friend Lola Alao won the custody of after taking the late actress’ husband to court and winning the case.\n\nReferences\n\n1974 births\n2018 deaths\nYoruba actresses\nActresses in Yoruba cinema\nDeaths from breast cancer\nDeaths from cancer in Canada\nLagos State Polytechnic alumni\nActresses from Lagos State\nNigerian former Muslims\nNigerian Christians\nConverts to Christianity from Islam\nNigerian film actresses",
"Brittany Anne Byrnes (born 31 July 1987) is an Australian actress. Her most notable acting role has been Charlotte Watsford in H2O: Just Add Water.\n\nPersonal life \nByrnes was born in Australia and trained in all aspects of dance at the Bradshaw Dancers Performing Arts Academy from the age of four. She attended Terra Sancta College in Quakers Hill, a suburb of Sydney, during her high school years.\n\nShe has been acting since she was seven, when she played her first role in the movie Babe. She was later given a lead role in the TV movie When Good Ghouls Go Bad. One of her latest roles was Charlotte Watsford on Network Ten's H2O: Just Add Water.\n\nActing career \nByrnes' first theatrical role was in Babe, where she played the Hoggetts' spoiled granddaughter. She has since appeared in films such as Little Oberon, Mermaids and Swimming Upstream. Byrnes has also been in a number of television shows, including BeastMaster, All Saints and the second season of the Australian show H2O: Just Add Water as the new girl, Charlotte Watsford.\n\nIn 2005, Brittany was nominated for an AFI Award (The Young Actor's Award) for her performance in Little Oberon. In 2008, she was nominated again for an AFI Award (Best Supporting Actress in a television drama) for her performance in H2O: Just Add Water.\n\nFilmography\n\nAwards and nominations\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n \n\n1987 births\nAustralian child actresses\nAustralian film actresses\nAustralian television actresses\nLiving people\n20th-century Australian actresses\n21st-century Australian actresses"
] |
[
"Jodie Foster",
"1965-1975: Early work",
"What was Foster's first role?",
"Foster's career began with an appearance as the Coppertone girl",
"What year was she the Coppertone Girl?",
"in a television advertisement in 1965,",
"What was her next appearance after that?",
"a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D.,",
"What year was her appearance on Mayberry?",
"in 1968",
"When was her first movie role?",
"a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970),"
] | C_67bd39d220a84618b8cdda8de3fe429e_1 | Did she have a lead role in Menace on the Mountain? | 6 | Did Jodie Foster have a lead role in Menace on the Mountain? | Jodie Foster | Foster's career began with an appearance as the Coppertone girl in a television advertisement in 1965, when she was only three years old. Her mother had originally intended only for her older brother Buddy to audition for the ad, but had taken Jodie with them to the casting call, where she was noticed by the casting agents. The television spot led to more advertisement work, and in 1968 to a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., in which her brother starred. In the following years Foster continued working in advertisements and appeared in over fifty television shows; she and her brother became the breadwinners of the family during this time. Although most of Foster's television appearances were minor, she had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969-1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), and starred opposite Christopher Connelly in the short-lived Paper Moon (1974), adapted from the hit film. Foster also appeared in films, mostly for Disney. After a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), playing a girl who becomes friends with a boy, played by Johnny Whitaker, and his pet lion. She was accidentally grabbed by the lion on set, which left her with permanent scars on her back. Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid". Foster has said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her: "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!' I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'" CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (born November 19, 1962) is an American actress, director, and producer. Regarded as one of the best actresses of her generation, she is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award. For her work as a director, she has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. People magazine named her the most beautiful woman in the world in 1992, and in 2003, she was voted Number 23 in Channel 4's countdown of the 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time. Entertainment Weekly named her 57th on their list of 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time in 1996. In 2016, she was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star located at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard.
Foster began her professional career as a child model when she was three years old, and made her acting debut in 1968 in the television sitcom Mayberry R.F.D. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she worked in several television series and made her film debut with Disney's Napoleon and Samantha (1972). Following appearances in the musical Tom Sawyer (1973) and Martin Scorsese's comedy-drama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), her breakthrough came with Scorsese's psychological thriller Taxi Driver (1976), where she played a child prostitute, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other roles as a teenager include the musical Bugsy Malone (1976) and the thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), and she became a popular teen idol by starring in Disney's Freaky Friday (1976) and Candleshoe (1977), as well as Carny (1980) and Foxes (1980).
After attending Yale University, Foster struggled to transition into adult roles until she gained critical acclaim for playing a rape survivor in the legal drama The Accused (1988), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won her second Academy Award three years later for the psychological horror film The Silence of the Lambs (1991), where she portrayed FBI agent Clarice Starling. She made her debut as a film director the same year with Little Man Tate. She founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, in 1992. Its first production was Nell (1994), in which Foster also played the title role, garnering her fourth Academy Award nomination. Her other successful films in the 1990s were the romantic drama Sommersby, western comedy Maverick (1994), science fiction Contact (1997), and period drama Anna and the King (1999).
Foster experienced career setbacks in the early 2000s, including the cancellation of a film project and the closing down of her production company, but she then starred in four commercially successful thrillers: Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005), Inside Man (2006), and The Brave One (2007). She has concentrated on directing in the 2010s, with the films The Beaver (2011) and Money Monster (2016), and episodes for Netflix television series Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards, and Black Mirror. She received her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for "Lesbian Request Denied", the third episode of the former. She also starred in the films Carnage (2011), Elysium (2013), Hotel Artemis (2018), and The Mauritanian (2021), the last of which won Foster her third Golden Globe.
Early life
Foster was born on November 19, 1962 in Los Angeles, the youngest child of Evelyn Ella "Brandy" (née Almond 1928-2019) and Lucius Fisher Foster III, a wealthy businessman. She is of English, German and Irish heritage. On her father's side she is descended from John Alden, who arrived in North America on the Mayflower in 1620.
Her parents' marriage had ended before she was born, and she never established a relationship with her father. She has three older full siblings: Lucinda (born 1954), Constance (born 1955), and Lucius, nicknamed "Buddy" (born 1957), as well as three half-brothers from her father's earlier marriage.
Following the divorce, Brandy raised the children with her partner in Los Angeles. She worked as a publicist for film producer Arthur P. Jacobs, until focusing on managing the acting careers of Buddy and Jodie. Although Foster was officially named Alicia, her siblings began calling her "Jodie", and the name stuck.
Foster was a gifted child who learned to read at age three. She attended the Lycée Français de Los Angeles, a French-language prep school. Her fluency in French has enabled her to act in French films, and she also dubs herself in French-language versions of most of her English-language films. At her graduation in 1980, she delivered the valedictorian address for the school's French division. She then attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut where she majored in African-American literature, wrote her thesis on Toni Morrison under the guidance of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and graduated magna cum laude in 1985. She returned to Yale in 1993 to address the graduating class, and received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree in 1997. In 2018, she was awarded the Yale Undergraduate Lifetime Achievement Award.
Career
Career beginnings
Foster's career began with an appearance in a Coppertone television advertisement in 1965, when she was three years old. Her mother had intended only for Jodie's older brother Buddy to audition, but had taken Jodie with them to the casting call, where she was noticed by the casting agents. The television spot led to more advertising work, and in 1968 to a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., in which her brother starred. In the following years Foster continued working in advertising and appeared in over 50 television shows; she and her brother became the breadwinners of the family during this time. She had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969–1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), and starred opposite Christopher Connelly in the short-lived Paper Moon (1974), adapted from the hit film.
Foster also appeared in films, mostly for Disney. After a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), playing a girl who befriends a boy, played by Johnny Whitaker, and his pet lion. She was accidentally grabbed by the lion on set, which left her with scars on her back. Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid".
Foster said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her: "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!' I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'"
1970s: Taxi Driver and teenage stardom
Foster's mother was concerned that her daughter's career would end by the time she grew out of playing children, and decided that Foster should also begin acting in films for adult audiences. After the minor supporting role in Alice, Scorsese cast her in the role of a child prostitute in Taxi Driver (1976). To be able to do the film, Foster had to undergo psychiatric assessment and was accompanied by a social worker on set. Her older sister acted as her stand-in in sexually suggestive scenes. Foster later commented on the role, saying that she hated "the idea that everybody thinks if a kid's going to be an actress it means that she has to play Shirley Temple or someone's little sister." During the filming, Foster developed a bond with co-star Robert De Niro, who saw "serious potential" in her and dedicated time rehearsing scenes with her.
She described Taxi Driver as a life-changing experience and stated that it was "the first time anyone asked me to create a character that wasn't myself. It was the first time I realized that acting wasn't this hobby you just sort of did, but that there was actually some craft." Taxi Driver won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival; Foster also impressed journalists when she acted as French interpreter at the press conference. Taxi Driver was a critical and commercial success, and earned her a supporting actress Academy Award nomination, as well as two BAFTAs, a David di Donatello and a National Society of Film Critics award. The film is considered one of the best in history by the American Film Institute and Sight & Sound, and has been preserved in the National Film Registry.
Foster also acted in another film nominated for the Palme d'Or in 1976, Bugsy Malone. The British musical parodied films about Prohibition Era gangsters by having all roles played by children; Foster appeared in a major supporting role as a star of a speakeasy show. Director Alan Parker was impressed by her, saying that "she takes such an intelligent interest in the way the film is being made that if I had been run over by a bus I think she was probably the only person on the set able to take over as director." She gained several positive notices for her performance: Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated that "at thirteen she was already getting the roles that grown-up actresses complained weren't being written for women anymore", Variety described her as "outstanding", and Vincent Canby of The New York Times called her "the star of the show". Foster's two BAFTAs were awarded jointly for her performances in Taxi Driver and Bugsy Malone. Her third film release in 1976 was the independent drama Echoes of a Summer, which had been filmed two years previously. The New York Times named Foster's performance as a terminally ill girl the film's "main strength" and Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune stated that she "is not a good child actress; she's just a good actress", although both reviewers otherwise panned the film.
Foster's fourth film of 1976 was the Canadian-French thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, in which she starred opposite Martin Sheen. The film combined aspects from thriller and horror genres, and showed Foster as a mysterious young girl living on her own in a small town. The performance earned her a Saturn Award. In November, Foster hosted Saturday Night Live, becoming the youngest person to do so until 1982. Her final film of the year was the Disney comedy Freaky Friday, "her first true star vehicle". She played a tomboy teen who accidentally changes bodies with her mother, and she later stated that the film marked a "transitional period" for her when she began to grow out of child roles. It received mainly positive reviews, and was a box office success, gaining Foster a Golden Globe nomination for her performance.
After her breakthrough year, Foster spent nine months living in France, where she starred in Moi, fleur bleue (1977) and recorded several songs for its soundtrack. Her other films released in 1977 were the Italian comedy Casotto (1977), and the Disney heist film Candleshoe (1977), which was filmed in England and co-starred veteran actors David Niven and Helen Hayes. After its release, Foster did not appear in any new releases until 1980, the year she turned eighteen.
1980s: Transition to adult roles
In 1980, Foster gained positive notices for her performances in the independent films Foxes and Carny (1980). The same year, she also became a full-time student at Yale. She later stated that going to college changed her thoughts about acting, which she had previously thought was an unintelligent profession, but now realised that "what I really wanted to do was to act and there was nothing stupid about it." Although Foster prioritized college during these years, she continued making films on her summer vacations. These were O'Hara's Wife (1982), television film Svengali (1983), John Irving adaptation The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), French film The Blood of Others (1984), and period drama Mesmerized (1986), which she also co-produced. None of them gained large audiences or critical appreciation, and after graduating from Yale in 1985, Foster struggled to find further acting work.
Foster's first film after college, the neo-noir Siesta (1987), was a failure. Her next project, the independent film Five Corners (1987), was better received. A moderate critical success, it earned Foster an Independent Spirit Award for her performance as a woman whose sexual assaulter returns to stalk her. The following year, Foster made her debut as a director with the episode "Do Not Open This Box" for the horror anthology series Tales from the Darkside, and starred in the romantic drama Stealing Home (1988) opposite Mark Harmon. The film was a critical and commercial failure, with critic Roger Ebert "wondering if any movie could possibly be that bad".
Foster's breakthrough into adult roles came with her performance as a rape survivor in The Accused (1988). Based on a real criminal case, the film focuses on the aftermath of a gang rape and its survivor's fight for justice in the face of victim blaming. Before making the film, Foster was having doubts about whether to continue her career and planned on starting graduate studies, but decided to give acting "one last try" in The Accused. She had to audition twice for the role and was cast only after several more established actors had turned it down, as the film's producers were wary of her due to her previous failures and because she was still remembered as a "chubby teenager". Due to the heavy subject matter, the filming was a difficult experience for all cast and crew involved, especially the shooting of the rape scene, which took five days to complete. Foster was unhappy with her performance, and feared that it would end her career. Instead, The Accused received positive reviews, with Foster's performance receiving widespread acclaim and earning her Academy, Golden Globe and National Board of Review awards, as well as a nomination for a BAFTA Award.
1990s: Box office success, debut as director and Egg Pictures
Foster's first film release after the success of The Accused was the thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991). She portrayed FBI trainee Clarice Starling, who is sent to interview incarcerated serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in order to hunt another serial killer, Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb (Ted Levine). Foster later named the role one of her favorites. She had read the novel it was based on after its publication in 1988 and had attempted to purchase its film rights, as it featured "a real female heroine" and its plot was not "about steroids and brawn, [but] about using your mind and using your insufficiencies to combat the villain." Despite her enthusiasm, director Jonathan Demme did not initially want to cast her, but the producers overruled him. Demme's view of Foster changed during the production, and he later credited her for helping him define the character.
Released in February 1991, The Silence of the Lambs became one of the biggest hits of the year, grossing close to $273 million, with a positive critical reception. Foster received largely positive reviews and won Academy, Golden Globe, and BAFTA awards for her portrayal of Starling; Silence won five Academy Awards overall, becoming one of the few films to win in all main categories. In contrast, some reviewers criticized the film as misogynist for its focus on brutal murders of women, and homo-/transphobic due to its portrayal of "Buffalo Bill" as bisexual and transgender. Much of the criticism was directed towards Foster, who the critics alleged was herself a lesbian. Despite the controversy, the film is considered a modern classic: Starling and Lecter are included on the American Film Institute's top ten of the greatest film heroes and villains, and the film is preserved in the National Film Registry. Later in 1991, Foster also starred in the unsuccessful low-budget thriller Catchfire, which had been filmed before Silence, but was released after it in an attempt to profit from its success.
In October 1991, Foster released her first feature film as a director, Little Man Tate, a drama about a child prodigy who struggles to come to terms with being different. The main role was played by previously unknown actor Adam Hann-Byrd, and Foster co-starred as his working-class single mother. She had found the script in the "slush pile" at Orion Pictures, and explained that for her debut film she "wanted a piece that was not autobiographical, but that had to do with the 10 philosophies I've accumulated in the past 25 years. Every single one of them, if they weren't in the script from the beginning, they're there now." Many reviewers felt that the film did not live up to the high expectations, and regarded it as "less adventurous than many films in which [she] had starred". Regardless, it was a moderate box office success. Foster's final film appearance of the year came in a small role as a sex worker in Shadows and Fog (1991), directed by Woody Allen, with whom she had wanted to collaborate since the 1970s.
Foster next starred in the period film Sommersby (1993), portraying a woman who begins to suspect that her husband (Richard Gere) who returns home from the Civil War is an impostor. She then replaced Meg Ryan in the Western comedy, Maverick (1994), playing a con artist opposite Mel Gibson and James Garner. According to film scholar Karen Hollinger, both films featured her in more "conventionally feminine" roles. Both Sommersby and Maverick were commercially successful.
Foster had founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, a subsidiary of PolyGram Filmed Entertainment in 1992, and released its first production, Nell, in December 1994. It was directed by Michael Apted and starred Foster in the titular role as a woman who grew up isolated in the Appalachian Mountains and speaks her own invented language. The film was based on Mark Handley's play Idioglossia, which interested Foster for its theme of "otherness", and because she "loved this idea of a woman who defies categorization, a creature who is labeled and categorized by people based on their own problems and their own prejudices and what they bring to the table." Despite mixed reviews, it was a commercial success, and earned Foster a Screen Actors Guild Award and nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her acting performance.
The second film that Foster directed and produced for Egg Pictures was Home for the Holidays, released in late 1995. A black comedy "set around a nightmarish Thanksgiving", it starred Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. The film received a mixed critical response and was a commercial failure. In 1996, Foster received two honorary awards: the Crystal Award, awarded annually for women in the entertainment industry, and the Berlinale Camera at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival. She voiced a character in an episode of Frasier in 1996 and in an episode of The X-Files in early 1997.
After Nell (1994), Foster appeared in no new film releases until Contact (1997), a science fiction film based on a novel by Carl Sagan and directed by Robert Zemeckis. She starred as a scientist searching for extraterrestrial life in the SETI project. The film was a commercial success and earned Foster a Saturn Award and a nomination for a Golden Globe. Foster next produced Jane Anderson's television film The Baby Dance (1998) for Showtime. Its story deals with a wealthy California couple who struggle with infertility and decide to adopt from a poor family in Louisiana. On her decision to produce for television, Foster stated that it was easier to take financial risks in that medium than in feature films. In 1998, she also moved her production company from PolyGram to Paramount Pictures. Also in 1998, asteroid 17744 Jodiefoster was named in her honor.
Foster's last film of the 1990s was the period drama Anna and the King (1999), in which she starred opposite Chow Yun-Fat. It was based on a fictionalized biography of British teacher Anna Leonowens, who taught the children of King Mongkut of Siam, and whose story became well known as the musical The King and I. Foster was paid $15 million to portray Leonowens, making her one of the highest-paid female actors in Hollywood. The film was subject to controversy when the Thai government deemed it historically inaccurate and insulting to the royal family and banned its distribution in the country. It was a moderate commercial success, but received mixed to negative reviews. Roger Ebert panned the film, stating that the role required Foster "to play beneath [her] intelligence" and The New York Times called it a "misstep" for her and accused her of only being "interested ... in sanctifying herself as an old-fashioned heroine than in taking on dramatically risky roles".
2000s: Career setbacks and resurgence in thrillers
Foster's first project of the new decade was Keith Gordon's film Waking the Dead (2000), which she produced. She declined to reprise her role as Clarice Starling in Hannibal (2001), with the part going instead to Julianne Moore, and concentrated on a new directorial project, Flora Plum. It was to focus on a 1930s circus and star Claire Danes and Russell Crowe, but had to be shelved after Crowe was injured on set and could not complete filming on schedule; Foster unsuccessfully attempted to revive the project several times in the following years. Controversially, she also expressed interest in directing and starring in a biographical film of Nazi film director Leni Riefenstahl, who did not like the idea. In addition to these setbacks, Foster shut down Egg Pictures in 2001, stating that producing was "just a really thankless, bad job". The company's last production, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2002. It received good reviews, and had a limited theatrical release in the summer.
After the cancellation of Flora Plum, Foster took on the main role in David Fincher's thriller Panic Room after its intended star, Nicole Kidman, had to drop out due to an injury on set. Before filming resumed, Foster was given only a week to prepare for the role of a woman who hides in a panic room with her daughter when burglars invade their home. It grossed over $30 million on its North American opening weekend in March 2002, thus becoming the most successful film opening of Foster's career . In addition to being a box office success, the film also received largely positive reviews.
After a minor appearance in the French period drama A Very Long Engagement (2004), Foster starred in three more thrillers. The first was Flightplan (2005), in which she played a woman whose daughter vanishes during an overnight flight. It became a global box office success, but received mixed reviews. It was followed by Spike Lee's critically and commercially successful Inside Man (2006), about a bank heist on Wall Street, which co-starred Denzel Washington and Clive Owen. The third thriller, The Brave One (2007), prompted some comparisons to Taxi Driver, as Foster played a New Yorker who becomes a vigilante after her fiancé is murdered. It was not a success, but earned Foster her sixth Golden Globe nomination. Her last film role of the decade was in the children's adventure film Nim's Island (2008), in which she portrayed an agoraphobic writer opposite Gerard Butler and Abigail Breslin. It was the first comedy in which she had starred since Maverick (1994), and was a commercial success but a critical failure. In 2009, she provided the voice for Maggie in a tetralogy episode of The Simpsons titled "Four Great Women and a Manicure".
2010s: Focus on directing
In the 2010s, Foster focused on directing and took fewer acting roles. In February 2011, she hosted the 36th César Awards in France, and the following month released her third feature film direction, The Beaver (2011), about a depressed man who develops an alternative personality based on a beaver hand puppet. It starred Maverick co-star Mel Gibson and featured herself, Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence in supporting roles as his family. Foster called its production "probably the biggest struggle of my professional career", partly due to the film's heavy subject matter but also due to the controversy that Gibson generated when he was accused of domestic violence and making anti-semitic, racist, and sexist statements. The film received mixed reviews, and failed the box office, largely due to this controversy. In 2011, Foster also appeared as part of an ensemble cast with John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz in Roman Polanski's comedy Carnage, in which the attempts of middle-class parents to settle an incident between their sons descends into chaos. It premiered to mainly positive reviews and earned Foster a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress.
In 2013, Foster received the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards. Her next film role was playing Secretary of Defense Delacourt opposite Matt Damon in the dystopian film Elysium (2013), which was a box office success. She also returned to television directing for the first time since the 1980s, directing the episodes "Lesbian Request Denied" (2013) and "Thirsty Bird" (2014) for Orange Is the New Black, and the episode "Chapter 22" (2014) for House of Cards. "Lesbian Request Denied" brought her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and the two 2014 episodes earned her two nominations for a Directors Guild of America Award. She also narrated the episode "Women in Space" (2014) for Makers: Women Who Make America, a PBS documentary series about women's struggle for equal rights in the United States. In 2015, Foster received the Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award at the Athena Film Festival.
The fourth film directed by Foster, hostage drama Money Monster, premiered out-of-competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2016. It starred George Clooney and Julia Roberts, and despite mixed reviews, was a moderate commercial success. The following year, Foster continued her work in television by directing an episode, "Arkangel", for the British sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror (2011–).
As the decade drew to a close, Foster continued to mix acting with directing. She starred together with Sterling Brown in the dystopian film Hotel Artemis (2018). Although the film was a commercial and critical disappointment, Foster's performance as Nurse, who runs a hospital for criminals, received positive notices. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle's stated that "not enough can be said about the performance of Foster in this film. She brings to the role a quality of having seen the absolute worst in people, but also the suggestion that, as a result, she accepts them on their own terms and knows how to handle any situation." Rick Bentley from Tampa Bay Times declared Foster's performance one of her "best and most memorable performances." The same year, Foster co-produced and narrated Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018), a documentary on one of the first female film directors.
2020s: Current work
Foster directed the finale of the 2020 science fiction drama Tales from the Loop. Her next project was the legal drama The Mauritanian (2021), in which she starred as the lawyer of a prisoner (Tahar Rahim) at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Foster won a Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her performance. At the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, Foster received the Honorary Palme d'Or for lifetime achievement.
Personal life
Foster met producer (then production coordinator) Cydney Bernard on the set of Sommersby (1993). They were in a relationship from 1993 until 2008 and had two sons (born in 1998 and 2001) together. In April 2014, Foster married actress and photographer Alexandra Hedison after a year of dating.
Foster's sexual orientation became the subject of public discussion in 1991 when publications such as OutWeek and The Village Voice, protesting against the alleged homophobia and transphobia in The Silence of the Lambs, claimed that she was a closeted lesbian. While she had been in a relationship with Bernard for 14 years, Foster first publicly acknowledged it in a speech at The Hollywood Reporter'''s "Women in Entertainment" breakfast honoring her in 2007. In 2013, she addressed her coming out in a speech after receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards, which led many news outlets to describe her as gay, although some sources noted that she did not use the words "gay" or "lesbian" in her speech.
John Hinckley incident
During her freshman year at Yale in 1980–1981, Foster was stalked by John W. Hinckley, Jr., who had developed an obsession with her after watching Taxi Driver. He moved to New Haven and tried to contact her by letter and telephone. On March 30, 1981, Hinckley attempted to assassinate U.S. president Ronald Reagan, wounding him and three other people, claiming that his motive was to impress Foster. The incident attracted intense media attention, and Foster was accompanied by bodyguards while on campus. Although Judge Barrington D. Parker confirmed that Foster was innocent in the case and had been "unwittingly ensnared in a third party's alleged attempt to assassinate an American President", her videotaped testimony was played at Hinckley's trial. While at Yale, Foster also had other stalkers, including a man who planned to kill her but changed his mind after watching her perform in a college play.
Foster has rarely commented publicly about Hinckley. She wrote an essay, "Why Me?", which was published in 1982 by Esquire on the condition that "there be no cover lines, no publicity and no photos". In 1991, she canceled an interview with NBC's Today Show when she discovered Hinckley would be mentioned in the introduction and that the producers would not change it. She discussed Hinckley with Charlie Rose of 60 Minutes II'' in 1999, explaining that she does not "like to dwell on it too much ... I never wanted to be the actress who was remembered for that event. Because it didn't have anything to do with me. I was kind of a hapless bystander. But ... what a scarring, strange moment in history for me, to be 17 years old, 18 years old, and to be caught up in a drama like that." She stated that the incident had a major impact on her career choices, and acknowledged that her experience was minimal compared to the suffering of Reagan's press secretary James Brady, who was permanently disabled in the shooting, and died as a result of his injuries 33 years later, and his loved ones: "Whatever bad moments that I had certainly could never compare to that family."
Filmography and accolades
See also
List of American film actresses
List of American television actresses
List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees – Youngest nominees for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
List of LGBTQ Academy Award winners and nominees – Best Actress in a Leading Role winners and nominees
List of actors with Academy Award nominations
List of actors with two or more Academy Award nominations in acting categories
List of actors with two or more Academy Awards in acting categories
References
Footnotes
Citations
Bibliography
External links
Jodie Foster in the online catalogue of the Cinémathèque Française
1962 births
Living people
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
Actresses from Los Angeles
American child actresses
American film actresses
American film producers
American television actresses
American television directors
American voice actresses
American women film directors
American women film producers
American women television producers
Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan
BAFTA Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles winners
Best Actress Academy Award winners
Best Actress BAFTA Award winners
Best Drama Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
Best Supporting Actress BAFTA Award winners
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
Cecil B. DeMille Award Golden Globe winners
David di Donatello winners
European Film Awards winners (people)
Film directors from Los Angeles
Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead winners
LGBT actresses
LGBT film directors
LGBT television directors
LGBT actors from the United States
LGBT people from California
LGBT producers
Lycée Français de Los Angeles alumni
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Television producers from California
American women television directors
Yale College alumni | false | [
"Gloria Henry (born Gloria Eileen McEniry; April 2, 1923 – April 3, 2021) was an American actress, best known for her role as Alice Mitchell, Dennis's mother, from 1959 to 1963 on the CBS family sitcom Dennis the Menace.\n\nEarly life\nHenry was born Gloria Eileen McEniry on April 2, 1923. She lived and grew up on the edge of the Garden District of New Orleans, Louisiana. She was educated at the Worcester Art Museum School in Massachusetts. Henry moved to Los Angeles in her late teens and worked on a number of radio shows and commercials using the stage name of Gloria Henry. Her topics of discussions were gossip, fashion, and sports. She also performed in little theater groups.\n\nCareer\n\nEarly career\nSigned by an agent, Henry transitioned into film work via Columbia Studios in 1946, and made her debut as the female lead in the horse racing film Sport of Kings (1947). She had featured roles in the romantic comedy Miss Grant Takes Richmond (1949) that starred Lucille Ball, and the western Rancho Notorious (1952) with Marlene Dietrich. Henry also appeared in three sports-themed stories; the football film Triple Threat (1948), the horse race tale Racing Luck (1948), and the William Bendix baseball comedy Kill the Umpire (1950).\n\nThe 1950s were a mixture of B films and episodic TV guest parts such as My Little Margie (1952) and the premiere episode of Perry Mason, \"The Case of the Restless Redhead\" (1957). She was also a regular on the detective series The Files of Jeffrey Jones (1954), starring Don Haggerty, but was written out of the show when she became pregnant. She also appeared on The Abbott and Costello Show in an episode entitled \"The Pigeon\".\n\nDennis the Menace\n\nIn 1959, Henry landed the role for which she would become most well-known, that of Dennis' mother \"Alice Mitchell\" on the CBS comedy television series Dennis the Menace. The series co-starred Herbert Anderson as her husband, and young Jay North in the title role of Dennis. Henry portrayed sunny domesticity and maternal warmth for four seasons until the series' cancellation in 1963.\n\nAfter Dennis the Menace\nHenry's career slowed down considerably after Dennis the Menace. In 1992, she stated that she had become so associated with the role of Alice Mitchell that she had become typecast in mother roles. She appeared occasionally in TV movies playing assorted bit-part matrons, and in 1989, she played a small role as an art-collecting society matron in the prime time soap opera Dallas.\n\nHenry returned to the big screen in a brief role in Her Minor Thing (2005), a romantic comedy directed by Charles Matthau, Walter Matthau's son. She occasionally attended film festivals and nostalgia conventions. In 2012, she guest-starred on the Parks and Recreation episode \"Campaign Shake-Up\", playing the role of Mary-Elizabeth Clinch.\n\nPersonal life\nHenry was of Scottish and Irish ancestry. She was married to Robert D. Lamb between 1943 and 1948. She wed architect Craig Ellwood in 1949; they divorced in 1977. The couple had three children, Jeffrey, Adam, and Erin Ellwood. \n\nGloria Henry died the day after her 98th birthday at her home in Los Angeles, California, on April 3, 2021.\n\nFilmography\n\nTelevision appearances\n\nThe Abbott and Costello Show – Ruby Norton\nMr. & Mrs. North – Ruth Spencer (1953)\nMy Little Margie – Norma Calkins (1953)\nThe Files of Jeffrey Jones (1954)\nNavy Log – Eileen Murphy (1957)\nPerry Mason – Helene Chaney (1957)\nThe Walter Winchell File (1957)\nTales of Wells Fargo – Sharon Burns (1957)\nFather Knows Best – Mildred Harris (1957)\nThe Life of Riley – Miss Cosgrove (1958)\nRescue 8 – Joan (1958)\nThe Thin Man (1959)\nDennis the Menace – Alice Mitchell (1959–63)\nHazel (1963)\nThe Snoop Sisters (1974)\nThe Brady Brides (1981)\nFalcon Crest (1987)\nDallas (1989)\nHunter (1990)\nDoogie Howser, M.D. (1992)\nParks and Recreation (2012)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n \n \n \n\n1923 births\n2021 deaths\n20th-century American actresses\n21st-century American actresses\nActresses from Los Angeles\nActresses from New Orleans\nAmerican film actresses\nAmerican television actresses\nAmerican people of Scottish descent\nAmerican people of Irish descent\nPeople associated with the Worcester Art Museum",
"Supriya Kumari is an Indian television actress who has played the lead in Balaji Telefilms serial Bairi Piya as Amoli on Colors (TV channel).\n\nCareer \nShe began her career with local regional languages Khortha and Nagpuri album of Jharkhand.\nSupriya says that she did not have to struggle much after coming to Mumbai. She auditioned for different television serials. She got her first break when she landed a small role in Agle Janam Mohe Bitiya Hi Kijo. During that time, she auditioned for the lead role in Bairi Piya. As luck would have had it, she got to play Amoli's role and which then went on to become a success. She was part of Sony's weekly show \"Babosa - Mere Bhagwan\". She was seen in the dance reality show Nachle Ve with Saroj Khan hosted by Saroj Khan and Terence Lewis (choreographer) on Imagine TV in 2010 and again in 2011.\n\nShe played the lead character of Billo in Looteri Dulhan on Imagine TV. She has also done a cameo negative role named Neelu for the show Bhagonwali-Baante Apni Taqdeer on Zee Tv.\n\nShe is also making her debut in Bollywood with the film Zindagi 50 50 where she plays the role of a housewife. She is playing one of lead roles in the film. Two of the other lead roles are being portrayed by Veena Malik and Riya Sen respectively.\n\nMovie\n\nTelevision\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \nI feel lonely and cry sometimes\nSupriya Kumari is all set to step into the role of the 'other' woman in Zee TV's Bhagonwali\nTelevision actress Supriya Kumari will debut on the silver screen.\n\nIndian television actresses\nLiving people\n1988 births"
] |
[
"Jodie Foster",
"1965-1975: Early work",
"What was Foster's first role?",
"Foster's career began with an appearance as the Coppertone girl",
"What year was she the Coppertone Girl?",
"in a television advertisement in 1965,",
"What was her next appearance after that?",
"a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D.,",
"What year was her appearance on Mayberry?",
"in 1968",
"When was her first movie role?",
"a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970),",
"Did she have a lead role in Menace on the Mountain?",
"I don't know."
] | C_67bd39d220a84618b8cdda8de3fe429e_1 | What did she do after Menace on the Mountain? | 7 | What did Jodie Foster do after Menace on the Mountain? | Jodie Foster | Foster's career began with an appearance as the Coppertone girl in a television advertisement in 1965, when she was only three years old. Her mother had originally intended only for her older brother Buddy to audition for the ad, but had taken Jodie with them to the casting call, where she was noticed by the casting agents. The television spot led to more advertisement work, and in 1968 to a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., in which her brother starred. In the following years Foster continued working in advertisements and appeared in over fifty television shows; she and her brother became the breadwinners of the family during this time. Although most of Foster's television appearances were minor, she had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969-1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), and starred opposite Christopher Connelly in the short-lived Paper Moon (1974), adapted from the hit film. Foster also appeared in films, mostly for Disney. After a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), playing a girl who becomes friends with a boy, played by Johnny Whitaker, and his pet lion. She was accidentally grabbed by the lion on set, which left her with permanent scars on her back. Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid". Foster has said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her: "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!' I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'" CANNOTANSWER | ), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), | Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (born November 19, 1962) is an American actress, director, and producer. Regarded as one of the best actresses of her generation, she is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award. For her work as a director, she has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. People magazine named her the most beautiful woman in the world in 1992, and in 2003, she was voted Number 23 in Channel 4's countdown of the 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time. Entertainment Weekly named her 57th on their list of 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time in 1996. In 2016, she was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star located at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard.
Foster began her professional career as a child model when she was three years old, and made her acting debut in 1968 in the television sitcom Mayberry R.F.D. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she worked in several television series and made her film debut with Disney's Napoleon and Samantha (1972). Following appearances in the musical Tom Sawyer (1973) and Martin Scorsese's comedy-drama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), her breakthrough came with Scorsese's psychological thriller Taxi Driver (1976), where she played a child prostitute, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other roles as a teenager include the musical Bugsy Malone (1976) and the thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), and she became a popular teen idol by starring in Disney's Freaky Friday (1976) and Candleshoe (1977), as well as Carny (1980) and Foxes (1980).
After attending Yale University, Foster struggled to transition into adult roles until she gained critical acclaim for playing a rape survivor in the legal drama The Accused (1988), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won her second Academy Award three years later for the psychological horror film The Silence of the Lambs (1991), where she portrayed FBI agent Clarice Starling. She made her debut as a film director the same year with Little Man Tate. She founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, in 1992. Its first production was Nell (1994), in which Foster also played the title role, garnering her fourth Academy Award nomination. Her other successful films in the 1990s were the romantic drama Sommersby, western comedy Maverick (1994), science fiction Contact (1997), and period drama Anna and the King (1999).
Foster experienced career setbacks in the early 2000s, including the cancellation of a film project and the closing down of her production company, but she then starred in four commercially successful thrillers: Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005), Inside Man (2006), and The Brave One (2007). She has concentrated on directing in the 2010s, with the films The Beaver (2011) and Money Monster (2016), and episodes for Netflix television series Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards, and Black Mirror. She received her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for "Lesbian Request Denied", the third episode of the former. She also starred in the films Carnage (2011), Elysium (2013), Hotel Artemis (2018), and The Mauritanian (2021), the last of which won Foster her third Golden Globe.
Early life
Foster was born on November 19, 1962 in Los Angeles, the youngest child of Evelyn Ella "Brandy" (née Almond 1928-2019) and Lucius Fisher Foster III, a wealthy businessman. She is of English, German and Irish heritage. On her father's side she is descended from John Alden, who arrived in North America on the Mayflower in 1620.
Her parents' marriage had ended before she was born, and she never established a relationship with her father. She has three older full siblings: Lucinda (born 1954), Constance (born 1955), and Lucius, nicknamed "Buddy" (born 1957), as well as three half-brothers from her father's earlier marriage.
Following the divorce, Brandy raised the children with her partner in Los Angeles. She worked as a publicist for film producer Arthur P. Jacobs, until focusing on managing the acting careers of Buddy and Jodie. Although Foster was officially named Alicia, her siblings began calling her "Jodie", and the name stuck.
Foster was a gifted child who learned to read at age three. She attended the Lycée Français de Los Angeles, a French-language prep school. Her fluency in French has enabled her to act in French films, and she also dubs herself in French-language versions of most of her English-language films. At her graduation in 1980, she delivered the valedictorian address for the school's French division. She then attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut where she majored in African-American literature, wrote her thesis on Toni Morrison under the guidance of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and graduated magna cum laude in 1985. She returned to Yale in 1993 to address the graduating class, and received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree in 1997. In 2018, she was awarded the Yale Undergraduate Lifetime Achievement Award.
Career
Career beginnings
Foster's career began with an appearance in a Coppertone television advertisement in 1965, when she was three years old. Her mother had intended only for Jodie's older brother Buddy to audition, but had taken Jodie with them to the casting call, where she was noticed by the casting agents. The television spot led to more advertising work, and in 1968 to a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., in which her brother starred. In the following years Foster continued working in advertising and appeared in over 50 television shows; she and her brother became the breadwinners of the family during this time. She had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969–1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), and starred opposite Christopher Connelly in the short-lived Paper Moon (1974), adapted from the hit film.
Foster also appeared in films, mostly for Disney. After a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), playing a girl who befriends a boy, played by Johnny Whitaker, and his pet lion. She was accidentally grabbed by the lion on set, which left her with scars on her back. Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid".
Foster said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her: "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!' I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'"
1970s: Taxi Driver and teenage stardom
Foster's mother was concerned that her daughter's career would end by the time she grew out of playing children, and decided that Foster should also begin acting in films for adult audiences. After the minor supporting role in Alice, Scorsese cast her in the role of a child prostitute in Taxi Driver (1976). To be able to do the film, Foster had to undergo psychiatric assessment and was accompanied by a social worker on set. Her older sister acted as her stand-in in sexually suggestive scenes. Foster later commented on the role, saying that she hated "the idea that everybody thinks if a kid's going to be an actress it means that she has to play Shirley Temple or someone's little sister." During the filming, Foster developed a bond with co-star Robert De Niro, who saw "serious potential" in her and dedicated time rehearsing scenes with her.
She described Taxi Driver as a life-changing experience and stated that it was "the first time anyone asked me to create a character that wasn't myself. It was the first time I realized that acting wasn't this hobby you just sort of did, but that there was actually some craft." Taxi Driver won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival; Foster also impressed journalists when she acted as French interpreter at the press conference. Taxi Driver was a critical and commercial success, and earned her a supporting actress Academy Award nomination, as well as two BAFTAs, a David di Donatello and a National Society of Film Critics award. The film is considered one of the best in history by the American Film Institute and Sight & Sound, and has been preserved in the National Film Registry.
Foster also acted in another film nominated for the Palme d'Or in 1976, Bugsy Malone. The British musical parodied films about Prohibition Era gangsters by having all roles played by children; Foster appeared in a major supporting role as a star of a speakeasy show. Director Alan Parker was impressed by her, saying that "she takes such an intelligent interest in the way the film is being made that if I had been run over by a bus I think she was probably the only person on the set able to take over as director." She gained several positive notices for her performance: Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated that "at thirteen she was already getting the roles that grown-up actresses complained weren't being written for women anymore", Variety described her as "outstanding", and Vincent Canby of The New York Times called her "the star of the show". Foster's two BAFTAs were awarded jointly for her performances in Taxi Driver and Bugsy Malone. Her third film release in 1976 was the independent drama Echoes of a Summer, which had been filmed two years previously. The New York Times named Foster's performance as a terminally ill girl the film's "main strength" and Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune stated that she "is not a good child actress; she's just a good actress", although both reviewers otherwise panned the film.
Foster's fourth film of 1976 was the Canadian-French thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, in which she starred opposite Martin Sheen. The film combined aspects from thriller and horror genres, and showed Foster as a mysterious young girl living on her own in a small town. The performance earned her a Saturn Award. In November, Foster hosted Saturday Night Live, becoming the youngest person to do so until 1982. Her final film of the year was the Disney comedy Freaky Friday, "her first true star vehicle". She played a tomboy teen who accidentally changes bodies with her mother, and she later stated that the film marked a "transitional period" for her when she began to grow out of child roles. It received mainly positive reviews, and was a box office success, gaining Foster a Golden Globe nomination for her performance.
After her breakthrough year, Foster spent nine months living in France, where she starred in Moi, fleur bleue (1977) and recorded several songs for its soundtrack. Her other films released in 1977 were the Italian comedy Casotto (1977), and the Disney heist film Candleshoe (1977), which was filmed in England and co-starred veteran actors David Niven and Helen Hayes. After its release, Foster did not appear in any new releases until 1980, the year she turned eighteen.
1980s: Transition to adult roles
In 1980, Foster gained positive notices for her performances in the independent films Foxes and Carny (1980). The same year, she also became a full-time student at Yale. She later stated that going to college changed her thoughts about acting, which she had previously thought was an unintelligent profession, but now realised that "what I really wanted to do was to act and there was nothing stupid about it." Although Foster prioritized college during these years, she continued making films on her summer vacations. These were O'Hara's Wife (1982), television film Svengali (1983), John Irving adaptation The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), French film The Blood of Others (1984), and period drama Mesmerized (1986), which she also co-produced. None of them gained large audiences or critical appreciation, and after graduating from Yale in 1985, Foster struggled to find further acting work.
Foster's first film after college, the neo-noir Siesta (1987), was a failure. Her next project, the independent film Five Corners (1987), was better received. A moderate critical success, it earned Foster an Independent Spirit Award for her performance as a woman whose sexual assaulter returns to stalk her. The following year, Foster made her debut as a director with the episode "Do Not Open This Box" for the horror anthology series Tales from the Darkside, and starred in the romantic drama Stealing Home (1988) opposite Mark Harmon. The film was a critical and commercial failure, with critic Roger Ebert "wondering if any movie could possibly be that bad".
Foster's breakthrough into adult roles came with her performance as a rape survivor in The Accused (1988). Based on a real criminal case, the film focuses on the aftermath of a gang rape and its survivor's fight for justice in the face of victim blaming. Before making the film, Foster was having doubts about whether to continue her career and planned on starting graduate studies, but decided to give acting "one last try" in The Accused. She had to audition twice for the role and was cast only after several more established actors had turned it down, as the film's producers were wary of her due to her previous failures and because she was still remembered as a "chubby teenager". Due to the heavy subject matter, the filming was a difficult experience for all cast and crew involved, especially the shooting of the rape scene, which took five days to complete. Foster was unhappy with her performance, and feared that it would end her career. Instead, The Accused received positive reviews, with Foster's performance receiving widespread acclaim and earning her Academy, Golden Globe and National Board of Review awards, as well as a nomination for a BAFTA Award.
1990s: Box office success, debut as director and Egg Pictures
Foster's first film release after the success of The Accused was the thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991). She portrayed FBI trainee Clarice Starling, who is sent to interview incarcerated serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in order to hunt another serial killer, Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb (Ted Levine). Foster later named the role one of her favorites. She had read the novel it was based on after its publication in 1988 and had attempted to purchase its film rights, as it featured "a real female heroine" and its plot was not "about steroids and brawn, [but] about using your mind and using your insufficiencies to combat the villain." Despite her enthusiasm, director Jonathan Demme did not initially want to cast her, but the producers overruled him. Demme's view of Foster changed during the production, and he later credited her for helping him define the character.
Released in February 1991, The Silence of the Lambs became one of the biggest hits of the year, grossing close to $273 million, with a positive critical reception. Foster received largely positive reviews and won Academy, Golden Globe, and BAFTA awards for her portrayal of Starling; Silence won five Academy Awards overall, becoming one of the few films to win in all main categories. In contrast, some reviewers criticized the film as misogynist for its focus on brutal murders of women, and homo-/transphobic due to its portrayal of "Buffalo Bill" as bisexual and transgender. Much of the criticism was directed towards Foster, who the critics alleged was herself a lesbian. Despite the controversy, the film is considered a modern classic: Starling and Lecter are included on the American Film Institute's top ten of the greatest film heroes and villains, and the film is preserved in the National Film Registry. Later in 1991, Foster also starred in the unsuccessful low-budget thriller Catchfire, which had been filmed before Silence, but was released after it in an attempt to profit from its success.
In October 1991, Foster released her first feature film as a director, Little Man Tate, a drama about a child prodigy who struggles to come to terms with being different. The main role was played by previously unknown actor Adam Hann-Byrd, and Foster co-starred as his working-class single mother. She had found the script in the "slush pile" at Orion Pictures, and explained that for her debut film she "wanted a piece that was not autobiographical, but that had to do with the 10 philosophies I've accumulated in the past 25 years. Every single one of them, if they weren't in the script from the beginning, they're there now." Many reviewers felt that the film did not live up to the high expectations, and regarded it as "less adventurous than many films in which [she] had starred". Regardless, it was a moderate box office success. Foster's final film appearance of the year came in a small role as a sex worker in Shadows and Fog (1991), directed by Woody Allen, with whom she had wanted to collaborate since the 1970s.
Foster next starred in the period film Sommersby (1993), portraying a woman who begins to suspect that her husband (Richard Gere) who returns home from the Civil War is an impostor. She then replaced Meg Ryan in the Western comedy, Maverick (1994), playing a con artist opposite Mel Gibson and James Garner. According to film scholar Karen Hollinger, both films featured her in more "conventionally feminine" roles. Both Sommersby and Maverick were commercially successful.
Foster had founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, a subsidiary of PolyGram Filmed Entertainment in 1992, and released its first production, Nell, in December 1994. It was directed by Michael Apted and starred Foster in the titular role as a woman who grew up isolated in the Appalachian Mountains and speaks her own invented language. The film was based on Mark Handley's play Idioglossia, which interested Foster for its theme of "otherness", and because she "loved this idea of a woman who defies categorization, a creature who is labeled and categorized by people based on their own problems and their own prejudices and what they bring to the table." Despite mixed reviews, it was a commercial success, and earned Foster a Screen Actors Guild Award and nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her acting performance.
The second film that Foster directed and produced for Egg Pictures was Home for the Holidays, released in late 1995. A black comedy "set around a nightmarish Thanksgiving", it starred Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. The film received a mixed critical response and was a commercial failure. In 1996, Foster received two honorary awards: the Crystal Award, awarded annually for women in the entertainment industry, and the Berlinale Camera at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival. She voiced a character in an episode of Frasier in 1996 and in an episode of The X-Files in early 1997.
After Nell (1994), Foster appeared in no new film releases until Contact (1997), a science fiction film based on a novel by Carl Sagan and directed by Robert Zemeckis. She starred as a scientist searching for extraterrestrial life in the SETI project. The film was a commercial success and earned Foster a Saturn Award and a nomination for a Golden Globe. Foster next produced Jane Anderson's television film The Baby Dance (1998) for Showtime. Its story deals with a wealthy California couple who struggle with infertility and decide to adopt from a poor family in Louisiana. On her decision to produce for television, Foster stated that it was easier to take financial risks in that medium than in feature films. In 1998, she also moved her production company from PolyGram to Paramount Pictures. Also in 1998, asteroid 17744 Jodiefoster was named in her honor.
Foster's last film of the 1990s was the period drama Anna and the King (1999), in which she starred opposite Chow Yun-Fat. It was based on a fictionalized biography of British teacher Anna Leonowens, who taught the children of King Mongkut of Siam, and whose story became well known as the musical The King and I. Foster was paid $15 million to portray Leonowens, making her one of the highest-paid female actors in Hollywood. The film was subject to controversy when the Thai government deemed it historically inaccurate and insulting to the royal family and banned its distribution in the country. It was a moderate commercial success, but received mixed to negative reviews. Roger Ebert panned the film, stating that the role required Foster "to play beneath [her] intelligence" and The New York Times called it a "misstep" for her and accused her of only being "interested ... in sanctifying herself as an old-fashioned heroine than in taking on dramatically risky roles".
2000s: Career setbacks and resurgence in thrillers
Foster's first project of the new decade was Keith Gordon's film Waking the Dead (2000), which she produced. She declined to reprise her role as Clarice Starling in Hannibal (2001), with the part going instead to Julianne Moore, and concentrated on a new directorial project, Flora Plum. It was to focus on a 1930s circus and star Claire Danes and Russell Crowe, but had to be shelved after Crowe was injured on set and could not complete filming on schedule; Foster unsuccessfully attempted to revive the project several times in the following years. Controversially, she also expressed interest in directing and starring in a biographical film of Nazi film director Leni Riefenstahl, who did not like the idea. In addition to these setbacks, Foster shut down Egg Pictures in 2001, stating that producing was "just a really thankless, bad job". The company's last production, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2002. It received good reviews, and had a limited theatrical release in the summer.
After the cancellation of Flora Plum, Foster took on the main role in David Fincher's thriller Panic Room after its intended star, Nicole Kidman, had to drop out due to an injury on set. Before filming resumed, Foster was given only a week to prepare for the role of a woman who hides in a panic room with her daughter when burglars invade their home. It grossed over $30 million on its North American opening weekend in March 2002, thus becoming the most successful film opening of Foster's career . In addition to being a box office success, the film also received largely positive reviews.
After a minor appearance in the French period drama A Very Long Engagement (2004), Foster starred in three more thrillers. The first was Flightplan (2005), in which she played a woman whose daughter vanishes during an overnight flight. It became a global box office success, but received mixed reviews. It was followed by Spike Lee's critically and commercially successful Inside Man (2006), about a bank heist on Wall Street, which co-starred Denzel Washington and Clive Owen. The third thriller, The Brave One (2007), prompted some comparisons to Taxi Driver, as Foster played a New Yorker who becomes a vigilante after her fiancé is murdered. It was not a success, but earned Foster her sixth Golden Globe nomination. Her last film role of the decade was in the children's adventure film Nim's Island (2008), in which she portrayed an agoraphobic writer opposite Gerard Butler and Abigail Breslin. It was the first comedy in which she had starred since Maverick (1994), and was a commercial success but a critical failure. In 2009, she provided the voice for Maggie in a tetralogy episode of The Simpsons titled "Four Great Women and a Manicure".
2010s: Focus on directing
In the 2010s, Foster focused on directing and took fewer acting roles. In February 2011, she hosted the 36th César Awards in France, and the following month released her third feature film direction, The Beaver (2011), about a depressed man who develops an alternative personality based on a beaver hand puppet. It starred Maverick co-star Mel Gibson and featured herself, Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence in supporting roles as his family. Foster called its production "probably the biggest struggle of my professional career", partly due to the film's heavy subject matter but also due to the controversy that Gibson generated when he was accused of domestic violence and making anti-semitic, racist, and sexist statements. The film received mixed reviews, and failed the box office, largely due to this controversy. In 2011, Foster also appeared as part of an ensemble cast with John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz in Roman Polanski's comedy Carnage, in which the attempts of middle-class parents to settle an incident between their sons descends into chaos. It premiered to mainly positive reviews and earned Foster a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress.
In 2013, Foster received the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards. Her next film role was playing Secretary of Defense Delacourt opposite Matt Damon in the dystopian film Elysium (2013), which was a box office success. She also returned to television directing for the first time since the 1980s, directing the episodes "Lesbian Request Denied" (2013) and "Thirsty Bird" (2014) for Orange Is the New Black, and the episode "Chapter 22" (2014) for House of Cards. "Lesbian Request Denied" brought her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and the two 2014 episodes earned her two nominations for a Directors Guild of America Award. She also narrated the episode "Women in Space" (2014) for Makers: Women Who Make America, a PBS documentary series about women's struggle for equal rights in the United States. In 2015, Foster received the Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award at the Athena Film Festival.
The fourth film directed by Foster, hostage drama Money Monster, premiered out-of-competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2016. It starred George Clooney and Julia Roberts, and despite mixed reviews, was a moderate commercial success. The following year, Foster continued her work in television by directing an episode, "Arkangel", for the British sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror (2011–).
As the decade drew to a close, Foster continued to mix acting with directing. She starred together with Sterling Brown in the dystopian film Hotel Artemis (2018). Although the film was a commercial and critical disappointment, Foster's performance as Nurse, who runs a hospital for criminals, received positive notices. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle's stated that "not enough can be said about the performance of Foster in this film. She brings to the role a quality of having seen the absolute worst in people, but also the suggestion that, as a result, she accepts them on their own terms and knows how to handle any situation." Rick Bentley from Tampa Bay Times declared Foster's performance one of her "best and most memorable performances." The same year, Foster co-produced and narrated Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018), a documentary on one of the first female film directors.
2020s: Current work
Foster directed the finale of the 2020 science fiction drama Tales from the Loop. Her next project was the legal drama The Mauritanian (2021), in which she starred as the lawyer of a prisoner (Tahar Rahim) at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Foster won a Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her performance. At the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, Foster received the Honorary Palme d'Or for lifetime achievement.
Personal life
Foster met producer (then production coordinator) Cydney Bernard on the set of Sommersby (1993). They were in a relationship from 1993 until 2008 and had two sons (born in 1998 and 2001) together. In April 2014, Foster married actress and photographer Alexandra Hedison after a year of dating.
Foster's sexual orientation became the subject of public discussion in 1991 when publications such as OutWeek and The Village Voice, protesting against the alleged homophobia and transphobia in The Silence of the Lambs, claimed that she was a closeted lesbian. While she had been in a relationship with Bernard for 14 years, Foster first publicly acknowledged it in a speech at The Hollywood Reporter'''s "Women in Entertainment" breakfast honoring her in 2007. In 2013, she addressed her coming out in a speech after receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards, which led many news outlets to describe her as gay, although some sources noted that she did not use the words "gay" or "lesbian" in her speech.
John Hinckley incident
During her freshman year at Yale in 1980–1981, Foster was stalked by John W. Hinckley, Jr., who had developed an obsession with her after watching Taxi Driver. He moved to New Haven and tried to contact her by letter and telephone. On March 30, 1981, Hinckley attempted to assassinate U.S. president Ronald Reagan, wounding him and three other people, claiming that his motive was to impress Foster. The incident attracted intense media attention, and Foster was accompanied by bodyguards while on campus. Although Judge Barrington D. Parker confirmed that Foster was innocent in the case and had been "unwittingly ensnared in a third party's alleged attempt to assassinate an American President", her videotaped testimony was played at Hinckley's trial. While at Yale, Foster also had other stalkers, including a man who planned to kill her but changed his mind after watching her perform in a college play.
Foster has rarely commented publicly about Hinckley. She wrote an essay, "Why Me?", which was published in 1982 by Esquire on the condition that "there be no cover lines, no publicity and no photos". In 1991, she canceled an interview with NBC's Today Show when she discovered Hinckley would be mentioned in the introduction and that the producers would not change it. She discussed Hinckley with Charlie Rose of 60 Minutes II'' in 1999, explaining that she does not "like to dwell on it too much ... I never wanted to be the actress who was remembered for that event. Because it didn't have anything to do with me. I was kind of a hapless bystander. But ... what a scarring, strange moment in history for me, to be 17 years old, 18 years old, and to be caught up in a drama like that." She stated that the incident had a major impact on her career choices, and acknowledged that her experience was minimal compared to the suffering of Reagan's press secretary James Brady, who was permanently disabled in the shooting, and died as a result of his injuries 33 years later, and his loved ones: "Whatever bad moments that I had certainly could never compare to that family."
Filmography and accolades
See also
List of American film actresses
List of American television actresses
List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees – Youngest nominees for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
List of LGBTQ Academy Award winners and nominees – Best Actress in a Leading Role winners and nominees
List of actors with Academy Award nominations
List of actors with two or more Academy Award nominations in acting categories
List of actors with two or more Academy Awards in acting categories
References
Footnotes
Citations
Bibliography
External links
Jodie Foster in the online catalogue of the Cinémathèque Française
1962 births
Living people
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
Actresses from Los Angeles
American child actresses
American film actresses
American film producers
American television actresses
American television directors
American voice actresses
American women film directors
American women film producers
American women television producers
Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan
BAFTA Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles winners
Best Actress Academy Award winners
Best Actress BAFTA Award winners
Best Drama Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
Best Supporting Actress BAFTA Award winners
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
Cecil B. DeMille Award Golden Globe winners
David di Donatello winners
European Film Awards winners (people)
Film directors from Los Angeles
Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead winners
LGBT actresses
LGBT film directors
LGBT television directors
LGBT actors from the United States
LGBT people from California
LGBT producers
Lycée Français de Los Angeles alumni
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Television producers from California
American women television directors
Yale College alumni | true | [
"Alvin R. Wiseman (August 25, 1918 – May 17, 1988) was an American cartoonist who worked on both comic strips and comic books, notably his long stint on the Dennis the Menace comic books. Wiseman's clean line was an influence on several cartoonists, including Jaime Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez, Al Gordon, and Daniel Clowes.\n\nBiography \nAfter Wiseman worked in advertising, he became an assistant to Hank Ketcham on Dennis the Menace. Wiseman and writer Fred Toole worked on the Dennis the Menace comic book from 1953 into the 1960s.\n\nAl's granddaughter, Aliza, claims that many of the characters from Dennis the Menace were created by Al.\n\nHe had his own feature, Punky, in the Dennis the Menace comic books.\n\nCharley Jones Laugh Book\nWiseman did covers for Charley Jones Laugh Book, contributed to George Crenshaw's Belvedere and briefly assisted on the Yogi Bear Sunday page . He also did children's books, such as We Learn to Play (1954).\n\nA Dennis the Menace story by Wiseman and Toole was reprinted in the Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly collection, The Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics (Abrams, 2009).\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nAliza Wiseman on Al Wiseman\nFred Hembeck on Al Wiseman\n\nAmerican comics artists\nAmerican comic strip cartoonists\nAmerican children's book illustrators\n1918 births\n1988 deaths",
"Da Hood is the only album by Menace Clan, released on October 10, 1995, through Rap-a-Lot Records. They guested on a few tracks for other artists before breaking up in 2000.\n\nThe album did not have much commercial success outside of Houston, reaching number 44 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and 33 on the Top Heatseekers chart. Two singles were released from the album, \"Da Hood\" and \"What You Say,\" both of which had accompanying music videos, though neither charted in Billboard.\n\nTrack listing\n\"Aggravated Mayheim!\" - 3:08 \n\"Mad Nigga\" - 4:17 \n\"Record Deal\" - 3:15 \n\"Life\" - 4:44 \n\"Runaway Slave\" - 5:25 \n\"Da Hood\"(featuring Bushwick Bill) - 4:42 \n\"What You Say\" - 4:02 \n\"Da Bullet\" - 3:44 \n\"Cold World\" - 4:41 \n\"Me by Myself\" - 3:37 \n\"Have You Ever Heard\" - 3:56 \n\"Last Driveby\" - 3:34 \n\"Kill Whitey\" - 2:48\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n1995 debut albums\nRap-A-Lot Records albums\nMenace Clan albums"
] |
[
"Jodie Foster",
"1965-1975: Early work",
"What was Foster's first role?",
"Foster's career began with an appearance as the Coppertone girl",
"What year was she the Coppertone Girl?",
"in a television advertisement in 1965,",
"What was her next appearance after that?",
"a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D.,",
"What year was her appearance on Mayberry?",
"in 1968",
"When was her first movie role?",
"a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970),",
"Did she have a lead role in Menace on the Mountain?",
"I don't know.",
"What did she do after Menace on the Mountain?",
"), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972),"
] | C_67bd39d220a84618b8cdda8de3fe429e_1 | Did she do any other television or advertisements? | 8 | Did Jodie Foster do any other television or advertisements besides Napolean and Samantha? | Jodie Foster | Foster's career began with an appearance as the Coppertone girl in a television advertisement in 1965, when she was only three years old. Her mother had originally intended only for her older brother Buddy to audition for the ad, but had taken Jodie with them to the casting call, where she was noticed by the casting agents. The television spot led to more advertisement work, and in 1968 to a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., in which her brother starred. In the following years Foster continued working in advertisements and appeared in over fifty television shows; she and her brother became the breadwinners of the family during this time. Although most of Foster's television appearances were minor, she had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969-1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), and starred opposite Christopher Connelly in the short-lived Paper Moon (1974), adapted from the hit film. Foster also appeared in films, mostly for Disney. After a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), playing a girl who becomes friends with a boy, played by Johnny Whitaker, and his pet lion. She was accidentally grabbed by the lion on set, which left her with permanent scars on her back. Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid". Foster has said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her: "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!' I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'" CANNOTANSWER | she had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969-1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), | Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (born November 19, 1962) is an American actress, director, and producer. Regarded as one of the best actresses of her generation, she is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award. For her work as a director, she has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. People magazine named her the most beautiful woman in the world in 1992, and in 2003, she was voted Number 23 in Channel 4's countdown of the 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time. Entertainment Weekly named her 57th on their list of 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time in 1996. In 2016, she was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star located at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard.
Foster began her professional career as a child model when she was three years old, and made her acting debut in 1968 in the television sitcom Mayberry R.F.D. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she worked in several television series and made her film debut with Disney's Napoleon and Samantha (1972). Following appearances in the musical Tom Sawyer (1973) and Martin Scorsese's comedy-drama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), her breakthrough came with Scorsese's psychological thriller Taxi Driver (1976), where she played a child prostitute, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other roles as a teenager include the musical Bugsy Malone (1976) and the thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), and she became a popular teen idol by starring in Disney's Freaky Friday (1976) and Candleshoe (1977), as well as Carny (1980) and Foxes (1980).
After attending Yale University, Foster struggled to transition into adult roles until she gained critical acclaim for playing a rape survivor in the legal drama The Accused (1988), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won her second Academy Award three years later for the psychological horror film The Silence of the Lambs (1991), where she portrayed FBI agent Clarice Starling. She made her debut as a film director the same year with Little Man Tate. She founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, in 1992. Its first production was Nell (1994), in which Foster also played the title role, garnering her fourth Academy Award nomination. Her other successful films in the 1990s were the romantic drama Sommersby, western comedy Maverick (1994), science fiction Contact (1997), and period drama Anna and the King (1999).
Foster experienced career setbacks in the early 2000s, including the cancellation of a film project and the closing down of her production company, but she then starred in four commercially successful thrillers: Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005), Inside Man (2006), and The Brave One (2007). She has concentrated on directing in the 2010s, with the films The Beaver (2011) and Money Monster (2016), and episodes for Netflix television series Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards, and Black Mirror. She received her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for "Lesbian Request Denied", the third episode of the former. She also starred in the films Carnage (2011), Elysium (2013), Hotel Artemis (2018), and The Mauritanian (2021), the last of which won Foster her third Golden Globe.
Early life
Foster was born on November 19, 1962 in Los Angeles, the youngest child of Evelyn Ella "Brandy" (née Almond 1928-2019) and Lucius Fisher Foster III, a wealthy businessman. She is of English, German and Irish heritage. On her father's side she is descended from John Alden, who arrived in North America on the Mayflower in 1620.
Her parents' marriage had ended before she was born, and she never established a relationship with her father. She has three older full siblings: Lucinda (born 1954), Constance (born 1955), and Lucius, nicknamed "Buddy" (born 1957), as well as three half-brothers from her father's earlier marriage.
Following the divorce, Brandy raised the children with her partner in Los Angeles. She worked as a publicist for film producer Arthur P. Jacobs, until focusing on managing the acting careers of Buddy and Jodie. Although Foster was officially named Alicia, her siblings began calling her "Jodie", and the name stuck.
Foster was a gifted child who learned to read at age three. She attended the Lycée Français de Los Angeles, a French-language prep school. Her fluency in French has enabled her to act in French films, and she also dubs herself in French-language versions of most of her English-language films. At her graduation in 1980, she delivered the valedictorian address for the school's French division. She then attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut where she majored in African-American literature, wrote her thesis on Toni Morrison under the guidance of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and graduated magna cum laude in 1985. She returned to Yale in 1993 to address the graduating class, and received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree in 1997. In 2018, she was awarded the Yale Undergraduate Lifetime Achievement Award.
Career
Career beginnings
Foster's career began with an appearance in a Coppertone television advertisement in 1965, when she was three years old. Her mother had intended only for Jodie's older brother Buddy to audition, but had taken Jodie with them to the casting call, where she was noticed by the casting agents. The television spot led to more advertising work, and in 1968 to a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., in which her brother starred. In the following years Foster continued working in advertising and appeared in over 50 television shows; she and her brother became the breadwinners of the family during this time. She had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969–1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), and starred opposite Christopher Connelly in the short-lived Paper Moon (1974), adapted from the hit film.
Foster also appeared in films, mostly for Disney. After a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), playing a girl who befriends a boy, played by Johnny Whitaker, and his pet lion. She was accidentally grabbed by the lion on set, which left her with scars on her back. Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid".
Foster said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her: "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!' I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'"
1970s: Taxi Driver and teenage stardom
Foster's mother was concerned that her daughter's career would end by the time she grew out of playing children, and decided that Foster should also begin acting in films for adult audiences. After the minor supporting role in Alice, Scorsese cast her in the role of a child prostitute in Taxi Driver (1976). To be able to do the film, Foster had to undergo psychiatric assessment and was accompanied by a social worker on set. Her older sister acted as her stand-in in sexually suggestive scenes. Foster later commented on the role, saying that she hated "the idea that everybody thinks if a kid's going to be an actress it means that she has to play Shirley Temple or someone's little sister." During the filming, Foster developed a bond with co-star Robert De Niro, who saw "serious potential" in her and dedicated time rehearsing scenes with her.
She described Taxi Driver as a life-changing experience and stated that it was "the first time anyone asked me to create a character that wasn't myself. It was the first time I realized that acting wasn't this hobby you just sort of did, but that there was actually some craft." Taxi Driver won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival; Foster also impressed journalists when she acted as French interpreter at the press conference. Taxi Driver was a critical and commercial success, and earned her a supporting actress Academy Award nomination, as well as two BAFTAs, a David di Donatello and a National Society of Film Critics award. The film is considered one of the best in history by the American Film Institute and Sight & Sound, and has been preserved in the National Film Registry.
Foster also acted in another film nominated for the Palme d'Or in 1976, Bugsy Malone. The British musical parodied films about Prohibition Era gangsters by having all roles played by children; Foster appeared in a major supporting role as a star of a speakeasy show. Director Alan Parker was impressed by her, saying that "she takes such an intelligent interest in the way the film is being made that if I had been run over by a bus I think she was probably the only person on the set able to take over as director." She gained several positive notices for her performance: Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated that "at thirteen she was already getting the roles that grown-up actresses complained weren't being written for women anymore", Variety described her as "outstanding", and Vincent Canby of The New York Times called her "the star of the show". Foster's two BAFTAs were awarded jointly for her performances in Taxi Driver and Bugsy Malone. Her third film release in 1976 was the independent drama Echoes of a Summer, which had been filmed two years previously. The New York Times named Foster's performance as a terminally ill girl the film's "main strength" and Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune stated that she "is not a good child actress; she's just a good actress", although both reviewers otherwise panned the film.
Foster's fourth film of 1976 was the Canadian-French thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, in which she starred opposite Martin Sheen. The film combined aspects from thriller and horror genres, and showed Foster as a mysterious young girl living on her own in a small town. The performance earned her a Saturn Award. In November, Foster hosted Saturday Night Live, becoming the youngest person to do so until 1982. Her final film of the year was the Disney comedy Freaky Friday, "her first true star vehicle". She played a tomboy teen who accidentally changes bodies with her mother, and she later stated that the film marked a "transitional period" for her when she began to grow out of child roles. It received mainly positive reviews, and was a box office success, gaining Foster a Golden Globe nomination for her performance.
After her breakthrough year, Foster spent nine months living in France, where she starred in Moi, fleur bleue (1977) and recorded several songs for its soundtrack. Her other films released in 1977 were the Italian comedy Casotto (1977), and the Disney heist film Candleshoe (1977), which was filmed in England and co-starred veteran actors David Niven and Helen Hayes. After its release, Foster did not appear in any new releases until 1980, the year she turned eighteen.
1980s: Transition to adult roles
In 1980, Foster gained positive notices for her performances in the independent films Foxes and Carny (1980). The same year, she also became a full-time student at Yale. She later stated that going to college changed her thoughts about acting, which she had previously thought was an unintelligent profession, but now realised that "what I really wanted to do was to act and there was nothing stupid about it." Although Foster prioritized college during these years, she continued making films on her summer vacations. These were O'Hara's Wife (1982), television film Svengali (1983), John Irving adaptation The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), French film The Blood of Others (1984), and period drama Mesmerized (1986), which she also co-produced. None of them gained large audiences or critical appreciation, and after graduating from Yale in 1985, Foster struggled to find further acting work.
Foster's first film after college, the neo-noir Siesta (1987), was a failure. Her next project, the independent film Five Corners (1987), was better received. A moderate critical success, it earned Foster an Independent Spirit Award for her performance as a woman whose sexual assaulter returns to stalk her. The following year, Foster made her debut as a director with the episode "Do Not Open This Box" for the horror anthology series Tales from the Darkside, and starred in the romantic drama Stealing Home (1988) opposite Mark Harmon. The film was a critical and commercial failure, with critic Roger Ebert "wondering if any movie could possibly be that bad".
Foster's breakthrough into adult roles came with her performance as a rape survivor in The Accused (1988). Based on a real criminal case, the film focuses on the aftermath of a gang rape and its survivor's fight for justice in the face of victim blaming. Before making the film, Foster was having doubts about whether to continue her career and planned on starting graduate studies, but decided to give acting "one last try" in The Accused. She had to audition twice for the role and was cast only after several more established actors had turned it down, as the film's producers were wary of her due to her previous failures and because she was still remembered as a "chubby teenager". Due to the heavy subject matter, the filming was a difficult experience for all cast and crew involved, especially the shooting of the rape scene, which took five days to complete. Foster was unhappy with her performance, and feared that it would end her career. Instead, The Accused received positive reviews, with Foster's performance receiving widespread acclaim and earning her Academy, Golden Globe and National Board of Review awards, as well as a nomination for a BAFTA Award.
1990s: Box office success, debut as director and Egg Pictures
Foster's first film release after the success of The Accused was the thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991). She portrayed FBI trainee Clarice Starling, who is sent to interview incarcerated serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in order to hunt another serial killer, Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb (Ted Levine). Foster later named the role one of her favorites. She had read the novel it was based on after its publication in 1988 and had attempted to purchase its film rights, as it featured "a real female heroine" and its plot was not "about steroids and brawn, [but] about using your mind and using your insufficiencies to combat the villain." Despite her enthusiasm, director Jonathan Demme did not initially want to cast her, but the producers overruled him. Demme's view of Foster changed during the production, and he later credited her for helping him define the character.
Released in February 1991, The Silence of the Lambs became one of the biggest hits of the year, grossing close to $273 million, with a positive critical reception. Foster received largely positive reviews and won Academy, Golden Globe, and BAFTA awards for her portrayal of Starling; Silence won five Academy Awards overall, becoming one of the few films to win in all main categories. In contrast, some reviewers criticized the film as misogynist for its focus on brutal murders of women, and homo-/transphobic due to its portrayal of "Buffalo Bill" as bisexual and transgender. Much of the criticism was directed towards Foster, who the critics alleged was herself a lesbian. Despite the controversy, the film is considered a modern classic: Starling and Lecter are included on the American Film Institute's top ten of the greatest film heroes and villains, and the film is preserved in the National Film Registry. Later in 1991, Foster also starred in the unsuccessful low-budget thriller Catchfire, which had been filmed before Silence, but was released after it in an attempt to profit from its success.
In October 1991, Foster released her first feature film as a director, Little Man Tate, a drama about a child prodigy who struggles to come to terms with being different. The main role was played by previously unknown actor Adam Hann-Byrd, and Foster co-starred as his working-class single mother. She had found the script in the "slush pile" at Orion Pictures, and explained that for her debut film she "wanted a piece that was not autobiographical, but that had to do with the 10 philosophies I've accumulated in the past 25 years. Every single one of them, if they weren't in the script from the beginning, they're there now." Many reviewers felt that the film did not live up to the high expectations, and regarded it as "less adventurous than many films in which [she] had starred". Regardless, it was a moderate box office success. Foster's final film appearance of the year came in a small role as a sex worker in Shadows and Fog (1991), directed by Woody Allen, with whom she had wanted to collaborate since the 1970s.
Foster next starred in the period film Sommersby (1993), portraying a woman who begins to suspect that her husband (Richard Gere) who returns home from the Civil War is an impostor. She then replaced Meg Ryan in the Western comedy, Maverick (1994), playing a con artist opposite Mel Gibson and James Garner. According to film scholar Karen Hollinger, both films featured her in more "conventionally feminine" roles. Both Sommersby and Maverick were commercially successful.
Foster had founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, a subsidiary of PolyGram Filmed Entertainment in 1992, and released its first production, Nell, in December 1994. It was directed by Michael Apted and starred Foster in the titular role as a woman who grew up isolated in the Appalachian Mountains and speaks her own invented language. The film was based on Mark Handley's play Idioglossia, which interested Foster for its theme of "otherness", and because she "loved this idea of a woman who defies categorization, a creature who is labeled and categorized by people based on their own problems and their own prejudices and what they bring to the table." Despite mixed reviews, it was a commercial success, and earned Foster a Screen Actors Guild Award and nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her acting performance.
The second film that Foster directed and produced for Egg Pictures was Home for the Holidays, released in late 1995. A black comedy "set around a nightmarish Thanksgiving", it starred Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. The film received a mixed critical response and was a commercial failure. In 1996, Foster received two honorary awards: the Crystal Award, awarded annually for women in the entertainment industry, and the Berlinale Camera at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival. She voiced a character in an episode of Frasier in 1996 and in an episode of The X-Files in early 1997.
After Nell (1994), Foster appeared in no new film releases until Contact (1997), a science fiction film based on a novel by Carl Sagan and directed by Robert Zemeckis. She starred as a scientist searching for extraterrestrial life in the SETI project. The film was a commercial success and earned Foster a Saturn Award and a nomination for a Golden Globe. Foster next produced Jane Anderson's television film The Baby Dance (1998) for Showtime. Its story deals with a wealthy California couple who struggle with infertility and decide to adopt from a poor family in Louisiana. On her decision to produce for television, Foster stated that it was easier to take financial risks in that medium than in feature films. In 1998, she also moved her production company from PolyGram to Paramount Pictures. Also in 1998, asteroid 17744 Jodiefoster was named in her honor.
Foster's last film of the 1990s was the period drama Anna and the King (1999), in which she starred opposite Chow Yun-Fat. It was based on a fictionalized biography of British teacher Anna Leonowens, who taught the children of King Mongkut of Siam, and whose story became well known as the musical The King and I. Foster was paid $15 million to portray Leonowens, making her one of the highest-paid female actors in Hollywood. The film was subject to controversy when the Thai government deemed it historically inaccurate and insulting to the royal family and banned its distribution in the country. It was a moderate commercial success, but received mixed to negative reviews. Roger Ebert panned the film, stating that the role required Foster "to play beneath [her] intelligence" and The New York Times called it a "misstep" for her and accused her of only being "interested ... in sanctifying herself as an old-fashioned heroine than in taking on dramatically risky roles".
2000s: Career setbacks and resurgence in thrillers
Foster's first project of the new decade was Keith Gordon's film Waking the Dead (2000), which she produced. She declined to reprise her role as Clarice Starling in Hannibal (2001), with the part going instead to Julianne Moore, and concentrated on a new directorial project, Flora Plum. It was to focus on a 1930s circus and star Claire Danes and Russell Crowe, but had to be shelved after Crowe was injured on set and could not complete filming on schedule; Foster unsuccessfully attempted to revive the project several times in the following years. Controversially, she also expressed interest in directing and starring in a biographical film of Nazi film director Leni Riefenstahl, who did not like the idea. In addition to these setbacks, Foster shut down Egg Pictures in 2001, stating that producing was "just a really thankless, bad job". The company's last production, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2002. It received good reviews, and had a limited theatrical release in the summer.
After the cancellation of Flora Plum, Foster took on the main role in David Fincher's thriller Panic Room after its intended star, Nicole Kidman, had to drop out due to an injury on set. Before filming resumed, Foster was given only a week to prepare for the role of a woman who hides in a panic room with her daughter when burglars invade their home. It grossed over $30 million on its North American opening weekend in March 2002, thus becoming the most successful film opening of Foster's career . In addition to being a box office success, the film also received largely positive reviews.
After a minor appearance in the French period drama A Very Long Engagement (2004), Foster starred in three more thrillers. The first was Flightplan (2005), in which she played a woman whose daughter vanishes during an overnight flight. It became a global box office success, but received mixed reviews. It was followed by Spike Lee's critically and commercially successful Inside Man (2006), about a bank heist on Wall Street, which co-starred Denzel Washington and Clive Owen. The third thriller, The Brave One (2007), prompted some comparisons to Taxi Driver, as Foster played a New Yorker who becomes a vigilante after her fiancé is murdered. It was not a success, but earned Foster her sixth Golden Globe nomination. Her last film role of the decade was in the children's adventure film Nim's Island (2008), in which she portrayed an agoraphobic writer opposite Gerard Butler and Abigail Breslin. It was the first comedy in which she had starred since Maverick (1994), and was a commercial success but a critical failure. In 2009, she provided the voice for Maggie in a tetralogy episode of The Simpsons titled "Four Great Women and a Manicure".
2010s: Focus on directing
In the 2010s, Foster focused on directing and took fewer acting roles. In February 2011, she hosted the 36th César Awards in France, and the following month released her third feature film direction, The Beaver (2011), about a depressed man who develops an alternative personality based on a beaver hand puppet. It starred Maverick co-star Mel Gibson and featured herself, Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence in supporting roles as his family. Foster called its production "probably the biggest struggle of my professional career", partly due to the film's heavy subject matter but also due to the controversy that Gibson generated when he was accused of domestic violence and making anti-semitic, racist, and sexist statements. The film received mixed reviews, and failed the box office, largely due to this controversy. In 2011, Foster also appeared as part of an ensemble cast with John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz in Roman Polanski's comedy Carnage, in which the attempts of middle-class parents to settle an incident between their sons descends into chaos. It premiered to mainly positive reviews and earned Foster a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress.
In 2013, Foster received the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards. Her next film role was playing Secretary of Defense Delacourt opposite Matt Damon in the dystopian film Elysium (2013), which was a box office success. She also returned to television directing for the first time since the 1980s, directing the episodes "Lesbian Request Denied" (2013) and "Thirsty Bird" (2014) for Orange Is the New Black, and the episode "Chapter 22" (2014) for House of Cards. "Lesbian Request Denied" brought her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and the two 2014 episodes earned her two nominations for a Directors Guild of America Award. She also narrated the episode "Women in Space" (2014) for Makers: Women Who Make America, a PBS documentary series about women's struggle for equal rights in the United States. In 2015, Foster received the Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award at the Athena Film Festival.
The fourth film directed by Foster, hostage drama Money Monster, premiered out-of-competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2016. It starred George Clooney and Julia Roberts, and despite mixed reviews, was a moderate commercial success. The following year, Foster continued her work in television by directing an episode, "Arkangel", for the British sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror (2011–).
As the decade drew to a close, Foster continued to mix acting with directing. She starred together with Sterling Brown in the dystopian film Hotel Artemis (2018). Although the film was a commercial and critical disappointment, Foster's performance as Nurse, who runs a hospital for criminals, received positive notices. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle's stated that "not enough can be said about the performance of Foster in this film. She brings to the role a quality of having seen the absolute worst in people, but also the suggestion that, as a result, she accepts them on their own terms and knows how to handle any situation." Rick Bentley from Tampa Bay Times declared Foster's performance one of her "best and most memorable performances." The same year, Foster co-produced and narrated Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018), a documentary on one of the first female film directors.
2020s: Current work
Foster directed the finale of the 2020 science fiction drama Tales from the Loop. Her next project was the legal drama The Mauritanian (2021), in which she starred as the lawyer of a prisoner (Tahar Rahim) at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Foster won a Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her performance. At the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, Foster received the Honorary Palme d'Or for lifetime achievement.
Personal life
Foster met producer (then production coordinator) Cydney Bernard on the set of Sommersby (1993). They were in a relationship from 1993 until 2008 and had two sons (born in 1998 and 2001) together. In April 2014, Foster married actress and photographer Alexandra Hedison after a year of dating.
Foster's sexual orientation became the subject of public discussion in 1991 when publications such as OutWeek and The Village Voice, protesting against the alleged homophobia and transphobia in The Silence of the Lambs, claimed that she was a closeted lesbian. While she had been in a relationship with Bernard for 14 years, Foster first publicly acknowledged it in a speech at The Hollywood Reporter'''s "Women in Entertainment" breakfast honoring her in 2007. In 2013, she addressed her coming out in a speech after receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards, which led many news outlets to describe her as gay, although some sources noted that she did not use the words "gay" or "lesbian" in her speech.
John Hinckley incident
During her freshman year at Yale in 1980–1981, Foster was stalked by John W. Hinckley, Jr., who had developed an obsession with her after watching Taxi Driver. He moved to New Haven and tried to contact her by letter and telephone. On March 30, 1981, Hinckley attempted to assassinate U.S. president Ronald Reagan, wounding him and three other people, claiming that his motive was to impress Foster. The incident attracted intense media attention, and Foster was accompanied by bodyguards while on campus. Although Judge Barrington D. Parker confirmed that Foster was innocent in the case and had been "unwittingly ensnared in a third party's alleged attempt to assassinate an American President", her videotaped testimony was played at Hinckley's trial. While at Yale, Foster also had other stalkers, including a man who planned to kill her but changed his mind after watching her perform in a college play.
Foster has rarely commented publicly about Hinckley. She wrote an essay, "Why Me?", which was published in 1982 by Esquire on the condition that "there be no cover lines, no publicity and no photos". In 1991, she canceled an interview with NBC's Today Show when she discovered Hinckley would be mentioned in the introduction and that the producers would not change it. She discussed Hinckley with Charlie Rose of 60 Minutes II'' in 1999, explaining that she does not "like to dwell on it too much ... I never wanted to be the actress who was remembered for that event. Because it didn't have anything to do with me. I was kind of a hapless bystander. But ... what a scarring, strange moment in history for me, to be 17 years old, 18 years old, and to be caught up in a drama like that." She stated that the incident had a major impact on her career choices, and acknowledged that her experience was minimal compared to the suffering of Reagan's press secretary James Brady, who was permanently disabled in the shooting, and died as a result of his injuries 33 years later, and his loved ones: "Whatever bad moments that I had certainly could never compare to that family."
Filmography and accolades
See also
List of American film actresses
List of American television actresses
List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees – Youngest nominees for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
List of LGBTQ Academy Award winners and nominees – Best Actress in a Leading Role winners and nominees
List of actors with Academy Award nominations
List of actors with two or more Academy Award nominations in acting categories
List of actors with two or more Academy Awards in acting categories
References
Footnotes
Citations
Bibliography
External links
Jodie Foster in the online catalogue of the Cinémathèque Française
1962 births
Living people
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
Actresses from Los Angeles
American child actresses
American film actresses
American film producers
American television actresses
American television directors
American voice actresses
American women film directors
American women film producers
American women television producers
Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan
BAFTA Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles winners
Best Actress Academy Award winners
Best Actress BAFTA Award winners
Best Drama Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
Best Supporting Actress BAFTA Award winners
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
Cecil B. DeMille Award Golden Globe winners
David di Donatello winners
European Film Awards winners (people)
Film directors from Los Angeles
Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead winners
LGBT actresses
LGBT film directors
LGBT television directors
LGBT actors from the United States
LGBT people from California
LGBT producers
Lycée Français de Los Angeles alumni
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Television producers from California
American women television directors
Yale College alumni | false | [
"Reena Basheer is an Indian film actress and dancer. She works in the Malayalam film industry and television.\n\nEarly life\nReena Basheer came into lime light through reality show on Amrita TV titled Vanitharatnam. Later she got featured in feature movies, advertisements, television serials and other shows. She is well known for her presentation of programmes especially cookery.\n\nCareer\nShe made her film debut in the Malayalam film Mulla in 2008 and later appeared in many movies. She won the Second Best Actress Award at the Kerala State Television Awards 2016 for her serial, Pokkuveyil.\n\nPersonal life\nShe married Basheer and they have two children: Basheer Binu and Basheer Anjala.\n\nFilmography\n\nTelevision\n\nOther Shows\nAs Guest\n Nammal Thammil (Asianet)\n Entertainment News (Asianet News)\n Varthaprabhatham (Asianet News)\n Don't Do Don't Do (Asianet Plus)\n India Voice (Mazhavil Manorama)\n Celluloid (Manorama News)\n Smart Show (Flowers TV)\n Flowers TV Awards (Flowers TV)\n Rhythm (Kairali TV)\n\nEndorsements\n Nirapara\n Radhas Soap\n Thomson Multiwood\n Ruchi\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nLiving people\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nActresses in Malayalam cinema\n21st-century Indian actresses\nActresses in Malayalam television",
"Vandana Tiwari known by her stage name Gehana Vasisth, is an Indian actress, model, and television presenter. After working for several brands as a model, she was crowned as Miss Asia Bikini. She did more than 80 advertisements. She later entered the film industry through lead role in a film called Filmy Duniya and did roles in Telugu cinema later she performed a handful of lead roles. Also, she has worked in many web series including Gandi Baat season 3 on Alt Balaji.\n\nEarly life and background\nVasisth was born in Chirimiri, Chhattisgarh. Her mother, Meena Tiwari is a housewife and her father, Rajendra Tiwari was an education officer.\n\nShe has one younger sister Namrata and two younger brothers Vedant and Sankalp Tiwari. Her friends call her by the nickname Zindagi. She has done her schooling from Chirimiri, Chhattisgarh and Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Later she completed her engineering degree from All Saints College of Technology, Bhopal.\n\nCareer \nGehana worked as a model for many international brands. She did about 70 advertisements. She won the Miss Asia Bikini contest of 2012.\n\nTelevision \nShe was introduced as an anchor in Sahara One Television Channel. Later she did a role in the serial Behenein on Star Plus and appeared as VJ on True Life show on MTV India.\n\nFilmography\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n \n \n\nLiving people\nActresses in Hindi cinema\nActresses in Telugu cinema\nIndian film actresses\nFemale models from Madhya Pradesh\nActresses from Chhattisgarh\nActresses in Tamil cinema\n21st-century Indian actresses\nFemale models from Chhattisgarh\n1988 births"
] |
[
"Jodie Foster",
"1965-1975: Early work",
"What was Foster's first role?",
"Foster's career began with an appearance as the Coppertone girl",
"What year was she the Coppertone Girl?",
"in a television advertisement in 1965,",
"What was her next appearance after that?",
"a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D.,",
"What year was her appearance on Mayberry?",
"in 1968",
"When was her first movie role?",
"a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970),",
"Did she have a lead role in Menace on the Mountain?",
"I don't know.",
"What did she do after Menace on the Mountain?",
"), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972),",
"Did she do any other television or advertisements?",
"she had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969-1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973),"
] | C_67bd39d220a84618b8cdda8de3fe429e_1 | What was her next movie role? | 9 | What was Jodie Foster next movie role after Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice? | Jodie Foster | Foster's career began with an appearance as the Coppertone girl in a television advertisement in 1965, when she was only three years old. Her mother had originally intended only for her older brother Buddy to audition for the ad, but had taken Jodie with them to the casting call, where she was noticed by the casting agents. The television spot led to more advertisement work, and in 1968 to a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., in which her brother starred. In the following years Foster continued working in advertisements and appeared in over fifty television shows; she and her brother became the breadwinners of the family during this time. Although most of Foster's television appearances were minor, she had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969-1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), and starred opposite Christopher Connelly in the short-lived Paper Moon (1974), adapted from the hit film. Foster also appeared in films, mostly for Disney. After a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), playing a girl who becomes friends with a boy, played by Johnny Whitaker, and his pet lion. She was accidentally grabbed by the lion on set, which left her with permanent scars on her back. Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid". Foster has said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her: "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!' I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'" CANNOTANSWER | Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), | Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (born November 19, 1962) is an American actress, director, and producer. Regarded as one of the best actresses of her generation, she is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award. For her work as a director, she has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. People magazine named her the most beautiful woman in the world in 1992, and in 2003, she was voted Number 23 in Channel 4's countdown of the 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time. Entertainment Weekly named her 57th on their list of 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time in 1996. In 2016, she was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star located at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard.
Foster began her professional career as a child model when she was three years old, and made her acting debut in 1968 in the television sitcom Mayberry R.F.D. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she worked in several television series and made her film debut with Disney's Napoleon and Samantha (1972). Following appearances in the musical Tom Sawyer (1973) and Martin Scorsese's comedy-drama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), her breakthrough came with Scorsese's psychological thriller Taxi Driver (1976), where she played a child prostitute, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other roles as a teenager include the musical Bugsy Malone (1976) and the thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), and she became a popular teen idol by starring in Disney's Freaky Friday (1976) and Candleshoe (1977), as well as Carny (1980) and Foxes (1980).
After attending Yale University, Foster struggled to transition into adult roles until she gained critical acclaim for playing a rape survivor in the legal drama The Accused (1988), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won her second Academy Award three years later for the psychological horror film The Silence of the Lambs (1991), where she portrayed FBI agent Clarice Starling. She made her debut as a film director the same year with Little Man Tate. She founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, in 1992. Its first production was Nell (1994), in which Foster also played the title role, garnering her fourth Academy Award nomination. Her other successful films in the 1990s were the romantic drama Sommersby, western comedy Maverick (1994), science fiction Contact (1997), and period drama Anna and the King (1999).
Foster experienced career setbacks in the early 2000s, including the cancellation of a film project and the closing down of her production company, but she then starred in four commercially successful thrillers: Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005), Inside Man (2006), and The Brave One (2007). She has concentrated on directing in the 2010s, with the films The Beaver (2011) and Money Monster (2016), and episodes for Netflix television series Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards, and Black Mirror. She received her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for "Lesbian Request Denied", the third episode of the former. She also starred in the films Carnage (2011), Elysium (2013), Hotel Artemis (2018), and The Mauritanian (2021), the last of which won Foster her third Golden Globe.
Early life
Foster was born on November 19, 1962 in Los Angeles, the youngest child of Evelyn Ella "Brandy" (née Almond 1928-2019) and Lucius Fisher Foster III, a wealthy businessman. She is of English, German and Irish heritage. On her father's side she is descended from John Alden, who arrived in North America on the Mayflower in 1620.
Her parents' marriage had ended before she was born, and she never established a relationship with her father. She has three older full siblings: Lucinda (born 1954), Constance (born 1955), and Lucius, nicknamed "Buddy" (born 1957), as well as three half-brothers from her father's earlier marriage.
Following the divorce, Brandy raised the children with her partner in Los Angeles. She worked as a publicist for film producer Arthur P. Jacobs, until focusing on managing the acting careers of Buddy and Jodie. Although Foster was officially named Alicia, her siblings began calling her "Jodie", and the name stuck.
Foster was a gifted child who learned to read at age three. She attended the Lycée Français de Los Angeles, a French-language prep school. Her fluency in French has enabled her to act in French films, and she also dubs herself in French-language versions of most of her English-language films. At her graduation in 1980, she delivered the valedictorian address for the school's French division. She then attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut where she majored in African-American literature, wrote her thesis on Toni Morrison under the guidance of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and graduated magna cum laude in 1985. She returned to Yale in 1993 to address the graduating class, and received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree in 1997. In 2018, she was awarded the Yale Undergraduate Lifetime Achievement Award.
Career
Career beginnings
Foster's career began with an appearance in a Coppertone television advertisement in 1965, when she was three years old. Her mother had intended only for Jodie's older brother Buddy to audition, but had taken Jodie with them to the casting call, where she was noticed by the casting agents. The television spot led to more advertising work, and in 1968 to a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., in which her brother starred. In the following years Foster continued working in advertising and appeared in over 50 television shows; she and her brother became the breadwinners of the family during this time. She had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969–1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), and starred opposite Christopher Connelly in the short-lived Paper Moon (1974), adapted from the hit film.
Foster also appeared in films, mostly for Disney. After a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), playing a girl who befriends a boy, played by Johnny Whitaker, and his pet lion. She was accidentally grabbed by the lion on set, which left her with scars on her back. Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid".
Foster said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her: "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!' I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'"
1970s: Taxi Driver and teenage stardom
Foster's mother was concerned that her daughter's career would end by the time she grew out of playing children, and decided that Foster should also begin acting in films for adult audiences. After the minor supporting role in Alice, Scorsese cast her in the role of a child prostitute in Taxi Driver (1976). To be able to do the film, Foster had to undergo psychiatric assessment and was accompanied by a social worker on set. Her older sister acted as her stand-in in sexually suggestive scenes. Foster later commented on the role, saying that she hated "the idea that everybody thinks if a kid's going to be an actress it means that she has to play Shirley Temple or someone's little sister." During the filming, Foster developed a bond with co-star Robert De Niro, who saw "serious potential" in her and dedicated time rehearsing scenes with her.
She described Taxi Driver as a life-changing experience and stated that it was "the first time anyone asked me to create a character that wasn't myself. It was the first time I realized that acting wasn't this hobby you just sort of did, but that there was actually some craft." Taxi Driver won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival; Foster also impressed journalists when she acted as French interpreter at the press conference. Taxi Driver was a critical and commercial success, and earned her a supporting actress Academy Award nomination, as well as two BAFTAs, a David di Donatello and a National Society of Film Critics award. The film is considered one of the best in history by the American Film Institute and Sight & Sound, and has been preserved in the National Film Registry.
Foster also acted in another film nominated for the Palme d'Or in 1976, Bugsy Malone. The British musical parodied films about Prohibition Era gangsters by having all roles played by children; Foster appeared in a major supporting role as a star of a speakeasy show. Director Alan Parker was impressed by her, saying that "she takes such an intelligent interest in the way the film is being made that if I had been run over by a bus I think she was probably the only person on the set able to take over as director." She gained several positive notices for her performance: Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated that "at thirteen she was already getting the roles that grown-up actresses complained weren't being written for women anymore", Variety described her as "outstanding", and Vincent Canby of The New York Times called her "the star of the show". Foster's two BAFTAs were awarded jointly for her performances in Taxi Driver and Bugsy Malone. Her third film release in 1976 was the independent drama Echoes of a Summer, which had been filmed two years previously. The New York Times named Foster's performance as a terminally ill girl the film's "main strength" and Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune stated that she "is not a good child actress; she's just a good actress", although both reviewers otherwise panned the film.
Foster's fourth film of 1976 was the Canadian-French thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, in which she starred opposite Martin Sheen. The film combined aspects from thriller and horror genres, and showed Foster as a mysterious young girl living on her own in a small town. The performance earned her a Saturn Award. In November, Foster hosted Saturday Night Live, becoming the youngest person to do so until 1982. Her final film of the year was the Disney comedy Freaky Friday, "her first true star vehicle". She played a tomboy teen who accidentally changes bodies with her mother, and she later stated that the film marked a "transitional period" for her when she began to grow out of child roles. It received mainly positive reviews, and was a box office success, gaining Foster a Golden Globe nomination for her performance.
After her breakthrough year, Foster spent nine months living in France, where she starred in Moi, fleur bleue (1977) and recorded several songs for its soundtrack. Her other films released in 1977 were the Italian comedy Casotto (1977), and the Disney heist film Candleshoe (1977), which was filmed in England and co-starred veteran actors David Niven and Helen Hayes. After its release, Foster did not appear in any new releases until 1980, the year she turned eighteen.
1980s: Transition to adult roles
In 1980, Foster gained positive notices for her performances in the independent films Foxes and Carny (1980). The same year, she also became a full-time student at Yale. She later stated that going to college changed her thoughts about acting, which she had previously thought was an unintelligent profession, but now realised that "what I really wanted to do was to act and there was nothing stupid about it." Although Foster prioritized college during these years, she continued making films on her summer vacations. These were O'Hara's Wife (1982), television film Svengali (1983), John Irving adaptation The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), French film The Blood of Others (1984), and period drama Mesmerized (1986), which she also co-produced. None of them gained large audiences or critical appreciation, and after graduating from Yale in 1985, Foster struggled to find further acting work.
Foster's first film after college, the neo-noir Siesta (1987), was a failure. Her next project, the independent film Five Corners (1987), was better received. A moderate critical success, it earned Foster an Independent Spirit Award for her performance as a woman whose sexual assaulter returns to stalk her. The following year, Foster made her debut as a director with the episode "Do Not Open This Box" for the horror anthology series Tales from the Darkside, and starred in the romantic drama Stealing Home (1988) opposite Mark Harmon. The film was a critical and commercial failure, with critic Roger Ebert "wondering if any movie could possibly be that bad".
Foster's breakthrough into adult roles came with her performance as a rape survivor in The Accused (1988). Based on a real criminal case, the film focuses on the aftermath of a gang rape and its survivor's fight for justice in the face of victim blaming. Before making the film, Foster was having doubts about whether to continue her career and planned on starting graduate studies, but decided to give acting "one last try" in The Accused. She had to audition twice for the role and was cast only after several more established actors had turned it down, as the film's producers were wary of her due to her previous failures and because she was still remembered as a "chubby teenager". Due to the heavy subject matter, the filming was a difficult experience for all cast and crew involved, especially the shooting of the rape scene, which took five days to complete. Foster was unhappy with her performance, and feared that it would end her career. Instead, The Accused received positive reviews, with Foster's performance receiving widespread acclaim and earning her Academy, Golden Globe and National Board of Review awards, as well as a nomination for a BAFTA Award.
1990s: Box office success, debut as director and Egg Pictures
Foster's first film release after the success of The Accused was the thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991). She portrayed FBI trainee Clarice Starling, who is sent to interview incarcerated serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in order to hunt another serial killer, Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb (Ted Levine). Foster later named the role one of her favorites. She had read the novel it was based on after its publication in 1988 and had attempted to purchase its film rights, as it featured "a real female heroine" and its plot was not "about steroids and brawn, [but] about using your mind and using your insufficiencies to combat the villain." Despite her enthusiasm, director Jonathan Demme did not initially want to cast her, but the producers overruled him. Demme's view of Foster changed during the production, and he later credited her for helping him define the character.
Released in February 1991, The Silence of the Lambs became one of the biggest hits of the year, grossing close to $273 million, with a positive critical reception. Foster received largely positive reviews and won Academy, Golden Globe, and BAFTA awards for her portrayal of Starling; Silence won five Academy Awards overall, becoming one of the few films to win in all main categories. In contrast, some reviewers criticized the film as misogynist for its focus on brutal murders of women, and homo-/transphobic due to its portrayal of "Buffalo Bill" as bisexual and transgender. Much of the criticism was directed towards Foster, who the critics alleged was herself a lesbian. Despite the controversy, the film is considered a modern classic: Starling and Lecter are included on the American Film Institute's top ten of the greatest film heroes and villains, and the film is preserved in the National Film Registry. Later in 1991, Foster also starred in the unsuccessful low-budget thriller Catchfire, which had been filmed before Silence, but was released after it in an attempt to profit from its success.
In October 1991, Foster released her first feature film as a director, Little Man Tate, a drama about a child prodigy who struggles to come to terms with being different. The main role was played by previously unknown actor Adam Hann-Byrd, and Foster co-starred as his working-class single mother. She had found the script in the "slush pile" at Orion Pictures, and explained that for her debut film she "wanted a piece that was not autobiographical, but that had to do with the 10 philosophies I've accumulated in the past 25 years. Every single one of them, if they weren't in the script from the beginning, they're there now." Many reviewers felt that the film did not live up to the high expectations, and regarded it as "less adventurous than many films in which [she] had starred". Regardless, it was a moderate box office success. Foster's final film appearance of the year came in a small role as a sex worker in Shadows and Fog (1991), directed by Woody Allen, with whom she had wanted to collaborate since the 1970s.
Foster next starred in the period film Sommersby (1993), portraying a woman who begins to suspect that her husband (Richard Gere) who returns home from the Civil War is an impostor. She then replaced Meg Ryan in the Western comedy, Maverick (1994), playing a con artist opposite Mel Gibson and James Garner. According to film scholar Karen Hollinger, both films featured her in more "conventionally feminine" roles. Both Sommersby and Maverick were commercially successful.
Foster had founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, a subsidiary of PolyGram Filmed Entertainment in 1992, and released its first production, Nell, in December 1994. It was directed by Michael Apted and starred Foster in the titular role as a woman who grew up isolated in the Appalachian Mountains and speaks her own invented language. The film was based on Mark Handley's play Idioglossia, which interested Foster for its theme of "otherness", and because she "loved this idea of a woman who defies categorization, a creature who is labeled and categorized by people based on their own problems and their own prejudices and what they bring to the table." Despite mixed reviews, it was a commercial success, and earned Foster a Screen Actors Guild Award and nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her acting performance.
The second film that Foster directed and produced for Egg Pictures was Home for the Holidays, released in late 1995. A black comedy "set around a nightmarish Thanksgiving", it starred Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. The film received a mixed critical response and was a commercial failure. In 1996, Foster received two honorary awards: the Crystal Award, awarded annually for women in the entertainment industry, and the Berlinale Camera at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival. She voiced a character in an episode of Frasier in 1996 and in an episode of The X-Files in early 1997.
After Nell (1994), Foster appeared in no new film releases until Contact (1997), a science fiction film based on a novel by Carl Sagan and directed by Robert Zemeckis. She starred as a scientist searching for extraterrestrial life in the SETI project. The film was a commercial success and earned Foster a Saturn Award and a nomination for a Golden Globe. Foster next produced Jane Anderson's television film The Baby Dance (1998) for Showtime. Its story deals with a wealthy California couple who struggle with infertility and decide to adopt from a poor family in Louisiana. On her decision to produce for television, Foster stated that it was easier to take financial risks in that medium than in feature films. In 1998, she also moved her production company from PolyGram to Paramount Pictures. Also in 1998, asteroid 17744 Jodiefoster was named in her honor.
Foster's last film of the 1990s was the period drama Anna and the King (1999), in which she starred opposite Chow Yun-Fat. It was based on a fictionalized biography of British teacher Anna Leonowens, who taught the children of King Mongkut of Siam, and whose story became well known as the musical The King and I. Foster was paid $15 million to portray Leonowens, making her one of the highest-paid female actors in Hollywood. The film was subject to controversy when the Thai government deemed it historically inaccurate and insulting to the royal family and banned its distribution in the country. It was a moderate commercial success, but received mixed to negative reviews. Roger Ebert panned the film, stating that the role required Foster "to play beneath [her] intelligence" and The New York Times called it a "misstep" for her and accused her of only being "interested ... in sanctifying herself as an old-fashioned heroine than in taking on dramatically risky roles".
2000s: Career setbacks and resurgence in thrillers
Foster's first project of the new decade was Keith Gordon's film Waking the Dead (2000), which she produced. She declined to reprise her role as Clarice Starling in Hannibal (2001), with the part going instead to Julianne Moore, and concentrated on a new directorial project, Flora Plum. It was to focus on a 1930s circus and star Claire Danes and Russell Crowe, but had to be shelved after Crowe was injured on set and could not complete filming on schedule; Foster unsuccessfully attempted to revive the project several times in the following years. Controversially, she also expressed interest in directing and starring in a biographical film of Nazi film director Leni Riefenstahl, who did not like the idea. In addition to these setbacks, Foster shut down Egg Pictures in 2001, stating that producing was "just a really thankless, bad job". The company's last production, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2002. It received good reviews, and had a limited theatrical release in the summer.
After the cancellation of Flora Plum, Foster took on the main role in David Fincher's thriller Panic Room after its intended star, Nicole Kidman, had to drop out due to an injury on set. Before filming resumed, Foster was given only a week to prepare for the role of a woman who hides in a panic room with her daughter when burglars invade their home. It grossed over $30 million on its North American opening weekend in March 2002, thus becoming the most successful film opening of Foster's career . In addition to being a box office success, the film also received largely positive reviews.
After a minor appearance in the French period drama A Very Long Engagement (2004), Foster starred in three more thrillers. The first was Flightplan (2005), in which she played a woman whose daughter vanishes during an overnight flight. It became a global box office success, but received mixed reviews. It was followed by Spike Lee's critically and commercially successful Inside Man (2006), about a bank heist on Wall Street, which co-starred Denzel Washington and Clive Owen. The third thriller, The Brave One (2007), prompted some comparisons to Taxi Driver, as Foster played a New Yorker who becomes a vigilante after her fiancé is murdered. It was not a success, but earned Foster her sixth Golden Globe nomination. Her last film role of the decade was in the children's adventure film Nim's Island (2008), in which she portrayed an agoraphobic writer opposite Gerard Butler and Abigail Breslin. It was the first comedy in which she had starred since Maverick (1994), and was a commercial success but a critical failure. In 2009, she provided the voice for Maggie in a tetralogy episode of The Simpsons titled "Four Great Women and a Manicure".
2010s: Focus on directing
In the 2010s, Foster focused on directing and took fewer acting roles. In February 2011, she hosted the 36th César Awards in France, and the following month released her third feature film direction, The Beaver (2011), about a depressed man who develops an alternative personality based on a beaver hand puppet. It starred Maverick co-star Mel Gibson and featured herself, Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence in supporting roles as his family. Foster called its production "probably the biggest struggle of my professional career", partly due to the film's heavy subject matter but also due to the controversy that Gibson generated when he was accused of domestic violence and making anti-semitic, racist, and sexist statements. The film received mixed reviews, and failed the box office, largely due to this controversy. In 2011, Foster also appeared as part of an ensemble cast with John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz in Roman Polanski's comedy Carnage, in which the attempts of middle-class parents to settle an incident between their sons descends into chaos. It premiered to mainly positive reviews and earned Foster a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress.
In 2013, Foster received the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards. Her next film role was playing Secretary of Defense Delacourt opposite Matt Damon in the dystopian film Elysium (2013), which was a box office success. She also returned to television directing for the first time since the 1980s, directing the episodes "Lesbian Request Denied" (2013) and "Thirsty Bird" (2014) for Orange Is the New Black, and the episode "Chapter 22" (2014) for House of Cards. "Lesbian Request Denied" brought her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and the two 2014 episodes earned her two nominations for a Directors Guild of America Award. She also narrated the episode "Women in Space" (2014) for Makers: Women Who Make America, a PBS documentary series about women's struggle for equal rights in the United States. In 2015, Foster received the Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award at the Athena Film Festival.
The fourth film directed by Foster, hostage drama Money Monster, premiered out-of-competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2016. It starred George Clooney and Julia Roberts, and despite mixed reviews, was a moderate commercial success. The following year, Foster continued her work in television by directing an episode, "Arkangel", for the British sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror (2011–).
As the decade drew to a close, Foster continued to mix acting with directing. She starred together with Sterling Brown in the dystopian film Hotel Artemis (2018). Although the film was a commercial and critical disappointment, Foster's performance as Nurse, who runs a hospital for criminals, received positive notices. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle's stated that "not enough can be said about the performance of Foster in this film. She brings to the role a quality of having seen the absolute worst in people, but also the suggestion that, as a result, she accepts them on their own terms and knows how to handle any situation." Rick Bentley from Tampa Bay Times declared Foster's performance one of her "best and most memorable performances." The same year, Foster co-produced and narrated Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018), a documentary on one of the first female film directors.
2020s: Current work
Foster directed the finale of the 2020 science fiction drama Tales from the Loop. Her next project was the legal drama The Mauritanian (2021), in which she starred as the lawyer of a prisoner (Tahar Rahim) at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Foster won a Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her performance. At the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, Foster received the Honorary Palme d'Or for lifetime achievement.
Personal life
Foster met producer (then production coordinator) Cydney Bernard on the set of Sommersby (1993). They were in a relationship from 1993 until 2008 and had two sons (born in 1998 and 2001) together. In April 2014, Foster married actress and photographer Alexandra Hedison after a year of dating.
Foster's sexual orientation became the subject of public discussion in 1991 when publications such as OutWeek and The Village Voice, protesting against the alleged homophobia and transphobia in The Silence of the Lambs, claimed that she was a closeted lesbian. While she had been in a relationship with Bernard for 14 years, Foster first publicly acknowledged it in a speech at The Hollywood Reporter'''s "Women in Entertainment" breakfast honoring her in 2007. In 2013, she addressed her coming out in a speech after receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards, which led many news outlets to describe her as gay, although some sources noted that she did not use the words "gay" or "lesbian" in her speech.
John Hinckley incident
During her freshman year at Yale in 1980–1981, Foster was stalked by John W. Hinckley, Jr., who had developed an obsession with her after watching Taxi Driver. He moved to New Haven and tried to contact her by letter and telephone. On March 30, 1981, Hinckley attempted to assassinate U.S. president Ronald Reagan, wounding him and three other people, claiming that his motive was to impress Foster. The incident attracted intense media attention, and Foster was accompanied by bodyguards while on campus. Although Judge Barrington D. Parker confirmed that Foster was innocent in the case and had been "unwittingly ensnared in a third party's alleged attempt to assassinate an American President", her videotaped testimony was played at Hinckley's trial. While at Yale, Foster also had other stalkers, including a man who planned to kill her but changed his mind after watching her perform in a college play.
Foster has rarely commented publicly about Hinckley. She wrote an essay, "Why Me?", which was published in 1982 by Esquire on the condition that "there be no cover lines, no publicity and no photos". In 1991, she canceled an interview with NBC's Today Show when she discovered Hinckley would be mentioned in the introduction and that the producers would not change it. She discussed Hinckley with Charlie Rose of 60 Minutes II'' in 1999, explaining that she does not "like to dwell on it too much ... I never wanted to be the actress who was remembered for that event. Because it didn't have anything to do with me. I was kind of a hapless bystander. But ... what a scarring, strange moment in history for me, to be 17 years old, 18 years old, and to be caught up in a drama like that." She stated that the incident had a major impact on her career choices, and acknowledged that her experience was minimal compared to the suffering of Reagan's press secretary James Brady, who was permanently disabled in the shooting, and died as a result of his injuries 33 years later, and his loved ones: "Whatever bad moments that I had certainly could never compare to that family."
Filmography and accolades
See also
List of American film actresses
List of American television actresses
List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees – Youngest nominees for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
List of LGBTQ Academy Award winners and nominees – Best Actress in a Leading Role winners and nominees
List of actors with Academy Award nominations
List of actors with two or more Academy Award nominations in acting categories
List of actors with two or more Academy Awards in acting categories
References
Footnotes
Citations
Bibliography
External links
Jodie Foster in the online catalogue of the Cinémathèque Française
1962 births
Living people
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
Actresses from Los Angeles
American child actresses
American film actresses
American film producers
American television actresses
American television directors
American voice actresses
American women film directors
American women film producers
American women television producers
Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan
BAFTA Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles winners
Best Actress Academy Award winners
Best Actress BAFTA Award winners
Best Drama Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
Best Supporting Actress BAFTA Award winners
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
Cecil B. DeMille Award Golden Globe winners
David di Donatello winners
European Film Awards winners (people)
Film directors from Los Angeles
Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead winners
LGBT actresses
LGBT film directors
LGBT television directors
LGBT actors from the United States
LGBT people from California
LGBT producers
Lycée Français de Los Angeles alumni
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Television producers from California
American women television directors
Yale College alumni | true | [
"Aishwarya Nag is an Indian film actress and a model, who has appeared in South Indian films, primarily in Kannada cinema. After her modelling, she made her acting debut in the film Neene Neene (2008). She rose to fame by acting in the Kannada film Jolly Days (2009) and Kal Manja (2010).\n\nCareer\nAishwarya debuted as a lead actress in the 2008 released film Neene Neene opposite Dhyan and Ananth Nag when she was 16 years old. The film dealt with the pressures and hassles of tech workers, and was appreciated for being maturely dealt with. Aishwarya got a great deal of praise for holding her own against Anant Nag who played her dad in the film. She was next seen in the MD Shridhar film Jolly Days, a remake of the Telugu hit Happy Days. It was well received by critics, who called her a \"very good heroine material in Kannada.\"\n\nAfter a brief hiatus, she was seen in the comedy, Kal Manja, which also had Komal Kumar in the cast. The film met with favorable reviews and her performance was lauded by critics. She then signed the film Vighna opposite Vijay Raghavendra, which underwent several delays in the making process. 2013 year saw her majority releases with Prajwal Devaraj starrer Ziddi being the first release. She appeared in the comedy film Loosegalu, another comedy opposite Vijay Raghavendra named Chella Pilli, a romantic comedy Pataisu and Jaathre opposite Chetan Chandra. She is playing the lead protagonist role in T. S. Nagabharana's next directional Vasundhara. Nag is playing a lead role in the movie Muddu Manase where she is seen riding a Royal Enfield with ease. She has received good appreciation from the critics for the role. Aishwarya played a media reporter in the movie Jaathre in 2015. She is currently shooting for her next movie \"The Gulaabi street\" and is playing a lead role in the movie which is vaguely inspired by the Bollywood movie Fashion.\n\nFilmography\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n \n\nLiving people\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nActresses from Bangalore\nIndian film actresses\nActresses in Kannada cinema\n21st-century Indian actresses\nFemale models from Bangalore",
"Emily Hirst (born July 9, 1993) is a Canadian actress.\n\nCareer\nHirst was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. Hirst first appeared in the TV series The Twilight Zone in 2002 and she has a small role in X2: X-Men United as The \"Ice Cream Girl\" in 2003.\n\nHer first larger role was in the film drama Desolation Sound, where she played Margaret Elliot. For this role she was nominated for a Leo Award in 2005. She played Laura in the Lifetime movie For the Love of a Child in 2006. She won a Young Artists Award for that role. She was also nominated for her supporting guest role in Smallville's \"Fragile\" (2006). In 2007, Hirst had a recurring role as the childlike vampire Charlotte on Spike TV's Blade: The Series with rapper Sticky Fingaz. Her next appearance was in the thriller Mem-o-re with Billy Zane as Bonnie McHale.\n\nIn 2007 Hirst played Mandy Tarr in the Lifetime movie Passion's Web and Young Mary in Second Sight. She also appeared briefly in Battlestar Galactica: Razor. Her next role was Alice in a movie called The Egg Factory which was renamed Prodigy, and featured a number of times on Movie Central.\n\nIn 2008, Hirst played Makoto Konno in the English dubbed version of the award-winning Japanese anime film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time alongside Andrew Francis, for which she is nominated for a Young Artists Award in 2009. Also in 2008, Hirst appeared in a made-for-TV movie with Daryl Hannah called Storm Seekers.\n\nIn February 2009, she filmed Stranger With My Face with Alexz Johnson, Catherine Hicks, and Andrew Francis.\n\nFilmography\n\nAwards\nLeo Awards\n 2005 - Nominated - Feature Length Drama: Best Supporting Performance by a Female for: Desolation Sound (2005)\n\nYoung Artist Awards\n 2007 - Won - Best Performance in a TV Movie, Miniseries or Special (Comedy or Drama) - Supporting Young Actress for: \"For the Love of a Child\" (2006) (TV)\n 2007 - Nominated - Best Performance in a TV Series (Comedy or Drama) - Guest Starring Young Actress for: \"Smallville\" (2001)\n 2009 - Won - Best Performance in a Voice-Over Role - Young Actress for: \"The Girl Who Leapt Through Time\" (English version) (2008)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n Pictures at ChildStarlets.com\n UGO.com Film/TV - Emily Hirst Interview\n IGN Interview: Blade: The Series's Emily Hirst\n Planete Smallville Interview\n\n1993 births\nCanadian child actresses\nCanadian television actresses\nLiving people\nActresses from Vancouver\n21st-century Canadian actresses\nCanadian film actresses\nCanadian voice actresses"
] |
[
"Jodie Foster",
"1965-1975: Early work",
"What was Foster's first role?",
"Foster's career began with an appearance as the Coppertone girl",
"What year was she the Coppertone Girl?",
"in a television advertisement in 1965,",
"What was her next appearance after that?",
"a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D.,",
"What year was her appearance on Mayberry?",
"in 1968",
"When was her first movie role?",
"a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970),",
"Did she have a lead role in Menace on the Mountain?",
"I don't know.",
"What did she do after Menace on the Mountain?",
"), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972),",
"Did she do any other television or advertisements?",
"she had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969-1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973),",
"What was her next movie role?",
"Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972),"
] | C_67bd39d220a84618b8cdda8de3fe429e_1 | Did she have any problems in her early career? | 10 | Did Jodie Foster have any problems in her early career? | Jodie Foster | Foster's career began with an appearance as the Coppertone girl in a television advertisement in 1965, when she was only three years old. Her mother had originally intended only for her older brother Buddy to audition for the ad, but had taken Jodie with them to the casting call, where she was noticed by the casting agents. The television spot led to more advertisement work, and in 1968 to a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., in which her brother starred. In the following years Foster continued working in advertisements and appeared in over fifty television shows; she and her brother became the breadwinners of the family during this time. Although most of Foster's television appearances were minor, she had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969-1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), and starred opposite Christopher Connelly in the short-lived Paper Moon (1974), adapted from the hit film. Foster also appeared in films, mostly for Disney. After a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), playing a girl who becomes friends with a boy, played by Johnny Whitaker, and his pet lion. She was accidentally grabbed by the lion on set, which left her with permanent scars on her back. Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid". Foster has said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her: "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!' I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'" CANNOTANSWER | Foster has said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her: | Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (born November 19, 1962) is an American actress, director, and producer. Regarded as one of the best actresses of her generation, she is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award. For her work as a director, she has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. People magazine named her the most beautiful woman in the world in 1992, and in 2003, she was voted Number 23 in Channel 4's countdown of the 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time. Entertainment Weekly named her 57th on their list of 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time in 1996. In 2016, she was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star located at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard.
Foster began her professional career as a child model when she was three years old, and made her acting debut in 1968 in the television sitcom Mayberry R.F.D. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she worked in several television series and made her film debut with Disney's Napoleon and Samantha (1972). Following appearances in the musical Tom Sawyer (1973) and Martin Scorsese's comedy-drama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), her breakthrough came with Scorsese's psychological thriller Taxi Driver (1976), where she played a child prostitute, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other roles as a teenager include the musical Bugsy Malone (1976) and the thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), and she became a popular teen idol by starring in Disney's Freaky Friday (1976) and Candleshoe (1977), as well as Carny (1980) and Foxes (1980).
After attending Yale University, Foster struggled to transition into adult roles until she gained critical acclaim for playing a rape survivor in the legal drama The Accused (1988), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won her second Academy Award three years later for the psychological horror film The Silence of the Lambs (1991), where she portrayed FBI agent Clarice Starling. She made her debut as a film director the same year with Little Man Tate. She founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, in 1992. Its first production was Nell (1994), in which Foster also played the title role, garnering her fourth Academy Award nomination. Her other successful films in the 1990s were the romantic drama Sommersby, western comedy Maverick (1994), science fiction Contact (1997), and period drama Anna and the King (1999).
Foster experienced career setbacks in the early 2000s, including the cancellation of a film project and the closing down of her production company, but she then starred in four commercially successful thrillers: Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005), Inside Man (2006), and The Brave One (2007). She has concentrated on directing in the 2010s, with the films The Beaver (2011) and Money Monster (2016), and episodes for Netflix television series Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards, and Black Mirror. She received her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for "Lesbian Request Denied", the third episode of the former. She also starred in the films Carnage (2011), Elysium (2013), Hotel Artemis (2018), and The Mauritanian (2021), the last of which won Foster her third Golden Globe.
Early life
Foster was born on November 19, 1962 in Los Angeles, the youngest child of Evelyn Ella "Brandy" (née Almond 1928-2019) and Lucius Fisher Foster III, a wealthy businessman. She is of English, German and Irish heritage. On her father's side she is descended from John Alden, who arrived in North America on the Mayflower in 1620.
Her parents' marriage had ended before she was born, and she never established a relationship with her father. She has three older full siblings: Lucinda (born 1954), Constance (born 1955), and Lucius, nicknamed "Buddy" (born 1957), as well as three half-brothers from her father's earlier marriage.
Following the divorce, Brandy raised the children with her partner in Los Angeles. She worked as a publicist for film producer Arthur P. Jacobs, until focusing on managing the acting careers of Buddy and Jodie. Although Foster was officially named Alicia, her siblings began calling her "Jodie", and the name stuck.
Foster was a gifted child who learned to read at age three. She attended the Lycée Français de Los Angeles, a French-language prep school. Her fluency in French has enabled her to act in French films, and she also dubs herself in French-language versions of most of her English-language films. At her graduation in 1980, she delivered the valedictorian address for the school's French division. She then attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut where she majored in African-American literature, wrote her thesis on Toni Morrison under the guidance of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and graduated magna cum laude in 1985. She returned to Yale in 1993 to address the graduating class, and received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree in 1997. In 2018, she was awarded the Yale Undergraduate Lifetime Achievement Award.
Career
Career beginnings
Foster's career began with an appearance in a Coppertone television advertisement in 1965, when she was three years old. Her mother had intended only for Jodie's older brother Buddy to audition, but had taken Jodie with them to the casting call, where she was noticed by the casting agents. The television spot led to more advertising work, and in 1968 to a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., in which her brother starred. In the following years Foster continued working in advertising and appeared in over 50 television shows; she and her brother became the breadwinners of the family during this time. She had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969–1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), and starred opposite Christopher Connelly in the short-lived Paper Moon (1974), adapted from the hit film.
Foster also appeared in films, mostly for Disney. After a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), playing a girl who befriends a boy, played by Johnny Whitaker, and his pet lion. She was accidentally grabbed by the lion on set, which left her with scars on her back. Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid".
Foster said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her: "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!' I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'"
1970s: Taxi Driver and teenage stardom
Foster's mother was concerned that her daughter's career would end by the time she grew out of playing children, and decided that Foster should also begin acting in films for adult audiences. After the minor supporting role in Alice, Scorsese cast her in the role of a child prostitute in Taxi Driver (1976). To be able to do the film, Foster had to undergo psychiatric assessment and was accompanied by a social worker on set. Her older sister acted as her stand-in in sexually suggestive scenes. Foster later commented on the role, saying that she hated "the idea that everybody thinks if a kid's going to be an actress it means that she has to play Shirley Temple or someone's little sister." During the filming, Foster developed a bond with co-star Robert De Niro, who saw "serious potential" in her and dedicated time rehearsing scenes with her.
She described Taxi Driver as a life-changing experience and stated that it was "the first time anyone asked me to create a character that wasn't myself. It was the first time I realized that acting wasn't this hobby you just sort of did, but that there was actually some craft." Taxi Driver won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival; Foster also impressed journalists when she acted as French interpreter at the press conference. Taxi Driver was a critical and commercial success, and earned her a supporting actress Academy Award nomination, as well as two BAFTAs, a David di Donatello and a National Society of Film Critics award. The film is considered one of the best in history by the American Film Institute and Sight & Sound, and has been preserved in the National Film Registry.
Foster also acted in another film nominated for the Palme d'Or in 1976, Bugsy Malone. The British musical parodied films about Prohibition Era gangsters by having all roles played by children; Foster appeared in a major supporting role as a star of a speakeasy show. Director Alan Parker was impressed by her, saying that "she takes such an intelligent interest in the way the film is being made that if I had been run over by a bus I think she was probably the only person on the set able to take over as director." She gained several positive notices for her performance: Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated that "at thirteen she was already getting the roles that grown-up actresses complained weren't being written for women anymore", Variety described her as "outstanding", and Vincent Canby of The New York Times called her "the star of the show". Foster's two BAFTAs were awarded jointly for her performances in Taxi Driver and Bugsy Malone. Her third film release in 1976 was the independent drama Echoes of a Summer, which had been filmed two years previously. The New York Times named Foster's performance as a terminally ill girl the film's "main strength" and Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune stated that she "is not a good child actress; she's just a good actress", although both reviewers otherwise panned the film.
Foster's fourth film of 1976 was the Canadian-French thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, in which she starred opposite Martin Sheen. The film combined aspects from thriller and horror genres, and showed Foster as a mysterious young girl living on her own in a small town. The performance earned her a Saturn Award. In November, Foster hosted Saturday Night Live, becoming the youngest person to do so until 1982. Her final film of the year was the Disney comedy Freaky Friday, "her first true star vehicle". She played a tomboy teen who accidentally changes bodies with her mother, and she later stated that the film marked a "transitional period" for her when she began to grow out of child roles. It received mainly positive reviews, and was a box office success, gaining Foster a Golden Globe nomination for her performance.
After her breakthrough year, Foster spent nine months living in France, where she starred in Moi, fleur bleue (1977) and recorded several songs for its soundtrack. Her other films released in 1977 were the Italian comedy Casotto (1977), and the Disney heist film Candleshoe (1977), which was filmed in England and co-starred veteran actors David Niven and Helen Hayes. After its release, Foster did not appear in any new releases until 1980, the year she turned eighteen.
1980s: Transition to adult roles
In 1980, Foster gained positive notices for her performances in the independent films Foxes and Carny (1980). The same year, she also became a full-time student at Yale. She later stated that going to college changed her thoughts about acting, which she had previously thought was an unintelligent profession, but now realised that "what I really wanted to do was to act and there was nothing stupid about it." Although Foster prioritized college during these years, she continued making films on her summer vacations. These were O'Hara's Wife (1982), television film Svengali (1983), John Irving adaptation The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), French film The Blood of Others (1984), and period drama Mesmerized (1986), which she also co-produced. None of them gained large audiences or critical appreciation, and after graduating from Yale in 1985, Foster struggled to find further acting work.
Foster's first film after college, the neo-noir Siesta (1987), was a failure. Her next project, the independent film Five Corners (1987), was better received. A moderate critical success, it earned Foster an Independent Spirit Award for her performance as a woman whose sexual assaulter returns to stalk her. The following year, Foster made her debut as a director with the episode "Do Not Open This Box" for the horror anthology series Tales from the Darkside, and starred in the romantic drama Stealing Home (1988) opposite Mark Harmon. The film was a critical and commercial failure, with critic Roger Ebert "wondering if any movie could possibly be that bad".
Foster's breakthrough into adult roles came with her performance as a rape survivor in The Accused (1988). Based on a real criminal case, the film focuses on the aftermath of a gang rape and its survivor's fight for justice in the face of victim blaming. Before making the film, Foster was having doubts about whether to continue her career and planned on starting graduate studies, but decided to give acting "one last try" in The Accused. She had to audition twice for the role and was cast only after several more established actors had turned it down, as the film's producers were wary of her due to her previous failures and because she was still remembered as a "chubby teenager". Due to the heavy subject matter, the filming was a difficult experience for all cast and crew involved, especially the shooting of the rape scene, which took five days to complete. Foster was unhappy with her performance, and feared that it would end her career. Instead, The Accused received positive reviews, with Foster's performance receiving widespread acclaim and earning her Academy, Golden Globe and National Board of Review awards, as well as a nomination for a BAFTA Award.
1990s: Box office success, debut as director and Egg Pictures
Foster's first film release after the success of The Accused was the thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991). She portrayed FBI trainee Clarice Starling, who is sent to interview incarcerated serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in order to hunt another serial killer, Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb (Ted Levine). Foster later named the role one of her favorites. She had read the novel it was based on after its publication in 1988 and had attempted to purchase its film rights, as it featured "a real female heroine" and its plot was not "about steroids and brawn, [but] about using your mind and using your insufficiencies to combat the villain." Despite her enthusiasm, director Jonathan Demme did not initially want to cast her, but the producers overruled him. Demme's view of Foster changed during the production, and he later credited her for helping him define the character.
Released in February 1991, The Silence of the Lambs became one of the biggest hits of the year, grossing close to $273 million, with a positive critical reception. Foster received largely positive reviews and won Academy, Golden Globe, and BAFTA awards for her portrayal of Starling; Silence won five Academy Awards overall, becoming one of the few films to win in all main categories. In contrast, some reviewers criticized the film as misogynist for its focus on brutal murders of women, and homo-/transphobic due to its portrayal of "Buffalo Bill" as bisexual and transgender. Much of the criticism was directed towards Foster, who the critics alleged was herself a lesbian. Despite the controversy, the film is considered a modern classic: Starling and Lecter are included on the American Film Institute's top ten of the greatest film heroes and villains, and the film is preserved in the National Film Registry. Later in 1991, Foster also starred in the unsuccessful low-budget thriller Catchfire, which had been filmed before Silence, but was released after it in an attempt to profit from its success.
In October 1991, Foster released her first feature film as a director, Little Man Tate, a drama about a child prodigy who struggles to come to terms with being different. The main role was played by previously unknown actor Adam Hann-Byrd, and Foster co-starred as his working-class single mother. She had found the script in the "slush pile" at Orion Pictures, and explained that for her debut film she "wanted a piece that was not autobiographical, but that had to do with the 10 philosophies I've accumulated in the past 25 years. Every single one of them, if they weren't in the script from the beginning, they're there now." Many reviewers felt that the film did not live up to the high expectations, and regarded it as "less adventurous than many films in which [she] had starred". Regardless, it was a moderate box office success. Foster's final film appearance of the year came in a small role as a sex worker in Shadows and Fog (1991), directed by Woody Allen, with whom she had wanted to collaborate since the 1970s.
Foster next starred in the period film Sommersby (1993), portraying a woman who begins to suspect that her husband (Richard Gere) who returns home from the Civil War is an impostor. She then replaced Meg Ryan in the Western comedy, Maverick (1994), playing a con artist opposite Mel Gibson and James Garner. According to film scholar Karen Hollinger, both films featured her in more "conventionally feminine" roles. Both Sommersby and Maverick were commercially successful.
Foster had founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, a subsidiary of PolyGram Filmed Entertainment in 1992, and released its first production, Nell, in December 1994. It was directed by Michael Apted and starred Foster in the titular role as a woman who grew up isolated in the Appalachian Mountains and speaks her own invented language. The film was based on Mark Handley's play Idioglossia, which interested Foster for its theme of "otherness", and because she "loved this idea of a woman who defies categorization, a creature who is labeled and categorized by people based on their own problems and their own prejudices and what they bring to the table." Despite mixed reviews, it was a commercial success, and earned Foster a Screen Actors Guild Award and nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her acting performance.
The second film that Foster directed and produced for Egg Pictures was Home for the Holidays, released in late 1995. A black comedy "set around a nightmarish Thanksgiving", it starred Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. The film received a mixed critical response and was a commercial failure. In 1996, Foster received two honorary awards: the Crystal Award, awarded annually for women in the entertainment industry, and the Berlinale Camera at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival. She voiced a character in an episode of Frasier in 1996 and in an episode of The X-Files in early 1997.
After Nell (1994), Foster appeared in no new film releases until Contact (1997), a science fiction film based on a novel by Carl Sagan and directed by Robert Zemeckis. She starred as a scientist searching for extraterrestrial life in the SETI project. The film was a commercial success and earned Foster a Saturn Award and a nomination for a Golden Globe. Foster next produced Jane Anderson's television film The Baby Dance (1998) for Showtime. Its story deals with a wealthy California couple who struggle with infertility and decide to adopt from a poor family in Louisiana. On her decision to produce for television, Foster stated that it was easier to take financial risks in that medium than in feature films. In 1998, she also moved her production company from PolyGram to Paramount Pictures. Also in 1998, asteroid 17744 Jodiefoster was named in her honor.
Foster's last film of the 1990s was the period drama Anna and the King (1999), in which she starred opposite Chow Yun-Fat. It was based on a fictionalized biography of British teacher Anna Leonowens, who taught the children of King Mongkut of Siam, and whose story became well known as the musical The King and I. Foster was paid $15 million to portray Leonowens, making her one of the highest-paid female actors in Hollywood. The film was subject to controversy when the Thai government deemed it historically inaccurate and insulting to the royal family and banned its distribution in the country. It was a moderate commercial success, but received mixed to negative reviews. Roger Ebert panned the film, stating that the role required Foster "to play beneath [her] intelligence" and The New York Times called it a "misstep" for her and accused her of only being "interested ... in sanctifying herself as an old-fashioned heroine than in taking on dramatically risky roles".
2000s: Career setbacks and resurgence in thrillers
Foster's first project of the new decade was Keith Gordon's film Waking the Dead (2000), which she produced. She declined to reprise her role as Clarice Starling in Hannibal (2001), with the part going instead to Julianne Moore, and concentrated on a new directorial project, Flora Plum. It was to focus on a 1930s circus and star Claire Danes and Russell Crowe, but had to be shelved after Crowe was injured on set and could not complete filming on schedule; Foster unsuccessfully attempted to revive the project several times in the following years. Controversially, she also expressed interest in directing and starring in a biographical film of Nazi film director Leni Riefenstahl, who did not like the idea. In addition to these setbacks, Foster shut down Egg Pictures in 2001, stating that producing was "just a really thankless, bad job". The company's last production, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2002. It received good reviews, and had a limited theatrical release in the summer.
After the cancellation of Flora Plum, Foster took on the main role in David Fincher's thriller Panic Room after its intended star, Nicole Kidman, had to drop out due to an injury on set. Before filming resumed, Foster was given only a week to prepare for the role of a woman who hides in a panic room with her daughter when burglars invade their home. It grossed over $30 million on its North American opening weekend in March 2002, thus becoming the most successful film opening of Foster's career . In addition to being a box office success, the film also received largely positive reviews.
After a minor appearance in the French period drama A Very Long Engagement (2004), Foster starred in three more thrillers. The first was Flightplan (2005), in which she played a woman whose daughter vanishes during an overnight flight. It became a global box office success, but received mixed reviews. It was followed by Spike Lee's critically and commercially successful Inside Man (2006), about a bank heist on Wall Street, which co-starred Denzel Washington and Clive Owen. The third thriller, The Brave One (2007), prompted some comparisons to Taxi Driver, as Foster played a New Yorker who becomes a vigilante after her fiancé is murdered. It was not a success, but earned Foster her sixth Golden Globe nomination. Her last film role of the decade was in the children's adventure film Nim's Island (2008), in which she portrayed an agoraphobic writer opposite Gerard Butler and Abigail Breslin. It was the first comedy in which she had starred since Maverick (1994), and was a commercial success but a critical failure. In 2009, she provided the voice for Maggie in a tetralogy episode of The Simpsons titled "Four Great Women and a Manicure".
2010s: Focus on directing
In the 2010s, Foster focused on directing and took fewer acting roles. In February 2011, she hosted the 36th César Awards in France, and the following month released her third feature film direction, The Beaver (2011), about a depressed man who develops an alternative personality based on a beaver hand puppet. It starred Maverick co-star Mel Gibson and featured herself, Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence in supporting roles as his family. Foster called its production "probably the biggest struggle of my professional career", partly due to the film's heavy subject matter but also due to the controversy that Gibson generated when he was accused of domestic violence and making anti-semitic, racist, and sexist statements. The film received mixed reviews, and failed the box office, largely due to this controversy. In 2011, Foster also appeared as part of an ensemble cast with John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz in Roman Polanski's comedy Carnage, in which the attempts of middle-class parents to settle an incident between their sons descends into chaos. It premiered to mainly positive reviews and earned Foster a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress.
In 2013, Foster received the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards. Her next film role was playing Secretary of Defense Delacourt opposite Matt Damon in the dystopian film Elysium (2013), which was a box office success. She also returned to television directing for the first time since the 1980s, directing the episodes "Lesbian Request Denied" (2013) and "Thirsty Bird" (2014) for Orange Is the New Black, and the episode "Chapter 22" (2014) for House of Cards. "Lesbian Request Denied" brought her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and the two 2014 episodes earned her two nominations for a Directors Guild of America Award. She also narrated the episode "Women in Space" (2014) for Makers: Women Who Make America, a PBS documentary series about women's struggle for equal rights in the United States. In 2015, Foster received the Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award at the Athena Film Festival.
The fourth film directed by Foster, hostage drama Money Monster, premiered out-of-competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2016. It starred George Clooney and Julia Roberts, and despite mixed reviews, was a moderate commercial success. The following year, Foster continued her work in television by directing an episode, "Arkangel", for the British sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror (2011–).
As the decade drew to a close, Foster continued to mix acting with directing. She starred together with Sterling Brown in the dystopian film Hotel Artemis (2018). Although the film was a commercial and critical disappointment, Foster's performance as Nurse, who runs a hospital for criminals, received positive notices. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle's stated that "not enough can be said about the performance of Foster in this film. She brings to the role a quality of having seen the absolute worst in people, but also the suggestion that, as a result, she accepts them on their own terms and knows how to handle any situation." Rick Bentley from Tampa Bay Times declared Foster's performance one of her "best and most memorable performances." The same year, Foster co-produced and narrated Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018), a documentary on one of the first female film directors.
2020s: Current work
Foster directed the finale of the 2020 science fiction drama Tales from the Loop. Her next project was the legal drama The Mauritanian (2021), in which she starred as the lawyer of a prisoner (Tahar Rahim) at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Foster won a Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her performance. At the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, Foster received the Honorary Palme d'Or for lifetime achievement.
Personal life
Foster met producer (then production coordinator) Cydney Bernard on the set of Sommersby (1993). They were in a relationship from 1993 until 2008 and had two sons (born in 1998 and 2001) together. In April 2014, Foster married actress and photographer Alexandra Hedison after a year of dating.
Foster's sexual orientation became the subject of public discussion in 1991 when publications such as OutWeek and The Village Voice, protesting against the alleged homophobia and transphobia in The Silence of the Lambs, claimed that she was a closeted lesbian. While she had been in a relationship with Bernard for 14 years, Foster first publicly acknowledged it in a speech at The Hollywood Reporter'''s "Women in Entertainment" breakfast honoring her in 2007. In 2013, she addressed her coming out in a speech after receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards, which led many news outlets to describe her as gay, although some sources noted that she did not use the words "gay" or "lesbian" in her speech.
John Hinckley incident
During her freshman year at Yale in 1980–1981, Foster was stalked by John W. Hinckley, Jr., who had developed an obsession with her after watching Taxi Driver. He moved to New Haven and tried to contact her by letter and telephone. On March 30, 1981, Hinckley attempted to assassinate U.S. president Ronald Reagan, wounding him and three other people, claiming that his motive was to impress Foster. The incident attracted intense media attention, and Foster was accompanied by bodyguards while on campus. Although Judge Barrington D. Parker confirmed that Foster was innocent in the case and had been "unwittingly ensnared in a third party's alleged attempt to assassinate an American President", her videotaped testimony was played at Hinckley's trial. While at Yale, Foster also had other stalkers, including a man who planned to kill her but changed his mind after watching her perform in a college play.
Foster has rarely commented publicly about Hinckley. She wrote an essay, "Why Me?", which was published in 1982 by Esquire on the condition that "there be no cover lines, no publicity and no photos". In 1991, she canceled an interview with NBC's Today Show when she discovered Hinckley would be mentioned in the introduction and that the producers would not change it. She discussed Hinckley with Charlie Rose of 60 Minutes II'' in 1999, explaining that she does not "like to dwell on it too much ... I never wanted to be the actress who was remembered for that event. Because it didn't have anything to do with me. I was kind of a hapless bystander. But ... what a scarring, strange moment in history for me, to be 17 years old, 18 years old, and to be caught up in a drama like that." She stated that the incident had a major impact on her career choices, and acknowledged that her experience was minimal compared to the suffering of Reagan's press secretary James Brady, who was permanently disabled in the shooting, and died as a result of his injuries 33 years later, and his loved ones: "Whatever bad moments that I had certainly could never compare to that family."
Filmography and accolades
See also
List of American film actresses
List of American television actresses
List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees – Youngest nominees for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
List of LGBTQ Academy Award winners and nominees – Best Actress in a Leading Role winners and nominees
List of actors with Academy Award nominations
List of actors with two or more Academy Award nominations in acting categories
List of actors with two or more Academy Awards in acting categories
References
Footnotes
Citations
Bibliography
External links
Jodie Foster in the online catalogue of the Cinémathèque Française
1962 births
Living people
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
Actresses from Los Angeles
American child actresses
American film actresses
American film producers
American television actresses
American television directors
American voice actresses
American women film directors
American women film producers
American women television producers
Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan
BAFTA Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles winners
Best Actress Academy Award winners
Best Actress BAFTA Award winners
Best Drama Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
Best Supporting Actress BAFTA Award winners
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
Cecil B. DeMille Award Golden Globe winners
David di Donatello winners
European Film Awards winners (people)
Film directors from Los Angeles
Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead winners
LGBT actresses
LGBT film directors
LGBT television directors
LGBT actors from the United States
LGBT people from California
LGBT producers
Lycée Français de Los Angeles alumni
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Television producers from California
American women television directors
Yale College alumni | false | [
"Ngozi Sylvia Oluchi Ezeokafor (commonly known as Sylvya Oluchy) is a Nigerian actress. She won the Most Promising Act of the Year award in the Best of Nollywood Awards. She shared photos of herself in a semi-nude way. She then said in an interview with Showtime Celebrities that she sees no big deal in going nude.\n\nEarly life \nSylvia Oluchi was born in Lagos and raised in Abuja. She studied theatre Arts at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka, Anambra State.\n\nCareer \nAccording to her, she never wanted to be an actress until her mom told her \"you will make a good actress\" after noticing her unique talent in mimicking her school teachers. In 2011, she played the role of Shaniqua in the popular Atlanta TV series. During interviews with Best of Nollywood Magazine and YES International Magazine Sylvia made national headlines when asked if she had any boundaries or limits her acting profession, she replied \"I don’t have any boundaries because my body is my laptop. Others have their laptops and files, what I have are body and voice, Even the concept of nudity, I don’t have any problems what so ever...\"\n\nFilmography\n\nAwards\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nLiving people\n21st-century Nigerian actresses\nActresses from Lagos\nNnamdi Azikiwe University alumni",
"Madiha Salem (; 2 October 1944 – 19 November 2015) was an Egyptian actress who appeared in 29 films, and 13 radio and TV serials . She is known for playing the \"dreamy teenager\" in Egyptian classics from the 1960s.\n\nEarly life \nSalem was born in the wealthy Zamalek neighborhood of Cairo. In high school she studied at the Zamalek School for Girls. Her father died shortly after she finished high school, forcing her to abandon further studies and look for work.\n\nCareer \nKnown as the \"teenager of the cinema\" and the \"innocent cat of the screen,\" she played many supporting roles during the golden era of Egyptian cinema of the 60s and 70s, mainly in the role of the dreamy teenager. She acted on TV and worked as a voice actress in radio serials as well. She is said to have drawn attention for her \"light-hearted and unassuming\" performances of her roles on the Egyptian screen. She quit acting in the early 80s, preferring to spend her time with her husband and family.\n\nShe briefly reappeared on the TV screen in the religious drama \"The Judiciary of Islam\" (القضاء في الإسلام), appearing in 1998 and 2001-2002, but did not subsequently appear in any other acting role.\n\nShe died on November 19 in El Safa Hospital due to respiratory problems. Her funeral took place the next day at the Hamidiyya-Shadhiliyya Mosque in the Mohandessin neighborhood in Giza and she was buried in a Cairo cemetery.\n\nFilmography\n\nFilm\nبلا دموع (Without Tears) (1961)\nDearer than My Life (1965)\nThree Thieves (1966)\nThe Nile and the Life (1968)\nOne day, the Nile (1972)\nThe Night (1978)\nTrees Die Standing (1980)\nWho Killed This Love (1980)\nالرجل والحصان (The Man and the Horse) (1982)\n\nTelevision\nإلا دمعة الحزن (But a Tear of Sorrow - series) (1979)\nDalal El Masriya (1982)\n\nReferences\n\n1944 births\n2015 deaths\nActresses from Cairo"
] |
[
"Jodie Foster",
"1965-1975: Early work",
"What was Foster's first role?",
"Foster's career began with an appearance as the Coppertone girl",
"What year was she the Coppertone Girl?",
"in a television advertisement in 1965,",
"What was her next appearance after that?",
"a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D.,",
"What year was her appearance on Mayberry?",
"in 1968",
"When was her first movie role?",
"a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970),",
"Did she have a lead role in Menace on the Mountain?",
"I don't know.",
"What did she do after Menace on the Mountain?",
"), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972),",
"Did she do any other television or advertisements?",
"she had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969-1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973),",
"What was her next movie role?",
"Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972),",
"Did she have any problems in her early career?",
"Foster has said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her:"
] | C_67bd39d220a84618b8cdda8de3fe429e_1 | How old was she when she started? | 11 | How old was Jodie Foster when she started? | Jodie Foster | Foster's career began with an appearance as the Coppertone girl in a television advertisement in 1965, when she was only three years old. Her mother had originally intended only for her older brother Buddy to audition for the ad, but had taken Jodie with them to the casting call, where she was noticed by the casting agents. The television spot led to more advertisement work, and in 1968 to a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., in which her brother starred. In the following years Foster continued working in advertisements and appeared in over fifty television shows; she and her brother became the breadwinners of the family during this time. Although most of Foster's television appearances were minor, she had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969-1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), and starred opposite Christopher Connelly in the short-lived Paper Moon (1974), adapted from the hit film. Foster also appeared in films, mostly for Disney. After a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), playing a girl who becomes friends with a boy, played by Johnny Whitaker, and his pet lion. She was accidentally grabbed by the lion on set, which left her with permanent scars on her back. Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid". Foster has said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her: "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!' I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'" CANNOTANSWER | when she was only three years old. | Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (born November 19, 1962) is an American actress, director, and producer. Regarded as one of the best actresses of her generation, she is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award. For her work as a director, she has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. People magazine named her the most beautiful woman in the world in 1992, and in 2003, she was voted Number 23 in Channel 4's countdown of the 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time. Entertainment Weekly named her 57th on their list of 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time in 1996. In 2016, she was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star located at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard.
Foster began her professional career as a child model when she was three years old, and made her acting debut in 1968 in the television sitcom Mayberry R.F.D. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she worked in several television series and made her film debut with Disney's Napoleon and Samantha (1972). Following appearances in the musical Tom Sawyer (1973) and Martin Scorsese's comedy-drama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), her breakthrough came with Scorsese's psychological thriller Taxi Driver (1976), where she played a child prostitute, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other roles as a teenager include the musical Bugsy Malone (1976) and the thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), and she became a popular teen idol by starring in Disney's Freaky Friday (1976) and Candleshoe (1977), as well as Carny (1980) and Foxes (1980).
After attending Yale University, Foster struggled to transition into adult roles until she gained critical acclaim for playing a rape survivor in the legal drama The Accused (1988), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won her second Academy Award three years later for the psychological horror film The Silence of the Lambs (1991), where she portrayed FBI agent Clarice Starling. She made her debut as a film director the same year with Little Man Tate. She founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, in 1992. Its first production was Nell (1994), in which Foster also played the title role, garnering her fourth Academy Award nomination. Her other successful films in the 1990s were the romantic drama Sommersby, western comedy Maverick (1994), science fiction Contact (1997), and period drama Anna and the King (1999).
Foster experienced career setbacks in the early 2000s, including the cancellation of a film project and the closing down of her production company, but she then starred in four commercially successful thrillers: Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005), Inside Man (2006), and The Brave One (2007). She has concentrated on directing in the 2010s, with the films The Beaver (2011) and Money Monster (2016), and episodes for Netflix television series Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards, and Black Mirror. She received her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for "Lesbian Request Denied", the third episode of the former. She also starred in the films Carnage (2011), Elysium (2013), Hotel Artemis (2018), and The Mauritanian (2021), the last of which won Foster her third Golden Globe.
Early life
Foster was born on November 19, 1962 in Los Angeles, the youngest child of Evelyn Ella "Brandy" (née Almond 1928-2019) and Lucius Fisher Foster III, a wealthy businessman. She is of English, German and Irish heritage. On her father's side she is descended from John Alden, who arrived in North America on the Mayflower in 1620.
Her parents' marriage had ended before she was born, and she never established a relationship with her father. She has three older full siblings: Lucinda (born 1954), Constance (born 1955), and Lucius, nicknamed "Buddy" (born 1957), as well as three half-brothers from her father's earlier marriage.
Following the divorce, Brandy raised the children with her partner in Los Angeles. She worked as a publicist for film producer Arthur P. Jacobs, until focusing on managing the acting careers of Buddy and Jodie. Although Foster was officially named Alicia, her siblings began calling her "Jodie", and the name stuck.
Foster was a gifted child who learned to read at age three. She attended the Lycée Français de Los Angeles, a French-language prep school. Her fluency in French has enabled her to act in French films, and she also dubs herself in French-language versions of most of her English-language films. At her graduation in 1980, she delivered the valedictorian address for the school's French division. She then attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut where she majored in African-American literature, wrote her thesis on Toni Morrison under the guidance of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and graduated magna cum laude in 1985. She returned to Yale in 1993 to address the graduating class, and received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree in 1997. In 2018, she was awarded the Yale Undergraduate Lifetime Achievement Award.
Career
Career beginnings
Foster's career began with an appearance in a Coppertone television advertisement in 1965, when she was three years old. Her mother had intended only for Jodie's older brother Buddy to audition, but had taken Jodie with them to the casting call, where she was noticed by the casting agents. The television spot led to more advertising work, and in 1968 to a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., in which her brother starred. In the following years Foster continued working in advertising and appeared in over 50 television shows; she and her brother became the breadwinners of the family during this time. She had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969–1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), and starred opposite Christopher Connelly in the short-lived Paper Moon (1974), adapted from the hit film.
Foster also appeared in films, mostly for Disney. After a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), playing a girl who befriends a boy, played by Johnny Whitaker, and his pet lion. She was accidentally grabbed by the lion on set, which left her with scars on her back. Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid".
Foster said she loved acting as a child, and values her early work for the experience it gave her: "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!' I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'"
1970s: Taxi Driver and teenage stardom
Foster's mother was concerned that her daughter's career would end by the time she grew out of playing children, and decided that Foster should also begin acting in films for adult audiences. After the minor supporting role in Alice, Scorsese cast her in the role of a child prostitute in Taxi Driver (1976). To be able to do the film, Foster had to undergo psychiatric assessment and was accompanied by a social worker on set. Her older sister acted as her stand-in in sexually suggestive scenes. Foster later commented on the role, saying that she hated "the idea that everybody thinks if a kid's going to be an actress it means that she has to play Shirley Temple or someone's little sister." During the filming, Foster developed a bond with co-star Robert De Niro, who saw "serious potential" in her and dedicated time rehearsing scenes with her.
She described Taxi Driver as a life-changing experience and stated that it was "the first time anyone asked me to create a character that wasn't myself. It was the first time I realized that acting wasn't this hobby you just sort of did, but that there was actually some craft." Taxi Driver won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival; Foster also impressed journalists when she acted as French interpreter at the press conference. Taxi Driver was a critical and commercial success, and earned her a supporting actress Academy Award nomination, as well as two BAFTAs, a David di Donatello and a National Society of Film Critics award. The film is considered one of the best in history by the American Film Institute and Sight & Sound, and has been preserved in the National Film Registry.
Foster also acted in another film nominated for the Palme d'Or in 1976, Bugsy Malone. The British musical parodied films about Prohibition Era gangsters by having all roles played by children; Foster appeared in a major supporting role as a star of a speakeasy show. Director Alan Parker was impressed by her, saying that "she takes such an intelligent interest in the way the film is being made that if I had been run over by a bus I think she was probably the only person on the set able to take over as director." She gained several positive notices for her performance: Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated that "at thirteen she was already getting the roles that grown-up actresses complained weren't being written for women anymore", Variety described her as "outstanding", and Vincent Canby of The New York Times called her "the star of the show". Foster's two BAFTAs were awarded jointly for her performances in Taxi Driver and Bugsy Malone. Her third film release in 1976 was the independent drama Echoes of a Summer, which had been filmed two years previously. The New York Times named Foster's performance as a terminally ill girl the film's "main strength" and Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune stated that she "is not a good child actress; she's just a good actress", although both reviewers otherwise panned the film.
Foster's fourth film of 1976 was the Canadian-French thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, in which she starred opposite Martin Sheen. The film combined aspects from thriller and horror genres, and showed Foster as a mysterious young girl living on her own in a small town. The performance earned her a Saturn Award. In November, Foster hosted Saturday Night Live, becoming the youngest person to do so until 1982. Her final film of the year was the Disney comedy Freaky Friday, "her first true star vehicle". She played a tomboy teen who accidentally changes bodies with her mother, and she later stated that the film marked a "transitional period" for her when she began to grow out of child roles. It received mainly positive reviews, and was a box office success, gaining Foster a Golden Globe nomination for her performance.
After her breakthrough year, Foster spent nine months living in France, where she starred in Moi, fleur bleue (1977) and recorded several songs for its soundtrack. Her other films released in 1977 were the Italian comedy Casotto (1977), and the Disney heist film Candleshoe (1977), which was filmed in England and co-starred veteran actors David Niven and Helen Hayes. After its release, Foster did not appear in any new releases until 1980, the year she turned eighteen.
1980s: Transition to adult roles
In 1980, Foster gained positive notices for her performances in the independent films Foxes and Carny (1980). The same year, she also became a full-time student at Yale. She later stated that going to college changed her thoughts about acting, which she had previously thought was an unintelligent profession, but now realised that "what I really wanted to do was to act and there was nothing stupid about it." Although Foster prioritized college during these years, she continued making films on her summer vacations. These were O'Hara's Wife (1982), television film Svengali (1983), John Irving adaptation The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), French film The Blood of Others (1984), and period drama Mesmerized (1986), which she also co-produced. None of them gained large audiences or critical appreciation, and after graduating from Yale in 1985, Foster struggled to find further acting work.
Foster's first film after college, the neo-noir Siesta (1987), was a failure. Her next project, the independent film Five Corners (1987), was better received. A moderate critical success, it earned Foster an Independent Spirit Award for her performance as a woman whose sexual assaulter returns to stalk her. The following year, Foster made her debut as a director with the episode "Do Not Open This Box" for the horror anthology series Tales from the Darkside, and starred in the romantic drama Stealing Home (1988) opposite Mark Harmon. The film was a critical and commercial failure, with critic Roger Ebert "wondering if any movie could possibly be that bad".
Foster's breakthrough into adult roles came with her performance as a rape survivor in The Accused (1988). Based on a real criminal case, the film focuses on the aftermath of a gang rape and its survivor's fight for justice in the face of victim blaming. Before making the film, Foster was having doubts about whether to continue her career and planned on starting graduate studies, but decided to give acting "one last try" in The Accused. She had to audition twice for the role and was cast only after several more established actors had turned it down, as the film's producers were wary of her due to her previous failures and because she was still remembered as a "chubby teenager". Due to the heavy subject matter, the filming was a difficult experience for all cast and crew involved, especially the shooting of the rape scene, which took five days to complete. Foster was unhappy with her performance, and feared that it would end her career. Instead, The Accused received positive reviews, with Foster's performance receiving widespread acclaim and earning her Academy, Golden Globe and National Board of Review awards, as well as a nomination for a BAFTA Award.
1990s: Box office success, debut as director and Egg Pictures
Foster's first film release after the success of The Accused was the thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991). She portrayed FBI trainee Clarice Starling, who is sent to interview incarcerated serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in order to hunt another serial killer, Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb (Ted Levine). Foster later named the role one of her favorites. She had read the novel it was based on after its publication in 1988 and had attempted to purchase its film rights, as it featured "a real female heroine" and its plot was not "about steroids and brawn, [but] about using your mind and using your insufficiencies to combat the villain." Despite her enthusiasm, director Jonathan Demme did not initially want to cast her, but the producers overruled him. Demme's view of Foster changed during the production, and he later credited her for helping him define the character.
Released in February 1991, The Silence of the Lambs became one of the biggest hits of the year, grossing close to $273 million, with a positive critical reception. Foster received largely positive reviews and won Academy, Golden Globe, and BAFTA awards for her portrayal of Starling; Silence won five Academy Awards overall, becoming one of the few films to win in all main categories. In contrast, some reviewers criticized the film as misogynist for its focus on brutal murders of women, and homo-/transphobic due to its portrayal of "Buffalo Bill" as bisexual and transgender. Much of the criticism was directed towards Foster, who the critics alleged was herself a lesbian. Despite the controversy, the film is considered a modern classic: Starling and Lecter are included on the American Film Institute's top ten of the greatest film heroes and villains, and the film is preserved in the National Film Registry. Later in 1991, Foster also starred in the unsuccessful low-budget thriller Catchfire, which had been filmed before Silence, but was released after it in an attempt to profit from its success.
In October 1991, Foster released her first feature film as a director, Little Man Tate, a drama about a child prodigy who struggles to come to terms with being different. The main role was played by previously unknown actor Adam Hann-Byrd, and Foster co-starred as his working-class single mother. She had found the script in the "slush pile" at Orion Pictures, and explained that for her debut film she "wanted a piece that was not autobiographical, but that had to do with the 10 philosophies I've accumulated in the past 25 years. Every single one of them, if they weren't in the script from the beginning, they're there now." Many reviewers felt that the film did not live up to the high expectations, and regarded it as "less adventurous than many films in which [she] had starred". Regardless, it was a moderate box office success. Foster's final film appearance of the year came in a small role as a sex worker in Shadows and Fog (1991), directed by Woody Allen, with whom she had wanted to collaborate since the 1970s.
Foster next starred in the period film Sommersby (1993), portraying a woman who begins to suspect that her husband (Richard Gere) who returns home from the Civil War is an impostor. She then replaced Meg Ryan in the Western comedy, Maverick (1994), playing a con artist opposite Mel Gibson and James Garner. According to film scholar Karen Hollinger, both films featured her in more "conventionally feminine" roles. Both Sommersby and Maverick were commercially successful.
Foster had founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, a subsidiary of PolyGram Filmed Entertainment in 1992, and released its first production, Nell, in December 1994. It was directed by Michael Apted and starred Foster in the titular role as a woman who grew up isolated in the Appalachian Mountains and speaks her own invented language. The film was based on Mark Handley's play Idioglossia, which interested Foster for its theme of "otherness", and because she "loved this idea of a woman who defies categorization, a creature who is labeled and categorized by people based on their own problems and their own prejudices and what they bring to the table." Despite mixed reviews, it was a commercial success, and earned Foster a Screen Actors Guild Award and nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her acting performance.
The second film that Foster directed and produced for Egg Pictures was Home for the Holidays, released in late 1995. A black comedy "set around a nightmarish Thanksgiving", it starred Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. The film received a mixed critical response and was a commercial failure. In 1996, Foster received two honorary awards: the Crystal Award, awarded annually for women in the entertainment industry, and the Berlinale Camera at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival. She voiced a character in an episode of Frasier in 1996 and in an episode of The X-Files in early 1997.
After Nell (1994), Foster appeared in no new film releases until Contact (1997), a science fiction film based on a novel by Carl Sagan and directed by Robert Zemeckis. She starred as a scientist searching for extraterrestrial life in the SETI project. The film was a commercial success and earned Foster a Saturn Award and a nomination for a Golden Globe. Foster next produced Jane Anderson's television film The Baby Dance (1998) for Showtime. Its story deals with a wealthy California couple who struggle with infertility and decide to adopt from a poor family in Louisiana. On her decision to produce for television, Foster stated that it was easier to take financial risks in that medium than in feature films. In 1998, she also moved her production company from PolyGram to Paramount Pictures. Also in 1998, asteroid 17744 Jodiefoster was named in her honor.
Foster's last film of the 1990s was the period drama Anna and the King (1999), in which she starred opposite Chow Yun-Fat. It was based on a fictionalized biography of British teacher Anna Leonowens, who taught the children of King Mongkut of Siam, and whose story became well known as the musical The King and I. Foster was paid $15 million to portray Leonowens, making her one of the highest-paid female actors in Hollywood. The film was subject to controversy when the Thai government deemed it historically inaccurate and insulting to the royal family and banned its distribution in the country. It was a moderate commercial success, but received mixed to negative reviews. Roger Ebert panned the film, stating that the role required Foster "to play beneath [her] intelligence" and The New York Times called it a "misstep" for her and accused her of only being "interested ... in sanctifying herself as an old-fashioned heroine than in taking on dramatically risky roles".
2000s: Career setbacks and resurgence in thrillers
Foster's first project of the new decade was Keith Gordon's film Waking the Dead (2000), which she produced. She declined to reprise her role as Clarice Starling in Hannibal (2001), with the part going instead to Julianne Moore, and concentrated on a new directorial project, Flora Plum. It was to focus on a 1930s circus and star Claire Danes and Russell Crowe, but had to be shelved after Crowe was injured on set and could not complete filming on schedule; Foster unsuccessfully attempted to revive the project several times in the following years. Controversially, she also expressed interest in directing and starring in a biographical film of Nazi film director Leni Riefenstahl, who did not like the idea. In addition to these setbacks, Foster shut down Egg Pictures in 2001, stating that producing was "just a really thankless, bad job". The company's last production, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2002. It received good reviews, and had a limited theatrical release in the summer.
After the cancellation of Flora Plum, Foster took on the main role in David Fincher's thriller Panic Room after its intended star, Nicole Kidman, had to drop out due to an injury on set. Before filming resumed, Foster was given only a week to prepare for the role of a woman who hides in a panic room with her daughter when burglars invade their home. It grossed over $30 million on its North American opening weekend in March 2002, thus becoming the most successful film opening of Foster's career . In addition to being a box office success, the film also received largely positive reviews.
After a minor appearance in the French period drama A Very Long Engagement (2004), Foster starred in three more thrillers. The first was Flightplan (2005), in which she played a woman whose daughter vanishes during an overnight flight. It became a global box office success, but received mixed reviews. It was followed by Spike Lee's critically and commercially successful Inside Man (2006), about a bank heist on Wall Street, which co-starred Denzel Washington and Clive Owen. The third thriller, The Brave One (2007), prompted some comparisons to Taxi Driver, as Foster played a New Yorker who becomes a vigilante after her fiancé is murdered. It was not a success, but earned Foster her sixth Golden Globe nomination. Her last film role of the decade was in the children's adventure film Nim's Island (2008), in which she portrayed an agoraphobic writer opposite Gerard Butler and Abigail Breslin. It was the first comedy in which she had starred since Maverick (1994), and was a commercial success but a critical failure. In 2009, she provided the voice for Maggie in a tetralogy episode of The Simpsons titled "Four Great Women and a Manicure".
2010s: Focus on directing
In the 2010s, Foster focused on directing and took fewer acting roles. In February 2011, she hosted the 36th César Awards in France, and the following month released her third feature film direction, The Beaver (2011), about a depressed man who develops an alternative personality based on a beaver hand puppet. It starred Maverick co-star Mel Gibson and featured herself, Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence in supporting roles as his family. Foster called its production "probably the biggest struggle of my professional career", partly due to the film's heavy subject matter but also due to the controversy that Gibson generated when he was accused of domestic violence and making anti-semitic, racist, and sexist statements. The film received mixed reviews, and failed the box office, largely due to this controversy. In 2011, Foster also appeared as part of an ensemble cast with John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz in Roman Polanski's comedy Carnage, in which the attempts of middle-class parents to settle an incident between their sons descends into chaos. It premiered to mainly positive reviews and earned Foster a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress.
In 2013, Foster received the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards. Her next film role was playing Secretary of Defense Delacourt opposite Matt Damon in the dystopian film Elysium (2013), which was a box office success. She also returned to television directing for the first time since the 1980s, directing the episodes "Lesbian Request Denied" (2013) and "Thirsty Bird" (2014) for Orange Is the New Black, and the episode "Chapter 22" (2014) for House of Cards. "Lesbian Request Denied" brought her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and the two 2014 episodes earned her two nominations for a Directors Guild of America Award. She also narrated the episode "Women in Space" (2014) for Makers: Women Who Make America, a PBS documentary series about women's struggle for equal rights in the United States. In 2015, Foster received the Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award at the Athena Film Festival.
The fourth film directed by Foster, hostage drama Money Monster, premiered out-of-competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2016. It starred George Clooney and Julia Roberts, and despite mixed reviews, was a moderate commercial success. The following year, Foster continued her work in television by directing an episode, "Arkangel", for the British sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror (2011–).
As the decade drew to a close, Foster continued to mix acting with directing. She starred together with Sterling Brown in the dystopian film Hotel Artemis (2018). Although the film was a commercial and critical disappointment, Foster's performance as Nurse, who runs a hospital for criminals, received positive notices. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle's stated that "not enough can be said about the performance of Foster in this film. She brings to the role a quality of having seen the absolute worst in people, but also the suggestion that, as a result, she accepts them on their own terms and knows how to handle any situation." Rick Bentley from Tampa Bay Times declared Foster's performance one of her "best and most memorable performances." The same year, Foster co-produced and narrated Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018), a documentary on one of the first female film directors.
2020s: Current work
Foster directed the finale of the 2020 science fiction drama Tales from the Loop. Her next project was the legal drama The Mauritanian (2021), in which she starred as the lawyer of a prisoner (Tahar Rahim) at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Foster won a Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her performance. At the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, Foster received the Honorary Palme d'Or for lifetime achievement.
Personal life
Foster met producer (then production coordinator) Cydney Bernard on the set of Sommersby (1993). They were in a relationship from 1993 until 2008 and had two sons (born in 1998 and 2001) together. In April 2014, Foster married actress and photographer Alexandra Hedison after a year of dating.
Foster's sexual orientation became the subject of public discussion in 1991 when publications such as OutWeek and The Village Voice, protesting against the alleged homophobia and transphobia in The Silence of the Lambs, claimed that she was a closeted lesbian. While she had been in a relationship with Bernard for 14 years, Foster first publicly acknowledged it in a speech at The Hollywood Reporter'''s "Women in Entertainment" breakfast honoring her in 2007. In 2013, she addressed her coming out in a speech after receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards, which led many news outlets to describe her as gay, although some sources noted that she did not use the words "gay" or "lesbian" in her speech.
John Hinckley incident
During her freshman year at Yale in 1980–1981, Foster was stalked by John W. Hinckley, Jr., who had developed an obsession with her after watching Taxi Driver. He moved to New Haven and tried to contact her by letter and telephone. On March 30, 1981, Hinckley attempted to assassinate U.S. president Ronald Reagan, wounding him and three other people, claiming that his motive was to impress Foster. The incident attracted intense media attention, and Foster was accompanied by bodyguards while on campus. Although Judge Barrington D. Parker confirmed that Foster was innocent in the case and had been "unwittingly ensnared in a third party's alleged attempt to assassinate an American President", her videotaped testimony was played at Hinckley's trial. While at Yale, Foster also had other stalkers, including a man who planned to kill her but changed his mind after watching her perform in a college play.
Foster has rarely commented publicly about Hinckley. She wrote an essay, "Why Me?", which was published in 1982 by Esquire on the condition that "there be no cover lines, no publicity and no photos". In 1991, she canceled an interview with NBC's Today Show when she discovered Hinckley would be mentioned in the introduction and that the producers would not change it. She discussed Hinckley with Charlie Rose of 60 Minutes II'' in 1999, explaining that she does not "like to dwell on it too much ... I never wanted to be the actress who was remembered for that event. Because it didn't have anything to do with me. I was kind of a hapless bystander. But ... what a scarring, strange moment in history for me, to be 17 years old, 18 years old, and to be caught up in a drama like that." She stated that the incident had a major impact on her career choices, and acknowledged that her experience was minimal compared to the suffering of Reagan's press secretary James Brady, who was permanently disabled in the shooting, and died as a result of his injuries 33 years later, and his loved ones: "Whatever bad moments that I had certainly could never compare to that family."
Filmography and accolades
See also
List of American film actresses
List of American television actresses
List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees – Youngest nominees for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
List of LGBTQ Academy Award winners and nominees – Best Actress in a Leading Role winners and nominees
List of actors with Academy Award nominations
List of actors with two or more Academy Award nominations in acting categories
List of actors with two or more Academy Awards in acting categories
References
Footnotes
Citations
Bibliography
External links
Jodie Foster in the online catalogue of the Cinémathèque Française
1962 births
Living people
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
Actresses from Los Angeles
American child actresses
American film actresses
American film producers
American television actresses
American television directors
American voice actresses
American women film directors
American women film producers
American women television producers
Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan
BAFTA Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles winners
Best Actress Academy Award winners
Best Actress BAFTA Award winners
Best Drama Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
Best Supporting Actress BAFTA Award winners
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
Cecil B. DeMille Award Golden Globe winners
David di Donatello winners
European Film Awards winners (people)
Film directors from Los Angeles
Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead winners
LGBT actresses
LGBT film directors
LGBT television directors
LGBT actors from the United States
LGBT people from California
LGBT producers
Lycée Français de Los Angeles alumni
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Television producers from California
American women television directors
Yale College alumni | false | [
"was a Japanese Masters athlete. She was the first 100-year-old to complete a 1,500m freestyle swim in a 25m pool. At the age of 106, she was Japan's oldest active swimmer.\n\nEarly life\nMieko Nagaoka was born on 31 July 1914 in Yamaguchi, Japan just days after the start of World War I. She started swimming at 80 years old to recover from a knee injury. In the beginning, Nagaoka didn’t know how to swim. She used to go in to the swimming pool to do exercises for her knee. At 82, she started to learn how to swim on her own. And because she performed in a Noh (a classical Japanese dancing drama) this was also an incentive for her to learn how to swim so that she could stay in shape for the plays.\n\nCareer\nShe achieved national recognition in Japan at age 90 when she established a world record in the 800m freestyle. Fresh from her success, she started training with a coach and took private swimming lessons with aims to improve her record-breaking performance.\n\nNagaoka was named as one of the 2014 Top 12 World Masters Swimmers of the Year by Swimming World Magazine.\n\nIn 2015 she became the first 100-year-old to complete a 1,500m freestyle swim in a 25m pool. She completed the feat in just over 1 hour and 15 minutes, using backstroke all the way.\n\nNagaoka trained four times a week for two hours under the tutelage of long-time coach Shintaro Sawada. She liked to swim longer distances because she swam slowly and was able to keep her own pace. She told Japan's Kyodo News agency: \"I want to swim until I turn 105 if I can live that long.\"\n\nIn 2016 Nagaoka told AFP “I’m fit as a fiddle,”in an interview after completing the 400 metres freestyle in 26 minutes, 16.81 seconds at a Japan Masters Swimming Association competition in Chiba, on the outskirts of Tokyo. “The secret is to eat well and stay active. It’s no good sitting around at my age. I want to keep swimming until I’m 105 – and beyond that,”\n\nIn September 2019 Nagaoka announced her intention to compete at the FINA World Masters Championships held later that month despite injuring her knees in April.\n\nPersonal life\nNagaoka latterly lived alone in Tabuse, Yamaguchi, Japan. After turning 100 in July 2014, she released a book entitled: I'm 100 years old and the world's best active swimmer.\n\nShe died from respiratory failure in January 2021 at the age of 106.\n\nReferences\n\n1914 births\n2021 deaths\nDeaths from respiratory failure\nJapanese centenarians\nJapanese female freestyle swimmers\nJapanese masters athletes\nWomen centenarians\nWorld record holders in masters athletics",
"Taylor Marie Ware (born September 17, 1994) is an American singer and yodeler from Franklin, Tennessee.\n\nBefore Ware knew how to yodel, she performed at a county fair at age four. Her talent was singing and playing a fiddle. When she was six she decided to sing to seniors, so she started an Adopt-a-Grandparent program. She taught herself to yodel from an audiotape and instruction book when she was seven years old, after going to a music convention with country singer Naomi Hills.\n\nIn 2003, at age 9, Ware won $10,000 in the Yahoo! Yodel Challenge and the Sonic Search for a Star. She was later featured in a Yahoo commercial. She also participated in a challenge to beat a Guinness world record. Ware performed on the Grand Ole Opry with Riders in the Sky when she was nine years old.\n\nWhen Ware was nine, she was given a dog as a gift by Wayne Brady after she appeared on his now defunct television show, The Wayne Brady Show. She named the dog Brady after him.\n\nWare honed her yodeling skills while taking lessons from country music star Margo Smith who is known worldwide as the Tennessee Yodeler.\n\nAt age eleven, she competed on NBC's America's Got Talent and advanced to the final competition (which aired on August 16, 2006). She was one of the top three finalists but she lost to 11-year-old Bianca Ryan and Irish step-dancers/fiddlers, Celtic Spring. The million-dollar prize was later awarded to Ryan. Ware was an opening act at the Liberty Bowl for singer LeAnn Rimes in Memphis, Tennessee on December 29, 2006, performing the national anthem.\n\nWare released her self-titled debut album in 2004. In 2007, she released her second album, titled America's Yodeling Sweetheart.\n\nShe appeared in an episode of Laguna Beach as herself. She also has appeared in commercials for Beech Bend Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Ware's younger brother, Harrison, is also a singer and yodeler. He has performed onstage at the Tennessee State Fair.\n\nDiscography \n\nTaylor Ware track listing:\n\"He Taught Me How To Yodel\"\n\"Take My Brother Please\"\n\"Shuffle Song\"\n\"Chime Bells\"\n\"Grandpa\"\n\"All I Ever Wanted Was A Pup\"\n\"The Rose\"\n\"When You're Down To Nothing\"\n\"Cowboy's Sweetheart\"\n\"9 to 5\"\n\"Save Your Kisses For Me\"\n\"Amazing Grace\"\n\nAmerica's Yodeling Sweetheart track listing:\n \"How Does She Yodel?\"\n \"Yodeling Cowgirls\"\n \"Mockingbird Yodel\"\n \"Chocolate Ice Cream Cone\"\n \"Taylor's Yodel\"\n \"Cowboy's Sweetheart\"\n \"My Little Lady Who\"\n \"Nola\"\n \"Hillbilly Fever\"\n \"Jesse The Yodeling Cowgirl\"\n \"He Taught Me How To Yodel\"\n \"Yodel Your Troubles Away\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n \n\n1994 births\n21st-century American singers\nSinger-songwriters from Tennessee\nAmerican child singers\nAmerican women country singers\nAmerican country singer-songwriters\nAmerica's Got Talent contestants\nLiving people\nPeople from Franklin, Tennessee\nYodelers\n21st-century American women singers\nCountry musicians from Tennessee"
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"Boston (band)",
"Death of Brad Delp (2007)"
] | C_c61d7973b8b2435f80b9d464781ec3a2_0 | what was the depth of brad delp? | 1 | What was the Death of Brad Delp? | Boston (band) | On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whoever would find him. In the bathroom where he committed suicide, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police Lt. William Baldwin called the death "untimely" and said that no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancee, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning as evidenced by carboxyhemoglobin. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie. A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included, in order of appearance, Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston. All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page. Another former Boston vocalist, Fran Cosmo, was unable to sing because of a ruptured blood vessel in his throat, but did play guitar. Jim Masdea, Fran Sheehan, and even Barry Goudreau joined Scholz and the rest of the band on stage for the finale, "Don't Look Back". Curly Smith and Kimberley Dahme split the lead vocal on the finale. Sib Hashian, while present, refused to go on stage with the other Boston alumni, citing discomfort with Tom Scholz. CANNOTANSWER | On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, | Boston is an American rock band from namesake Boston, Massachusetts, that had its most notable successes during the 1970s and '80s. The band's core members on their most popular recordings included multi-instrumentalist founder and leader Tom Scholz, who played the majority of instruments on the debut album, and lead vocalist Brad Delp, among a number of other musicians who varied from album to album. Boston's best-known songs include "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Foreplay/Long Time", "Rock and Roll Band", "Smokin'", "Don't Look Back", "A Man I'll Never Be", and "Amanda". The band has sold more than 75 million records worldwide, including 31 million albums in the United States, of which 17 million were from its self-titled debut album and seven million were for its second album, Don't Look Back, making the group one of the world's best-selling artists. Altogether, the band has released six studio albums over a career spanning over years. Boston was ranked the 63rd best hard rock artist by VH1.
After Delp's death in 2007, a number of other vocalists have taken the stage; currently the lead singer is Tommy DeCarlo. Other current members of the band include multi-instrumentalist and singer Beth Cohen, guitarist Gary Pihl, bassist Tracy Ferrie, drummer Jeff Neal and percussionist Curly Smith.
History
Early years (1969–1975)
Tom Scholz first started writing music in 1969 while he was attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he wrote an instrumental song, "Foreplay". While attending MIT, Scholz joined the band Freehold, where he met guitarist Barry Goudreau and drummer Jim Masdea, who would later become members of Boston. Vocalist Brad Delp was added to the collective in 1970. After graduating with a master's degree, Scholz worked for Polaroid, using his salary to build a recording studio in his basement, and to finance demo tapes recorded in professional recording studios. These early demo tapes were recorded with (at various times) Delp on vocals, Goudreau on guitar, Masdea on drums, and Scholz on guitar, bass and keyboards. The demo tapes were sent to record companies, but received consistent rejections. In 1973 Scholz formed the band Mother's Milk with Delp, Goudreau, and Masdea. That group disbanded by 1974, but Scholz subsequently worked with Masdea and Delp to produce six new demos, including "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Rock and Roll Band", "Something About You" (then entitled "Life Isn't Easy"), "Hitch a Ride" (then entitled "San Francisco Day"), and "Don't Be Afraid". Scholz stated they finished four of the six by the end of 1974, and they finished "More Than a Feeling" and "Something About You" in 1975. Scholz played all the instruments on the demos, except for the drums, which were played by Masdea, and used self-designed pedals to create the desired guitar sounds.
This final demo tape attracted the attention of promoters Paul Ahern and Charlie McKenzie. Masdea left the band around this time. According to Scholz, the managers insisted that Masdea had to be replaced before the band could get a recording deal. Years later, Delp told journalist Chuck Miller: "[Jim] actually told me he was losing interest in playing drums. I know Tom felt very bad when the whole thing happened. And then, of course, we started getting some interest." Scholz and Delp signed a deal with Epic Records after Masdea's departure, thanks to Ahern and McKenzie. Before the deal could be finalized, the band had to do a live audition for the record company executives. The duo recruited Goudreau on guitar, bassist Fran Sheehan and drummer Sib Hashian to create a performing unit which could replicate Scholz's richly layered recordings on stage. The showcase was a success and the band agreed to put out ten albums over the next six years.
In addition to the firing of Masdea, the record label insisted that Scholz re-record the demo tapes in a professional studio. However, Scholz wanted to record them in his basement studio so that he could work at his own pace. Scholz and producer John Boylan hatched a plan to send the rest of the band to Los Angeles to make the record label happy, while Scholz recorded most of Boston's debut album at home, with Masdea playing drums on the track "Rock and Roll Band" and Scholz playing the other instruments. The multitrack tapes were then brought to Los Angeles, where Delp added vocals and the album was mixed by Boylan. It was then that the band was named "Boston", by suggestion of Boylan and engineer Warren Dewey.
Boston and Don't Look Back (1976–1978)
The debut album, Boston, released on August 25, 1976, ranks as one of the best-selling debut albums in U.S. history with over 17 million copies sold.
During late summer and early fall of 1976, Boston attracted publicity due to the record sales. However, according to Cameron Crowe in Rolling Stone, there was "a conscious effort to de-emphasize Scholz as the total mastermind behind Boston". After opening for Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, Foghat and others in the fall, the band embarked on a headlining tour in the winter and spring of 1976–1977 to support the album. This helped establish Boston as one of rock's top acts within a short time, being nominated for a Grammy Award as a "Best New Artist". Boston was the first band in history to make their New York City debut at Madison Square Garden.
The album spawned three singles, "More Than a Feeling", "Long Time", and "Peace of Mind", all of which made the national charts. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and remained on the charts for 132 weeks.
Despite having problems with manager Paul Ahern, being caught in the middle of a fight between Ahern and his business partner Charles McKenzie, and doing most of the recording work alone, Scholz completed the second Boston album two years after the debut album's release. The second album, Don't Look Back, was released by Epic in August 1978. At the time this was considered a long gap between albums, but Scholz still considered Don't Look Back to be a rush job and was unhappy with the album's second side in particular. Overall, Don't Look Back sold about half as well as the debut album, eventually selling over 7 million records.
Another tour followed (playing with the likes of AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Sammy Hagar and The Doobie Brothers), and the album's title track became a top-5 hit. Additionally, two other singles, "A Man I'll Never Be" and "Feelin' Satisfied", went top 40 and top 50, respectively. Despite the success, Scholz's relationship with Ahern completely deteriorated. Delayed by technical renovations to his studio, Scholz eventually began the process of working on Boston's third album, determined to complete the album at his own pace and up to his demanding standard.
Solo projects and CBS lawsuit (1979–1985)
In late 1979, Scholz began writing new material, but Boston's former co-manager, Paul Ahern, argued that, according to an agreement Scholz had signed years earlier with Ahern, Ahern owned a percentage of all songs Scholz wrote from that point on. Delayed further by the dispute, Scholz suggested that in the meantime the individual members should work on whatever other projects they might be considering.
Goudreau then decided to record a solo album that featured Boston members Delp and Hashian, and which was recorded with the help of Paul Grupp, an engineer and producer familiar with Scholz's studio techniques. The album, released in 1980, was titled Barry Goudreau and featured the minor hit single "Dreams". There was tension when CBS's marketing connected Goudreau's solo album to Boston's signature guitar sound, despite Scholz not having played at all on this album. Scholz objected to the ad copy, but it became irrelevant when Epic dropped promotion on Goudreau's album citing lack of interest. Goudreau left the band in 1981 and formed Orion the Hunter. Delp contributed vocals and co-wrote songs on the debut album, but returned to Boston and recorded vocals on the third Boston album.
While Scholz and Delp were recording new material for the third Boston album, CBS filed a $60 million lawsuit against Scholz, alleging breach of contract for failing to deliver a new Boston album on time.
During this same period, Scholz founded his high-tech company Scholz Research & Development (SR&D), which made amplifiers and other musical electronic equipment. Its most famous product, the Rockman amplifier, was introduced in 1982.
The legal trouble slowed progress toward the completion of the next album, which took six years to record and produce. Joining Scholz in the album's development again were Delp and Jim Masdea. In 1985, guitarist Gary Pihl left Sammy Hagar's touring band to work with Scholz as both a musician and an SR&D executive. As CBS v. Scholz played out in court, CBS opted to withhold royalty payments to Scholz, hoping to force him to settle on unfavorable terms.
The lawsuit's first round was eventually decided in Scholz's favor, and Scholz moved the band to MCA Records.
The CBS case took seven years to run its course, and in April 1990 Scholz won.
Third Stage (1986–1988)
Despite the adversity, progress continued to be made on the third Boston album. A tape of one of the songs, "Amanda", leaked out of the studio in 1984. The song became the lead single when Third Stage was finally released on September 23, 1986.
The album topped the Billboard 200 while the lead single "Amanda" went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the subsequent singles "We're Ready" and "Can'tcha Say" reached No. 9 and No. 20, respectively. "Cool the Engines" also got significant airplay on rock radio. The album sold over 4 million copies.
The group headed off on tour to promote Third Stage in 1987 and 1988. Third Stage was played in sequence in its entirety during the shows, with expanded arrangements of some cuts. Boston opened with "Rock and Roll Band" and brought back the original drummer, Jim Masdea, to play drums for this one song. For the tour, the group was joined by Doug Huffman and David Sikes, both of whom stayed with the band into the mid-1990s.
Departure of Delp; Walk On (1989–1996)
By spring 1990, Scholz was back in the studio working on the band's fourth studio album. Later that year, Delp told Scholz he wanted to concentrate on other projects, and might not be available for some time. With Delp's departure, Scholz was then the last remaining original member. Before he left, Delp co-wrote with Scholz and David Sikes the song "Walk On", which eventually became the title track of the new album.
Delp subsequently joined Barry Goudreau's new band, RTZ. Scholz eventually replaced him with vocalist Fran Cosmo, who had been in Goudreau's previous band Orion the Hunter.
For the second album in a row, and for the second time in a decade, Scholz's work was delayed by renovations to his studio. In the end, eight years passed between Third Stage and Walk On, which was released in June 1994. Walk On was certified platinum by the RIAA, and reached No. 7 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. Unlike Boston's previous albums, it failed to chart in the top 5. It produced one hit single, "I Need Your Love", which was widely played on some rock radio stations. Delp reunited with Boston at the end of 1994. Their first appearance was for two benefit shows at the House of Blues on December 12–13, 1994, in Cambridge. The band also handed a check of $5,000 to Globe Santa and another check of $5,000 to Operation Christmas in Fall River.
The group, with Delp now back in the band, toured in the summer of 1995 with both Cosmo and Delp combining vocals. By that time drummer Huffman had been replaced by Curly Smith, who was previously with Jo Jo Gunne. Following the conclusion of the "Livin' For You" tour in 1995, Scholz announced that a greatest hits album would be released. Initially planned for release in August 1996, the album was pushed back to a 1997 release date.
Greatest Hits and Corporate America (1997–2006)
Boston released a compilation album in 1997, titled simply Boston: Greatest Hits. The album featured all of the band's hit singles except "We're Ready", "Can'tcha Say (You Believe In Me)/Still In Love", and "I Need Your Love" along with three new songs, "Higher Power", "Tell Me", and an instrumental version of the "Star Spangled Banner". Smith and Sikes left the band in late 1997 and recorded an album together.
Scholz headed back to the studio in 1998 to begin work on a fifth album, which eventually turned out to be Corporate America. The title track of "Corporate America" was uploaded by Tom Scholz to MP3.com under the pseudonym of "Downer's Revenge" in early 2002 in order to test the album's appeal to a younger demographic. The song reached No. 2 on the progressive rock charts on the website for two weeks.
November 2002 marked the release of Corporate America on the independent label Artemis Records. This album featured the largest Boston lineup ever; returning members included Delp and Cosmo on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Scholz on lead guitar and keyboards, and Gary Pihl on guitar, along with new members Anthony Cosmo on rhythm guitar, Jeff Neal on drums, and Kimberley Dahme on bass, acoustic guitar, and vocals. Dahme, Delp, and Cosmo all contributed lead vocals to the album. The group embarked on a national tour in support of the album in 2003 and 2004. In 2006, the first two Boston albums appeared in remastered form.
Death of Brad Delp (2007)
On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp died by suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whomever would find him. In the bathroom where he died, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door was sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police called the death "untimely" and said no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancée, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie.
A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston.
All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page.
New line-up and intermittent performances (2008–2012)
The ongoing conflicts among the surviving band members spilled over to the 2008 Presidential campaign. Barry Goudreau appeared with Mike Huckabee and played with him at some rallies in New Hampshire. Huckabee used "More Than a Feeling" as a campaign theme song. Scholz, a self-described "Obama supporter", sent an open letter to Huckabee in February 2008 stating that the band had never endorsed any candidate, and that he had never authorized the use of "More Than a Feeling" as Huckabee's theme song. Scholz made a point of saying that he, and not Goudreau or Sheehan, actually played all the guitars on "More Than a Feeling" as well as most of Boston's songs. Huckabee eventually stopped using the song for his campaign.
In the spring of 2008, Scholz and Sweet introduced a new Boston lineup, which subsequently did a North American summer tour, playing 53 dates in 12 weeks (on a double bill with Styx). Scholz was the only founding member of Boston to play on the tour, although longtime member Gary Pihl was also part of the band, and Dahme and Neal returned on bass and drums, respectively. DeCarlo and Sweet shared lead vocals.
In January 2009, Greatest Hits was re-released as a remastered disc.
Michael Sweet left the band in August 2011 in order to focus on Stryper. In 2012, guitarist and vocalist David Victor joined the band, beginning in the studio, where he contributed vocals to several tracks on the album in progress.
Scholz and Pihl led the band on a 2012 North American tour, beginning on June 28, 2012, at the Seminole Hard Rock Live arena in Hollywood, Florida and ending on September 8 at the U.S. Cellular Grandstand in Hutchinson, Kansas. Victor and DeCarlo shared lead vocals, with drummer Curly Smith returning for the first time in over a decade, and former Stryper member Tracy Ferrie on bass. Neither Dahme nor Neal played on the tour.
Life, Love & Hope (2013–2017)
Boston's sixth album, Life, Love & Hope, was released on December 3, 2013, by Frontiers Records; it includes lead vocals from Brad Delp, Tommy DeCarlo, Kimberley Dahme, David Victor, and Tom Scholz. Work on the album started in 2002. On December 11, 2013, Boston re-recorded a Christmas song, "God Rest Ye Metal Gentleman 2013" (previously released in 2002 as "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"). In 2014 Boston embarked on the "Heaven on Earth Tour" spanning the United States and Japan with a lineup including Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Victor and Ferrie. Dahme returned, this time performing rhythm guitar and vocals, and drumming duties were split between Neal and Smith, with Neal handling the first leg of the tour. Victor departed the lineup partway through the tour for unspecified reasons. In his stead, Siobhan Magnus joined the tour as a guest vocalist in July, performing lead vocals on 'Walk On'.
In 2015, Boston launched another tour with a lineup consisting of Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Ferrie and new member Beth Cohen, who performed keyboards, rhythm guitar and vocals. Cohen had previously recorded with the group on both Corporate America and Life, Love & Hope as a vocalist and flautist. Initially, the lineup was to include former Spock's Beard drummer and vocalist Nick D'Virgilio for its first month of shows, with Neal then returning, but D'Virgilio proved "not the right fit" and Smith rejoined in his place. This seven-person lineup proved Boston's most stable lineup in some time, touring as well in the summers of 2016 and 2017. The 2016 tour marked the group's 40th anniversary and included shows in Boston's Wang Theatre, their first full performances in their namesake town since 1994.
On March 22, 2017, former drummer Sib Hashian died after collapsing on a Legends of Rock cruise ship.
Upcoming seventh album (2017–present)
In April 2017, Scholz reported that he has been writing new material for the seventh Boston album. He told Sun Herald, "I find that I'm in a position that I really need to write things that we can play at the shows. We play basically everything that people expect to hear that we can fit into two hours. We also do a lot of things that aren't on any of the records by adding things and segues and instrumental parts, so I always have to come up with new stuff. It's quite a challenge. I have to write new things for the tour every year, which is what I wanted to do in the first place. But I got sidetracked in the studio, recording. Now, I'm actually a performing musician, and I have to tell you, it's much more fun." When asked the same month about a potential release date of the album, Scholz said, "Who knows? I'm only 70. I figure I've got 30 years."
Spaceship
One of the themes of Boston's album covers is the presence of a guitar-shaped spaceship, ostensibly a generation or colony ship carrying the city of Boston inside a clear dome, with the city's name emblazoned across the front. The original spaceship was designed in 1976 by Paula Scher and illustrated by Roger Huyssen with lettering by Gerard Huerta for Epic Records.
Appearances
Boston – Two long lines of guitar shaped starships flee a planet that is breaking apart. The ships all have blue flames coming out of the bottom.
Don't Look Back – The Boston ship is flying low or perhaps hovering over a grassy, crystalline planet. The ship has searchlights on.
Third Stage – The Boston ship is headed towards a large flat spaceship resembling a bank of pipe organ pipes over a blue planet.
Walk On – The Boston ship is shown crashing through a rock outcropping.
Greatest Hits – The Boston ship is flying low over a planet with turquoise rocks and a turquoise tower in the distance.
Corporate America – The Boston ship is flying towards Earth and the United States.
Life, Love & Hope – The Boston ship is flying in space, near a nebula.
Their spaceship also appeared on their tours in the late 1980s, early 1990s, and early 2000s in the form of a giant lighting rig and accompanied on stage by their giant pipe-organ set piece, which is known to Boston insiders as Bertha because of its sheer size.
Innovation and style
Boston's genre is considered by most to be hard rock and arena rock, while combining elements of progressive rock into its music.
Boston founder, guitarist, and primary songwriter Tom Scholz's blend of musical styles, ranging from classical to 1960s English pop, has resulted in a unique sound, most consistently realized on the first two albums (Boston and Don't Look Back). This sound is characterized by multiple lead and blended harmonies guitar work (usually harmonized in thirds), often alternating between and then mixing electric and acoustic guitars. The band's harmonic style has been characterized as being "violin-like" without using synthesizers. Scholz is well-regarded for the development of complex, multi-tracked guitar harmonies. Another contributing factor is the use of handmade, high-tech equipment, such as the Rockman, used by artists such as Journey guitarist Neal Schon, the band ZZ Top, and Ted Nugent. Def Leppard's album Hysteria was created using only Rockman technology. Scholz's production style combines deep, aggressive, comparatively short guitar riffing and nearly ethereal, generally longer note vocal harmonies. A heavier, lower, and darker overall approach came in the next two albums (Third Stage and Walk On). The original track "Higher Power", on the Greatest Hits album, exhibits a near Neue Deutsche Härte and almost techno influence with its sequencer-sounding keyboards, a sound most fully realized on Corporate America'''s title track.
Tom Scholz also credited the late Brad Delp with helping to create Boston's sound with his signature vocal style. Delp, who was strongly influenced by the Beatles, was well known for his extended vocal range, shown on hits such as "More Than a Feeling".
Band members
Current members
Tom Scholz – lead and rhythm guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, percussion, backing vocals (1976–present)
Gary Pihl – rhythm and lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1985–present)
Curly Smith – drums, percussion, harmonica, backing vocals (1994–1997, 2012–present)
Jeff Neal – drums, percussion, backing vocals (2002–2012, 2014–present)
Tommy DeCarlo – lead vocals, keyboards, percussion (2007–present)
Tracy Ferrie – bass guitar, backing vocals (2012–present)
Beth Cohen – keyboards, vocals, rhythm guitar (2002, 2012, 2015–present)
Discography
Studio albumsBoston (1976)Don't Look Back (1978)Third Stage (1986)Walk On (1994)Corporate America (2002)Life, Love & Hope (2013)
Compilation albumsGreatest Hits'' (1997)
References
External links
1976 establishments in Massachusetts
Epic Records artists
Hard rock musical groups from Massachusetts
MCA Records artists
Musical groups established in 1976
Musical groups from Boston | false | [
"RTZ (Return to Zero) was an American rock band that featured Boston band members Brad Delp and Barry Goudreau. The band was formed in the early 1990s.\n\nHistory\nRTZ began as a collaboration between Boston members Brad Delp and Barry Goudreau around 1989. The original 1987 demo of \"Face The Music\" (featuring Fergie Frederiksen on vocals) was later made available for download at BarryGoudreau.com. Goudreau and Delp were both part of the original Boston line-up and after Goudreau's departure from the band, they stayed in close contact with Delp contributing to Goudreau's solo album and also to a lesser degree on the Orion the Hunter album.\n\nAround 1989, Delp was on hiatus from Boston and looking to get active in writing again. He contacted Goudreau about a possible collaboration and RTZ was formed. Goudreau and Delp brought in keyboardist Brian Maes who was part of the Orion the Hunter touring band, drummer Dave Stefanelli and bass player Tim Archibald. Maes and Stefanelli had previously worked with producer Nick Lowe in England and Archibald's band New Man had released an album on Epic.\n\nDelp and Goudreau landed a deal with Giant Records and the first RTZ album, titled Return to Zero, was released in 1991. A video was produced for the first single \"Face the Music\". The band soon hit the road and Delp gave Boston his notice. After touring the US extensively, a video was prepared for the single \"Until Your Love Comes Back Around\" penned by keyboard player Brian Maes. The single was very successful and reached #1 in several markets, #26 in the U.S. Two other tracks, \"There's Another Side\" and \"All You've Got\" also got airplay, with the latter reaching #56.\n\nRTZ felt that the band was not getting the attention it deserved by the label and asked to be released from their contract. As RTZ began to shop for a new label, Delp decided to leave the band and would eventually reunite with Boston for the Walk On tour and to assist in the writing of the associated album. The other band members decided that it would be impossible to replace Delp and decided to end the band. The Return to Zero album went out of print until April 2013, although the band later released other material. There were still enough recordings left over from the original recording sessions to create another album. Barry searched for a new label and eventually found MTM Records. The recordings were released on September 28, 1998, and the album was titled Lost.\n\nIn 2004, Lost and Found was released. It features previously unreleased music from the band. In 2005, RTZ released two CDs simultaneously, Lost in America and Found in America under band member Brian Maes' Briola Records label. The album contains all the same material that was released on Lost, including the song \"Dangerous\", which was only available on the Japanese release of Lost. Found in America contains the same material that is on their 2004 release Lost and Found, but includes a bonus live version of the song \"Return to Zero\".\n\nThe Delp and Goudreau album was also released in 2004, and was included as a bonus CD in Lost and Found. It featured RTZ but was released under the name \"Delp and Goudreau\" and involves a different style of music from RTZ's albums.\n\nIn 2007, the band reunited (though with former Boston member Sib Hashian on drums) to release a single called \"Rockin' Away\". Written in 2006, it celebrated the 30 year anniversary of Boston, and is also an autobiography of Brad Delp's music career. Following Delp's suicide in 2007, the band reunited again to release the single \"Set The Songbird Free\" as a tribute to Delp, with Maes on vocals. They also performed at the Brad Delp \"Come Together\" tribute concert in 2008.\n\nThis entire line-up (with Hashian on drums, and without Delp) also makes up most of the members of the band Ernie and the Automatics which formed in 2006.\n\nDiscography\n\nStudio albums\n Return to Zero (1991)\n Lost (1998)\n\nCompilation albums\n Lost and Found (2004)\n\nSingles\n\nSee also\n Boston (band)\n\nReferences\n\nAmerican rock music groups\nMusical groups established in 1989\nMusical groups disestablished in 1994",
"Bradley Edward Delp (born June 12, 1951 – March 9, 2007) was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, who was the lead vocalist for the American rock bands Boston and RTZ.\n\nEarly life\nDelp was born in Peabody, Massachusetts, on June 12, 1951, his parents were French-Canadian immigrants. He was raised in Danvers, Massachusetts.\n\nMusical career\nIn 1969, guitarist Barry Goudreau introduced Delp to Tom Scholz, who was looking for a singer to complete some demo recordings. Eventually Scholz formed the short-lived band Mother's Milk (1973–74), which included Delp and Goudreau. After producing a demo, Epic Records eventually signed the act. Mother's Milk was renamed Boston, and the self-titled debut album (recorded in 1975, although many tracks had been written years before) was released in August 1976. Delp performed all of the lead and all backing harmony vocals, including all layered vocal overdubs.\n\nBoston's debut album has sold more than 20 million copies, and produced rock standards such as \"More Than a Feeling\", \"Foreplay/Long Time\" and \"Peace of Mind\". Delp co-wrote \"Smokin'\" along with Scholz, and wrote the album's closing track, \"Let Me Take You Home Tonight\".\n\nTheir next album, Don't Look Back, was released two years later in August 1978. Its release spawned new hits such as the title track, \"Party\", and the ballad \"A Man I'll Never Be\". As they did with \"Smokin'\", Delp and Scholz collaborated on \"Party\", and Delp penned \"Used to Bad News\".\n\nAfter the first two Boston albums, Delp sang vocals on Barry Goudreau's self-titled solo album, released in 1980. Scholz's perfectionism and a legal battle with their record company stalled any further Boston albums until 1986 when the band released Third Stage. Delp co-wrote the songs \"Cool the Engines\" and \"Can'tcha Say (You Believe in Me)/Still in Love\" for the album, and both songs got significant airplay.\n\nThough probably best-known for the soaring vocals and range of his \"golden\" voice and for singing all harmony parts on every song, Delp was also a multi-instrumentalist, playing guitar, harmonica and keyboards. He wrote or co-wrote songs for Boston, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, Lisa Guyer, and other artists.\n\nIn 1991, Delp and Goudreau formed a band called RTZ. After Boston released the album Walk On in 1994 with Fran Cosmo on vocals, Delp and Boston reunited later that year for another major tour. Delp continued to record vocals on several albums and projects, including new tracks for Boston's 1997 Greatest Hits compilation and their 2002 release Corporate America.\n\nFrom the mid-1990s until his death in 2007, Delp played in a side project when he had time off from Boston – a Beatles tribute band called Beatlejuice. During this time, Delp also co-wrote and recorded with former Boston bandmate Barry Goudreau, and in 2003 released the CD Delp and Goudreau.\n\nPersonal life\nDelp was married and divorced twice, and had two children by his second wife, Micki Boone, who had been a flight attendant on tour with Boston. Boone’s sister, Connie, subsequently married band member Goudreau. Brad and Micki married in 1980 and divorced in 1996. He was a vegetarian for over 30 years, and contributed to a number of charitable causes.\n\nSuicide and aftermath\nSometime between 11:00 pm on March 8 and 1:20 pm on March 9, 2007, Delp committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in his home on 55 Academy Avenue, in Atkinson, New Hampshire. He left various notes scattered from his car to the interior of his home. The Atkinson police discovered his body on the floor of his master bathroom after his fiancée, Pamela Sullivan saw a dryer vent tube connected to the exhaust pipe of Delp's car. Two charcoal grills were found to have been placed in the bathtub and lit, causing the room to fill with smoke. A suicide note was paper-clipped to the neck of his T-shirt, which read the same as a character's note from Twin Peaks: \"Mr. Brad Delp. 'J'ai une âme solitaire'. I am a lonely soul.\" Delp left four sealed envelopes in his office addressed to his children, his former wife Micki, his fiancée, and a couple who were not named by the media. He was 55 years old. The following day, Boston's website was temporarily closed down, the webmaster having replaced their homepage with a simple black background and white text message: \"We've just lost the nicest guy in rock and roll.\"\n\nDelp's cause of death was ruled a suicide. The reason for Delp's suicide has been the subject of contradictory news reports and various lawsuits. A series of interviews conducted by the Boston Herald alleged that lingering hard feelings from Boston's disbandment in the 1980s and personal tension between Delp and bandleader Scholz drove the singer to commit suicide. Scholz denied these claims but lost the defamation suits he filed in response. Court documents from the trials detail Scholz stating that Delp was plagued by personal problems. Boston Herald attorneys pointed to testimony from former Boston members, other local musicians, Delp's doctor, and Delp's friends, including Meg Sullivan (his fiancée's sister), many of whom say the singer disliked Scholz, desperately wanted to quit the band, and felt tormented by his role as middleman in an ugly conflict between Scholz and former band members. All of this was summarized in a 140-page statement filed by the Herald in April 2012.\n\nAdditional sworn testimony by Meg Sullivan revealed an additional explanation for Delp’s suicide: Delp was housemates with Meg, fiancée Pamela's sister, for two and a half years before his death. On February 28, 2007, Meg discovered a hidden camera planted in her room. After Meg confronted him, Delp admitted to planting the camera and later wrote a series of emails pleading for forgiveness. Todd Winmill, Meg's boyfriend, implored Delp to admit his wrongdoings to Pamela on March 3. After promising to tell her in a few days, Delp purchased the grills and tubing he later used to commit suicide. Pamela found his body on March 9 in the room where several notes were written by Delp, one of which read: \"I have had bouts of depression and thoughts of suicide since I was a teenager … [Pamela] was my 'ray of sunshine', but sometimes even a ray of sunshine is no substitute for a good psychiatrist.\"\n\nOn October 16, 2007, Barry Goudreau released one final song with Delp on vocals, titled \"Rockin Away\". Written and recorded in the summer of 2006, co-written with Goudreau, it is an autobiography of Delp's musical career. According to \"America's Music Charts\", the song reached #20 on the rock charts in January 2008.\n\nOn what would have been Delp's 61st birthday, June 12, 2012, Jenna Delp, Delp's daughter and president of the Brad Delp Foundation, released an MP3 on the foundation website of a \"never before released\" song which was written and recorded by Delp in 1973. It also was announced the foundation intended to release a complete album of Delp's solo work at some point in the future, which would encompass a span of 30 years of previously unreleased material written and recorded by Delp and his closest friends.\n\nOn November 25, 2015, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts found in favor of the Boston Herald and Micki Delp in a defamation lawsuit brought by Scholz. In its ruling, the court said that statements attributing Delp's suicide to Scholz were \"statements of opinion and not verifiable fact and therefore could not form the basis of a claim of defamation.\" On February 23, 2016, Scholz filed a petition for certiorari asking the Supreme Court of the United States to allow his defamation lawsuit to proceed. On June 6, 2016, the Supreme Court declined to review the case.\n\nDiscography\n\nwith Boston\nBoston (1976)\nDon't Look Back (1978)\nThird Stage (1986)\nCorporate America (2002)\n\nwith Barry Goudreau\nBarry Goudreau (1980)\n\nwith Orion the Hunter\nOrion the Hunter (1984)\n\nwith RTZ\nReturn to Zero (1991)\nLost (1998)\n Lost and Found (2004)\n\nwith Delp and Goudreau\nDelp and Goudreau (2003)\n\"Rockin' Away\" (2007)\n\nwith Mark \"Guitar\" Miller\nWhatcha Gonna Do! (2008)\n\nGuest appearances\nKeith Emerson - Best Revenge - Playing For Keeps (1982)\nBruce Arnold - Orpheus Again (2010)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n \n \n Brad Delp Foundation\n\n1951 births\n2007 deaths\nAmerican rock singers\nAmerican tenors\nBoston (band) members\nAmerican people of French-Canadian descent\nCountertenors\nPeople from Peabody, Massachusetts\nSuicides by carbon monoxide poisoning\nSuicides in New Hampshire\nSingers from Massachusetts\n20th-century American singers\n21st-century American singers\nPeople from Atkinson, New Hampshire\n2007 suicides\n20th-century American male singers"
] |
[
"Boston (band)",
"Death of Brad Delp (2007)",
"what was the depth of brad delp?",
"On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom,"
] | C_c61d7973b8b2435f80b9d464781ec3a2_0 | why did he kill himself? | 2 | Why did Delp kill himself? | Boston (band) | On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whoever would find him. In the bathroom where he committed suicide, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police Lt. William Baldwin called the death "untimely" and said that no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancee, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning as evidenced by carboxyhemoglobin. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie. A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included, in order of appearance, Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston. All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page. Another former Boston vocalist, Fran Cosmo, was unable to sing because of a ruptured blood vessel in his throat, but did play guitar. Jim Masdea, Fran Sheehan, and even Barry Goudreau joined Scholz and the rest of the band on stage for the finale, "Don't Look Back". Curly Smith and Kimberley Dahme split the lead vocal on the finale. Sib Hashian, while present, refused to go on stage with the other Boston alumni, citing discomfort with Tom Scholz. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Boston is an American rock band from namesake Boston, Massachusetts, that had its most notable successes during the 1970s and '80s. The band's core members on their most popular recordings included multi-instrumentalist founder and leader Tom Scholz, who played the majority of instruments on the debut album, and lead vocalist Brad Delp, among a number of other musicians who varied from album to album. Boston's best-known songs include "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Foreplay/Long Time", "Rock and Roll Band", "Smokin'", "Don't Look Back", "A Man I'll Never Be", and "Amanda". The band has sold more than 75 million records worldwide, including 31 million albums in the United States, of which 17 million were from its self-titled debut album and seven million were for its second album, Don't Look Back, making the group one of the world's best-selling artists. Altogether, the band has released six studio albums over a career spanning over years. Boston was ranked the 63rd best hard rock artist by VH1.
After Delp's death in 2007, a number of other vocalists have taken the stage; currently the lead singer is Tommy DeCarlo. Other current members of the band include multi-instrumentalist and singer Beth Cohen, guitarist Gary Pihl, bassist Tracy Ferrie, drummer Jeff Neal and percussionist Curly Smith.
History
Early years (1969–1975)
Tom Scholz first started writing music in 1969 while he was attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he wrote an instrumental song, "Foreplay". While attending MIT, Scholz joined the band Freehold, where he met guitarist Barry Goudreau and drummer Jim Masdea, who would later become members of Boston. Vocalist Brad Delp was added to the collective in 1970. After graduating with a master's degree, Scholz worked for Polaroid, using his salary to build a recording studio in his basement, and to finance demo tapes recorded in professional recording studios. These early demo tapes were recorded with (at various times) Delp on vocals, Goudreau on guitar, Masdea on drums, and Scholz on guitar, bass and keyboards. The demo tapes were sent to record companies, but received consistent rejections. In 1973 Scholz formed the band Mother's Milk with Delp, Goudreau, and Masdea. That group disbanded by 1974, but Scholz subsequently worked with Masdea and Delp to produce six new demos, including "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Rock and Roll Band", "Something About You" (then entitled "Life Isn't Easy"), "Hitch a Ride" (then entitled "San Francisco Day"), and "Don't Be Afraid". Scholz stated they finished four of the six by the end of 1974, and they finished "More Than a Feeling" and "Something About You" in 1975. Scholz played all the instruments on the demos, except for the drums, which were played by Masdea, and used self-designed pedals to create the desired guitar sounds.
This final demo tape attracted the attention of promoters Paul Ahern and Charlie McKenzie. Masdea left the band around this time. According to Scholz, the managers insisted that Masdea had to be replaced before the band could get a recording deal. Years later, Delp told journalist Chuck Miller: "[Jim] actually told me he was losing interest in playing drums. I know Tom felt very bad when the whole thing happened. And then, of course, we started getting some interest." Scholz and Delp signed a deal with Epic Records after Masdea's departure, thanks to Ahern and McKenzie. Before the deal could be finalized, the band had to do a live audition for the record company executives. The duo recruited Goudreau on guitar, bassist Fran Sheehan and drummer Sib Hashian to create a performing unit which could replicate Scholz's richly layered recordings on stage. The showcase was a success and the band agreed to put out ten albums over the next six years.
In addition to the firing of Masdea, the record label insisted that Scholz re-record the demo tapes in a professional studio. However, Scholz wanted to record them in his basement studio so that he could work at his own pace. Scholz and producer John Boylan hatched a plan to send the rest of the band to Los Angeles to make the record label happy, while Scholz recorded most of Boston's debut album at home, with Masdea playing drums on the track "Rock and Roll Band" and Scholz playing the other instruments. The multitrack tapes were then brought to Los Angeles, where Delp added vocals and the album was mixed by Boylan. It was then that the band was named "Boston", by suggestion of Boylan and engineer Warren Dewey.
Boston and Don't Look Back (1976–1978)
The debut album, Boston, released on August 25, 1976, ranks as one of the best-selling debut albums in U.S. history with over 17 million copies sold.
During late summer and early fall of 1976, Boston attracted publicity due to the record sales. However, according to Cameron Crowe in Rolling Stone, there was "a conscious effort to de-emphasize Scholz as the total mastermind behind Boston". After opening for Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, Foghat and others in the fall, the band embarked on a headlining tour in the winter and spring of 1976–1977 to support the album. This helped establish Boston as one of rock's top acts within a short time, being nominated for a Grammy Award as a "Best New Artist". Boston was the first band in history to make their New York City debut at Madison Square Garden.
The album spawned three singles, "More Than a Feeling", "Long Time", and "Peace of Mind", all of which made the national charts. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and remained on the charts for 132 weeks.
Despite having problems with manager Paul Ahern, being caught in the middle of a fight between Ahern and his business partner Charles McKenzie, and doing most of the recording work alone, Scholz completed the second Boston album two years after the debut album's release. The second album, Don't Look Back, was released by Epic in August 1978. At the time this was considered a long gap between albums, but Scholz still considered Don't Look Back to be a rush job and was unhappy with the album's second side in particular. Overall, Don't Look Back sold about half as well as the debut album, eventually selling over 7 million records.
Another tour followed (playing with the likes of AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Sammy Hagar and The Doobie Brothers), and the album's title track became a top-5 hit. Additionally, two other singles, "A Man I'll Never Be" and "Feelin' Satisfied", went top 40 and top 50, respectively. Despite the success, Scholz's relationship with Ahern completely deteriorated. Delayed by technical renovations to his studio, Scholz eventually began the process of working on Boston's third album, determined to complete the album at his own pace and up to his demanding standard.
Solo projects and CBS lawsuit (1979–1985)
In late 1979, Scholz began writing new material, but Boston's former co-manager, Paul Ahern, argued that, according to an agreement Scholz had signed years earlier with Ahern, Ahern owned a percentage of all songs Scholz wrote from that point on. Delayed further by the dispute, Scholz suggested that in the meantime the individual members should work on whatever other projects they might be considering.
Goudreau then decided to record a solo album that featured Boston members Delp and Hashian, and which was recorded with the help of Paul Grupp, an engineer and producer familiar with Scholz's studio techniques. The album, released in 1980, was titled Barry Goudreau and featured the minor hit single "Dreams". There was tension when CBS's marketing connected Goudreau's solo album to Boston's signature guitar sound, despite Scholz not having played at all on this album. Scholz objected to the ad copy, but it became irrelevant when Epic dropped promotion on Goudreau's album citing lack of interest. Goudreau left the band in 1981 and formed Orion the Hunter. Delp contributed vocals and co-wrote songs on the debut album, but returned to Boston and recorded vocals on the third Boston album.
While Scholz and Delp were recording new material for the third Boston album, CBS filed a $60 million lawsuit against Scholz, alleging breach of contract for failing to deliver a new Boston album on time.
During this same period, Scholz founded his high-tech company Scholz Research & Development (SR&D), which made amplifiers and other musical electronic equipment. Its most famous product, the Rockman amplifier, was introduced in 1982.
The legal trouble slowed progress toward the completion of the next album, which took six years to record and produce. Joining Scholz in the album's development again were Delp and Jim Masdea. In 1985, guitarist Gary Pihl left Sammy Hagar's touring band to work with Scholz as both a musician and an SR&D executive. As CBS v. Scholz played out in court, CBS opted to withhold royalty payments to Scholz, hoping to force him to settle on unfavorable terms.
The lawsuit's first round was eventually decided in Scholz's favor, and Scholz moved the band to MCA Records.
The CBS case took seven years to run its course, and in April 1990 Scholz won.
Third Stage (1986–1988)
Despite the adversity, progress continued to be made on the third Boston album. A tape of one of the songs, "Amanda", leaked out of the studio in 1984. The song became the lead single when Third Stage was finally released on September 23, 1986.
The album topped the Billboard 200 while the lead single "Amanda" went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the subsequent singles "We're Ready" and "Can'tcha Say" reached No. 9 and No. 20, respectively. "Cool the Engines" also got significant airplay on rock radio. The album sold over 4 million copies.
The group headed off on tour to promote Third Stage in 1987 and 1988. Third Stage was played in sequence in its entirety during the shows, with expanded arrangements of some cuts. Boston opened with "Rock and Roll Band" and brought back the original drummer, Jim Masdea, to play drums for this one song. For the tour, the group was joined by Doug Huffman and David Sikes, both of whom stayed with the band into the mid-1990s.
Departure of Delp; Walk On (1989–1996)
By spring 1990, Scholz was back in the studio working on the band's fourth studio album. Later that year, Delp told Scholz he wanted to concentrate on other projects, and might not be available for some time. With Delp's departure, Scholz was then the last remaining original member. Before he left, Delp co-wrote with Scholz and David Sikes the song "Walk On", which eventually became the title track of the new album.
Delp subsequently joined Barry Goudreau's new band, RTZ. Scholz eventually replaced him with vocalist Fran Cosmo, who had been in Goudreau's previous band Orion the Hunter.
For the second album in a row, and for the second time in a decade, Scholz's work was delayed by renovations to his studio. In the end, eight years passed between Third Stage and Walk On, which was released in June 1994. Walk On was certified platinum by the RIAA, and reached No. 7 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. Unlike Boston's previous albums, it failed to chart in the top 5. It produced one hit single, "I Need Your Love", which was widely played on some rock radio stations. Delp reunited with Boston at the end of 1994. Their first appearance was for two benefit shows at the House of Blues on December 12–13, 1994, in Cambridge. The band also handed a check of $5,000 to Globe Santa and another check of $5,000 to Operation Christmas in Fall River.
The group, with Delp now back in the band, toured in the summer of 1995 with both Cosmo and Delp combining vocals. By that time drummer Huffman had been replaced by Curly Smith, who was previously with Jo Jo Gunne. Following the conclusion of the "Livin' For You" tour in 1995, Scholz announced that a greatest hits album would be released. Initially planned for release in August 1996, the album was pushed back to a 1997 release date.
Greatest Hits and Corporate America (1997–2006)
Boston released a compilation album in 1997, titled simply Boston: Greatest Hits. The album featured all of the band's hit singles except "We're Ready", "Can'tcha Say (You Believe In Me)/Still In Love", and "I Need Your Love" along with three new songs, "Higher Power", "Tell Me", and an instrumental version of the "Star Spangled Banner". Smith and Sikes left the band in late 1997 and recorded an album together.
Scholz headed back to the studio in 1998 to begin work on a fifth album, which eventually turned out to be Corporate America. The title track of "Corporate America" was uploaded by Tom Scholz to MP3.com under the pseudonym of "Downer's Revenge" in early 2002 in order to test the album's appeal to a younger demographic. The song reached No. 2 on the progressive rock charts on the website for two weeks.
November 2002 marked the release of Corporate America on the independent label Artemis Records. This album featured the largest Boston lineup ever; returning members included Delp and Cosmo on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Scholz on lead guitar and keyboards, and Gary Pihl on guitar, along with new members Anthony Cosmo on rhythm guitar, Jeff Neal on drums, and Kimberley Dahme on bass, acoustic guitar, and vocals. Dahme, Delp, and Cosmo all contributed lead vocals to the album. The group embarked on a national tour in support of the album in 2003 and 2004. In 2006, the first two Boston albums appeared in remastered form.
Death of Brad Delp (2007)
On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp died by suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whomever would find him. In the bathroom where he died, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door was sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police called the death "untimely" and said no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancée, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie.
A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston.
All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page.
New line-up and intermittent performances (2008–2012)
The ongoing conflicts among the surviving band members spilled over to the 2008 Presidential campaign. Barry Goudreau appeared with Mike Huckabee and played with him at some rallies in New Hampshire. Huckabee used "More Than a Feeling" as a campaign theme song. Scholz, a self-described "Obama supporter", sent an open letter to Huckabee in February 2008 stating that the band had never endorsed any candidate, and that he had never authorized the use of "More Than a Feeling" as Huckabee's theme song. Scholz made a point of saying that he, and not Goudreau or Sheehan, actually played all the guitars on "More Than a Feeling" as well as most of Boston's songs. Huckabee eventually stopped using the song for his campaign.
In the spring of 2008, Scholz and Sweet introduced a new Boston lineup, which subsequently did a North American summer tour, playing 53 dates in 12 weeks (on a double bill with Styx). Scholz was the only founding member of Boston to play on the tour, although longtime member Gary Pihl was also part of the band, and Dahme and Neal returned on bass and drums, respectively. DeCarlo and Sweet shared lead vocals.
In January 2009, Greatest Hits was re-released as a remastered disc.
Michael Sweet left the band in August 2011 in order to focus on Stryper. In 2012, guitarist and vocalist David Victor joined the band, beginning in the studio, where he contributed vocals to several tracks on the album in progress.
Scholz and Pihl led the band on a 2012 North American tour, beginning on June 28, 2012, at the Seminole Hard Rock Live arena in Hollywood, Florida and ending on September 8 at the U.S. Cellular Grandstand in Hutchinson, Kansas. Victor and DeCarlo shared lead vocals, with drummer Curly Smith returning for the first time in over a decade, and former Stryper member Tracy Ferrie on bass. Neither Dahme nor Neal played on the tour.
Life, Love & Hope (2013–2017)
Boston's sixth album, Life, Love & Hope, was released on December 3, 2013, by Frontiers Records; it includes lead vocals from Brad Delp, Tommy DeCarlo, Kimberley Dahme, David Victor, and Tom Scholz. Work on the album started in 2002. On December 11, 2013, Boston re-recorded a Christmas song, "God Rest Ye Metal Gentleman 2013" (previously released in 2002 as "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"). In 2014 Boston embarked on the "Heaven on Earth Tour" spanning the United States and Japan with a lineup including Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Victor and Ferrie. Dahme returned, this time performing rhythm guitar and vocals, and drumming duties were split between Neal and Smith, with Neal handling the first leg of the tour. Victor departed the lineup partway through the tour for unspecified reasons. In his stead, Siobhan Magnus joined the tour as a guest vocalist in July, performing lead vocals on 'Walk On'.
In 2015, Boston launched another tour with a lineup consisting of Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Ferrie and new member Beth Cohen, who performed keyboards, rhythm guitar and vocals. Cohen had previously recorded with the group on both Corporate America and Life, Love & Hope as a vocalist and flautist. Initially, the lineup was to include former Spock's Beard drummer and vocalist Nick D'Virgilio for its first month of shows, with Neal then returning, but D'Virgilio proved "not the right fit" and Smith rejoined in his place. This seven-person lineup proved Boston's most stable lineup in some time, touring as well in the summers of 2016 and 2017. The 2016 tour marked the group's 40th anniversary and included shows in Boston's Wang Theatre, their first full performances in their namesake town since 1994.
On March 22, 2017, former drummer Sib Hashian died after collapsing on a Legends of Rock cruise ship.
Upcoming seventh album (2017–present)
In April 2017, Scholz reported that he has been writing new material for the seventh Boston album. He told Sun Herald, "I find that I'm in a position that I really need to write things that we can play at the shows. We play basically everything that people expect to hear that we can fit into two hours. We also do a lot of things that aren't on any of the records by adding things and segues and instrumental parts, so I always have to come up with new stuff. It's quite a challenge. I have to write new things for the tour every year, which is what I wanted to do in the first place. But I got sidetracked in the studio, recording. Now, I'm actually a performing musician, and I have to tell you, it's much more fun." When asked the same month about a potential release date of the album, Scholz said, "Who knows? I'm only 70. I figure I've got 30 years."
Spaceship
One of the themes of Boston's album covers is the presence of a guitar-shaped spaceship, ostensibly a generation or colony ship carrying the city of Boston inside a clear dome, with the city's name emblazoned across the front. The original spaceship was designed in 1976 by Paula Scher and illustrated by Roger Huyssen with lettering by Gerard Huerta for Epic Records.
Appearances
Boston – Two long lines of guitar shaped starships flee a planet that is breaking apart. The ships all have blue flames coming out of the bottom.
Don't Look Back – The Boston ship is flying low or perhaps hovering over a grassy, crystalline planet. The ship has searchlights on.
Third Stage – The Boston ship is headed towards a large flat spaceship resembling a bank of pipe organ pipes over a blue planet.
Walk On – The Boston ship is shown crashing through a rock outcropping.
Greatest Hits – The Boston ship is flying low over a planet with turquoise rocks and a turquoise tower in the distance.
Corporate America – The Boston ship is flying towards Earth and the United States.
Life, Love & Hope – The Boston ship is flying in space, near a nebula.
Their spaceship also appeared on their tours in the late 1980s, early 1990s, and early 2000s in the form of a giant lighting rig and accompanied on stage by their giant pipe-organ set piece, which is known to Boston insiders as Bertha because of its sheer size.
Innovation and style
Boston's genre is considered by most to be hard rock and arena rock, while combining elements of progressive rock into its music.
Boston founder, guitarist, and primary songwriter Tom Scholz's blend of musical styles, ranging from classical to 1960s English pop, has resulted in a unique sound, most consistently realized on the first two albums (Boston and Don't Look Back). This sound is characterized by multiple lead and blended harmonies guitar work (usually harmonized in thirds), often alternating between and then mixing electric and acoustic guitars. The band's harmonic style has been characterized as being "violin-like" without using synthesizers. Scholz is well-regarded for the development of complex, multi-tracked guitar harmonies. Another contributing factor is the use of handmade, high-tech equipment, such as the Rockman, used by artists such as Journey guitarist Neal Schon, the band ZZ Top, and Ted Nugent. Def Leppard's album Hysteria was created using only Rockman technology. Scholz's production style combines deep, aggressive, comparatively short guitar riffing and nearly ethereal, generally longer note vocal harmonies. A heavier, lower, and darker overall approach came in the next two albums (Third Stage and Walk On). The original track "Higher Power", on the Greatest Hits album, exhibits a near Neue Deutsche Härte and almost techno influence with its sequencer-sounding keyboards, a sound most fully realized on Corporate America'''s title track.
Tom Scholz also credited the late Brad Delp with helping to create Boston's sound with his signature vocal style. Delp, who was strongly influenced by the Beatles, was well known for his extended vocal range, shown on hits such as "More Than a Feeling".
Band members
Current members
Tom Scholz – lead and rhythm guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, percussion, backing vocals (1976–present)
Gary Pihl – rhythm and lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1985–present)
Curly Smith – drums, percussion, harmonica, backing vocals (1994–1997, 2012–present)
Jeff Neal – drums, percussion, backing vocals (2002–2012, 2014–present)
Tommy DeCarlo – lead vocals, keyboards, percussion (2007–present)
Tracy Ferrie – bass guitar, backing vocals (2012–present)
Beth Cohen – keyboards, vocals, rhythm guitar (2002, 2012, 2015–present)
Discography
Studio albumsBoston (1976)Don't Look Back (1978)Third Stage (1986)Walk On (1994)Corporate America (2002)Life, Love & Hope (2013)
Compilation albumsGreatest Hits'' (1997)
References
External links
1976 establishments in Massachusetts
Epic Records artists
Hard rock musical groups from Massachusetts
MCA Records artists
Musical groups established in 1976
Musical groups from Boston | false | [
"Why Did You Kill Me? is a 2021 American documentary film directed and produced by Fredrick Munk. The film follows Belinda Lane as she tracks down those involved in the murder of Crystal Theobald, her daughter, using MySpace.\n\nIt was released on April 14, 2021, by Netflix.\n\nPlot\nBelinda Lane tracks down those involved in the murder of Crystal Theobald, her daughter, using MySpace.\n\nRelease\nThe film was released on April 14, 2021, by Netflix.\n\nReception\nWhy Did You Kill Me? holds a 63% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 8 reviews, with a weighted average of 6.50/10.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n \n\n2021 films\n2021 documentary films\nAmerican films\nAmerican documentary films\nDocumentary films about gangs in the United States\nDocumentary films about death\nNetflix original documentary films",
"Gravity is an American comedy-drama television series created by Jill Franklyn and Eric Schaeffer. It ran for one season in 2010 on Starz.\n\nPremise\nThe series \"follows the sometimes comic, sometimes tragic exploits of a group from an eccentric out-patient program of suicide survivors\". Production of the show began in New York City in October 2009.\n\nCreation\nFranklyn created the show during the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. She is known for her Emmy-nominated \"Yada Yada\" episode of Seinfeld. In 2008 she brought in Eric Schaeffer and they collaborated in selling the show to the Starz Network. The show's working titles were Suicide for Dummies and Failure to Fly.\n\nCast\n Ivan Sergei as Robert Collingsworth; a middle aged eye doctor labeled the \"suicide dummy\" after driving off a peak in an attempt to kill himself so that he could be with his dead wife, he landed on a cruise ship. He has a relationship with Lily Champagne and develops a conflicted friendship with Christian; he also has an ugly relationship with his estranged mother. \n Krysten Ritter as Lily Champagne; a shy, lonely 27-year-old woman who works at a department store who attempts to kill herself by eating a poisonous slice of chocolate cake and claims to have made love with someone in heaven but turns out to have made it up to hide her true reasons for killing herself. She also enjoys sketching and when someone asks her why she says \"I sell makeup at a department store, I change lives\" .\n Eric Schaeffer as Detective Christian Miller; a man who claims to be a police officer but is in a debt crisis after placing so many losing bets, he seems to stalk Lily after her suicide attempt and tries to look for information about his dead mother. His many flaws seem to have him butt heads with a man named Diego.\n Rachel Hunter as Shawna Rollins; a model who attempts to kill herself by slitting her wrists and develops a relationship with Adam\n Robyn Cohen as Carla; a housewife who attempts to kill herself by shooting herself after being tired of a routine life and living up to everyone's expectations.\n James Martinez as Jorge Sanchez; a former construction worker who attempts to kill himself by placing himself in a collapsing building, he is so insecure about his penis size that he gets a penis implant. He also works as a comedian.\n Seth Numrich as Adam Rosenblum; a teenager who attempts to kill himself by overdosing after his rocky relationship with his family makes him depressed. He also develops a relationship with Shawna.\n Ving Rhames as Dogg McFee; the group leader and former New York Mets player who attempted suicide after hearing all the criticism of losing the NLCS after a car accident left him confined to a wheelchair. He also has a difficult relationship with his son who chose the wrong path due to his father neglecting him.\n\nEpisodes\n\nReferences\n\n General references\n\nExternal links\n \n\n2010 American television series debuts\n2010 American television series endings\n2010s American comedy-drama television series\nEnglish-language television shows\nStarz original programming\nTelevision shows set in New York City"
] |
[
"Boston (band)",
"Death of Brad Delp (2007)",
"what was the depth of brad delp?",
"On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom,",
"why did he kill himself?",
"I don't know."
] | C_c61d7973b8b2435f80b9d464781ec3a2_0 | anything interesting about the article? | 3 | Besides the death of Brad Delp, is there anything interesting about the article? | Boston (band) | On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whoever would find him. In the bathroom where he committed suicide, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police Lt. William Baldwin called the death "untimely" and said that no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancee, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning as evidenced by carboxyhemoglobin. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie. A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included, in order of appearance, Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston. All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page. Another former Boston vocalist, Fran Cosmo, was unable to sing because of a ruptured blood vessel in his throat, but did play guitar. Jim Masdea, Fran Sheehan, and even Barry Goudreau joined Scholz and the rest of the band on stage for the finale, "Don't Look Back". Curly Smith and Kimberley Dahme split the lead vocal on the finale. Sib Hashian, while present, refused to go on stage with the other Boston alumni, citing discomfort with Tom Scholz. CANNOTANSWER | A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, | Boston is an American rock band from namesake Boston, Massachusetts, that had its most notable successes during the 1970s and '80s. The band's core members on their most popular recordings included multi-instrumentalist founder and leader Tom Scholz, who played the majority of instruments on the debut album, and lead vocalist Brad Delp, among a number of other musicians who varied from album to album. Boston's best-known songs include "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Foreplay/Long Time", "Rock and Roll Band", "Smokin'", "Don't Look Back", "A Man I'll Never Be", and "Amanda". The band has sold more than 75 million records worldwide, including 31 million albums in the United States, of which 17 million were from its self-titled debut album and seven million were for its second album, Don't Look Back, making the group one of the world's best-selling artists. Altogether, the band has released six studio albums over a career spanning over years. Boston was ranked the 63rd best hard rock artist by VH1.
After Delp's death in 2007, a number of other vocalists have taken the stage; currently the lead singer is Tommy DeCarlo. Other current members of the band include multi-instrumentalist and singer Beth Cohen, guitarist Gary Pihl, bassist Tracy Ferrie, drummer Jeff Neal and percussionist Curly Smith.
History
Early years (1969–1975)
Tom Scholz first started writing music in 1969 while he was attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he wrote an instrumental song, "Foreplay". While attending MIT, Scholz joined the band Freehold, where he met guitarist Barry Goudreau and drummer Jim Masdea, who would later become members of Boston. Vocalist Brad Delp was added to the collective in 1970. After graduating with a master's degree, Scholz worked for Polaroid, using his salary to build a recording studio in his basement, and to finance demo tapes recorded in professional recording studios. These early demo tapes were recorded with (at various times) Delp on vocals, Goudreau on guitar, Masdea on drums, and Scholz on guitar, bass and keyboards. The demo tapes were sent to record companies, but received consistent rejections. In 1973 Scholz formed the band Mother's Milk with Delp, Goudreau, and Masdea. That group disbanded by 1974, but Scholz subsequently worked with Masdea and Delp to produce six new demos, including "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Rock and Roll Band", "Something About You" (then entitled "Life Isn't Easy"), "Hitch a Ride" (then entitled "San Francisco Day"), and "Don't Be Afraid". Scholz stated they finished four of the six by the end of 1974, and they finished "More Than a Feeling" and "Something About You" in 1975. Scholz played all the instruments on the demos, except for the drums, which were played by Masdea, and used self-designed pedals to create the desired guitar sounds.
This final demo tape attracted the attention of promoters Paul Ahern and Charlie McKenzie. Masdea left the band around this time. According to Scholz, the managers insisted that Masdea had to be replaced before the band could get a recording deal. Years later, Delp told journalist Chuck Miller: "[Jim] actually told me he was losing interest in playing drums. I know Tom felt very bad when the whole thing happened. And then, of course, we started getting some interest." Scholz and Delp signed a deal with Epic Records after Masdea's departure, thanks to Ahern and McKenzie. Before the deal could be finalized, the band had to do a live audition for the record company executives. The duo recruited Goudreau on guitar, bassist Fran Sheehan and drummer Sib Hashian to create a performing unit which could replicate Scholz's richly layered recordings on stage. The showcase was a success and the band agreed to put out ten albums over the next six years.
In addition to the firing of Masdea, the record label insisted that Scholz re-record the demo tapes in a professional studio. However, Scholz wanted to record them in his basement studio so that he could work at his own pace. Scholz and producer John Boylan hatched a plan to send the rest of the band to Los Angeles to make the record label happy, while Scholz recorded most of Boston's debut album at home, with Masdea playing drums on the track "Rock and Roll Band" and Scholz playing the other instruments. The multitrack tapes were then brought to Los Angeles, where Delp added vocals and the album was mixed by Boylan. It was then that the band was named "Boston", by suggestion of Boylan and engineer Warren Dewey.
Boston and Don't Look Back (1976–1978)
The debut album, Boston, released on August 25, 1976, ranks as one of the best-selling debut albums in U.S. history with over 17 million copies sold.
During late summer and early fall of 1976, Boston attracted publicity due to the record sales. However, according to Cameron Crowe in Rolling Stone, there was "a conscious effort to de-emphasize Scholz as the total mastermind behind Boston". After opening for Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, Foghat and others in the fall, the band embarked on a headlining tour in the winter and spring of 1976–1977 to support the album. This helped establish Boston as one of rock's top acts within a short time, being nominated for a Grammy Award as a "Best New Artist". Boston was the first band in history to make their New York City debut at Madison Square Garden.
The album spawned three singles, "More Than a Feeling", "Long Time", and "Peace of Mind", all of which made the national charts. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and remained on the charts for 132 weeks.
Despite having problems with manager Paul Ahern, being caught in the middle of a fight between Ahern and his business partner Charles McKenzie, and doing most of the recording work alone, Scholz completed the second Boston album two years after the debut album's release. The second album, Don't Look Back, was released by Epic in August 1978. At the time this was considered a long gap between albums, but Scholz still considered Don't Look Back to be a rush job and was unhappy with the album's second side in particular. Overall, Don't Look Back sold about half as well as the debut album, eventually selling over 7 million records.
Another tour followed (playing with the likes of AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Sammy Hagar and The Doobie Brothers), and the album's title track became a top-5 hit. Additionally, two other singles, "A Man I'll Never Be" and "Feelin' Satisfied", went top 40 and top 50, respectively. Despite the success, Scholz's relationship with Ahern completely deteriorated. Delayed by technical renovations to his studio, Scholz eventually began the process of working on Boston's third album, determined to complete the album at his own pace and up to his demanding standard.
Solo projects and CBS lawsuit (1979–1985)
In late 1979, Scholz began writing new material, but Boston's former co-manager, Paul Ahern, argued that, according to an agreement Scholz had signed years earlier with Ahern, Ahern owned a percentage of all songs Scholz wrote from that point on. Delayed further by the dispute, Scholz suggested that in the meantime the individual members should work on whatever other projects they might be considering.
Goudreau then decided to record a solo album that featured Boston members Delp and Hashian, and which was recorded with the help of Paul Grupp, an engineer and producer familiar with Scholz's studio techniques. The album, released in 1980, was titled Barry Goudreau and featured the minor hit single "Dreams". There was tension when CBS's marketing connected Goudreau's solo album to Boston's signature guitar sound, despite Scholz not having played at all on this album. Scholz objected to the ad copy, but it became irrelevant when Epic dropped promotion on Goudreau's album citing lack of interest. Goudreau left the band in 1981 and formed Orion the Hunter. Delp contributed vocals and co-wrote songs on the debut album, but returned to Boston and recorded vocals on the third Boston album.
While Scholz and Delp were recording new material for the third Boston album, CBS filed a $60 million lawsuit against Scholz, alleging breach of contract for failing to deliver a new Boston album on time.
During this same period, Scholz founded his high-tech company Scholz Research & Development (SR&D), which made amplifiers and other musical electronic equipment. Its most famous product, the Rockman amplifier, was introduced in 1982.
The legal trouble slowed progress toward the completion of the next album, which took six years to record and produce. Joining Scholz in the album's development again were Delp and Jim Masdea. In 1985, guitarist Gary Pihl left Sammy Hagar's touring band to work with Scholz as both a musician and an SR&D executive. As CBS v. Scholz played out in court, CBS opted to withhold royalty payments to Scholz, hoping to force him to settle on unfavorable terms.
The lawsuit's first round was eventually decided in Scholz's favor, and Scholz moved the band to MCA Records.
The CBS case took seven years to run its course, and in April 1990 Scholz won.
Third Stage (1986–1988)
Despite the adversity, progress continued to be made on the third Boston album. A tape of one of the songs, "Amanda", leaked out of the studio in 1984. The song became the lead single when Third Stage was finally released on September 23, 1986.
The album topped the Billboard 200 while the lead single "Amanda" went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the subsequent singles "We're Ready" and "Can'tcha Say" reached No. 9 and No. 20, respectively. "Cool the Engines" also got significant airplay on rock radio. The album sold over 4 million copies.
The group headed off on tour to promote Third Stage in 1987 and 1988. Third Stage was played in sequence in its entirety during the shows, with expanded arrangements of some cuts. Boston opened with "Rock and Roll Band" and brought back the original drummer, Jim Masdea, to play drums for this one song. For the tour, the group was joined by Doug Huffman and David Sikes, both of whom stayed with the band into the mid-1990s.
Departure of Delp; Walk On (1989–1996)
By spring 1990, Scholz was back in the studio working on the band's fourth studio album. Later that year, Delp told Scholz he wanted to concentrate on other projects, and might not be available for some time. With Delp's departure, Scholz was then the last remaining original member. Before he left, Delp co-wrote with Scholz and David Sikes the song "Walk On", which eventually became the title track of the new album.
Delp subsequently joined Barry Goudreau's new band, RTZ. Scholz eventually replaced him with vocalist Fran Cosmo, who had been in Goudreau's previous band Orion the Hunter.
For the second album in a row, and for the second time in a decade, Scholz's work was delayed by renovations to his studio. In the end, eight years passed between Third Stage and Walk On, which was released in June 1994. Walk On was certified platinum by the RIAA, and reached No. 7 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. Unlike Boston's previous albums, it failed to chart in the top 5. It produced one hit single, "I Need Your Love", which was widely played on some rock radio stations. Delp reunited with Boston at the end of 1994. Their first appearance was for two benefit shows at the House of Blues on December 12–13, 1994, in Cambridge. The band also handed a check of $5,000 to Globe Santa and another check of $5,000 to Operation Christmas in Fall River.
The group, with Delp now back in the band, toured in the summer of 1995 with both Cosmo and Delp combining vocals. By that time drummer Huffman had been replaced by Curly Smith, who was previously with Jo Jo Gunne. Following the conclusion of the "Livin' For You" tour in 1995, Scholz announced that a greatest hits album would be released. Initially planned for release in August 1996, the album was pushed back to a 1997 release date.
Greatest Hits and Corporate America (1997–2006)
Boston released a compilation album in 1997, titled simply Boston: Greatest Hits. The album featured all of the band's hit singles except "We're Ready", "Can'tcha Say (You Believe In Me)/Still In Love", and "I Need Your Love" along with three new songs, "Higher Power", "Tell Me", and an instrumental version of the "Star Spangled Banner". Smith and Sikes left the band in late 1997 and recorded an album together.
Scholz headed back to the studio in 1998 to begin work on a fifth album, which eventually turned out to be Corporate America. The title track of "Corporate America" was uploaded by Tom Scholz to MP3.com under the pseudonym of "Downer's Revenge" in early 2002 in order to test the album's appeal to a younger demographic. The song reached No. 2 on the progressive rock charts on the website for two weeks.
November 2002 marked the release of Corporate America on the independent label Artemis Records. This album featured the largest Boston lineup ever; returning members included Delp and Cosmo on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Scholz on lead guitar and keyboards, and Gary Pihl on guitar, along with new members Anthony Cosmo on rhythm guitar, Jeff Neal on drums, and Kimberley Dahme on bass, acoustic guitar, and vocals. Dahme, Delp, and Cosmo all contributed lead vocals to the album. The group embarked on a national tour in support of the album in 2003 and 2004. In 2006, the first two Boston albums appeared in remastered form.
Death of Brad Delp (2007)
On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp died by suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whomever would find him. In the bathroom where he died, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door was sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police called the death "untimely" and said no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancée, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie.
A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston.
All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page.
New line-up and intermittent performances (2008–2012)
The ongoing conflicts among the surviving band members spilled over to the 2008 Presidential campaign. Barry Goudreau appeared with Mike Huckabee and played with him at some rallies in New Hampshire. Huckabee used "More Than a Feeling" as a campaign theme song. Scholz, a self-described "Obama supporter", sent an open letter to Huckabee in February 2008 stating that the band had never endorsed any candidate, and that he had never authorized the use of "More Than a Feeling" as Huckabee's theme song. Scholz made a point of saying that he, and not Goudreau or Sheehan, actually played all the guitars on "More Than a Feeling" as well as most of Boston's songs. Huckabee eventually stopped using the song for his campaign.
In the spring of 2008, Scholz and Sweet introduced a new Boston lineup, which subsequently did a North American summer tour, playing 53 dates in 12 weeks (on a double bill with Styx). Scholz was the only founding member of Boston to play on the tour, although longtime member Gary Pihl was also part of the band, and Dahme and Neal returned on bass and drums, respectively. DeCarlo and Sweet shared lead vocals.
In January 2009, Greatest Hits was re-released as a remastered disc.
Michael Sweet left the band in August 2011 in order to focus on Stryper. In 2012, guitarist and vocalist David Victor joined the band, beginning in the studio, where he contributed vocals to several tracks on the album in progress.
Scholz and Pihl led the band on a 2012 North American tour, beginning on June 28, 2012, at the Seminole Hard Rock Live arena in Hollywood, Florida and ending on September 8 at the U.S. Cellular Grandstand in Hutchinson, Kansas. Victor and DeCarlo shared lead vocals, with drummer Curly Smith returning for the first time in over a decade, and former Stryper member Tracy Ferrie on bass. Neither Dahme nor Neal played on the tour.
Life, Love & Hope (2013–2017)
Boston's sixth album, Life, Love & Hope, was released on December 3, 2013, by Frontiers Records; it includes lead vocals from Brad Delp, Tommy DeCarlo, Kimberley Dahme, David Victor, and Tom Scholz. Work on the album started in 2002. On December 11, 2013, Boston re-recorded a Christmas song, "God Rest Ye Metal Gentleman 2013" (previously released in 2002 as "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"). In 2014 Boston embarked on the "Heaven on Earth Tour" spanning the United States and Japan with a lineup including Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Victor and Ferrie. Dahme returned, this time performing rhythm guitar and vocals, and drumming duties were split between Neal and Smith, with Neal handling the first leg of the tour. Victor departed the lineup partway through the tour for unspecified reasons. In his stead, Siobhan Magnus joined the tour as a guest vocalist in July, performing lead vocals on 'Walk On'.
In 2015, Boston launched another tour with a lineup consisting of Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Ferrie and new member Beth Cohen, who performed keyboards, rhythm guitar and vocals. Cohen had previously recorded with the group on both Corporate America and Life, Love & Hope as a vocalist and flautist. Initially, the lineup was to include former Spock's Beard drummer and vocalist Nick D'Virgilio for its first month of shows, with Neal then returning, but D'Virgilio proved "not the right fit" and Smith rejoined in his place. This seven-person lineup proved Boston's most stable lineup in some time, touring as well in the summers of 2016 and 2017. The 2016 tour marked the group's 40th anniversary and included shows in Boston's Wang Theatre, their first full performances in their namesake town since 1994.
On March 22, 2017, former drummer Sib Hashian died after collapsing on a Legends of Rock cruise ship.
Upcoming seventh album (2017–present)
In April 2017, Scholz reported that he has been writing new material for the seventh Boston album. He told Sun Herald, "I find that I'm in a position that I really need to write things that we can play at the shows. We play basically everything that people expect to hear that we can fit into two hours. We also do a lot of things that aren't on any of the records by adding things and segues and instrumental parts, so I always have to come up with new stuff. It's quite a challenge. I have to write new things for the tour every year, which is what I wanted to do in the first place. But I got sidetracked in the studio, recording. Now, I'm actually a performing musician, and I have to tell you, it's much more fun." When asked the same month about a potential release date of the album, Scholz said, "Who knows? I'm only 70. I figure I've got 30 years."
Spaceship
One of the themes of Boston's album covers is the presence of a guitar-shaped spaceship, ostensibly a generation or colony ship carrying the city of Boston inside a clear dome, with the city's name emblazoned across the front. The original spaceship was designed in 1976 by Paula Scher and illustrated by Roger Huyssen with lettering by Gerard Huerta for Epic Records.
Appearances
Boston – Two long lines of guitar shaped starships flee a planet that is breaking apart. The ships all have blue flames coming out of the bottom.
Don't Look Back – The Boston ship is flying low or perhaps hovering over a grassy, crystalline planet. The ship has searchlights on.
Third Stage – The Boston ship is headed towards a large flat spaceship resembling a bank of pipe organ pipes over a blue planet.
Walk On – The Boston ship is shown crashing through a rock outcropping.
Greatest Hits – The Boston ship is flying low over a planet with turquoise rocks and a turquoise tower in the distance.
Corporate America – The Boston ship is flying towards Earth and the United States.
Life, Love & Hope – The Boston ship is flying in space, near a nebula.
Their spaceship also appeared on their tours in the late 1980s, early 1990s, and early 2000s in the form of a giant lighting rig and accompanied on stage by their giant pipe-organ set piece, which is known to Boston insiders as Bertha because of its sheer size.
Innovation and style
Boston's genre is considered by most to be hard rock and arena rock, while combining elements of progressive rock into its music.
Boston founder, guitarist, and primary songwriter Tom Scholz's blend of musical styles, ranging from classical to 1960s English pop, has resulted in a unique sound, most consistently realized on the first two albums (Boston and Don't Look Back). This sound is characterized by multiple lead and blended harmonies guitar work (usually harmonized in thirds), often alternating between and then mixing electric and acoustic guitars. The band's harmonic style has been characterized as being "violin-like" without using synthesizers. Scholz is well-regarded for the development of complex, multi-tracked guitar harmonies. Another contributing factor is the use of handmade, high-tech equipment, such as the Rockman, used by artists such as Journey guitarist Neal Schon, the band ZZ Top, and Ted Nugent. Def Leppard's album Hysteria was created using only Rockman technology. Scholz's production style combines deep, aggressive, comparatively short guitar riffing and nearly ethereal, generally longer note vocal harmonies. A heavier, lower, and darker overall approach came in the next two albums (Third Stage and Walk On). The original track "Higher Power", on the Greatest Hits album, exhibits a near Neue Deutsche Härte and almost techno influence with its sequencer-sounding keyboards, a sound most fully realized on Corporate America'''s title track.
Tom Scholz also credited the late Brad Delp with helping to create Boston's sound with his signature vocal style. Delp, who was strongly influenced by the Beatles, was well known for his extended vocal range, shown on hits such as "More Than a Feeling".
Band members
Current members
Tom Scholz – lead and rhythm guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, percussion, backing vocals (1976–present)
Gary Pihl – rhythm and lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1985–present)
Curly Smith – drums, percussion, harmonica, backing vocals (1994–1997, 2012–present)
Jeff Neal – drums, percussion, backing vocals (2002–2012, 2014–present)
Tommy DeCarlo – lead vocals, keyboards, percussion (2007–present)
Tracy Ferrie – bass guitar, backing vocals (2012–present)
Beth Cohen – keyboards, vocals, rhythm guitar (2002, 2012, 2015–present)
Discography
Studio albumsBoston (1976)Don't Look Back (1978)Third Stage (1986)Walk On (1994)Corporate America (2002)Life, Love & Hope (2013)
Compilation albumsGreatest Hits'' (1997)
References
External links
1976 establishments in Massachusetts
Epic Records artists
Hard rock musical groups from Massachusetts
MCA Records artists
Musical groups established in 1976
Musical groups from Boston | true | [
"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",
"Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway is a 1995 book written by Clifford Stoll where he discusses his ambivalence regarding the future of how the internet will be used. He wrote the book at a time when he felt the promise of the internet was being over-hyped: \"I'm mainly speaking to people who feel mystically lured to the Internet: lotus-eaters, beware. Life in the real world is far more interesting, far more important, far richer, than anything you'll ever find on a computer screen.\" Stoll later acknowledged that the book was a mistake.\n\nSummary \n\nIn Silicon Snake Oil and an accompanying article, The Internet? Bah!, in Newsweek Stoll raised questions about the influence of the Internet on future society and whether it would be beneficial. Along the way, he made various predictions, e.g. about e-commerce (calling it nonviable due to a lack of personal contact and secure online funds transfers), the future of printed news publications (\"no online database will replace your daily newspaper\") and the cost of digitizing books would be too expensive since only 200 books had been digitized at the time. When the article resurfaced on BoingBoing in 2010, Stoll left a self-deprecating comment: \"Of my many mistakes, flubs, and howlers, few have been as public as my 1995 howler....Now, whenever I think I know what's happening, I temper my thoughts: Might be wrong, Cliff...\"\n\nSee also \n Paul Krugman#Views on technology\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n 1997 Review by Eli T. Vestich\n\n1995 non-fiction books\nAmerican non-fiction books\nBooks about the Internet\nDoubleday (publisher) books"
] |
[
"Boston (band)",
"Death of Brad Delp (2007)",
"what was the depth of brad delp?",
"On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom,",
"why did he kill himself?",
"I don't know.",
"anything interesting about the article?",
"A concert in honor of Delp named \"Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp\" occurred on August 19, 2007,"
] | C_c61d7973b8b2435f80b9d464781ec3a2_0 | who performed? | 4 | Who performed in "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp"? | Boston (band) | On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whoever would find him. In the bathroom where he committed suicide, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police Lt. William Baldwin called the death "untimely" and said that no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancee, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning as evidenced by carboxyhemoglobin. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie. A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included, in order of appearance, Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston. All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page. Another former Boston vocalist, Fran Cosmo, was unable to sing because of a ruptured blood vessel in his throat, but did play guitar. Jim Masdea, Fran Sheehan, and even Barry Goudreau joined Scholz and the rest of the band on stage for the finale, "Don't Look Back". Curly Smith and Kimberley Dahme split the lead vocal on the finale. Sib Hashian, while present, refused to go on stage with the other Boston alumni, citing discomfort with Tom Scholz. CANNOTANSWER | Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston. | Boston is an American rock band from namesake Boston, Massachusetts, that had its most notable successes during the 1970s and '80s. The band's core members on their most popular recordings included multi-instrumentalist founder and leader Tom Scholz, who played the majority of instruments on the debut album, and lead vocalist Brad Delp, among a number of other musicians who varied from album to album. Boston's best-known songs include "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Foreplay/Long Time", "Rock and Roll Band", "Smokin'", "Don't Look Back", "A Man I'll Never Be", and "Amanda". The band has sold more than 75 million records worldwide, including 31 million albums in the United States, of which 17 million were from its self-titled debut album and seven million were for its second album, Don't Look Back, making the group one of the world's best-selling artists. Altogether, the band has released six studio albums over a career spanning over years. Boston was ranked the 63rd best hard rock artist by VH1.
After Delp's death in 2007, a number of other vocalists have taken the stage; currently the lead singer is Tommy DeCarlo. Other current members of the band include multi-instrumentalist and singer Beth Cohen, guitarist Gary Pihl, bassist Tracy Ferrie, drummer Jeff Neal and percussionist Curly Smith.
History
Early years (1969–1975)
Tom Scholz first started writing music in 1969 while he was attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he wrote an instrumental song, "Foreplay". While attending MIT, Scholz joined the band Freehold, where he met guitarist Barry Goudreau and drummer Jim Masdea, who would later become members of Boston. Vocalist Brad Delp was added to the collective in 1970. After graduating with a master's degree, Scholz worked for Polaroid, using his salary to build a recording studio in his basement, and to finance demo tapes recorded in professional recording studios. These early demo tapes were recorded with (at various times) Delp on vocals, Goudreau on guitar, Masdea on drums, and Scholz on guitar, bass and keyboards. The demo tapes were sent to record companies, but received consistent rejections. In 1973 Scholz formed the band Mother's Milk with Delp, Goudreau, and Masdea. That group disbanded by 1974, but Scholz subsequently worked with Masdea and Delp to produce six new demos, including "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Rock and Roll Band", "Something About You" (then entitled "Life Isn't Easy"), "Hitch a Ride" (then entitled "San Francisco Day"), and "Don't Be Afraid". Scholz stated they finished four of the six by the end of 1974, and they finished "More Than a Feeling" and "Something About You" in 1975. Scholz played all the instruments on the demos, except for the drums, which were played by Masdea, and used self-designed pedals to create the desired guitar sounds.
This final demo tape attracted the attention of promoters Paul Ahern and Charlie McKenzie. Masdea left the band around this time. According to Scholz, the managers insisted that Masdea had to be replaced before the band could get a recording deal. Years later, Delp told journalist Chuck Miller: "[Jim] actually told me he was losing interest in playing drums. I know Tom felt very bad when the whole thing happened. And then, of course, we started getting some interest." Scholz and Delp signed a deal with Epic Records after Masdea's departure, thanks to Ahern and McKenzie. Before the deal could be finalized, the band had to do a live audition for the record company executives. The duo recruited Goudreau on guitar, bassist Fran Sheehan and drummer Sib Hashian to create a performing unit which could replicate Scholz's richly layered recordings on stage. The showcase was a success and the band agreed to put out ten albums over the next six years.
In addition to the firing of Masdea, the record label insisted that Scholz re-record the demo tapes in a professional studio. However, Scholz wanted to record them in his basement studio so that he could work at his own pace. Scholz and producer John Boylan hatched a plan to send the rest of the band to Los Angeles to make the record label happy, while Scholz recorded most of Boston's debut album at home, with Masdea playing drums on the track "Rock and Roll Band" and Scholz playing the other instruments. The multitrack tapes were then brought to Los Angeles, where Delp added vocals and the album was mixed by Boylan. It was then that the band was named "Boston", by suggestion of Boylan and engineer Warren Dewey.
Boston and Don't Look Back (1976–1978)
The debut album, Boston, released on August 25, 1976, ranks as one of the best-selling debut albums in U.S. history with over 17 million copies sold.
During late summer and early fall of 1976, Boston attracted publicity due to the record sales. However, according to Cameron Crowe in Rolling Stone, there was "a conscious effort to de-emphasize Scholz as the total mastermind behind Boston". After opening for Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, Foghat and others in the fall, the band embarked on a headlining tour in the winter and spring of 1976–1977 to support the album. This helped establish Boston as one of rock's top acts within a short time, being nominated for a Grammy Award as a "Best New Artist". Boston was the first band in history to make their New York City debut at Madison Square Garden.
The album spawned three singles, "More Than a Feeling", "Long Time", and "Peace of Mind", all of which made the national charts. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and remained on the charts for 132 weeks.
Despite having problems with manager Paul Ahern, being caught in the middle of a fight between Ahern and his business partner Charles McKenzie, and doing most of the recording work alone, Scholz completed the second Boston album two years after the debut album's release. The second album, Don't Look Back, was released by Epic in August 1978. At the time this was considered a long gap between albums, but Scholz still considered Don't Look Back to be a rush job and was unhappy with the album's second side in particular. Overall, Don't Look Back sold about half as well as the debut album, eventually selling over 7 million records.
Another tour followed (playing with the likes of AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Sammy Hagar and The Doobie Brothers), and the album's title track became a top-5 hit. Additionally, two other singles, "A Man I'll Never Be" and "Feelin' Satisfied", went top 40 and top 50, respectively. Despite the success, Scholz's relationship with Ahern completely deteriorated. Delayed by technical renovations to his studio, Scholz eventually began the process of working on Boston's third album, determined to complete the album at his own pace and up to his demanding standard.
Solo projects and CBS lawsuit (1979–1985)
In late 1979, Scholz began writing new material, but Boston's former co-manager, Paul Ahern, argued that, according to an agreement Scholz had signed years earlier with Ahern, Ahern owned a percentage of all songs Scholz wrote from that point on. Delayed further by the dispute, Scholz suggested that in the meantime the individual members should work on whatever other projects they might be considering.
Goudreau then decided to record a solo album that featured Boston members Delp and Hashian, and which was recorded with the help of Paul Grupp, an engineer and producer familiar with Scholz's studio techniques. The album, released in 1980, was titled Barry Goudreau and featured the minor hit single "Dreams". There was tension when CBS's marketing connected Goudreau's solo album to Boston's signature guitar sound, despite Scholz not having played at all on this album. Scholz objected to the ad copy, but it became irrelevant when Epic dropped promotion on Goudreau's album citing lack of interest. Goudreau left the band in 1981 and formed Orion the Hunter. Delp contributed vocals and co-wrote songs on the debut album, but returned to Boston and recorded vocals on the third Boston album.
While Scholz and Delp were recording new material for the third Boston album, CBS filed a $60 million lawsuit against Scholz, alleging breach of contract for failing to deliver a new Boston album on time.
During this same period, Scholz founded his high-tech company Scholz Research & Development (SR&D), which made amplifiers and other musical electronic equipment. Its most famous product, the Rockman amplifier, was introduced in 1982.
The legal trouble slowed progress toward the completion of the next album, which took six years to record and produce. Joining Scholz in the album's development again were Delp and Jim Masdea. In 1985, guitarist Gary Pihl left Sammy Hagar's touring band to work with Scholz as both a musician and an SR&D executive. As CBS v. Scholz played out in court, CBS opted to withhold royalty payments to Scholz, hoping to force him to settle on unfavorable terms.
The lawsuit's first round was eventually decided in Scholz's favor, and Scholz moved the band to MCA Records.
The CBS case took seven years to run its course, and in April 1990 Scholz won.
Third Stage (1986–1988)
Despite the adversity, progress continued to be made on the third Boston album. A tape of one of the songs, "Amanda", leaked out of the studio in 1984. The song became the lead single when Third Stage was finally released on September 23, 1986.
The album topped the Billboard 200 while the lead single "Amanda" went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the subsequent singles "We're Ready" and "Can'tcha Say" reached No. 9 and No. 20, respectively. "Cool the Engines" also got significant airplay on rock radio. The album sold over 4 million copies.
The group headed off on tour to promote Third Stage in 1987 and 1988. Third Stage was played in sequence in its entirety during the shows, with expanded arrangements of some cuts. Boston opened with "Rock and Roll Band" and brought back the original drummer, Jim Masdea, to play drums for this one song. For the tour, the group was joined by Doug Huffman and David Sikes, both of whom stayed with the band into the mid-1990s.
Departure of Delp; Walk On (1989–1996)
By spring 1990, Scholz was back in the studio working on the band's fourth studio album. Later that year, Delp told Scholz he wanted to concentrate on other projects, and might not be available for some time. With Delp's departure, Scholz was then the last remaining original member. Before he left, Delp co-wrote with Scholz and David Sikes the song "Walk On", which eventually became the title track of the new album.
Delp subsequently joined Barry Goudreau's new band, RTZ. Scholz eventually replaced him with vocalist Fran Cosmo, who had been in Goudreau's previous band Orion the Hunter.
For the second album in a row, and for the second time in a decade, Scholz's work was delayed by renovations to his studio. In the end, eight years passed between Third Stage and Walk On, which was released in June 1994. Walk On was certified platinum by the RIAA, and reached No. 7 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. Unlike Boston's previous albums, it failed to chart in the top 5. It produced one hit single, "I Need Your Love", which was widely played on some rock radio stations. Delp reunited with Boston at the end of 1994. Their first appearance was for two benefit shows at the House of Blues on December 12–13, 1994, in Cambridge. The band also handed a check of $5,000 to Globe Santa and another check of $5,000 to Operation Christmas in Fall River.
The group, with Delp now back in the band, toured in the summer of 1995 with both Cosmo and Delp combining vocals. By that time drummer Huffman had been replaced by Curly Smith, who was previously with Jo Jo Gunne. Following the conclusion of the "Livin' For You" tour in 1995, Scholz announced that a greatest hits album would be released. Initially planned for release in August 1996, the album was pushed back to a 1997 release date.
Greatest Hits and Corporate America (1997–2006)
Boston released a compilation album in 1997, titled simply Boston: Greatest Hits. The album featured all of the band's hit singles except "We're Ready", "Can'tcha Say (You Believe In Me)/Still In Love", and "I Need Your Love" along with three new songs, "Higher Power", "Tell Me", and an instrumental version of the "Star Spangled Banner". Smith and Sikes left the band in late 1997 and recorded an album together.
Scholz headed back to the studio in 1998 to begin work on a fifth album, which eventually turned out to be Corporate America. The title track of "Corporate America" was uploaded by Tom Scholz to MP3.com under the pseudonym of "Downer's Revenge" in early 2002 in order to test the album's appeal to a younger demographic. The song reached No. 2 on the progressive rock charts on the website for two weeks.
November 2002 marked the release of Corporate America on the independent label Artemis Records. This album featured the largest Boston lineup ever; returning members included Delp and Cosmo on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Scholz on lead guitar and keyboards, and Gary Pihl on guitar, along with new members Anthony Cosmo on rhythm guitar, Jeff Neal on drums, and Kimberley Dahme on bass, acoustic guitar, and vocals. Dahme, Delp, and Cosmo all contributed lead vocals to the album. The group embarked on a national tour in support of the album in 2003 and 2004. In 2006, the first two Boston albums appeared in remastered form.
Death of Brad Delp (2007)
On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp died by suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whomever would find him. In the bathroom where he died, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door was sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police called the death "untimely" and said no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancée, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie.
A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston.
All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page.
New line-up and intermittent performances (2008–2012)
The ongoing conflicts among the surviving band members spilled over to the 2008 Presidential campaign. Barry Goudreau appeared with Mike Huckabee and played with him at some rallies in New Hampshire. Huckabee used "More Than a Feeling" as a campaign theme song. Scholz, a self-described "Obama supporter", sent an open letter to Huckabee in February 2008 stating that the band had never endorsed any candidate, and that he had never authorized the use of "More Than a Feeling" as Huckabee's theme song. Scholz made a point of saying that he, and not Goudreau or Sheehan, actually played all the guitars on "More Than a Feeling" as well as most of Boston's songs. Huckabee eventually stopped using the song for his campaign.
In the spring of 2008, Scholz and Sweet introduced a new Boston lineup, which subsequently did a North American summer tour, playing 53 dates in 12 weeks (on a double bill with Styx). Scholz was the only founding member of Boston to play on the tour, although longtime member Gary Pihl was also part of the band, and Dahme and Neal returned on bass and drums, respectively. DeCarlo and Sweet shared lead vocals.
In January 2009, Greatest Hits was re-released as a remastered disc.
Michael Sweet left the band in August 2011 in order to focus on Stryper. In 2012, guitarist and vocalist David Victor joined the band, beginning in the studio, where he contributed vocals to several tracks on the album in progress.
Scholz and Pihl led the band on a 2012 North American tour, beginning on June 28, 2012, at the Seminole Hard Rock Live arena in Hollywood, Florida and ending on September 8 at the U.S. Cellular Grandstand in Hutchinson, Kansas. Victor and DeCarlo shared lead vocals, with drummer Curly Smith returning for the first time in over a decade, and former Stryper member Tracy Ferrie on bass. Neither Dahme nor Neal played on the tour.
Life, Love & Hope (2013–2017)
Boston's sixth album, Life, Love & Hope, was released on December 3, 2013, by Frontiers Records; it includes lead vocals from Brad Delp, Tommy DeCarlo, Kimberley Dahme, David Victor, and Tom Scholz. Work on the album started in 2002. On December 11, 2013, Boston re-recorded a Christmas song, "God Rest Ye Metal Gentleman 2013" (previously released in 2002 as "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"). In 2014 Boston embarked on the "Heaven on Earth Tour" spanning the United States and Japan with a lineup including Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Victor and Ferrie. Dahme returned, this time performing rhythm guitar and vocals, and drumming duties were split between Neal and Smith, with Neal handling the first leg of the tour. Victor departed the lineup partway through the tour for unspecified reasons. In his stead, Siobhan Magnus joined the tour as a guest vocalist in July, performing lead vocals on 'Walk On'.
In 2015, Boston launched another tour with a lineup consisting of Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Ferrie and new member Beth Cohen, who performed keyboards, rhythm guitar and vocals. Cohen had previously recorded with the group on both Corporate America and Life, Love & Hope as a vocalist and flautist. Initially, the lineup was to include former Spock's Beard drummer and vocalist Nick D'Virgilio for its first month of shows, with Neal then returning, but D'Virgilio proved "not the right fit" and Smith rejoined in his place. This seven-person lineup proved Boston's most stable lineup in some time, touring as well in the summers of 2016 and 2017. The 2016 tour marked the group's 40th anniversary and included shows in Boston's Wang Theatre, their first full performances in their namesake town since 1994.
On March 22, 2017, former drummer Sib Hashian died after collapsing on a Legends of Rock cruise ship.
Upcoming seventh album (2017–present)
In April 2017, Scholz reported that he has been writing new material for the seventh Boston album. He told Sun Herald, "I find that I'm in a position that I really need to write things that we can play at the shows. We play basically everything that people expect to hear that we can fit into two hours. We also do a lot of things that aren't on any of the records by adding things and segues and instrumental parts, so I always have to come up with new stuff. It's quite a challenge. I have to write new things for the tour every year, which is what I wanted to do in the first place. But I got sidetracked in the studio, recording. Now, I'm actually a performing musician, and I have to tell you, it's much more fun." When asked the same month about a potential release date of the album, Scholz said, "Who knows? I'm only 70. I figure I've got 30 years."
Spaceship
One of the themes of Boston's album covers is the presence of a guitar-shaped spaceship, ostensibly a generation or colony ship carrying the city of Boston inside a clear dome, with the city's name emblazoned across the front. The original spaceship was designed in 1976 by Paula Scher and illustrated by Roger Huyssen with lettering by Gerard Huerta for Epic Records.
Appearances
Boston – Two long lines of guitar shaped starships flee a planet that is breaking apart. The ships all have blue flames coming out of the bottom.
Don't Look Back – The Boston ship is flying low or perhaps hovering over a grassy, crystalline planet. The ship has searchlights on.
Third Stage – The Boston ship is headed towards a large flat spaceship resembling a bank of pipe organ pipes over a blue planet.
Walk On – The Boston ship is shown crashing through a rock outcropping.
Greatest Hits – The Boston ship is flying low over a planet with turquoise rocks and a turquoise tower in the distance.
Corporate America – The Boston ship is flying towards Earth and the United States.
Life, Love & Hope – The Boston ship is flying in space, near a nebula.
Their spaceship also appeared on their tours in the late 1980s, early 1990s, and early 2000s in the form of a giant lighting rig and accompanied on stage by their giant pipe-organ set piece, which is known to Boston insiders as Bertha because of its sheer size.
Innovation and style
Boston's genre is considered by most to be hard rock and arena rock, while combining elements of progressive rock into its music.
Boston founder, guitarist, and primary songwriter Tom Scholz's blend of musical styles, ranging from classical to 1960s English pop, has resulted in a unique sound, most consistently realized on the first two albums (Boston and Don't Look Back). This sound is characterized by multiple lead and blended harmonies guitar work (usually harmonized in thirds), often alternating between and then mixing electric and acoustic guitars. The band's harmonic style has been characterized as being "violin-like" without using synthesizers. Scholz is well-regarded for the development of complex, multi-tracked guitar harmonies. Another contributing factor is the use of handmade, high-tech equipment, such as the Rockman, used by artists such as Journey guitarist Neal Schon, the band ZZ Top, and Ted Nugent. Def Leppard's album Hysteria was created using only Rockman technology. Scholz's production style combines deep, aggressive, comparatively short guitar riffing and nearly ethereal, generally longer note vocal harmonies. A heavier, lower, and darker overall approach came in the next two albums (Third Stage and Walk On). The original track "Higher Power", on the Greatest Hits album, exhibits a near Neue Deutsche Härte and almost techno influence with its sequencer-sounding keyboards, a sound most fully realized on Corporate America'''s title track.
Tom Scholz also credited the late Brad Delp with helping to create Boston's sound with his signature vocal style. Delp, who was strongly influenced by the Beatles, was well known for his extended vocal range, shown on hits such as "More Than a Feeling".
Band members
Current members
Tom Scholz – lead and rhythm guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, percussion, backing vocals (1976–present)
Gary Pihl – rhythm and lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1985–present)
Curly Smith – drums, percussion, harmonica, backing vocals (1994–1997, 2012–present)
Jeff Neal – drums, percussion, backing vocals (2002–2012, 2014–present)
Tommy DeCarlo – lead vocals, keyboards, percussion (2007–present)
Tracy Ferrie – bass guitar, backing vocals (2012–present)
Beth Cohen – keyboards, vocals, rhythm guitar (2002, 2012, 2015–present)
Discography
Studio albumsBoston (1976)Don't Look Back (1978)Third Stage (1986)Walk On (1994)Corporate America (2002)Life, Love & Hope (2013)
Compilation albumsGreatest Hits'' (1997)
References
External links
1976 establishments in Massachusetts
Epic Records artists
Hard rock musical groups from Massachusetts
MCA Records artists
Musical groups established in 1976
Musical groups from Boston | true | [
"Tvoje Lice Zvuči Poznato (; ) is a Serbian talent show based on the Spanish franchise Your Face Sounds Familiar. The show began October 12, 2013 on Prva TV.\n\nThe show involves ten celebrities (singers, actors, TV personalities and sportsmen) portraying various iconic singers every week to win a financial donation for their chosen charity.\n\nFormat\nEach celebrity gets transformed into a different musical performer, which is chosen by the show's \"Randomiser\", each week, and performs an iconic song and dance routine well known by that particular singer. Contestants are given an individual score based on their performance by each of the four judges. The points go between 2 and 12, with the exception of 11. Contestants also give five more bonus points to another fellow contestant of their choice. During the semi-final and final week viewers decide the winner via SMS vote.\n\nThe winner of each episode wins €1000, and the winner of the whole show wins €25000. All money goes to a charity of the winner's choice.\n\nJudges and presenters\nContestants are judged by the celebrity panel consisted of three main judges and, prior to the grand finale, a guest judge.\n\nThe initial panel consisted of TV presenter Ivan Ivanović, singer and vocal coach Marija Mihajlović and actress Katarina Radivojević, who was replaced by actor and musician Branko Đurić in the second series. Musician Vlado Georgiev and season one winner Ana Kokić then filled in during the third series alongside Ivanović. Đurić returned to the show in season four and was joined by comedian and actor Andrija Milošević and singer Aleksandra Radović. Series four saw actress Dubravka Mijatović, artist Uroš Đurić and composer Dušan Alagić as main judges.\n\nGuest judges have included Dragana Mirković, Lepa Brena, Slađana Milošević, Bora Đorđević, Miroslav Ilić, Aca Lukas, Severina, Kaliopi, Marija Šerifović, Željko Joksimović, Jelena Karleuša, Tony Cetinski, Nataša Bekvalac, Haris Džinović, Niggor, Karolina Gočeva, Tonči Huljić, Aleksandar Milić Mili, Tanja Bošković, Neda Arnerić, Milan Gutović, Milutin Karadžić, Sergej Trifunović, Hristina Popović, Ivan Bosiljčić, Mićko Ljubičić, Dejan Tomašević, Savo Milošević, Dušan Ivković, Nikola Rađen, etc.\n\nTV presenter Marija Kilibarda co-hosted the show with actors Petar Strugar in the first series and Bojan Ivković in the second and also all by herself in the third and fifth season. She was replaced by actress Nina Seničar during the series four.\n\nSeries overview\n\nOverall results of the show\n One of the participants had the honor of portraying one of the members of the jury, speaking directly in front of him:\nIn season 1, Goca Tržan performed in the image of Dragana Mirković (who gave 4 points), Tamara Dragičević performed in the image of Severina (who gave 5 points), Aleksa Jelić performed in the image of Miroslav Ilić (who gave 7 points) and Nataša Bekvalac (who gave 10 points), Wikluh Sky performed in the image of Marija Šerifović (who gave 10 points), Boris Milivojević performed in the image of Tony Cetinski (who gave 3 points).\nIn season 2, Zvonko Pantović Čipi performed in the image of Slađana Milošević (who gave 9 points), Tanja Savić performed in the image of Željko Joksimović (who gave 9 points), Neda Ukraden performed in the image of Kaliopi (who gave maximum 12 points).\nIn season 3, Bogoljub Mitić Đoša performed in the image of Knez (who gave 5 points) and Dragana Mirković (who gave minimum 2 points), Dara Bubamara performed in the image of Vlado Georgiev (who gave 9 points), Lepa Brena (who gave 6 points) and Aca Lukas (who gave 7 points), Katarina Ostojić Kaya performed in the image of Željko Joksimović (who gave 10 points).\nIn season 4, Nenad Pagonis performed in the image of Jelena Karleuša (who gave maximum 12 points), Mira Škorić performed in the image of Marija Šerifović (who gave maximum 12 points).\n Some participants portrayed their \"colleagues\":\nIn season 1, Boris Milivojević performed in the image of Ana Kokić, Wikluh Sky performed in the image of Željko Šašić, who performed in the image of Snežana Babić Sneki and Goca Tržan performed in the image of Knez.\nIn season 2, Ivan Jevtović performed in the image of Dragan Kojić Keba, Tanja Savić performed in the image of Neda Ukraden.\nIn season 3, Katarina Ostojić Kaya performed in the image of Ivana Peters, who performed in the image of Halid Muslimović, Neša Bridžis performed in the image of Dara Bubamara.\nIn season 4, Mira Škorić performed in the image of Edita Aradinović, who performed in the image of Tijana Dapčević, who performed in the image of Bebi Dol.\nIn season 5, Knez and Ivana Peters, Keba and Ana Kokić, Edita Aradinović and Željko Šašić performed in the image of each other.\n\nSee also\nSurvivor Srbija\nPles sa zvezdama\n\nReferences\n\nSerbian reality television series\nSerbia\n2013 Serbian television series debuts",
"Hip-Hop Forever III is the third compilation album in the \"Hip-Hop Forever\" series by DJ Jazzy Jeff, an American hip hop producer. The mix is available with or without an accompanying unmixed disc containing the same tracks.\n\nTrack listing\n\nDisc one: DJ Mix\n \"Tear Shit Up\"\n Performed by Biz Markie\n Featuring DJ Jazzy Jeff\n \"Passing Me By\"\n Performed by Pharcyde\n \"Whatever You Say\"\n Performed by Little Brother\n \"IJusWannaChill\"\n Performed by Large Professor\n \"Top Ten List\"\n Performed by Masta Ace\n \"Visualize\"\n Performed by Mr Complex\n \"Speed\"\n Performed by Little Brother\n \"Ebonics\"\n Performed by Big L\n \"Play Dis [Clean]\"\n Performed by Saukrates\n \"Players\"\n Performed by Slum Village\n \"Runnin'\"\n Performed by Pharcyde\n \"Fuck The Police\"\n Performed by Jay Dee\n \"Eric B. Is President\"\n Performed by Eric B. & Rakim\n \"Droppin' Science\"\n Performed by Marley Marl\n \"The ? Remains\"\n Performed by Gang Starr\n \"Mass Appeal\"\n Performed by Gang Starr\n \"Full Clip\"\n Performed by Gang Starr\n \"Boom\"\n Performed by Royce Da 5'9\"\n \"Award Tour\"\n Performed by A Tribe Called Quest\n \"Don't Nobody Care About Us\"\n Performed by Phat Kat\n \"Quiet Storm\"\n Performed by Mobb Deep\n \"Who Got Da Props?\"\n Performed by Black Moon\n \"Let's Get Dirty (I Can't Get In Da Club)\"\n Performed by Redman\n Featuring DJ Kool\n \"Choice Is Yours\"\n Performed by Black Sheep\n \"Lookin' At The Front Door\"\n Performed by Main Source\n \"Them That Not\"\n Performed by J-Live\n\nDisc two: Unmixed Disc\n \"Boom\"\n Performed by Royce Da 5'9\"\n Produced by DJ Premier\n \"The Best Part\"\n Performed by J-Live\n Produced by DJ Premier\n \"Them That's Not\"\n Performed by J-Live\n Produced by J-Live, Grap Luva\n \"Don't Nobody Care About Us\"\n Performed by Phat Kat\n Produced by Jay Dee\n \"Who Got The Props\"\n Performed by Black Moon\n Produced by Da Beatminerz\n \"Looking At The Front Door\"\n Performed by Main Source\n Produced by Main Source\n \"Top 10 List\"\n Performed by Masta Ace\n Produced by Saukrates\n \"Tear Shit Up\"\n Performed by Biz Markie\n Produced by M. Hall\n \"Visualize\"\n Performed by Mr. Complex\n Produced by DJ Spinna\n \"Quiet Storm\"\n Performed by Mobb Deep\n Produced by Havoc\n \"Eric B Is President\"\n Performed by Eric B & Rakim\n Produced by Eric B & Rakim\n \"Choice Is Yours\"\n Performed by Black Sheep\n Produced by Black Sheep\n \"Let's Get Dirty\"\n Performed by Redman\n Produced by Rockwilder\n \"Ebonics\"\n Performed by Big L\n Produced by Ron Browz\n \"Mass Appeal\"\n Performed by Gang Starr\n Produced by DJ Premier\n \"The ? Remains\"\n Performed by Gang Starr\n Produced by DJ Premier\n \"Players\"\n Performed by Slum Village\n Produced by Jay Dee\n \"Too Complex\"\n Performed by L Da Head Toucha\n Produced by Vinyl Reanimators\n \"Treat 'Em Right\"\n Performed by Chubb Rock\n Produced by Howie Tee\n\nExternal links\n DJ Jazzy Jeff official site\n DJ Jazzy Jeff on MySpace\n DJ Jazzy Jeff on BBE Records\n BBE Records official site\n\nDJ Jazzy Jeff albums\n2006 albums"
] |
[
"Boston (band)",
"Death of Brad Delp (2007)",
"what was the depth of brad delp?",
"On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom,",
"why did he kill himself?",
"I don't know.",
"anything interesting about the article?",
"A concert in honor of Delp named \"Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp\" occurred on August 19, 2007,",
"who performed?",
"Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston."
] | C_c61d7973b8b2435f80b9d464781ec3a2_0 | why did they perform? | 5 | Why did Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and the current version of Boston perfom? | Boston (band) | On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whoever would find him. In the bathroom where he committed suicide, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police Lt. William Baldwin called the death "untimely" and said that no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancee, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning as evidenced by carboxyhemoglobin. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie. A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included, in order of appearance, Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston. All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page. Another former Boston vocalist, Fran Cosmo, was unable to sing because of a ruptured blood vessel in his throat, but did play guitar. Jim Masdea, Fran Sheehan, and even Barry Goudreau joined Scholz and the rest of the band on stage for the finale, "Don't Look Back". Curly Smith and Kimberley Dahme split the lead vocal on the finale. Sib Hashian, while present, refused to go on stage with the other Boston alumni, citing discomfort with Tom Scholz. CANNOTANSWER | A concert in honor of Delp | Boston is an American rock band from namesake Boston, Massachusetts, that had its most notable successes during the 1970s and '80s. The band's core members on their most popular recordings included multi-instrumentalist founder and leader Tom Scholz, who played the majority of instruments on the debut album, and lead vocalist Brad Delp, among a number of other musicians who varied from album to album. Boston's best-known songs include "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Foreplay/Long Time", "Rock and Roll Band", "Smokin'", "Don't Look Back", "A Man I'll Never Be", and "Amanda". The band has sold more than 75 million records worldwide, including 31 million albums in the United States, of which 17 million were from its self-titled debut album and seven million were for its second album, Don't Look Back, making the group one of the world's best-selling artists. Altogether, the band has released six studio albums over a career spanning over years. Boston was ranked the 63rd best hard rock artist by VH1.
After Delp's death in 2007, a number of other vocalists have taken the stage; currently the lead singer is Tommy DeCarlo. Other current members of the band include multi-instrumentalist and singer Beth Cohen, guitarist Gary Pihl, bassist Tracy Ferrie, drummer Jeff Neal and percussionist Curly Smith.
History
Early years (1969–1975)
Tom Scholz first started writing music in 1969 while he was attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he wrote an instrumental song, "Foreplay". While attending MIT, Scholz joined the band Freehold, where he met guitarist Barry Goudreau and drummer Jim Masdea, who would later become members of Boston. Vocalist Brad Delp was added to the collective in 1970. After graduating with a master's degree, Scholz worked for Polaroid, using his salary to build a recording studio in his basement, and to finance demo tapes recorded in professional recording studios. These early demo tapes were recorded with (at various times) Delp on vocals, Goudreau on guitar, Masdea on drums, and Scholz on guitar, bass and keyboards. The demo tapes were sent to record companies, but received consistent rejections. In 1973 Scholz formed the band Mother's Milk with Delp, Goudreau, and Masdea. That group disbanded by 1974, but Scholz subsequently worked with Masdea and Delp to produce six new demos, including "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Rock and Roll Band", "Something About You" (then entitled "Life Isn't Easy"), "Hitch a Ride" (then entitled "San Francisco Day"), and "Don't Be Afraid". Scholz stated they finished four of the six by the end of 1974, and they finished "More Than a Feeling" and "Something About You" in 1975. Scholz played all the instruments on the demos, except for the drums, which were played by Masdea, and used self-designed pedals to create the desired guitar sounds.
This final demo tape attracted the attention of promoters Paul Ahern and Charlie McKenzie. Masdea left the band around this time. According to Scholz, the managers insisted that Masdea had to be replaced before the band could get a recording deal. Years later, Delp told journalist Chuck Miller: "[Jim] actually told me he was losing interest in playing drums. I know Tom felt very bad when the whole thing happened. And then, of course, we started getting some interest." Scholz and Delp signed a deal with Epic Records after Masdea's departure, thanks to Ahern and McKenzie. Before the deal could be finalized, the band had to do a live audition for the record company executives. The duo recruited Goudreau on guitar, bassist Fran Sheehan and drummer Sib Hashian to create a performing unit which could replicate Scholz's richly layered recordings on stage. The showcase was a success and the band agreed to put out ten albums over the next six years.
In addition to the firing of Masdea, the record label insisted that Scholz re-record the demo tapes in a professional studio. However, Scholz wanted to record them in his basement studio so that he could work at his own pace. Scholz and producer John Boylan hatched a plan to send the rest of the band to Los Angeles to make the record label happy, while Scholz recorded most of Boston's debut album at home, with Masdea playing drums on the track "Rock and Roll Band" and Scholz playing the other instruments. The multitrack tapes were then brought to Los Angeles, where Delp added vocals and the album was mixed by Boylan. It was then that the band was named "Boston", by suggestion of Boylan and engineer Warren Dewey.
Boston and Don't Look Back (1976–1978)
The debut album, Boston, released on August 25, 1976, ranks as one of the best-selling debut albums in U.S. history with over 17 million copies sold.
During late summer and early fall of 1976, Boston attracted publicity due to the record sales. However, according to Cameron Crowe in Rolling Stone, there was "a conscious effort to de-emphasize Scholz as the total mastermind behind Boston". After opening for Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, Foghat and others in the fall, the band embarked on a headlining tour in the winter and spring of 1976–1977 to support the album. This helped establish Boston as one of rock's top acts within a short time, being nominated for a Grammy Award as a "Best New Artist". Boston was the first band in history to make their New York City debut at Madison Square Garden.
The album spawned three singles, "More Than a Feeling", "Long Time", and "Peace of Mind", all of which made the national charts. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and remained on the charts for 132 weeks.
Despite having problems with manager Paul Ahern, being caught in the middle of a fight between Ahern and his business partner Charles McKenzie, and doing most of the recording work alone, Scholz completed the second Boston album two years after the debut album's release. The second album, Don't Look Back, was released by Epic in August 1978. At the time this was considered a long gap between albums, but Scholz still considered Don't Look Back to be a rush job and was unhappy with the album's second side in particular. Overall, Don't Look Back sold about half as well as the debut album, eventually selling over 7 million records.
Another tour followed (playing with the likes of AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Sammy Hagar and The Doobie Brothers), and the album's title track became a top-5 hit. Additionally, two other singles, "A Man I'll Never Be" and "Feelin' Satisfied", went top 40 and top 50, respectively. Despite the success, Scholz's relationship with Ahern completely deteriorated. Delayed by technical renovations to his studio, Scholz eventually began the process of working on Boston's third album, determined to complete the album at his own pace and up to his demanding standard.
Solo projects and CBS lawsuit (1979–1985)
In late 1979, Scholz began writing new material, but Boston's former co-manager, Paul Ahern, argued that, according to an agreement Scholz had signed years earlier with Ahern, Ahern owned a percentage of all songs Scholz wrote from that point on. Delayed further by the dispute, Scholz suggested that in the meantime the individual members should work on whatever other projects they might be considering.
Goudreau then decided to record a solo album that featured Boston members Delp and Hashian, and which was recorded with the help of Paul Grupp, an engineer and producer familiar with Scholz's studio techniques. The album, released in 1980, was titled Barry Goudreau and featured the minor hit single "Dreams". There was tension when CBS's marketing connected Goudreau's solo album to Boston's signature guitar sound, despite Scholz not having played at all on this album. Scholz objected to the ad copy, but it became irrelevant when Epic dropped promotion on Goudreau's album citing lack of interest. Goudreau left the band in 1981 and formed Orion the Hunter. Delp contributed vocals and co-wrote songs on the debut album, but returned to Boston and recorded vocals on the third Boston album.
While Scholz and Delp were recording new material for the third Boston album, CBS filed a $60 million lawsuit against Scholz, alleging breach of contract for failing to deliver a new Boston album on time.
During this same period, Scholz founded his high-tech company Scholz Research & Development (SR&D), which made amplifiers and other musical electronic equipment. Its most famous product, the Rockman amplifier, was introduced in 1982.
The legal trouble slowed progress toward the completion of the next album, which took six years to record and produce. Joining Scholz in the album's development again were Delp and Jim Masdea. In 1985, guitarist Gary Pihl left Sammy Hagar's touring band to work with Scholz as both a musician and an SR&D executive. As CBS v. Scholz played out in court, CBS opted to withhold royalty payments to Scholz, hoping to force him to settle on unfavorable terms.
The lawsuit's first round was eventually decided in Scholz's favor, and Scholz moved the band to MCA Records.
The CBS case took seven years to run its course, and in April 1990 Scholz won.
Third Stage (1986–1988)
Despite the adversity, progress continued to be made on the third Boston album. A tape of one of the songs, "Amanda", leaked out of the studio in 1984. The song became the lead single when Third Stage was finally released on September 23, 1986.
The album topped the Billboard 200 while the lead single "Amanda" went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the subsequent singles "We're Ready" and "Can'tcha Say" reached No. 9 and No. 20, respectively. "Cool the Engines" also got significant airplay on rock radio. The album sold over 4 million copies.
The group headed off on tour to promote Third Stage in 1987 and 1988. Third Stage was played in sequence in its entirety during the shows, with expanded arrangements of some cuts. Boston opened with "Rock and Roll Band" and brought back the original drummer, Jim Masdea, to play drums for this one song. For the tour, the group was joined by Doug Huffman and David Sikes, both of whom stayed with the band into the mid-1990s.
Departure of Delp; Walk On (1989–1996)
By spring 1990, Scholz was back in the studio working on the band's fourth studio album. Later that year, Delp told Scholz he wanted to concentrate on other projects, and might not be available for some time. With Delp's departure, Scholz was then the last remaining original member. Before he left, Delp co-wrote with Scholz and David Sikes the song "Walk On", which eventually became the title track of the new album.
Delp subsequently joined Barry Goudreau's new band, RTZ. Scholz eventually replaced him with vocalist Fran Cosmo, who had been in Goudreau's previous band Orion the Hunter.
For the second album in a row, and for the second time in a decade, Scholz's work was delayed by renovations to his studio. In the end, eight years passed between Third Stage and Walk On, which was released in June 1994. Walk On was certified platinum by the RIAA, and reached No. 7 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. Unlike Boston's previous albums, it failed to chart in the top 5. It produced one hit single, "I Need Your Love", which was widely played on some rock radio stations. Delp reunited with Boston at the end of 1994. Their first appearance was for two benefit shows at the House of Blues on December 12–13, 1994, in Cambridge. The band also handed a check of $5,000 to Globe Santa and another check of $5,000 to Operation Christmas in Fall River.
The group, with Delp now back in the band, toured in the summer of 1995 with both Cosmo and Delp combining vocals. By that time drummer Huffman had been replaced by Curly Smith, who was previously with Jo Jo Gunne. Following the conclusion of the "Livin' For You" tour in 1995, Scholz announced that a greatest hits album would be released. Initially planned for release in August 1996, the album was pushed back to a 1997 release date.
Greatest Hits and Corporate America (1997–2006)
Boston released a compilation album in 1997, titled simply Boston: Greatest Hits. The album featured all of the band's hit singles except "We're Ready", "Can'tcha Say (You Believe In Me)/Still In Love", and "I Need Your Love" along with three new songs, "Higher Power", "Tell Me", and an instrumental version of the "Star Spangled Banner". Smith and Sikes left the band in late 1997 and recorded an album together.
Scholz headed back to the studio in 1998 to begin work on a fifth album, which eventually turned out to be Corporate America. The title track of "Corporate America" was uploaded by Tom Scholz to MP3.com under the pseudonym of "Downer's Revenge" in early 2002 in order to test the album's appeal to a younger demographic. The song reached No. 2 on the progressive rock charts on the website for two weeks.
November 2002 marked the release of Corporate America on the independent label Artemis Records. This album featured the largest Boston lineup ever; returning members included Delp and Cosmo on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Scholz on lead guitar and keyboards, and Gary Pihl on guitar, along with new members Anthony Cosmo on rhythm guitar, Jeff Neal on drums, and Kimberley Dahme on bass, acoustic guitar, and vocals. Dahme, Delp, and Cosmo all contributed lead vocals to the album. The group embarked on a national tour in support of the album in 2003 and 2004. In 2006, the first two Boston albums appeared in remastered form.
Death of Brad Delp (2007)
On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp died by suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whomever would find him. In the bathroom where he died, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door was sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police called the death "untimely" and said no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancée, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie.
A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston.
All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page.
New line-up and intermittent performances (2008–2012)
The ongoing conflicts among the surviving band members spilled over to the 2008 Presidential campaign. Barry Goudreau appeared with Mike Huckabee and played with him at some rallies in New Hampshire. Huckabee used "More Than a Feeling" as a campaign theme song. Scholz, a self-described "Obama supporter", sent an open letter to Huckabee in February 2008 stating that the band had never endorsed any candidate, and that he had never authorized the use of "More Than a Feeling" as Huckabee's theme song. Scholz made a point of saying that he, and not Goudreau or Sheehan, actually played all the guitars on "More Than a Feeling" as well as most of Boston's songs. Huckabee eventually stopped using the song for his campaign.
In the spring of 2008, Scholz and Sweet introduced a new Boston lineup, which subsequently did a North American summer tour, playing 53 dates in 12 weeks (on a double bill with Styx). Scholz was the only founding member of Boston to play on the tour, although longtime member Gary Pihl was also part of the band, and Dahme and Neal returned on bass and drums, respectively. DeCarlo and Sweet shared lead vocals.
In January 2009, Greatest Hits was re-released as a remastered disc.
Michael Sweet left the band in August 2011 in order to focus on Stryper. In 2012, guitarist and vocalist David Victor joined the band, beginning in the studio, where he contributed vocals to several tracks on the album in progress.
Scholz and Pihl led the band on a 2012 North American tour, beginning on June 28, 2012, at the Seminole Hard Rock Live arena in Hollywood, Florida and ending on September 8 at the U.S. Cellular Grandstand in Hutchinson, Kansas. Victor and DeCarlo shared lead vocals, with drummer Curly Smith returning for the first time in over a decade, and former Stryper member Tracy Ferrie on bass. Neither Dahme nor Neal played on the tour.
Life, Love & Hope (2013–2017)
Boston's sixth album, Life, Love & Hope, was released on December 3, 2013, by Frontiers Records; it includes lead vocals from Brad Delp, Tommy DeCarlo, Kimberley Dahme, David Victor, and Tom Scholz. Work on the album started in 2002. On December 11, 2013, Boston re-recorded a Christmas song, "God Rest Ye Metal Gentleman 2013" (previously released in 2002 as "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"). In 2014 Boston embarked on the "Heaven on Earth Tour" spanning the United States and Japan with a lineup including Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Victor and Ferrie. Dahme returned, this time performing rhythm guitar and vocals, and drumming duties were split between Neal and Smith, with Neal handling the first leg of the tour. Victor departed the lineup partway through the tour for unspecified reasons. In his stead, Siobhan Magnus joined the tour as a guest vocalist in July, performing lead vocals on 'Walk On'.
In 2015, Boston launched another tour with a lineup consisting of Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Ferrie and new member Beth Cohen, who performed keyboards, rhythm guitar and vocals. Cohen had previously recorded with the group on both Corporate America and Life, Love & Hope as a vocalist and flautist. Initially, the lineup was to include former Spock's Beard drummer and vocalist Nick D'Virgilio for its first month of shows, with Neal then returning, but D'Virgilio proved "not the right fit" and Smith rejoined in his place. This seven-person lineup proved Boston's most stable lineup in some time, touring as well in the summers of 2016 and 2017. The 2016 tour marked the group's 40th anniversary and included shows in Boston's Wang Theatre, their first full performances in their namesake town since 1994.
On March 22, 2017, former drummer Sib Hashian died after collapsing on a Legends of Rock cruise ship.
Upcoming seventh album (2017–present)
In April 2017, Scholz reported that he has been writing new material for the seventh Boston album. He told Sun Herald, "I find that I'm in a position that I really need to write things that we can play at the shows. We play basically everything that people expect to hear that we can fit into two hours. We also do a lot of things that aren't on any of the records by adding things and segues and instrumental parts, so I always have to come up with new stuff. It's quite a challenge. I have to write new things for the tour every year, which is what I wanted to do in the first place. But I got sidetracked in the studio, recording. Now, I'm actually a performing musician, and I have to tell you, it's much more fun." When asked the same month about a potential release date of the album, Scholz said, "Who knows? I'm only 70. I figure I've got 30 years."
Spaceship
One of the themes of Boston's album covers is the presence of a guitar-shaped spaceship, ostensibly a generation or colony ship carrying the city of Boston inside a clear dome, with the city's name emblazoned across the front. The original spaceship was designed in 1976 by Paula Scher and illustrated by Roger Huyssen with lettering by Gerard Huerta for Epic Records.
Appearances
Boston – Two long lines of guitar shaped starships flee a planet that is breaking apart. The ships all have blue flames coming out of the bottom.
Don't Look Back – The Boston ship is flying low or perhaps hovering over a grassy, crystalline planet. The ship has searchlights on.
Third Stage – The Boston ship is headed towards a large flat spaceship resembling a bank of pipe organ pipes over a blue planet.
Walk On – The Boston ship is shown crashing through a rock outcropping.
Greatest Hits – The Boston ship is flying low over a planet with turquoise rocks and a turquoise tower in the distance.
Corporate America – The Boston ship is flying towards Earth and the United States.
Life, Love & Hope – The Boston ship is flying in space, near a nebula.
Their spaceship also appeared on their tours in the late 1980s, early 1990s, and early 2000s in the form of a giant lighting rig and accompanied on stage by their giant pipe-organ set piece, which is known to Boston insiders as Bertha because of its sheer size.
Innovation and style
Boston's genre is considered by most to be hard rock and arena rock, while combining elements of progressive rock into its music.
Boston founder, guitarist, and primary songwriter Tom Scholz's blend of musical styles, ranging from classical to 1960s English pop, has resulted in a unique sound, most consistently realized on the first two albums (Boston and Don't Look Back). This sound is characterized by multiple lead and blended harmonies guitar work (usually harmonized in thirds), often alternating between and then mixing electric and acoustic guitars. The band's harmonic style has been characterized as being "violin-like" without using synthesizers. Scholz is well-regarded for the development of complex, multi-tracked guitar harmonies. Another contributing factor is the use of handmade, high-tech equipment, such as the Rockman, used by artists such as Journey guitarist Neal Schon, the band ZZ Top, and Ted Nugent. Def Leppard's album Hysteria was created using only Rockman technology. Scholz's production style combines deep, aggressive, comparatively short guitar riffing and nearly ethereal, generally longer note vocal harmonies. A heavier, lower, and darker overall approach came in the next two albums (Third Stage and Walk On). The original track "Higher Power", on the Greatest Hits album, exhibits a near Neue Deutsche Härte and almost techno influence with its sequencer-sounding keyboards, a sound most fully realized on Corporate America'''s title track.
Tom Scholz also credited the late Brad Delp with helping to create Boston's sound with his signature vocal style. Delp, who was strongly influenced by the Beatles, was well known for his extended vocal range, shown on hits such as "More Than a Feeling".
Band members
Current members
Tom Scholz – lead and rhythm guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, percussion, backing vocals (1976–present)
Gary Pihl – rhythm and lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1985–present)
Curly Smith – drums, percussion, harmonica, backing vocals (1994–1997, 2012–present)
Jeff Neal – drums, percussion, backing vocals (2002–2012, 2014–present)
Tommy DeCarlo – lead vocals, keyboards, percussion (2007–present)
Tracy Ferrie – bass guitar, backing vocals (2012–present)
Beth Cohen – keyboards, vocals, rhythm guitar (2002, 2012, 2015–present)
Discography
Studio albumsBoston (1976)Don't Look Back (1978)Third Stage (1986)Walk On (1994)Corporate America (2002)Life, Love & Hope (2013)
Compilation albumsGreatest Hits'' (1997)
References
External links
1976 establishments in Massachusetts
Epic Records artists
Hard rock musical groups from Massachusetts
MCA Records artists
Musical groups established in 1976
Musical groups from Boston | true | [
"\"The Reason Why\" is a song by Italian singer-songwriter Lorenzo Fragola, released as his debut single on 5 December 2015, during the week preceding the final of the eight series of Italian talent show X Factor, which was won by Fragola himself.\n\nThe song was written by Fragola with Michelle Lily Popovic and Fausto Cogliati. The latter also served as the song's producer.\n\nBackground\nFragola started composing the song a few years before it was completed, during a summer holiday when some friends asked him to write a song as a joke while they played the guitar together. He later continued to work on the track, and he chose to perform it during the auditions for the eighth series of X Factor. On 4 December 2016, during the semi-final of the show, each contestant was required to perform a previously unreleased track, and Fragola chose to perform \"The Reason Why\". The following day, the song was released as a single, together with the other contestant's entries. \"The Reason Why\" later allowed Fragola to win the X Factor series, on 11 December 2014.\n\nWriting for Italian magazine Panorama, Gianni Poglio described \"The Reason Why\", as a \"pop song written to receive airplay, incisive, immediate, without being trivial\". Critics including Alessandro Alicandri and la Repubblicas Anna Puricella also compared the song's sound to the work of British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran.\n\nTrack listing\n Digital download'\n \"The Reason Why\" – 3:02\n\nCharts\n\nCertifications\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\n2014 songs\n2014 debut singles\nEnglish-language Italian songs\nItalian songs\nNumber-one singles in Italy\nX Factor (Italian TV series)",
"The Carpenters' Very First Television Special was Richard and Karen Carpenter's first television special produced in the US, airing on December 8, 1976, and their second overall, following a special for BBC Television five years earlier.\n\nThe Carpenters performed a variety of sketches with guest stars Victor Borge and John Denver. It ended with a hits medley (which can be found without applause on the CD As Time Goes By).\n\nThe Skits\nAfter Karen, Richard and the orchestra perform \"We've Only Just Begun\", they show a clip of Richard conducting the orchestra playing a different version of \"We've Only Just Begun\", with Karen's voice-over talking about how much Richard loves conducting orchestras. After the orchestra's finished, the Carpenters performed \"Top of the World\", which can be found on the VHS Yesterday Once More (repackaged as Gold: Greatest Hits on DVD in 2002).\n\nOn top of that, Richard and Karen perform a \"Spike Jones and the City Slickers\" style parody version of \"(They Long to Be) Close to You\", beginning with a harp introduction. The duo also performed \"These Are the Jokes\" on the same set as the one of \"Top of the World\", only with a black background instead of a blue background.\n\nJohn Denver and Karen Carpenter did a duet together of a medley consisting of a cleaned up version of Robert Burns' \"Comin' Through the Rye\" and the Beach Boys' \"Good Vibrations\". The amazing thing about this medley is that in parts, Denver may be singing \"Comin' Through the Rye\", while Carpenter sings \"Good Vibrations\".\n\nThey did a skit of Karen's drumming talent as well. It begins with Richard and Karen talking about why Karen played the drums, and Karen says, \"Why not!!\" Then, they reminisce to the high school days, where classmate John Denver played the drums in the high school band, and Karen was stuck with the glockenspiel. They told how Karen obtained the drums, and fell in love with it immediately. After that scene, Karen plays a medley including \"Strike Up the Band\" and \"'S Wonderful\".\n\nIn the end, the band and the orchestra combined, and performed a Hits Medley to close the show.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\nThe Carpenters\n1976 television specials\n1970s American television specials"
] |
[
"Boston (band)",
"Death of Brad Delp (2007)",
"what was the depth of brad delp?",
"On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom,",
"why did he kill himself?",
"I don't know.",
"anything interesting about the article?",
"A concert in honor of Delp named \"Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp\" occurred on August 19, 2007,",
"who performed?",
"Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston.",
"why did they perform?",
"A concert in honor of Delp"
] | C_c61d7973b8b2435f80b9d464781ec3a2_0 | when was the concert? | 6 | When was the concert in honor of Delp? | Boston (band) | On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whoever would find him. In the bathroom where he committed suicide, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police Lt. William Baldwin called the death "untimely" and said that no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancee, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning as evidenced by carboxyhemoglobin. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie. A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included, in order of appearance, Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston. All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page. Another former Boston vocalist, Fran Cosmo, was unable to sing because of a ruptured blood vessel in his throat, but did play guitar. Jim Masdea, Fran Sheehan, and even Barry Goudreau joined Scholz and the rest of the band on stage for the finale, "Don't Look Back". Curly Smith and Kimberley Dahme split the lead vocal on the finale. Sib Hashian, while present, refused to go on stage with the other Boston alumni, citing discomfort with Tom Scholz. CANNOTANSWER | August 19, 2007, | Boston is an American rock band from namesake Boston, Massachusetts, that had its most notable successes during the 1970s and '80s. The band's core members on their most popular recordings included multi-instrumentalist founder and leader Tom Scholz, who played the majority of instruments on the debut album, and lead vocalist Brad Delp, among a number of other musicians who varied from album to album. Boston's best-known songs include "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Foreplay/Long Time", "Rock and Roll Band", "Smokin'", "Don't Look Back", "A Man I'll Never Be", and "Amanda". The band has sold more than 75 million records worldwide, including 31 million albums in the United States, of which 17 million were from its self-titled debut album and seven million were for its second album, Don't Look Back, making the group one of the world's best-selling artists. Altogether, the band has released six studio albums over a career spanning over years. Boston was ranked the 63rd best hard rock artist by VH1.
After Delp's death in 2007, a number of other vocalists have taken the stage; currently the lead singer is Tommy DeCarlo. Other current members of the band include multi-instrumentalist and singer Beth Cohen, guitarist Gary Pihl, bassist Tracy Ferrie, drummer Jeff Neal and percussionist Curly Smith.
History
Early years (1969–1975)
Tom Scholz first started writing music in 1969 while he was attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he wrote an instrumental song, "Foreplay". While attending MIT, Scholz joined the band Freehold, where he met guitarist Barry Goudreau and drummer Jim Masdea, who would later become members of Boston. Vocalist Brad Delp was added to the collective in 1970. After graduating with a master's degree, Scholz worked for Polaroid, using his salary to build a recording studio in his basement, and to finance demo tapes recorded in professional recording studios. These early demo tapes were recorded with (at various times) Delp on vocals, Goudreau on guitar, Masdea on drums, and Scholz on guitar, bass and keyboards. The demo tapes were sent to record companies, but received consistent rejections. In 1973 Scholz formed the band Mother's Milk with Delp, Goudreau, and Masdea. That group disbanded by 1974, but Scholz subsequently worked with Masdea and Delp to produce six new demos, including "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Rock and Roll Band", "Something About You" (then entitled "Life Isn't Easy"), "Hitch a Ride" (then entitled "San Francisco Day"), and "Don't Be Afraid". Scholz stated they finished four of the six by the end of 1974, and they finished "More Than a Feeling" and "Something About You" in 1975. Scholz played all the instruments on the demos, except for the drums, which were played by Masdea, and used self-designed pedals to create the desired guitar sounds.
This final demo tape attracted the attention of promoters Paul Ahern and Charlie McKenzie. Masdea left the band around this time. According to Scholz, the managers insisted that Masdea had to be replaced before the band could get a recording deal. Years later, Delp told journalist Chuck Miller: "[Jim] actually told me he was losing interest in playing drums. I know Tom felt very bad when the whole thing happened. And then, of course, we started getting some interest." Scholz and Delp signed a deal with Epic Records after Masdea's departure, thanks to Ahern and McKenzie. Before the deal could be finalized, the band had to do a live audition for the record company executives. The duo recruited Goudreau on guitar, bassist Fran Sheehan and drummer Sib Hashian to create a performing unit which could replicate Scholz's richly layered recordings on stage. The showcase was a success and the band agreed to put out ten albums over the next six years.
In addition to the firing of Masdea, the record label insisted that Scholz re-record the demo tapes in a professional studio. However, Scholz wanted to record them in his basement studio so that he could work at his own pace. Scholz and producer John Boylan hatched a plan to send the rest of the band to Los Angeles to make the record label happy, while Scholz recorded most of Boston's debut album at home, with Masdea playing drums on the track "Rock and Roll Band" and Scholz playing the other instruments. The multitrack tapes were then brought to Los Angeles, where Delp added vocals and the album was mixed by Boylan. It was then that the band was named "Boston", by suggestion of Boylan and engineer Warren Dewey.
Boston and Don't Look Back (1976–1978)
The debut album, Boston, released on August 25, 1976, ranks as one of the best-selling debut albums in U.S. history with over 17 million copies sold.
During late summer and early fall of 1976, Boston attracted publicity due to the record sales. However, according to Cameron Crowe in Rolling Stone, there was "a conscious effort to de-emphasize Scholz as the total mastermind behind Boston". After opening for Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, Foghat and others in the fall, the band embarked on a headlining tour in the winter and spring of 1976–1977 to support the album. This helped establish Boston as one of rock's top acts within a short time, being nominated for a Grammy Award as a "Best New Artist". Boston was the first band in history to make their New York City debut at Madison Square Garden.
The album spawned three singles, "More Than a Feeling", "Long Time", and "Peace of Mind", all of which made the national charts. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and remained on the charts for 132 weeks.
Despite having problems with manager Paul Ahern, being caught in the middle of a fight between Ahern and his business partner Charles McKenzie, and doing most of the recording work alone, Scholz completed the second Boston album two years after the debut album's release. The second album, Don't Look Back, was released by Epic in August 1978. At the time this was considered a long gap between albums, but Scholz still considered Don't Look Back to be a rush job and was unhappy with the album's second side in particular. Overall, Don't Look Back sold about half as well as the debut album, eventually selling over 7 million records.
Another tour followed (playing with the likes of AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Sammy Hagar and The Doobie Brothers), and the album's title track became a top-5 hit. Additionally, two other singles, "A Man I'll Never Be" and "Feelin' Satisfied", went top 40 and top 50, respectively. Despite the success, Scholz's relationship with Ahern completely deteriorated. Delayed by technical renovations to his studio, Scholz eventually began the process of working on Boston's third album, determined to complete the album at his own pace and up to his demanding standard.
Solo projects and CBS lawsuit (1979–1985)
In late 1979, Scholz began writing new material, but Boston's former co-manager, Paul Ahern, argued that, according to an agreement Scholz had signed years earlier with Ahern, Ahern owned a percentage of all songs Scholz wrote from that point on. Delayed further by the dispute, Scholz suggested that in the meantime the individual members should work on whatever other projects they might be considering.
Goudreau then decided to record a solo album that featured Boston members Delp and Hashian, and which was recorded with the help of Paul Grupp, an engineer and producer familiar with Scholz's studio techniques. The album, released in 1980, was titled Barry Goudreau and featured the minor hit single "Dreams". There was tension when CBS's marketing connected Goudreau's solo album to Boston's signature guitar sound, despite Scholz not having played at all on this album. Scholz objected to the ad copy, but it became irrelevant when Epic dropped promotion on Goudreau's album citing lack of interest. Goudreau left the band in 1981 and formed Orion the Hunter. Delp contributed vocals and co-wrote songs on the debut album, but returned to Boston and recorded vocals on the third Boston album.
While Scholz and Delp were recording new material for the third Boston album, CBS filed a $60 million lawsuit against Scholz, alleging breach of contract for failing to deliver a new Boston album on time.
During this same period, Scholz founded his high-tech company Scholz Research & Development (SR&D), which made amplifiers and other musical electronic equipment. Its most famous product, the Rockman amplifier, was introduced in 1982.
The legal trouble slowed progress toward the completion of the next album, which took six years to record and produce. Joining Scholz in the album's development again were Delp and Jim Masdea. In 1985, guitarist Gary Pihl left Sammy Hagar's touring band to work with Scholz as both a musician and an SR&D executive. As CBS v. Scholz played out in court, CBS opted to withhold royalty payments to Scholz, hoping to force him to settle on unfavorable terms.
The lawsuit's first round was eventually decided in Scholz's favor, and Scholz moved the band to MCA Records.
The CBS case took seven years to run its course, and in April 1990 Scholz won.
Third Stage (1986–1988)
Despite the adversity, progress continued to be made on the third Boston album. A tape of one of the songs, "Amanda", leaked out of the studio in 1984. The song became the lead single when Third Stage was finally released on September 23, 1986.
The album topped the Billboard 200 while the lead single "Amanda" went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the subsequent singles "We're Ready" and "Can'tcha Say" reached No. 9 and No. 20, respectively. "Cool the Engines" also got significant airplay on rock radio. The album sold over 4 million copies.
The group headed off on tour to promote Third Stage in 1987 and 1988. Third Stage was played in sequence in its entirety during the shows, with expanded arrangements of some cuts. Boston opened with "Rock and Roll Band" and brought back the original drummer, Jim Masdea, to play drums for this one song. For the tour, the group was joined by Doug Huffman and David Sikes, both of whom stayed with the band into the mid-1990s.
Departure of Delp; Walk On (1989–1996)
By spring 1990, Scholz was back in the studio working on the band's fourth studio album. Later that year, Delp told Scholz he wanted to concentrate on other projects, and might not be available for some time. With Delp's departure, Scholz was then the last remaining original member. Before he left, Delp co-wrote with Scholz and David Sikes the song "Walk On", which eventually became the title track of the new album.
Delp subsequently joined Barry Goudreau's new band, RTZ. Scholz eventually replaced him with vocalist Fran Cosmo, who had been in Goudreau's previous band Orion the Hunter.
For the second album in a row, and for the second time in a decade, Scholz's work was delayed by renovations to his studio. In the end, eight years passed between Third Stage and Walk On, which was released in June 1994. Walk On was certified platinum by the RIAA, and reached No. 7 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. Unlike Boston's previous albums, it failed to chart in the top 5. It produced one hit single, "I Need Your Love", which was widely played on some rock radio stations. Delp reunited with Boston at the end of 1994. Their first appearance was for two benefit shows at the House of Blues on December 12–13, 1994, in Cambridge. The band also handed a check of $5,000 to Globe Santa and another check of $5,000 to Operation Christmas in Fall River.
The group, with Delp now back in the band, toured in the summer of 1995 with both Cosmo and Delp combining vocals. By that time drummer Huffman had been replaced by Curly Smith, who was previously with Jo Jo Gunne. Following the conclusion of the "Livin' For You" tour in 1995, Scholz announced that a greatest hits album would be released. Initially planned for release in August 1996, the album was pushed back to a 1997 release date.
Greatest Hits and Corporate America (1997–2006)
Boston released a compilation album in 1997, titled simply Boston: Greatest Hits. The album featured all of the band's hit singles except "We're Ready", "Can'tcha Say (You Believe In Me)/Still In Love", and "I Need Your Love" along with three new songs, "Higher Power", "Tell Me", and an instrumental version of the "Star Spangled Banner". Smith and Sikes left the band in late 1997 and recorded an album together.
Scholz headed back to the studio in 1998 to begin work on a fifth album, which eventually turned out to be Corporate America. The title track of "Corporate America" was uploaded by Tom Scholz to MP3.com under the pseudonym of "Downer's Revenge" in early 2002 in order to test the album's appeal to a younger demographic. The song reached No. 2 on the progressive rock charts on the website for two weeks.
November 2002 marked the release of Corporate America on the independent label Artemis Records. This album featured the largest Boston lineup ever; returning members included Delp and Cosmo on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Scholz on lead guitar and keyboards, and Gary Pihl on guitar, along with new members Anthony Cosmo on rhythm guitar, Jeff Neal on drums, and Kimberley Dahme on bass, acoustic guitar, and vocals. Dahme, Delp, and Cosmo all contributed lead vocals to the album. The group embarked on a national tour in support of the album in 2003 and 2004. In 2006, the first two Boston albums appeared in remastered form.
Death of Brad Delp (2007)
On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp died by suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whomever would find him. In the bathroom where he died, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door was sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police called the death "untimely" and said no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancée, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie.
A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston.
All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page.
New line-up and intermittent performances (2008–2012)
The ongoing conflicts among the surviving band members spilled over to the 2008 Presidential campaign. Barry Goudreau appeared with Mike Huckabee and played with him at some rallies in New Hampshire. Huckabee used "More Than a Feeling" as a campaign theme song. Scholz, a self-described "Obama supporter", sent an open letter to Huckabee in February 2008 stating that the band had never endorsed any candidate, and that he had never authorized the use of "More Than a Feeling" as Huckabee's theme song. Scholz made a point of saying that he, and not Goudreau or Sheehan, actually played all the guitars on "More Than a Feeling" as well as most of Boston's songs. Huckabee eventually stopped using the song for his campaign.
In the spring of 2008, Scholz and Sweet introduced a new Boston lineup, which subsequently did a North American summer tour, playing 53 dates in 12 weeks (on a double bill with Styx). Scholz was the only founding member of Boston to play on the tour, although longtime member Gary Pihl was also part of the band, and Dahme and Neal returned on bass and drums, respectively. DeCarlo and Sweet shared lead vocals.
In January 2009, Greatest Hits was re-released as a remastered disc.
Michael Sweet left the band in August 2011 in order to focus on Stryper. In 2012, guitarist and vocalist David Victor joined the band, beginning in the studio, where he contributed vocals to several tracks on the album in progress.
Scholz and Pihl led the band on a 2012 North American tour, beginning on June 28, 2012, at the Seminole Hard Rock Live arena in Hollywood, Florida and ending on September 8 at the U.S. Cellular Grandstand in Hutchinson, Kansas. Victor and DeCarlo shared lead vocals, with drummer Curly Smith returning for the first time in over a decade, and former Stryper member Tracy Ferrie on bass. Neither Dahme nor Neal played on the tour.
Life, Love & Hope (2013–2017)
Boston's sixth album, Life, Love & Hope, was released on December 3, 2013, by Frontiers Records; it includes lead vocals from Brad Delp, Tommy DeCarlo, Kimberley Dahme, David Victor, and Tom Scholz. Work on the album started in 2002. On December 11, 2013, Boston re-recorded a Christmas song, "God Rest Ye Metal Gentleman 2013" (previously released in 2002 as "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"). In 2014 Boston embarked on the "Heaven on Earth Tour" spanning the United States and Japan with a lineup including Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Victor and Ferrie. Dahme returned, this time performing rhythm guitar and vocals, and drumming duties were split between Neal and Smith, with Neal handling the first leg of the tour. Victor departed the lineup partway through the tour for unspecified reasons. In his stead, Siobhan Magnus joined the tour as a guest vocalist in July, performing lead vocals on 'Walk On'.
In 2015, Boston launched another tour with a lineup consisting of Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Ferrie and new member Beth Cohen, who performed keyboards, rhythm guitar and vocals. Cohen had previously recorded with the group on both Corporate America and Life, Love & Hope as a vocalist and flautist. Initially, the lineup was to include former Spock's Beard drummer and vocalist Nick D'Virgilio for its first month of shows, with Neal then returning, but D'Virgilio proved "not the right fit" and Smith rejoined in his place. This seven-person lineup proved Boston's most stable lineup in some time, touring as well in the summers of 2016 and 2017. The 2016 tour marked the group's 40th anniversary and included shows in Boston's Wang Theatre, their first full performances in their namesake town since 1994.
On March 22, 2017, former drummer Sib Hashian died after collapsing on a Legends of Rock cruise ship.
Upcoming seventh album (2017–present)
In April 2017, Scholz reported that he has been writing new material for the seventh Boston album. He told Sun Herald, "I find that I'm in a position that I really need to write things that we can play at the shows. We play basically everything that people expect to hear that we can fit into two hours. We also do a lot of things that aren't on any of the records by adding things and segues and instrumental parts, so I always have to come up with new stuff. It's quite a challenge. I have to write new things for the tour every year, which is what I wanted to do in the first place. But I got sidetracked in the studio, recording. Now, I'm actually a performing musician, and I have to tell you, it's much more fun." When asked the same month about a potential release date of the album, Scholz said, "Who knows? I'm only 70. I figure I've got 30 years."
Spaceship
One of the themes of Boston's album covers is the presence of a guitar-shaped spaceship, ostensibly a generation or colony ship carrying the city of Boston inside a clear dome, with the city's name emblazoned across the front. The original spaceship was designed in 1976 by Paula Scher and illustrated by Roger Huyssen with lettering by Gerard Huerta for Epic Records.
Appearances
Boston – Two long lines of guitar shaped starships flee a planet that is breaking apart. The ships all have blue flames coming out of the bottom.
Don't Look Back – The Boston ship is flying low or perhaps hovering over a grassy, crystalline planet. The ship has searchlights on.
Third Stage – The Boston ship is headed towards a large flat spaceship resembling a bank of pipe organ pipes over a blue planet.
Walk On – The Boston ship is shown crashing through a rock outcropping.
Greatest Hits – The Boston ship is flying low over a planet with turquoise rocks and a turquoise tower in the distance.
Corporate America – The Boston ship is flying towards Earth and the United States.
Life, Love & Hope – The Boston ship is flying in space, near a nebula.
Their spaceship also appeared on their tours in the late 1980s, early 1990s, and early 2000s in the form of a giant lighting rig and accompanied on stage by their giant pipe-organ set piece, which is known to Boston insiders as Bertha because of its sheer size.
Innovation and style
Boston's genre is considered by most to be hard rock and arena rock, while combining elements of progressive rock into its music.
Boston founder, guitarist, and primary songwriter Tom Scholz's blend of musical styles, ranging from classical to 1960s English pop, has resulted in a unique sound, most consistently realized on the first two albums (Boston and Don't Look Back). This sound is characterized by multiple lead and blended harmonies guitar work (usually harmonized in thirds), often alternating between and then mixing electric and acoustic guitars. The band's harmonic style has been characterized as being "violin-like" without using synthesizers. Scholz is well-regarded for the development of complex, multi-tracked guitar harmonies. Another contributing factor is the use of handmade, high-tech equipment, such as the Rockman, used by artists such as Journey guitarist Neal Schon, the band ZZ Top, and Ted Nugent. Def Leppard's album Hysteria was created using only Rockman technology. Scholz's production style combines deep, aggressive, comparatively short guitar riffing and nearly ethereal, generally longer note vocal harmonies. A heavier, lower, and darker overall approach came in the next two albums (Third Stage and Walk On). The original track "Higher Power", on the Greatest Hits album, exhibits a near Neue Deutsche Härte and almost techno influence with its sequencer-sounding keyboards, a sound most fully realized on Corporate America'''s title track.
Tom Scholz also credited the late Brad Delp with helping to create Boston's sound with his signature vocal style. Delp, who was strongly influenced by the Beatles, was well known for his extended vocal range, shown on hits such as "More Than a Feeling".
Band members
Current members
Tom Scholz – lead and rhythm guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, percussion, backing vocals (1976–present)
Gary Pihl – rhythm and lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1985–present)
Curly Smith – drums, percussion, harmonica, backing vocals (1994–1997, 2012–present)
Jeff Neal – drums, percussion, backing vocals (2002–2012, 2014–present)
Tommy DeCarlo – lead vocals, keyboards, percussion (2007–present)
Tracy Ferrie – bass guitar, backing vocals (2012–present)
Beth Cohen – keyboards, vocals, rhythm guitar (2002, 2012, 2015–present)
Discography
Studio albumsBoston (1976)Don't Look Back (1978)Third Stage (1986)Walk On (1994)Corporate America (2002)Life, Love & Hope (2013)
Compilation albumsGreatest Hits'' (1997)
References
External links
1976 establishments in Massachusetts
Epic Records artists
Hard rock musical groups from Massachusetts
MCA Records artists
Musical groups established in 1976
Musical groups from Boston | true | [
"The Everlasting Tour is the seventh headlining concert tour by American recording artist, Martina McBride. The tour supports the singer's twelfth studio album, Everlasting (2014). The tour mainly visited North America, playing over 100 shows in the United States and Canada.\n\nSetlist\nThe following setlist was obtained from the concert held on February 12, 2015, at the Adler Theatre in Davenport, Iowa. It does not represent all concerts for the duration of the tour.\n\"When God-Fearin' Women Get the Blues\"\n\"Wild Angels\"\n\"Wild Night\"\n\"Suspicious Minds\"\n\"Valentine\"\n\"Blessed\"\n\"I'm Gonna Love You Through It\"\n\"My Babe\"\n\"Perfect\"\n\"In My Daughter's Eyes\"\n\"Little Bit of Rain\"\n\"Anyway\"\n\"Come See About Me\n\"In The Basement\"\n\"Bring It On Home to Me\"\n\"Whatever You Say\" / \"Where Would You Be\"\n\"Love's the Only House\"\n\"A Broken Wing\"\n\"What Becomes of the Brokenhearted\"\nEncore \n\"Son of a Preacher Man\"\n\"Baby What You Want Me to Do\"\n\"This One's For The Girls\"\n\"Independence Day\"\n\nTour dates\n\nFestivals and other miscellaneous performances\n\nThis concert was a part of the \"St. Regis Big Stars, Bright Nights Concert Series\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Greeley Stampede\"\nThis concert was a part of \"HawkFest\"\nThis concert was a part of \"FunFest\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"NatsLive Free Postgame Concert Series\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Thunder Valley Summer Concert Series\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"End of Summer Concerts Series\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Rodeo Austin\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Riverbend Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Burlington Steamboat Days\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Summerfest\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Let Freedom Sing\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Stanislaus County Fair\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Toyota Concert Series\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Santa Barbara County Fair\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Last Chance Stampede and Fair\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Medicine Hat Stampede\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Mission Hill Summer Concert Series\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Sweetwater County Fair\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Deschutes County Fair\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Douglas County Fair\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Richland County Fair and Rodeo\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Montana Fair\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Brown County Fair\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Knox Concert Series\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Live at the Garden Concert Series\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Gulf Coast Jam\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Durham Fair\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Norsk Høstfest\"\n\nBox office score data\n\nPersonnel\n Vinnie Ciesielski – trumpet\n Shelly Fairchild – backing vocals\n Greg Foresman – electric and acoustic guitars, backing vocals\n Greg Herrington – drums\n John Hinchey – trombone\n Randy Leago – baritone saxophone, harmonica\n Jim Medlin – keyboards\n Martina McBride – lead vocals, harmonica\n Wendy Moten – backing vocals\n Shandra Penix – backing vocals\n Glenn Snow – bass guitar, backing vocals\n Tyler Summer – tenor saxophone\n\nReferences\n\nMartina McBride concert tours\n2014 concert tours\n2015 concert tours",
"Swag It Out Tour (also known as Zendaya: Live in Concert) is the debut concert tour by American actress and recording artist Zendaya. The tour spanned the course of two years, playing music festivals in state fairs in North America.\n\nOpening acts\nLiam Lis \nTrevor Jackson\n\nSetlist\nThe following setlist was obtained from the May 2, 2014 concert, held at the Best Buy Theater in New York City, New York. It does not represent all concerts during the tour.\n\"Putcha Body Down\"\n\"Heaven Lost an Angel\" \n\"Butterflies\"\n\"Love You Forever\"\n\"Cry for Love\"\n\"Only When You're Close\"\n\"Fashion Is My Kryptonite\" / \"Watch Me\" / \"Something to Dance For\" \n\"Scared\"\n\"Fireflies\"\n\"Bottle You Up\"\n\"All of Me\"\n\"Smile\" \n\"My Baby\"\n\"Beat of My Drum\"\n\"Replay\"\n\nTour dates\n\nFestivals and other miscellaneous performances\n\nThis concert was a part of \"Art and Soul Oakland\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Believe in Girls Day\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Who Came To Party With Operation Smile?\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Arizona State Fair\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Teen Music Fest\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Taste of Joliet\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Marin County Fair\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Alameda County Fair\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Open House\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Toyota Concert Series\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Great New York State Fair\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Big Ticket Summer Concert\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Kern County Fair\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"End of Summer Concert Series\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Tulsa State Fair\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Table Mountain Concert Series\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Triple Ho Show\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"FREECEMBER Toy Drive & Concert\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Toys for Teens\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Magic Springs 2014 Concert Series\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Elitch Gardens Summer Concert Series\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Frontier City Summer Concert Series\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Toyota Summer Concert Series\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Six Flags Summer Concert Series\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Runaround: A Pop Experience\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Benton Franklin Fair & Rodeo\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Summer Night Concerts\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Chicas Poderosas Concert\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Utah State Fair\"\n\nCancellations and rescheduled shows\n\nBox office score data\n\nPersonnel\nBand\nKeyboards: Dylan Wiggins\nBass guitar: Jaden Wiggins\nPercussion: Ali Khan\nDrums: Jared Anderson\nGuitar: Cole Berliner\nBacking vocalist: Whitney Boswell, Sabrina Chaco and Vivian Allen\nDancers: Richard Curtis IV, Jake Deanda, Brenna Mendoza, Deja Carter, Dominique Battiste\n\nReferences\n\n2012 concert tours\n2013 concert tours\n2014 concert tours\nZendaya concert tours"
] |
[
"Boston (band)",
"Death of Brad Delp (2007)",
"what was the depth of brad delp?",
"On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom,",
"why did he kill himself?",
"I don't know.",
"anything interesting about the article?",
"A concert in honor of Delp named \"Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp\" occurred on August 19, 2007,",
"who performed?",
"Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston.",
"why did they perform?",
"A concert in honor of Delp",
"when was the concert?",
"August 19, 2007,"
] | C_c61d7973b8b2435f80b9d464781ec3a2_0 | did the proceeds go toward a special cause? | 7 | Did the proceeds of the concert in honor of Delp go toward a special cause? | Boston (band) | On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whoever would find him. In the bathroom where he committed suicide, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police Lt. William Baldwin called the death "untimely" and said that no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancee, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning as evidenced by carboxyhemoglobin. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie. A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included, in order of appearance, Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston. All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page. Another former Boston vocalist, Fran Cosmo, was unable to sing because of a ruptured blood vessel in his throat, but did play guitar. Jim Masdea, Fran Sheehan, and even Barry Goudreau joined Scholz and the rest of the band on stage for the finale, "Don't Look Back". Curly Smith and Kimberley Dahme split the lead vocal on the finale. Sib Hashian, while present, refused to go on stage with the other Boston alumni, citing discomfort with Tom Scholz. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Boston is an American rock band from namesake Boston, Massachusetts, that had its most notable successes during the 1970s and '80s. The band's core members on their most popular recordings included multi-instrumentalist founder and leader Tom Scholz, who played the majority of instruments on the debut album, and lead vocalist Brad Delp, among a number of other musicians who varied from album to album. Boston's best-known songs include "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Foreplay/Long Time", "Rock and Roll Band", "Smokin'", "Don't Look Back", "A Man I'll Never Be", and "Amanda". The band has sold more than 75 million records worldwide, including 31 million albums in the United States, of which 17 million were from its self-titled debut album and seven million were for its second album, Don't Look Back, making the group one of the world's best-selling artists. Altogether, the band has released six studio albums over a career spanning over years. Boston was ranked the 63rd best hard rock artist by VH1.
After Delp's death in 2007, a number of other vocalists have taken the stage; currently the lead singer is Tommy DeCarlo. Other current members of the band include multi-instrumentalist and singer Beth Cohen, guitarist Gary Pihl, bassist Tracy Ferrie, drummer Jeff Neal and percussionist Curly Smith.
History
Early years (1969–1975)
Tom Scholz first started writing music in 1969 while he was attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he wrote an instrumental song, "Foreplay". While attending MIT, Scholz joined the band Freehold, where he met guitarist Barry Goudreau and drummer Jim Masdea, who would later become members of Boston. Vocalist Brad Delp was added to the collective in 1970. After graduating with a master's degree, Scholz worked for Polaroid, using his salary to build a recording studio in his basement, and to finance demo tapes recorded in professional recording studios. These early demo tapes were recorded with (at various times) Delp on vocals, Goudreau on guitar, Masdea on drums, and Scholz on guitar, bass and keyboards. The demo tapes were sent to record companies, but received consistent rejections. In 1973 Scholz formed the band Mother's Milk with Delp, Goudreau, and Masdea. That group disbanded by 1974, but Scholz subsequently worked with Masdea and Delp to produce six new demos, including "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Rock and Roll Band", "Something About You" (then entitled "Life Isn't Easy"), "Hitch a Ride" (then entitled "San Francisco Day"), and "Don't Be Afraid". Scholz stated they finished four of the six by the end of 1974, and they finished "More Than a Feeling" and "Something About You" in 1975. Scholz played all the instruments on the demos, except for the drums, which were played by Masdea, and used self-designed pedals to create the desired guitar sounds.
This final demo tape attracted the attention of promoters Paul Ahern and Charlie McKenzie. Masdea left the band around this time. According to Scholz, the managers insisted that Masdea had to be replaced before the band could get a recording deal. Years later, Delp told journalist Chuck Miller: "[Jim] actually told me he was losing interest in playing drums. I know Tom felt very bad when the whole thing happened. And then, of course, we started getting some interest." Scholz and Delp signed a deal with Epic Records after Masdea's departure, thanks to Ahern and McKenzie. Before the deal could be finalized, the band had to do a live audition for the record company executives. The duo recruited Goudreau on guitar, bassist Fran Sheehan and drummer Sib Hashian to create a performing unit which could replicate Scholz's richly layered recordings on stage. The showcase was a success and the band agreed to put out ten albums over the next six years.
In addition to the firing of Masdea, the record label insisted that Scholz re-record the demo tapes in a professional studio. However, Scholz wanted to record them in his basement studio so that he could work at his own pace. Scholz and producer John Boylan hatched a plan to send the rest of the band to Los Angeles to make the record label happy, while Scholz recorded most of Boston's debut album at home, with Masdea playing drums on the track "Rock and Roll Band" and Scholz playing the other instruments. The multitrack tapes were then brought to Los Angeles, where Delp added vocals and the album was mixed by Boylan. It was then that the band was named "Boston", by suggestion of Boylan and engineer Warren Dewey.
Boston and Don't Look Back (1976–1978)
The debut album, Boston, released on August 25, 1976, ranks as one of the best-selling debut albums in U.S. history with over 17 million copies sold.
During late summer and early fall of 1976, Boston attracted publicity due to the record sales. However, according to Cameron Crowe in Rolling Stone, there was "a conscious effort to de-emphasize Scholz as the total mastermind behind Boston". After opening for Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, Foghat and others in the fall, the band embarked on a headlining tour in the winter and spring of 1976–1977 to support the album. This helped establish Boston as one of rock's top acts within a short time, being nominated for a Grammy Award as a "Best New Artist". Boston was the first band in history to make their New York City debut at Madison Square Garden.
The album spawned three singles, "More Than a Feeling", "Long Time", and "Peace of Mind", all of which made the national charts. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and remained on the charts for 132 weeks.
Despite having problems with manager Paul Ahern, being caught in the middle of a fight between Ahern and his business partner Charles McKenzie, and doing most of the recording work alone, Scholz completed the second Boston album two years after the debut album's release. The second album, Don't Look Back, was released by Epic in August 1978. At the time this was considered a long gap between albums, but Scholz still considered Don't Look Back to be a rush job and was unhappy with the album's second side in particular. Overall, Don't Look Back sold about half as well as the debut album, eventually selling over 7 million records.
Another tour followed (playing with the likes of AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Sammy Hagar and The Doobie Brothers), and the album's title track became a top-5 hit. Additionally, two other singles, "A Man I'll Never Be" and "Feelin' Satisfied", went top 40 and top 50, respectively. Despite the success, Scholz's relationship with Ahern completely deteriorated. Delayed by technical renovations to his studio, Scholz eventually began the process of working on Boston's third album, determined to complete the album at his own pace and up to his demanding standard.
Solo projects and CBS lawsuit (1979–1985)
In late 1979, Scholz began writing new material, but Boston's former co-manager, Paul Ahern, argued that, according to an agreement Scholz had signed years earlier with Ahern, Ahern owned a percentage of all songs Scholz wrote from that point on. Delayed further by the dispute, Scholz suggested that in the meantime the individual members should work on whatever other projects they might be considering.
Goudreau then decided to record a solo album that featured Boston members Delp and Hashian, and which was recorded with the help of Paul Grupp, an engineer and producer familiar with Scholz's studio techniques. The album, released in 1980, was titled Barry Goudreau and featured the minor hit single "Dreams". There was tension when CBS's marketing connected Goudreau's solo album to Boston's signature guitar sound, despite Scholz not having played at all on this album. Scholz objected to the ad copy, but it became irrelevant when Epic dropped promotion on Goudreau's album citing lack of interest. Goudreau left the band in 1981 and formed Orion the Hunter. Delp contributed vocals and co-wrote songs on the debut album, but returned to Boston and recorded vocals on the third Boston album.
While Scholz and Delp were recording new material for the third Boston album, CBS filed a $60 million lawsuit against Scholz, alleging breach of contract for failing to deliver a new Boston album on time.
During this same period, Scholz founded his high-tech company Scholz Research & Development (SR&D), which made amplifiers and other musical electronic equipment. Its most famous product, the Rockman amplifier, was introduced in 1982.
The legal trouble slowed progress toward the completion of the next album, which took six years to record and produce. Joining Scholz in the album's development again were Delp and Jim Masdea. In 1985, guitarist Gary Pihl left Sammy Hagar's touring band to work with Scholz as both a musician and an SR&D executive. As CBS v. Scholz played out in court, CBS opted to withhold royalty payments to Scholz, hoping to force him to settle on unfavorable terms.
The lawsuit's first round was eventually decided in Scholz's favor, and Scholz moved the band to MCA Records.
The CBS case took seven years to run its course, and in April 1990 Scholz won.
Third Stage (1986–1988)
Despite the adversity, progress continued to be made on the third Boston album. A tape of one of the songs, "Amanda", leaked out of the studio in 1984. The song became the lead single when Third Stage was finally released on September 23, 1986.
The album topped the Billboard 200 while the lead single "Amanda" went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the subsequent singles "We're Ready" and "Can'tcha Say" reached No. 9 and No. 20, respectively. "Cool the Engines" also got significant airplay on rock radio. The album sold over 4 million copies.
The group headed off on tour to promote Third Stage in 1987 and 1988. Third Stage was played in sequence in its entirety during the shows, with expanded arrangements of some cuts. Boston opened with "Rock and Roll Band" and brought back the original drummer, Jim Masdea, to play drums for this one song. For the tour, the group was joined by Doug Huffman and David Sikes, both of whom stayed with the band into the mid-1990s.
Departure of Delp; Walk On (1989–1996)
By spring 1990, Scholz was back in the studio working on the band's fourth studio album. Later that year, Delp told Scholz he wanted to concentrate on other projects, and might not be available for some time. With Delp's departure, Scholz was then the last remaining original member. Before he left, Delp co-wrote with Scholz and David Sikes the song "Walk On", which eventually became the title track of the new album.
Delp subsequently joined Barry Goudreau's new band, RTZ. Scholz eventually replaced him with vocalist Fran Cosmo, who had been in Goudreau's previous band Orion the Hunter.
For the second album in a row, and for the second time in a decade, Scholz's work was delayed by renovations to his studio. In the end, eight years passed between Third Stage and Walk On, which was released in June 1994. Walk On was certified platinum by the RIAA, and reached No. 7 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. Unlike Boston's previous albums, it failed to chart in the top 5. It produced one hit single, "I Need Your Love", which was widely played on some rock radio stations. Delp reunited with Boston at the end of 1994. Their first appearance was for two benefit shows at the House of Blues on December 12–13, 1994, in Cambridge. The band also handed a check of $5,000 to Globe Santa and another check of $5,000 to Operation Christmas in Fall River.
The group, with Delp now back in the band, toured in the summer of 1995 with both Cosmo and Delp combining vocals. By that time drummer Huffman had been replaced by Curly Smith, who was previously with Jo Jo Gunne. Following the conclusion of the "Livin' For You" tour in 1995, Scholz announced that a greatest hits album would be released. Initially planned for release in August 1996, the album was pushed back to a 1997 release date.
Greatest Hits and Corporate America (1997–2006)
Boston released a compilation album in 1997, titled simply Boston: Greatest Hits. The album featured all of the band's hit singles except "We're Ready", "Can'tcha Say (You Believe In Me)/Still In Love", and "I Need Your Love" along with three new songs, "Higher Power", "Tell Me", and an instrumental version of the "Star Spangled Banner". Smith and Sikes left the band in late 1997 and recorded an album together.
Scholz headed back to the studio in 1998 to begin work on a fifth album, which eventually turned out to be Corporate America. The title track of "Corporate America" was uploaded by Tom Scholz to MP3.com under the pseudonym of "Downer's Revenge" in early 2002 in order to test the album's appeal to a younger demographic. The song reached No. 2 on the progressive rock charts on the website for two weeks.
November 2002 marked the release of Corporate America on the independent label Artemis Records. This album featured the largest Boston lineup ever; returning members included Delp and Cosmo on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Scholz on lead guitar and keyboards, and Gary Pihl on guitar, along with new members Anthony Cosmo on rhythm guitar, Jeff Neal on drums, and Kimberley Dahme on bass, acoustic guitar, and vocals. Dahme, Delp, and Cosmo all contributed lead vocals to the album. The group embarked on a national tour in support of the album in 2003 and 2004. In 2006, the first two Boston albums appeared in remastered form.
Death of Brad Delp (2007)
On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp died by suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whomever would find him. In the bathroom where he died, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door was sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police called the death "untimely" and said no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancée, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie.
A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston.
All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page.
New line-up and intermittent performances (2008–2012)
The ongoing conflicts among the surviving band members spilled over to the 2008 Presidential campaign. Barry Goudreau appeared with Mike Huckabee and played with him at some rallies in New Hampshire. Huckabee used "More Than a Feeling" as a campaign theme song. Scholz, a self-described "Obama supporter", sent an open letter to Huckabee in February 2008 stating that the band had never endorsed any candidate, and that he had never authorized the use of "More Than a Feeling" as Huckabee's theme song. Scholz made a point of saying that he, and not Goudreau or Sheehan, actually played all the guitars on "More Than a Feeling" as well as most of Boston's songs. Huckabee eventually stopped using the song for his campaign.
In the spring of 2008, Scholz and Sweet introduced a new Boston lineup, which subsequently did a North American summer tour, playing 53 dates in 12 weeks (on a double bill with Styx). Scholz was the only founding member of Boston to play on the tour, although longtime member Gary Pihl was also part of the band, and Dahme and Neal returned on bass and drums, respectively. DeCarlo and Sweet shared lead vocals.
In January 2009, Greatest Hits was re-released as a remastered disc.
Michael Sweet left the band in August 2011 in order to focus on Stryper. In 2012, guitarist and vocalist David Victor joined the band, beginning in the studio, where he contributed vocals to several tracks on the album in progress.
Scholz and Pihl led the band on a 2012 North American tour, beginning on June 28, 2012, at the Seminole Hard Rock Live arena in Hollywood, Florida and ending on September 8 at the U.S. Cellular Grandstand in Hutchinson, Kansas. Victor and DeCarlo shared lead vocals, with drummer Curly Smith returning for the first time in over a decade, and former Stryper member Tracy Ferrie on bass. Neither Dahme nor Neal played on the tour.
Life, Love & Hope (2013–2017)
Boston's sixth album, Life, Love & Hope, was released on December 3, 2013, by Frontiers Records; it includes lead vocals from Brad Delp, Tommy DeCarlo, Kimberley Dahme, David Victor, and Tom Scholz. Work on the album started in 2002. On December 11, 2013, Boston re-recorded a Christmas song, "God Rest Ye Metal Gentleman 2013" (previously released in 2002 as "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"). In 2014 Boston embarked on the "Heaven on Earth Tour" spanning the United States and Japan with a lineup including Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Victor and Ferrie. Dahme returned, this time performing rhythm guitar and vocals, and drumming duties were split between Neal and Smith, with Neal handling the first leg of the tour. Victor departed the lineup partway through the tour for unspecified reasons. In his stead, Siobhan Magnus joined the tour as a guest vocalist in July, performing lead vocals on 'Walk On'.
In 2015, Boston launched another tour with a lineup consisting of Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Ferrie and new member Beth Cohen, who performed keyboards, rhythm guitar and vocals. Cohen had previously recorded with the group on both Corporate America and Life, Love & Hope as a vocalist and flautist. Initially, the lineup was to include former Spock's Beard drummer and vocalist Nick D'Virgilio for its first month of shows, with Neal then returning, but D'Virgilio proved "not the right fit" and Smith rejoined in his place. This seven-person lineup proved Boston's most stable lineup in some time, touring as well in the summers of 2016 and 2017. The 2016 tour marked the group's 40th anniversary and included shows in Boston's Wang Theatre, their first full performances in their namesake town since 1994.
On March 22, 2017, former drummer Sib Hashian died after collapsing on a Legends of Rock cruise ship.
Upcoming seventh album (2017–present)
In April 2017, Scholz reported that he has been writing new material for the seventh Boston album. He told Sun Herald, "I find that I'm in a position that I really need to write things that we can play at the shows. We play basically everything that people expect to hear that we can fit into two hours. We also do a lot of things that aren't on any of the records by adding things and segues and instrumental parts, so I always have to come up with new stuff. It's quite a challenge. I have to write new things for the tour every year, which is what I wanted to do in the first place. But I got sidetracked in the studio, recording. Now, I'm actually a performing musician, and I have to tell you, it's much more fun." When asked the same month about a potential release date of the album, Scholz said, "Who knows? I'm only 70. I figure I've got 30 years."
Spaceship
One of the themes of Boston's album covers is the presence of a guitar-shaped spaceship, ostensibly a generation or colony ship carrying the city of Boston inside a clear dome, with the city's name emblazoned across the front. The original spaceship was designed in 1976 by Paula Scher and illustrated by Roger Huyssen with lettering by Gerard Huerta for Epic Records.
Appearances
Boston – Two long lines of guitar shaped starships flee a planet that is breaking apart. The ships all have blue flames coming out of the bottom.
Don't Look Back – The Boston ship is flying low or perhaps hovering over a grassy, crystalline planet. The ship has searchlights on.
Third Stage – The Boston ship is headed towards a large flat spaceship resembling a bank of pipe organ pipes over a blue planet.
Walk On – The Boston ship is shown crashing through a rock outcropping.
Greatest Hits – The Boston ship is flying low over a planet with turquoise rocks and a turquoise tower in the distance.
Corporate America – The Boston ship is flying towards Earth and the United States.
Life, Love & Hope – The Boston ship is flying in space, near a nebula.
Their spaceship also appeared on their tours in the late 1980s, early 1990s, and early 2000s in the form of a giant lighting rig and accompanied on stage by their giant pipe-organ set piece, which is known to Boston insiders as Bertha because of its sheer size.
Innovation and style
Boston's genre is considered by most to be hard rock and arena rock, while combining elements of progressive rock into its music.
Boston founder, guitarist, and primary songwriter Tom Scholz's blend of musical styles, ranging from classical to 1960s English pop, has resulted in a unique sound, most consistently realized on the first two albums (Boston and Don't Look Back). This sound is characterized by multiple lead and blended harmonies guitar work (usually harmonized in thirds), often alternating between and then mixing electric and acoustic guitars. The band's harmonic style has been characterized as being "violin-like" without using synthesizers. Scholz is well-regarded for the development of complex, multi-tracked guitar harmonies. Another contributing factor is the use of handmade, high-tech equipment, such as the Rockman, used by artists such as Journey guitarist Neal Schon, the band ZZ Top, and Ted Nugent. Def Leppard's album Hysteria was created using only Rockman technology. Scholz's production style combines deep, aggressive, comparatively short guitar riffing and nearly ethereal, generally longer note vocal harmonies. A heavier, lower, and darker overall approach came in the next two albums (Third Stage and Walk On). The original track "Higher Power", on the Greatest Hits album, exhibits a near Neue Deutsche Härte and almost techno influence with its sequencer-sounding keyboards, a sound most fully realized on Corporate America'''s title track.
Tom Scholz also credited the late Brad Delp with helping to create Boston's sound with his signature vocal style. Delp, who was strongly influenced by the Beatles, was well known for his extended vocal range, shown on hits such as "More Than a Feeling".
Band members
Current members
Tom Scholz – lead and rhythm guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, percussion, backing vocals (1976–present)
Gary Pihl – rhythm and lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1985–present)
Curly Smith – drums, percussion, harmonica, backing vocals (1994–1997, 2012–present)
Jeff Neal – drums, percussion, backing vocals (2002–2012, 2014–present)
Tommy DeCarlo – lead vocals, keyboards, percussion (2007–present)
Tracy Ferrie – bass guitar, backing vocals (2012–present)
Beth Cohen – keyboards, vocals, rhythm guitar (2002, 2012, 2015–present)
Discography
Studio albumsBoston (1976)Don't Look Back (1978)Third Stage (1986)Walk On (1994)Corporate America (2002)Life, Love & Hope (2013)
Compilation albumsGreatest Hits'' (1997)
References
External links
1976 establishments in Massachusetts
Epic Records artists
Hard rock musical groups from Massachusetts
MCA Records artists
Musical groups established in 1976
Musical groups from Boston | false | [
"Cane Grove is an agricultural community in the Demerara-Mahaica Region of Guyana, standing at sea level on the coastal plain, along the Mahaica River, about eight kilometres upstream of its mouth. \nJohn Carter, Guyana's first ambassador to the United States and a key figure in the pre-independence turmoil of what was, before 1966, British Guiana was born in Cane Grove.\n\nThe diaspora of Cane Grove hold an annual reunion in New York City where proceeds go toward funding various charity projects that help the current residents of the village.\n\nReferences\n\nPopulated places in Demerara-Mahaica",
"A penny war is a fundraising competition where two or more groups collect coins and bills in an effort to score points based on the amount and denomination collected.\n\nEach group has a bucket for collecting the money; typically groups collect coins, but dollar bills may also be accepted. The value of any pennies collected by a group count toward that group's point total, while the value of other coins or dollar bills are subtracted. Hence, in a competition between Group A and Group B, a contributor who wants Group A to win will place pennies into Group A's bucket and nickels, dimes, quarters, or dollar bills into Group B's bucket.\n\nAt the end, a winner among the groups is declared, sometimes earning a small prize. The proceeds are donated to a specified charity or cause.\n\nReferences\n\nFundraising"
] |
[
"Boston (band)",
"Death of Brad Delp (2007)",
"what was the depth of brad delp?",
"On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom,",
"why did he kill himself?",
"I don't know.",
"anything interesting about the article?",
"A concert in honor of Delp named \"Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp\" occurred on August 19, 2007,",
"who performed?",
"Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston.",
"why did they perform?",
"A concert in honor of Delp",
"when was the concert?",
"August 19, 2007,",
"did the proceeds go toward a special cause?",
"I don't know."
] | C_c61d7973b8b2435f80b9d464781ec3a2_0 | what lead up to brad delp death? | 8 | What led up to Brad Delp's death? | Boston (band) | On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp committed suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whoever would find him. In the bathroom where he committed suicide, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police Lt. William Baldwin called the death "untimely" and said that no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancee, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning as evidenced by carboxyhemoglobin. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie. A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included, in order of appearance, Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston. All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page. Another former Boston vocalist, Fran Cosmo, was unable to sing because of a ruptured blood vessel in his throat, but did play guitar. Jim Masdea, Fran Sheehan, and even Barry Goudreau joined Scholz and the rest of the band on stage for the finale, "Don't Look Back". Curly Smith and Kimberley Dahme split the lead vocal on the finale. Sib Hashian, while present, refused to go on stage with the other Boston alumni, citing discomfort with Tom Scholz. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Boston is an American rock band from namesake Boston, Massachusetts, that had its most notable successes during the 1970s and '80s. The band's core members on their most popular recordings included multi-instrumentalist founder and leader Tom Scholz, who played the majority of instruments on the debut album, and lead vocalist Brad Delp, among a number of other musicians who varied from album to album. Boston's best-known songs include "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Foreplay/Long Time", "Rock and Roll Band", "Smokin'", "Don't Look Back", "A Man I'll Never Be", and "Amanda". The band has sold more than 75 million records worldwide, including 31 million albums in the United States, of which 17 million were from its self-titled debut album and seven million were for its second album, Don't Look Back, making the group one of the world's best-selling artists. Altogether, the band has released six studio albums over a career spanning over years. Boston was ranked the 63rd best hard rock artist by VH1.
After Delp's death in 2007, a number of other vocalists have taken the stage; currently the lead singer is Tommy DeCarlo. Other current members of the band include multi-instrumentalist and singer Beth Cohen, guitarist Gary Pihl, bassist Tracy Ferrie, drummer Jeff Neal and percussionist Curly Smith.
History
Early years (1969–1975)
Tom Scholz first started writing music in 1969 while he was attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he wrote an instrumental song, "Foreplay". While attending MIT, Scholz joined the band Freehold, where he met guitarist Barry Goudreau and drummer Jim Masdea, who would later become members of Boston. Vocalist Brad Delp was added to the collective in 1970. After graduating with a master's degree, Scholz worked for Polaroid, using his salary to build a recording studio in his basement, and to finance demo tapes recorded in professional recording studios. These early demo tapes were recorded with (at various times) Delp on vocals, Goudreau on guitar, Masdea on drums, and Scholz on guitar, bass and keyboards. The demo tapes were sent to record companies, but received consistent rejections. In 1973 Scholz formed the band Mother's Milk with Delp, Goudreau, and Masdea. That group disbanded by 1974, but Scholz subsequently worked with Masdea and Delp to produce six new demos, including "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Rock and Roll Band", "Something About You" (then entitled "Life Isn't Easy"), "Hitch a Ride" (then entitled "San Francisco Day"), and "Don't Be Afraid". Scholz stated they finished four of the six by the end of 1974, and they finished "More Than a Feeling" and "Something About You" in 1975. Scholz played all the instruments on the demos, except for the drums, which were played by Masdea, and used self-designed pedals to create the desired guitar sounds.
This final demo tape attracted the attention of promoters Paul Ahern and Charlie McKenzie. Masdea left the band around this time. According to Scholz, the managers insisted that Masdea had to be replaced before the band could get a recording deal. Years later, Delp told journalist Chuck Miller: "[Jim] actually told me he was losing interest in playing drums. I know Tom felt very bad when the whole thing happened. And then, of course, we started getting some interest." Scholz and Delp signed a deal with Epic Records after Masdea's departure, thanks to Ahern and McKenzie. Before the deal could be finalized, the band had to do a live audition for the record company executives. The duo recruited Goudreau on guitar, bassist Fran Sheehan and drummer Sib Hashian to create a performing unit which could replicate Scholz's richly layered recordings on stage. The showcase was a success and the band agreed to put out ten albums over the next six years.
In addition to the firing of Masdea, the record label insisted that Scholz re-record the demo tapes in a professional studio. However, Scholz wanted to record them in his basement studio so that he could work at his own pace. Scholz and producer John Boylan hatched a plan to send the rest of the band to Los Angeles to make the record label happy, while Scholz recorded most of Boston's debut album at home, with Masdea playing drums on the track "Rock and Roll Band" and Scholz playing the other instruments. The multitrack tapes were then brought to Los Angeles, where Delp added vocals and the album was mixed by Boylan. It was then that the band was named "Boston", by suggestion of Boylan and engineer Warren Dewey.
Boston and Don't Look Back (1976–1978)
The debut album, Boston, released on August 25, 1976, ranks as one of the best-selling debut albums in U.S. history with over 17 million copies sold.
During late summer and early fall of 1976, Boston attracted publicity due to the record sales. However, according to Cameron Crowe in Rolling Stone, there was "a conscious effort to de-emphasize Scholz as the total mastermind behind Boston". After opening for Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, Foghat and others in the fall, the band embarked on a headlining tour in the winter and spring of 1976–1977 to support the album. This helped establish Boston as one of rock's top acts within a short time, being nominated for a Grammy Award as a "Best New Artist". Boston was the first band in history to make their New York City debut at Madison Square Garden.
The album spawned three singles, "More Than a Feeling", "Long Time", and "Peace of Mind", all of which made the national charts. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and remained on the charts for 132 weeks.
Despite having problems with manager Paul Ahern, being caught in the middle of a fight between Ahern and his business partner Charles McKenzie, and doing most of the recording work alone, Scholz completed the second Boston album two years after the debut album's release. The second album, Don't Look Back, was released by Epic in August 1978. At the time this was considered a long gap between albums, but Scholz still considered Don't Look Back to be a rush job and was unhappy with the album's second side in particular. Overall, Don't Look Back sold about half as well as the debut album, eventually selling over 7 million records.
Another tour followed (playing with the likes of AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Sammy Hagar and The Doobie Brothers), and the album's title track became a top-5 hit. Additionally, two other singles, "A Man I'll Never Be" and "Feelin' Satisfied", went top 40 and top 50, respectively. Despite the success, Scholz's relationship with Ahern completely deteriorated. Delayed by technical renovations to his studio, Scholz eventually began the process of working on Boston's third album, determined to complete the album at his own pace and up to his demanding standard.
Solo projects and CBS lawsuit (1979–1985)
In late 1979, Scholz began writing new material, but Boston's former co-manager, Paul Ahern, argued that, according to an agreement Scholz had signed years earlier with Ahern, Ahern owned a percentage of all songs Scholz wrote from that point on. Delayed further by the dispute, Scholz suggested that in the meantime the individual members should work on whatever other projects they might be considering.
Goudreau then decided to record a solo album that featured Boston members Delp and Hashian, and which was recorded with the help of Paul Grupp, an engineer and producer familiar with Scholz's studio techniques. The album, released in 1980, was titled Barry Goudreau and featured the minor hit single "Dreams". There was tension when CBS's marketing connected Goudreau's solo album to Boston's signature guitar sound, despite Scholz not having played at all on this album. Scholz objected to the ad copy, but it became irrelevant when Epic dropped promotion on Goudreau's album citing lack of interest. Goudreau left the band in 1981 and formed Orion the Hunter. Delp contributed vocals and co-wrote songs on the debut album, but returned to Boston and recorded vocals on the third Boston album.
While Scholz and Delp were recording new material for the third Boston album, CBS filed a $60 million lawsuit against Scholz, alleging breach of contract for failing to deliver a new Boston album on time.
During this same period, Scholz founded his high-tech company Scholz Research & Development (SR&D), which made amplifiers and other musical electronic equipment. Its most famous product, the Rockman amplifier, was introduced in 1982.
The legal trouble slowed progress toward the completion of the next album, which took six years to record and produce. Joining Scholz in the album's development again were Delp and Jim Masdea. In 1985, guitarist Gary Pihl left Sammy Hagar's touring band to work with Scholz as both a musician and an SR&D executive. As CBS v. Scholz played out in court, CBS opted to withhold royalty payments to Scholz, hoping to force him to settle on unfavorable terms.
The lawsuit's first round was eventually decided in Scholz's favor, and Scholz moved the band to MCA Records.
The CBS case took seven years to run its course, and in April 1990 Scholz won.
Third Stage (1986–1988)
Despite the adversity, progress continued to be made on the third Boston album. A tape of one of the songs, "Amanda", leaked out of the studio in 1984. The song became the lead single when Third Stage was finally released on September 23, 1986.
The album topped the Billboard 200 while the lead single "Amanda" went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the subsequent singles "We're Ready" and "Can'tcha Say" reached No. 9 and No. 20, respectively. "Cool the Engines" also got significant airplay on rock radio. The album sold over 4 million copies.
The group headed off on tour to promote Third Stage in 1987 and 1988. Third Stage was played in sequence in its entirety during the shows, with expanded arrangements of some cuts. Boston opened with "Rock and Roll Band" and brought back the original drummer, Jim Masdea, to play drums for this one song. For the tour, the group was joined by Doug Huffman and David Sikes, both of whom stayed with the band into the mid-1990s.
Departure of Delp; Walk On (1989–1996)
By spring 1990, Scholz was back in the studio working on the band's fourth studio album. Later that year, Delp told Scholz he wanted to concentrate on other projects, and might not be available for some time. With Delp's departure, Scholz was then the last remaining original member. Before he left, Delp co-wrote with Scholz and David Sikes the song "Walk On", which eventually became the title track of the new album.
Delp subsequently joined Barry Goudreau's new band, RTZ. Scholz eventually replaced him with vocalist Fran Cosmo, who had been in Goudreau's previous band Orion the Hunter.
For the second album in a row, and for the second time in a decade, Scholz's work was delayed by renovations to his studio. In the end, eight years passed between Third Stage and Walk On, which was released in June 1994. Walk On was certified platinum by the RIAA, and reached No. 7 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. Unlike Boston's previous albums, it failed to chart in the top 5. It produced one hit single, "I Need Your Love", which was widely played on some rock radio stations. Delp reunited with Boston at the end of 1994. Their first appearance was for two benefit shows at the House of Blues on December 12–13, 1994, in Cambridge. The band also handed a check of $5,000 to Globe Santa and another check of $5,000 to Operation Christmas in Fall River.
The group, with Delp now back in the band, toured in the summer of 1995 with both Cosmo and Delp combining vocals. By that time drummer Huffman had been replaced by Curly Smith, who was previously with Jo Jo Gunne. Following the conclusion of the "Livin' For You" tour in 1995, Scholz announced that a greatest hits album would be released. Initially planned for release in August 1996, the album was pushed back to a 1997 release date.
Greatest Hits and Corporate America (1997–2006)
Boston released a compilation album in 1997, titled simply Boston: Greatest Hits. The album featured all of the band's hit singles except "We're Ready", "Can'tcha Say (You Believe In Me)/Still In Love", and "I Need Your Love" along with three new songs, "Higher Power", "Tell Me", and an instrumental version of the "Star Spangled Banner". Smith and Sikes left the band in late 1997 and recorded an album together.
Scholz headed back to the studio in 1998 to begin work on a fifth album, which eventually turned out to be Corporate America. The title track of "Corporate America" was uploaded by Tom Scholz to MP3.com under the pseudonym of "Downer's Revenge" in early 2002 in order to test the album's appeal to a younger demographic. The song reached No. 2 on the progressive rock charts on the website for two weeks.
November 2002 marked the release of Corporate America on the independent label Artemis Records. This album featured the largest Boston lineup ever; returning members included Delp and Cosmo on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Scholz on lead guitar and keyboards, and Gary Pihl on guitar, along with new members Anthony Cosmo on rhythm guitar, Jeff Neal on drums, and Kimberley Dahme on bass, acoustic guitar, and vocals. Dahme, Delp, and Cosmo all contributed lead vocals to the album. The group embarked on a national tour in support of the album in 2003 and 2004. In 2006, the first two Boston albums appeared in remastered form.
Death of Brad Delp (2007)
On March 9, 2007, lead singer Delp died by suicide at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Police found him dead in his master bathroom, along with several notes for whomever would find him. In the bathroom where he died, two charcoal grills were found on the bathroom fixtures, and the door was sealed with duct tape and a towel underneath. Police called the death "untimely" and said no foul play was indicated. Delp was alone at the time of his death, according to the police report. He was found by his fiancée, who saw a dryer hose attached to his car. According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, his death was the result of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Delp's last concert with Boston was performed at Boston Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006, at a concert honoring Doug Flutie.
A concert in honor of Delp named "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp" occurred on August 19, 2007, at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. The concert included Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, Farrenheit, Extreme, Godsmack, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, and finally the current version of Boston.
All of the living members of Boston were invited to perform in the concert. The singers for Boston included Michael Sweet of Stryper, former band member Curly Smith, band member Kimberley Dahme, and a Boston fan from North Carolina named Tommy DeCarlo, who was chosen to sing based on his performances of Boston cover songs on his MySpace page.
New line-up and intermittent performances (2008–2012)
The ongoing conflicts among the surviving band members spilled over to the 2008 Presidential campaign. Barry Goudreau appeared with Mike Huckabee and played with him at some rallies in New Hampshire. Huckabee used "More Than a Feeling" as a campaign theme song. Scholz, a self-described "Obama supporter", sent an open letter to Huckabee in February 2008 stating that the band had never endorsed any candidate, and that he had never authorized the use of "More Than a Feeling" as Huckabee's theme song. Scholz made a point of saying that he, and not Goudreau or Sheehan, actually played all the guitars on "More Than a Feeling" as well as most of Boston's songs. Huckabee eventually stopped using the song for his campaign.
In the spring of 2008, Scholz and Sweet introduced a new Boston lineup, which subsequently did a North American summer tour, playing 53 dates in 12 weeks (on a double bill with Styx). Scholz was the only founding member of Boston to play on the tour, although longtime member Gary Pihl was also part of the band, and Dahme and Neal returned on bass and drums, respectively. DeCarlo and Sweet shared lead vocals.
In January 2009, Greatest Hits was re-released as a remastered disc.
Michael Sweet left the band in August 2011 in order to focus on Stryper. In 2012, guitarist and vocalist David Victor joined the band, beginning in the studio, where he contributed vocals to several tracks on the album in progress.
Scholz and Pihl led the band on a 2012 North American tour, beginning on June 28, 2012, at the Seminole Hard Rock Live arena in Hollywood, Florida and ending on September 8 at the U.S. Cellular Grandstand in Hutchinson, Kansas. Victor and DeCarlo shared lead vocals, with drummer Curly Smith returning for the first time in over a decade, and former Stryper member Tracy Ferrie on bass. Neither Dahme nor Neal played on the tour.
Life, Love & Hope (2013–2017)
Boston's sixth album, Life, Love & Hope, was released on December 3, 2013, by Frontiers Records; it includes lead vocals from Brad Delp, Tommy DeCarlo, Kimberley Dahme, David Victor, and Tom Scholz. Work on the album started in 2002. On December 11, 2013, Boston re-recorded a Christmas song, "God Rest Ye Metal Gentleman 2013" (previously released in 2002 as "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"). In 2014 Boston embarked on the "Heaven on Earth Tour" spanning the United States and Japan with a lineup including Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Victor and Ferrie. Dahme returned, this time performing rhythm guitar and vocals, and drumming duties were split between Neal and Smith, with Neal handling the first leg of the tour. Victor departed the lineup partway through the tour for unspecified reasons. In his stead, Siobhan Magnus joined the tour as a guest vocalist in July, performing lead vocals on 'Walk On'.
In 2015, Boston launched another tour with a lineup consisting of Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo, Ferrie and new member Beth Cohen, who performed keyboards, rhythm guitar and vocals. Cohen had previously recorded with the group on both Corporate America and Life, Love & Hope as a vocalist and flautist. Initially, the lineup was to include former Spock's Beard drummer and vocalist Nick D'Virgilio for its first month of shows, with Neal then returning, but D'Virgilio proved "not the right fit" and Smith rejoined in his place. This seven-person lineup proved Boston's most stable lineup in some time, touring as well in the summers of 2016 and 2017. The 2016 tour marked the group's 40th anniversary and included shows in Boston's Wang Theatre, their first full performances in their namesake town since 1994.
On March 22, 2017, former drummer Sib Hashian died after collapsing on a Legends of Rock cruise ship.
Upcoming seventh album (2017–present)
In April 2017, Scholz reported that he has been writing new material for the seventh Boston album. He told Sun Herald, "I find that I'm in a position that I really need to write things that we can play at the shows. We play basically everything that people expect to hear that we can fit into two hours. We also do a lot of things that aren't on any of the records by adding things and segues and instrumental parts, so I always have to come up with new stuff. It's quite a challenge. I have to write new things for the tour every year, which is what I wanted to do in the first place. But I got sidetracked in the studio, recording. Now, I'm actually a performing musician, and I have to tell you, it's much more fun." When asked the same month about a potential release date of the album, Scholz said, "Who knows? I'm only 70. I figure I've got 30 years."
Spaceship
One of the themes of Boston's album covers is the presence of a guitar-shaped spaceship, ostensibly a generation or colony ship carrying the city of Boston inside a clear dome, with the city's name emblazoned across the front. The original spaceship was designed in 1976 by Paula Scher and illustrated by Roger Huyssen with lettering by Gerard Huerta for Epic Records.
Appearances
Boston – Two long lines of guitar shaped starships flee a planet that is breaking apart. The ships all have blue flames coming out of the bottom.
Don't Look Back – The Boston ship is flying low or perhaps hovering over a grassy, crystalline planet. The ship has searchlights on.
Third Stage – The Boston ship is headed towards a large flat spaceship resembling a bank of pipe organ pipes over a blue planet.
Walk On – The Boston ship is shown crashing through a rock outcropping.
Greatest Hits – The Boston ship is flying low over a planet with turquoise rocks and a turquoise tower in the distance.
Corporate America – The Boston ship is flying towards Earth and the United States.
Life, Love & Hope – The Boston ship is flying in space, near a nebula.
Their spaceship also appeared on their tours in the late 1980s, early 1990s, and early 2000s in the form of a giant lighting rig and accompanied on stage by their giant pipe-organ set piece, which is known to Boston insiders as Bertha because of its sheer size.
Innovation and style
Boston's genre is considered by most to be hard rock and arena rock, while combining elements of progressive rock into its music.
Boston founder, guitarist, and primary songwriter Tom Scholz's blend of musical styles, ranging from classical to 1960s English pop, has resulted in a unique sound, most consistently realized on the first two albums (Boston and Don't Look Back). This sound is characterized by multiple lead and blended harmonies guitar work (usually harmonized in thirds), often alternating between and then mixing electric and acoustic guitars. The band's harmonic style has been characterized as being "violin-like" without using synthesizers. Scholz is well-regarded for the development of complex, multi-tracked guitar harmonies. Another contributing factor is the use of handmade, high-tech equipment, such as the Rockman, used by artists such as Journey guitarist Neal Schon, the band ZZ Top, and Ted Nugent. Def Leppard's album Hysteria was created using only Rockman technology. Scholz's production style combines deep, aggressive, comparatively short guitar riffing and nearly ethereal, generally longer note vocal harmonies. A heavier, lower, and darker overall approach came in the next two albums (Third Stage and Walk On). The original track "Higher Power", on the Greatest Hits album, exhibits a near Neue Deutsche Härte and almost techno influence with its sequencer-sounding keyboards, a sound most fully realized on Corporate America'''s title track.
Tom Scholz also credited the late Brad Delp with helping to create Boston's sound with his signature vocal style. Delp, who was strongly influenced by the Beatles, was well known for his extended vocal range, shown on hits such as "More Than a Feeling".
Band members
Current members
Tom Scholz – lead and rhythm guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, percussion, backing vocals (1976–present)
Gary Pihl – rhythm and lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1985–present)
Curly Smith – drums, percussion, harmonica, backing vocals (1994–1997, 2012–present)
Jeff Neal – drums, percussion, backing vocals (2002–2012, 2014–present)
Tommy DeCarlo – lead vocals, keyboards, percussion (2007–present)
Tracy Ferrie – bass guitar, backing vocals (2012–present)
Beth Cohen – keyboards, vocals, rhythm guitar (2002, 2012, 2015–present)
Discography
Studio albumsBoston (1976)Don't Look Back (1978)Third Stage (1986)Walk On (1994)Corporate America (2002)Life, Love & Hope (2013)
Compilation albumsGreatest Hits'' (1997)
References
External links
1976 establishments in Massachusetts
Epic Records artists
Hard rock musical groups from Massachusetts
MCA Records artists
Musical groups established in 1976
Musical groups from Boston | false | [
"Barry Goudreau is the debut self-titled album of original Boston guitarist Barry Goudreau. Featuring Goudreau's Boston bandmates Brad Delp on lead vocals and Sib Hashian on drums (as well as future Boston singer Fran Cosmo), the album displays a sound very similar to that of Boston's first two releases, Boston (1976) and Don't Look Back (1978). However, neither this album nor any of Goudreau's subsequent releases with other acts (Orion The Hunter, RTZ) proved to be as commercially successful as his work with Boston. The album was released in 1980 and was Goudreau's only solo album. The song \"Dreams\" was released as a single in 1980, nearly cracking Billboards top 100. It still receives airplay today on Classic rock radio stations, as does \"Mean Woman Blues\".\n\nCash Box said of \"Dreams\" that it is \"as melodic and hook-filled as anything by Boston.\"\n\n Track listing Side One (A) \"Hard Luck\" (Barry Goudreau, Brad Delp) - 3:37\n \"Nothin' to Lose\" (Fran Cosmo) – 4:01\n \"What's a Fella to Do?\" (Goudreau, Delp) – 4:29\n \"Mean Woman Blues\" (Goudreau, Delp) – 3:53Side Two (B) \"Leavin' Tonight\" (Cosmo) – 3:25\n \"Dreams\" (Goudreau) – 3:32\n \"Life Is What We Make It\" (Goudreau, Delp) – 3:11\n \"Sailin' Away\" (Goudreau) – 1:48\n \"Cold Cold World\" (Cosmo) – 4:55\n\n Personnel \n Barry Goudreau - lead guitar, guitars, vocals, bass, keyboards\n Brad Delp - lead vocals on A1, A3, A4 & B2-4\n Fran Cosmo - lead vocals on A2, B1 & B5\n Sib Hashian - drums, percussion\n Jesse Erlich - cello\n Joy Lyle - violin\n David Schwartz - viola\n Sid Sharp - violin, concert master\n\n Production \n Produced By John Boylan & Barry Goudreau\n Engineered By Paul Grupp\n Assistant Engineers: Ed Cherney, Phil Jamtaas, Russ Martin\n Mastering: Steve Hoffman\n CD Preparation: Kevin Gray\n\n Charts Albums - Billboard (United States)Singles' - Billboard (United States)\n\nReferences \n\n1980 debut albums\nAlbums produced by John Boylan (record producer)\nPop albums by American artists",
"Beatlejuice is an American Beatles cover band based in New England. It initially featured Brad Delp, former front-man of the band Boston, on vocals, and has continued with other members since Delp's death in 2007.\n\nBiography\nBeatlejuice began in 1994 when John Muzzy and Brad Delp saw Bob Squires' Beatles cover band Merseyside play in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and they decided to start their own band. Beatlejuice played regularly at venues throughout New England until lead singer Brad Delp committed suicide on March 9, 2007, at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire, at the age of 55.\n\nAfter Delp's death, the band continued to perform, using the name Beatlejuice and Friends, beginning with memorial concerts for Delp at the Regent Theatre in Arlington, Massachusetts. Some performers include Jimmy Rogers of Velvet Elvis, and Mike Girard of The Fools. Dave Mitchell, the guitarist in the band, works as a guitar teacher in Nashua, New Hampshire. Beatlejuice is occasionally joined onstage by Joe Holaday's sons: Jared, who plays saxophone, and P.J., who plays drums.\n\nMembers\nCurrent band members\n\nJohn \"Muzz\" Muzzy (drums)\nSteve Baker (keyboard, guitar)\nJoe Holaday (bass)\nDave Mitchell (guitar)\nJimmy Rogers (vocals)\nBuddy Bernard (vocals)\nMike Girard (vocals)\nBob Jennings (vocals)\nEvan Gianoulis (percussion)\nRich Bartlett (acoustic guitar)\n\nPast band members\nBob Squires (guitar)\nPeter DiStefano (guitar)\nBrad Delp (vocals, deceased)\n\nRelated bands\n Velvet Elvis: Elvis Presley and 1950s tribute band with Steve Baker and Joe Holaday, Jimmy Rogers, Rich Bartlett, Dave Mitchell and Jeff Maté.\n The Fools: Mike Girard, Rich Bartlett, Lou Spagnola, Joe Holaday, Leo Black, Stacey Pedrick and others, including John \"Muzz\" Muzzy for a time.\n Boston\n Farrenheit: Charlie Farren, David Hull, and John \"Muzz\" Muzzy.\n Juice in the Machine: When Boston toured in summer 2003, most of Beatlejuice played in this Police tribute band, with Jimmy Rogers as lead singer.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOfficial site\n\nMusical groups from Massachusetts\nMusical groups established in 1994\nThe Beatles tribute bands\n1994 establishments in Massachusetts"
] |
[
"Super Furry Animals",
"1999-2000: Guerrilla and Mwng"
] | C_9a7f7b8da890471b9697afc151525904_0 | What year did the band start? | 1 | What year did the band Super Furry Animals start? | Super Furry Animals | In 1999, NME readers named them 'best new band' in January (this despite the fact it was now three years since they released their debut album). In May, the single "Northern Lites" was released and made No. 11 in the charts. A dense production, with steel drums clattering out a calypso rhythm whilst Rhys sang an irreverent lyric about the El Nino-Southern Oscillation weather phenomenon, it was an apt taster for the new album, Guerrilla. Recorded at the Real World Studios, the album retained SFA's pop melodies but took a less guitar-centric approach to their execution and was their most experimental work to date. Layers of samples over brass, percussion and Gruff's melodic singing produced an album which took the freewheeling approach of 1960s groups such as The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Velvet Underground and updated it to the late 1990s. The album swung from glam and garage rock numbers ("Night Vision", "The Teacher") to novelty techno ("Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home)"), ambient indietronica ("Some Things Come From Nothing") and upbeat drum and bass ("The Door To This House Remains Open"). For the cover art, Pete Fowler created the band's first three-dimensional models, rather than the paintings he had supplied for the Radiator album and singles. After playing several of the summer festivals, SFA released "Fire in My Heart", the most soulful track from Guerrilla, in August and saw it chart at No. 25. They then embarked on a US and UK tour. SFA finished their UK tour at the Cardiff International Arena in Cardiff, where they showcased the first ever concert in surround sound and broadcast it on the World Wide Web. January 2000 involved a series of changes for SFA. The last single from Guerrilla, "Do or Die", was released and made No. 20. It was also the last single SFA released on Creation Records, as founder Alan McGee set off to pursue other interests. It had always been SFA's plan to release their next album on their own label, Placid Casual, as it would be a deliberate sidestep from their recent work: a largely acoustic album of Welsh language songs entitled Mwng. Meaning "mane", its lilting melodies established that SFA's songwriting did not have to fall back on head-spinning production tricks. A limited edition (of 3000) 7 inch record, "Ysbeidiau Heulog" (meaning "Sunny Intervals") preceded Mwng in May 2000. It came backed with "Charge", a hard-rock jam recorded as a Peel Session for the BBC. The album, released the same month, sold remarkably well for a non-English LP - it made No. 11 in the charts - and received a rare distinction for a pop record, being commended in Parliament for its efforts in keeping the Welsh language alive. 2000 also saw the Furries contribute two tracks, Free Now and Peter Blake 2000, for the Liverpool Sound Collage project, which was nominated for a Grammy. They undertook this remixing of unreleased Beatles recordings at the invitation of Paul McCartney, whom they had met at the NME Awards, where they had won Best Live Act. CANNOTANSWER | In 1999, NME readers named them 'best new band' in January (this despite the fact it was now three years since they released their debut album). | Super Furry Animals are a Welsh rock band formed in Cardiff in 1993. Since their formation, the band had consisted of Gruff Rhys (lead vocals, guitar), Huw Bunford (lead guitar, vocals), Guto Pryce (bass guitar), Cian Ciaran (keyboards, synthesisers, various electronics, occasional guitar, vocals), Dafydd Ieuan (drums, vocals) and actor Rhys Ifans.
Super Furry Animals has recorded nine UK Albums Chart Top 25 studio albums (one BPI certified Gold and four certified Silver), plus numerous singles, EPs, compilations and collaborations. The band were known as central to the Cool Cymru era during which they were dominant, and are the act with the most top 75 hits without reaching the UK Singles Chart Top 10. Over the course of nine albums, Super Furry Animals has been described as "one of the most imaginative bands of our time" by Billboard, while according to a 2005 article in NME, "There's a case to be argued that [Super Furry Animals] were the most important band of the past 15 years".
History
1990–1993: Formation
Super Furry Animals formed in Cardiff after being in various other Welsh bands and techno outfits in the area. Rhys, Ieuan and Pryce had been together since the early 1990s and had toured France as a techno group. After Bunford and Ciaran (Ieuan's younger brother) joined, they wrote some songs, and in 1995 signed to Ankst, a Welsh indie label. The band are considered to be part of the renaissance of Welsh music (and art, and literature) in the 1990s: other Welsh bands of the time include the Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, Catatonia and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.
The name of the band came from T-shirts being printed by Rhys' sister. She was making Super Furry Animals T-shirts for the fashion and music collective Acid Casuals (variants of whose name have appeared throughout Super Furry Animals' career – for example, in their song "The Placid Casual", their record label Placid Casual). The band has also made reference to Blur, Elvis Costello, and Wynton Marsalis as major influences in their work.
1994–1995: Early recordings
The earliest Super Furry Animals track commercially available is "Dim Brys: Dim Chwys", recorded in 1994 for Radio Cymru: an ambient piece, the track shows the band's techno roots. However, by the time it was released (on the "Triskedekaphilia" compilation album in August 1995), the band had already put out their debut EP on the Ankst label. The Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantysiliogogogochynygofod (In Space) EP appeared in June 1995 and has been listed in the Guinness Book of Records as having the longest-ever title for an EP.
The Moog Droog EP followed in October 1995, named after the synthesiser manufacturer Robert Moog and the Nadsat term for "friend" in A Clockwork Orange. The EP's title is also a pun on the Welsh "mwg drwg", meaning "wacky baccy" (slang for cannabis, more literally "bad (or naughty) smoke"). The lyrics on all the tracks on both EPs were in Welsh, except for "God! Show Me Magic" from "Moog Droog".
After gigging in London in late 1995, they were noticed by Creation Records boss Alan McGee at the Camden Monarch club, who signed them to his label. Creation was also home to Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine and Teenage Fanclub, and had recently found massive commercial success with Oasis. The band have said that having watched their gig, McGee asked them if they could sing in English rather than Welsh in future shows. In fact, by this stage they were singing in English, but McGee didn't realise because their Welsh accents were so strong. The Super Furry Animals received some criticism in the Welsh media for singing in English, something which the band felt "completely pissed" about. According to drummer Dafydd Ieuan: "It all started when we played this festival in West Wales, and for some reason the Welsh media started foaming at the mouth because we were singing songs in Welsh and English. But they get The Dubliners playing and they don't sing in Irish. It's ridiculous." The band have claimed that the decision to sing in English was taken in order to broaden their fanbase.
1996–1998: Fuzzy Logic to Out Spaced
In February 1996, the band's debut on Creation, "Hometown Unicorn", became New Musical Express's Single of the Week, chosen by guest reviewers Pulp, and the first Super Furry Animals single to chart in the UK Top 50, peaking at No. 47. The follow-up, a re-recording of "God! Show Me Magic", charted at No. 33 upon release in April 1996 and also became NME single of the week. Rawer than the "Moog Droog" version, it clocks in at 1 min 50 secs. In May, their debut album Fuzzy Logic was released, to wide critical acclaim. Sales were slow, with the album peaking at No. 23 in the charts, but it garnered a little more interest when next single "Something 4 the Weekend" (a reworked, more mellow version of the album track) was given considerable radio airplay and charted at No. 18 in July 1996.
The final single from the album, "If You Don't Want Me to Destroy You", was to have been backed by a track called "The Man Don't Give a Fuck". However, there were problems in clearing a sample from "Showbiz Kids" by Steely Dan which formed the basis of the chorus, and it was switched for a different track. The single charted at No. 18. However, Super Furry Animals regarded "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" as one of their best songs and continued their efforts to clear the sample. When they managed this, there was no upcoming release to attach it to – so it came out as a limited edition single in its own right, in December 1996. This ultimately cemented its legendary status and did much to establish Super Furry Animals as cult heroes, as the song contained the word "fuck" over 50 times and therefore received practically no airplay. However, it hit No. 22 in the charts and became Super Furry Animals' standard closing number when they played live.
In early 1997, Super Furry Animals embarked on the NME Brats Tour and completed work on a speedy follow-up to Fuzzy Logic. Two singles preceded the new album, "Hermann ♥'s Pauline" in May and "The International Language of Screaming" in July, hitting No. 26 and No. 24 respectively: these releases were the first to feature cover art from Pete Fowler, who went on to design the sleeves of all their releases up until 2007's Hey Venus. The album, Radiator, hit shelves in August. The reviews were, if anything, better than those for Fuzzy Logic, and it sold more quickly than its predecessor, reaching a peak of No. 8: however, Creation did not serve the album particularly well by releasing it just four days after the long-awaited new effort from Oasis, Be Here Now. Two further singles, "Play It Cool" (released September 1997) and "Demons" (November 1997) both hit No. 27 in the charts, suggesting that Super Furry Animals had hit a commercial ceiling though which they were struggling to break. However, they had established themselves as favourites in the music press, a cut above the majority of their Britpop peers.
After a chance to think about their music and their direction, Super Furry Animals decided to record a new EP in early 1998 at Gorwel Owen's house and released it in May. This was the Ice Hockey Hair EP, widely held as one of their finest moments. ("Ice hockey hair" is a slang term for a mullet.) Featuring four tracks, the EP sampled from Black Uhuru. The title track, a melodic and very moving epic, gained airplay while "Smokin'". In a Melody Maker interview, Super Furry Animals said the "Smokin'" referred to smoking haddock, or to truck drivers' tyres when they're 'burnin' the roads'. It became their most successful single up to this point, hitting No. 12 in the charts and leading to a memorable appearance on "Top of the Pops".
In November 1998, the album Out Spaced was released. This was a collection of songs from the 1995 Ankst releases (including "Dim Brys: Dim Chwys"), the band's favourite B-sides, plus "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" and "Smokin'". A limited edition appeared in a comedy rubber sleeve, shaped like a nipple.
1999–2000: Guerrilla and Mwng
In 1999, NME readers named them 'best new band' in January (this despite the fact it was now three years since they released their debut album). In May, the single "Northern Lites" was released and made No. 11 in the charts. A dense production, with steel drums clattering out a calypso rhythm whilst Rhys sang an irreverent lyric about the El Niño-Southern Oscillation weather phenomenon, it was an apt taster for the new album, Guerrilla. Recorded at the Real World Studios, the album retained SFA's pop melodies but took a less guitar-centric approach to their execution and was their most experimental work to date. Layers of samples over brass, percussion and Gruff's melodic singing produced an album which took the freewheeling approach of 1960s groups such as The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Velvet Underground and updated it to the late 1990s. The album swung from glam and garage rock numbers ("Night Vision", "The Teacher") to novelty techno ("Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home)"), ambient indietronica ("Some Things Come From Nothing") and upbeat drum and bass ("The Door To This House Remains Open"). For the cover art, Pete Fowler created the band's first three-dimensional models, rather than the paintings he had supplied for the Radiator album and singles.
After playing several of the summer festivals, SFA released "Fire in My Heart", the most soulful track from Guerrilla, in August and saw it chart at No. 25. They then embarked on a US and UK tour. SFA finished their UK tour at the Cardiff International Arena in Cardiff, where they showcased the first ever concert in surround sound and broadcast it on the World Wide Web.
January 2000 involved a series of changes for SFA. The last single from Guerrilla, "Do or Die", was released and made No. 20. It was also the last single SFA released on Creation Records, as founder Alan McGee set off to pursue other interests. It had always been SFA's plan to release their next album on their own label, Placid Casual, as it would be a deliberate sidestep from their recent work: a largely acoustic album of Welsh language songs entitled Mwng. Meaning "mane", its lilting melodies established that SFA's songwriting did not have to fall back on head-spinning production tricks. A limited edition (of 3000) 7 inch record, "Ysbeidiau Heulog" (meaning "Sunny Intervals") preceded Mwng in May 2000. It came backed with "Charge", a hard-rock jam recorded as a Peel Session for the BBC. The album, released the same month, sold remarkably well for a non-English LP – it made No. 11 in the charts – and received a rare distinction for a pop record, being commended in Parliament for its efforts in keeping the Welsh language alive.
2000 also saw the Furries contribute two tracks, Free Now and Peter Blake 2000, for the Liverpool Sound Collage project, which was nominated for a Grammy. They undertook this remixing of unreleased Beatles recordings at the invitation of Paul McCartney, whom they had met at the NME Awards, where they had won Best Live Act.
2001–2003: Rings Around the World and Phantom Power
With the demise of Creation, SFA needed to find a new label for their next album. Sony had long held a substantial stake in Creation and offered deals to many ex-Creation artists, including SFA, who signed with one of Sony's subsidiaries, Epic. The band pushed for a deal which allowed them to take a new album elsewhere if the label wasn't interested in releasing it – thereby allowing them to find a home for any esoteric project they might want to undertake in the future.
The greater resources afforded them by Epic were apparent in their first album for the label, Rings Around the World, an album that recaptured the cohesive, experimental feel of Guerrilla but more song-driven and sonically expansive. It is cited by many critics and fans alike as their most polished and accessible work. Again the first single was a good indication of what was to come: "Juxtapozed with U", released in July 2001, was a lush soul record which made No. 14 in the charts. The album followed in the same month and major label marketing muscle made it their biggest-seller to date, reaching No. 3 in the album charts. One of the tracks from the album, "Receptacle For the Respectable" featured Paul McCartney on "carrot and celery rhythm track" (a homage to his performance on the Beach Boys' "Vegetables"). SFA unleashed their experimental side on tracks such as "Sidewalk Serfer Girl" (which switches between light techno-pop and hardcore punk), "[A] Touch Sensitive" (gloomy trip-hop) and "No Sympathy" (which descends into chaotic drum'n'bass), but also apparent was an angrier edge to the lyrics: "Run! Christian, Run!" seemed to be an attack on the complacency of organised religion.
Rings Around the World is also remarkable for being the world's first simultaneous release of an audio and DVD album. It was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2001. The ceremony took place on the day after the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and SFA's performance of the album track "It's Not the End of the World?" took on a somewhat bitter edge. It was released as a single in January 2002 (chart No. 30), following "(Drawing) Rings Around the World" (chart No. 28): neither had that much impact but still received some airplay, notably on BBC Radio 2.
The next album, Phantom Power, relied less on sound experimentation and proved to be a more stripped-down, back-to-basics recording in contrast to the orchestral Rings Around the World. It was also released as both a CD and DVD album in July 2003, preceded by a single, "Golden Retriever", in June (chart No. 13). Although the reviews for the album were generally good and it sold well initially, charting at No. 4, the album broke little new ground by SFA's standards and the band had fallen out of fashion, receiving little coverage in the music press. Another single, "Hello Sunshine", hit No. 31 in October 2003 and was eventually featured on the soundtrack of The O.C..
2004–2005: Phantom Phorce to Love Kraft
Perhaps recognising that their approach to Phantom Power had been a little too straightforward, the group followed it up in 2004 with a remix version, Phantom Phorce, with tracks reworked by the likes of Killa Kela, Four Tet and Brave Captain. They accompanied this with a download single, "Slow Life", which also included the track "Motherfokker", a collaboration with Goldie Lookin Chain, both tracks are now available as a free download via the Placid Casual website. In October 2004 the band released a best of album, Songbook: The Singles, Vol. 1, accompanied by a single – a live version of "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" (chart No. 16).
In early 2005, Gruff Rhys released a solo album Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, ("The Stuttering Generation", and also a play on words as "Atal Genhedlu" means contraception), sung all in Welsh. Gruff played most of the instruments himself, mainly using guitars, drums and his own multi-tracked voice. The band also selected tracks for a volume in the Under the Influence series of compilations, in which artists present the songs that they feel have most contributed to their sound.
In 2005 Super Furry Animals were asked to put together the sixth release from the 'Under The Influence' series - Under the Influence: Super Furry Animals. Each member chose 3 track each - Pryce's selections were Dawn Penn "You Don't Love Me (No, No, No)", Dennis Wilson and Rumbo "Lady" and MC5 "Kick Out the Jams".
Also in 2005 it was reported that the band turned down a US$1.8m advertising deal with Coca-Cola after visiting a Coca-Cola plantation in Colombia with charity War on Want, where they heard of management-directed killings of trade-union members. The company were asking for use of "Hello Sunshine" as part of their campaign. In a statement to British magazine Q, Coca-Cola denied the allegations, stating they had been "an exemplary member of the business community" in Colombia.
In August 2005, Super Furry Animals released their seventh studio effort, Love Kraft, recorded in Spain. This represented a departure from their previous working methods: although all five members had always contributed to the development of the songs, Rhys had been the main songwriter. On Love Kraft this was no longer the case, as Rhys, Bunford, Ieuan and Ciaran all contributed songs and lead vocals. There was only one single from the album, "Lazer Beam", released on 15 August (chart No. 28). The laid-back ambience recalls early-1970s Beach Boys albums such as Surf's Up (which SFA have referred to as one of their favourite albums), whilst the heavy use of strings suggested the likes of Scott Walker and Curtis Mayfield. The album's cool commercial reception (it charted at just No. 19) suggested that they had returned to their familiar status of critically acclaimed cult favourites. Love Kraft was also the last album released under Epic Records, as their contract expired in early 2006.
2006–2008: Rough Trade and Hey Venus!
Ciaran's side project Acid Casuals released their debut album Omni in January 2006 on the Placid Casual label. Drummer Ieuan formed a band known as The Peth which has been described by Rhys in various magazine articles as "Satanic Abba": the band also reunites Rhys Ifans with the SFA family, as he takes lead vocal duties.
The band signed to Rough Trade Records during 2006 and are reportedly working on three projects for the label. Gruff Rhys has also signed for Rough Trade Records as a solo artist in his own right and released a single on 7" vinyl and download entitled "Candylion" in late 2006 which preceded an album of the same name that was released during the second week of 2007. Unlike his debut Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, Candylion is primarily sung in English but has two Welsh tracks and one in "bad Spanish": it is primarily an acoustic album, and came about because Rhys has written several acoustic pop songs that didn't fit with the direction of the new SFA record.
During this time some of the bands' music was used prominently in The Rock-afire Explosion documentary movie, namely Hello Sunshine and Some things Come From Nothing.
Recording sessions took place in a chateau in the south of France in 2007 for the band's first release for Rough Trade, Hey Venus!, which was released on 27 August that year. Gruff himself described the record as "speaker blowing". The album's first single, "Show Your Hand", failed to enter the top 40, their first to do so since 1996's "Hometown Unicorn", despite modest airplay. The album itself fared much better, peaking at No. 11 and was a slight improvement from the sales of Love Kraft. The album became their first to enter the iTunes Music Store top 10 album charts, peaking at No. 9. Over the 2007 Christmas period SFA released a single, "The Gift That Keeps Giving", free from their website.
2009–2014: Dark Days/Light Years and hiatus
On 16 March 2009, Super Furry Animals released their ninth and final studio album, Dark Days/Light Years, digitally via their website. The album's progress was recorded in a series of short films that were shown on the band's website in the build-up to the release. Later in March, they performed the record in its entirety through an exclusive stream on their website. A physical release on Rough Trade Records followed on 21 April, resulting in a number 23 UK Chart placement. Dark Days/Light Years notably featured a guest appearance from Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand on "Inaugural Trams." Dark Days/Light Years received strong critical feedback, with The Guardian writing that "it has more spark and invention than most teen bands manage on their debuts."
In 2010, Super Furry Animals went on what became a five-year hiatus, as bassist Guto Pryce revealed in an interview with Wales Online. Pryce noted that the band expected to reconvene as soon as the members finished with the various projects they were working on.
Super Furry Animals reconvened for one performance on 29 February 2012 at Cardiff City Stadium before a Wales v Costa Rica Gary Speed Memorial Match, in tribute to the late Welsh footballer and team manager.
In 2014, craft brewer The Celt Experience created a tribute "Fuzzy Beer" in collaboration with the band.
2015–2016: Reunion
In May 2015, the band played several gigs from early May to September to accompany a major reissue of their 15-year-old album Mwng, which had been out of print. The same month a biography, Rise of the Super Furry Animals, was published by HarperCollins. In January 2016, the band announced their first North American tour in six years. In May 2016, the band released "Bing Bong", their first single in seven years. The song was released to celebrate the Wales national football team's qualification for UEFA Euro 2016. They headlined the Caught by the River Festival in August 2016, and announced the re-release of Fuzzy Logic. A compilation album, Zoom! The Best of 1995–2016, was released on 4 November 2016. The final tour of their reunion, in which they played both Fuzzy Logic and Radiator in full across the UK and Ireland, took place in December 2016.
2017–present: Second hiatus and Das Koolies
In September 2018, the official Super Furry Animals Twitter feed posted an announcement of a multi-disc set of recordings made at the BBC to be released on 23 November 2018.
In 2019 Bunford, Ciaran, Pryce, and Ieuan reformed without Rhys under the name Das Koolies, an alter ego SFA used around 2000 for an experimental electronic album that was never officially released. Das Koolies released their debut single "It's All About The Dolphins" on 29 January 2020. According to Ciaran, Das Koolies is now their main focus; they are no longer focusing on anything from Super Furry Animals.
Discography
Fuzzy Logic (1996)
Radiator (1997)
Guerrilla (1999)
Mwng (2000)
Rings Around the World (2001)
Phantom Power (2003)
Love Kraft (2005)
Hey Venus! (2007)
Dark Days/Light Years (2009)
References
External links
Super Furry Animals biography from BBC Wales
Musical groups established in 1993
1993 establishments in Wales
Neo-psychedelia groups
Cool Cymru
Welsh alternative rock groups
British psychedelic rock music groups
Britpop groups
Creation Records artists
Welsh-language bands
Musical quintets
Musical groups from Cardiff
Bertelsmann Music Group artists
Epic Records artists
Rough Trade Records artists | true | [
"False Start was a power pop/rock band from Auckland, New Zealand, that formed in the winter of 2005. They were signed to Deadboy Records/Universal.\n\nHistory \n\nIn June 2005, False Start won the Henderson regional heat of Battle of the Bands, going on to claim first equal in the Primal final, out of over a hundred Auckland bands. Adding to their early success, False Start's Goodbye Summer EP sold out on the first night of sales, their record debuting at No. 3 on the Real Groovy National chart. Shortly after False Start signed to Deadboy Records with distribution/backing from Universal Music NZ.\n\nThey released their first single, \"Don't Walk Away\" from the EP titled Goodbye Summer EP and a mini album entitled Adore Tu Ser..... There is also a four-track acoustic mini album titled Tealight For Burma.\n\nSince forming their band, False Start have shared the stage with numerous local and international acts such as Fall Out Boy, Good Charlotte, Story of the Year, Funeral for a Friend, Aiden, Rise Against, The Used and many more. They have also toured extensively throughout New Zealand and Australia.\n\nFalse Start played at the Auckland Big Day Out 2008 on the Local Produce Stage. False Start also did a cover of \"4ever\" by The Veronicas.\n\nIn August 2008, False Start released their second studio album named Through The Looking Glass which includes the single \"Four Letter Lie\". The band opened for Escape The Fate in support of this album.\n\nIn September 2008, Vaughn announced he was leaving along with David a few months later in November.\n\nOn 3 June 2010, False Start posted on their Myspace that 2010 would be their last year as a band before breaking up, each member going their separate ways.\n\nFalse Start reunited with the original lineup in April 2017 for a show in Auckland.\n\nDiscography\n\nStudio albums\nAdore Tu Ser\nThrough The Looking Glass\n\nEPs\nGoodbye Summer EP\nBeginnings...\n\nOther albums\nTealight For Burma\n\nSingles\n\nBand members \nAndrew Morrison – Vocals\nJim Marshall - Guitar\nKev Roberts - Drums\nDavid Wong - Bass\nVaughn Phillips - Guitar\n\nPast members\n\nAshley Wills \nPascal Jarry \nCraigen Durrant\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \nOfficial Myspace\nOfficial Webstore\nOfficial Buzznet\n\nNew Zealand rock music groups\nPower pop groups",
"Look What I Did is an American band, formed in 2001 in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. The band is known for its intense live show, described by Cincinnati CityBeat as a \"live act capable of unleashing a scary, uncontrolled intensity bordering on dangerous,\" and oft-satirical eccentric lyrics.\n\nHistory\nIn 2003, the band added a second guitar player, Aaron \"Skeet\" Childress, formerly of National Green, and relocated to Los Angeles, California. At this time they also released their first recording, an independently recorded, financed, and released LP, My First Time, on their own Clockrock Recordings. Despite its limited pressing, the record received many features from ezines such as theprp.com, loudside.com, and Opuszine.com. \n\nIn early 2008, the band signed a deal with new label Modernist Movement. The album Atlas Drugged was released on February 9, 2010 via Modernist Movement Recordings. Atlas Drugged was also produced by Brian Virtue. Decibel magazine referred to the band in a review of Atlas Drugged, \"Look What I Did crush on political philosophers, put Latin words in their song titles and generally get off on being a bunch of wiseasses to spazzed-out Adderall punk.\"\n\nZanzibar III: Analog Prison was named the Best Metal Album of 2015 by The Nashville Scene.\n\nThe band released a full new song ''If I Were You I Wouldn't'' in January 2016 on their YouTube account, followed by Fireball in June 2016, their first songs released since 'Zanzibar III : Analog Prison'.\n\nThe band was named after friend's child said the phrase 'Mommy, look what I did', about a drawing to her mother when Barry was talking to her over the phone discussing what the band's name should be.\n\nIn September 2020, the band announced that Evan Brewer has joined the band on bass, replacing Chad Omen, with new music underway in the studio.\n\nDiscography\n\nStudio albums\n2003: My First Time (Clockrock Recordings)\n2005: Minuteman for the Moment (Combat Records)\n2010: Atlas Drugged (Modernist Movement Recordings)\n2014: Zanzibar III: Analog Prison (So Say We All Records)\n2019: Sympathy Porn (So Say We All Records)\n\nVideography\n\"Minuteman for the Moment\" (2005)\n\"Fade to Daft\" (2010)\n\"I'm Majoring in Psychology\" (2010)\n\"Serf Song\" (2010)\n\"Pussy Comitatus\" (2011)\n\"Sebastian's Analog Prison\" (2013)\n\"Wait, Don't Jump\" (2015)\n\"If I Were You I Wouldn't\" (2016)\n\"Hands Off My Snacks\" (2019)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nLook What I Did official website\nMusic on Reverbnation \nLook What I Did on Spotify\n[ Look What I Did @ Allmusic.com]\n\nMNRK Music Group artists\nMusical groups established in 2001"
] |
[
"Super Furry Animals",
"1999-2000: Guerrilla and Mwng",
"What year did the band start?",
"In 1999, NME readers named them 'best new band' in January (this despite the fact it was now three years since they released their debut album)."
] | C_9a7f7b8da890471b9697afc151525904_0 | When were they in London? | 2 | When were Super Furry Animals in London? | Super Furry Animals | In 1999, NME readers named them 'best new band' in January (this despite the fact it was now three years since they released their debut album). In May, the single "Northern Lites" was released and made No. 11 in the charts. A dense production, with steel drums clattering out a calypso rhythm whilst Rhys sang an irreverent lyric about the El Nino-Southern Oscillation weather phenomenon, it was an apt taster for the new album, Guerrilla. Recorded at the Real World Studios, the album retained SFA's pop melodies but took a less guitar-centric approach to their execution and was their most experimental work to date. Layers of samples over brass, percussion and Gruff's melodic singing produced an album which took the freewheeling approach of 1960s groups such as The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Velvet Underground and updated it to the late 1990s. The album swung from glam and garage rock numbers ("Night Vision", "The Teacher") to novelty techno ("Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home)"), ambient indietronica ("Some Things Come From Nothing") and upbeat drum and bass ("The Door To This House Remains Open"). For the cover art, Pete Fowler created the band's first three-dimensional models, rather than the paintings he had supplied for the Radiator album and singles. After playing several of the summer festivals, SFA released "Fire in My Heart", the most soulful track from Guerrilla, in August and saw it chart at No. 25. They then embarked on a US and UK tour. SFA finished their UK tour at the Cardiff International Arena in Cardiff, where they showcased the first ever concert in surround sound and broadcast it on the World Wide Web. January 2000 involved a series of changes for SFA. The last single from Guerrilla, "Do or Die", was released and made No. 20. It was also the last single SFA released on Creation Records, as founder Alan McGee set off to pursue other interests. It had always been SFA's plan to release their next album on their own label, Placid Casual, as it would be a deliberate sidestep from their recent work: a largely acoustic album of Welsh language songs entitled Mwng. Meaning "mane", its lilting melodies established that SFA's songwriting did not have to fall back on head-spinning production tricks. A limited edition (of 3000) 7 inch record, "Ysbeidiau Heulog" (meaning "Sunny Intervals") preceded Mwng in May 2000. It came backed with "Charge", a hard-rock jam recorded as a Peel Session for the BBC. The album, released the same month, sold remarkably well for a non-English LP - it made No. 11 in the charts - and received a rare distinction for a pop record, being commended in Parliament for its efforts in keeping the Welsh language alive. 2000 also saw the Furries contribute two tracks, Free Now and Peter Blake 2000, for the Liverpool Sound Collage project, which was nominated for a Grammy. They undertook this remixing of unreleased Beatles recordings at the invitation of Paul McCartney, whom they had met at the NME Awards, where they had won Best Live Act. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Super Furry Animals are a Welsh rock band formed in Cardiff in 1993. Since their formation, the band had consisted of Gruff Rhys (lead vocals, guitar), Huw Bunford (lead guitar, vocals), Guto Pryce (bass guitar), Cian Ciaran (keyboards, synthesisers, various electronics, occasional guitar, vocals), Dafydd Ieuan (drums, vocals) and actor Rhys Ifans.
Super Furry Animals has recorded nine UK Albums Chart Top 25 studio albums (one BPI certified Gold and four certified Silver), plus numerous singles, EPs, compilations and collaborations. The band were known as central to the Cool Cymru era during which they were dominant, and are the act with the most top 75 hits without reaching the UK Singles Chart Top 10. Over the course of nine albums, Super Furry Animals has been described as "one of the most imaginative bands of our time" by Billboard, while according to a 2005 article in NME, "There's a case to be argued that [Super Furry Animals] were the most important band of the past 15 years".
History
1990–1993: Formation
Super Furry Animals formed in Cardiff after being in various other Welsh bands and techno outfits in the area. Rhys, Ieuan and Pryce had been together since the early 1990s and had toured France as a techno group. After Bunford and Ciaran (Ieuan's younger brother) joined, they wrote some songs, and in 1995 signed to Ankst, a Welsh indie label. The band are considered to be part of the renaissance of Welsh music (and art, and literature) in the 1990s: other Welsh bands of the time include the Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, Catatonia and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.
The name of the band came from T-shirts being printed by Rhys' sister. She was making Super Furry Animals T-shirts for the fashion and music collective Acid Casuals (variants of whose name have appeared throughout Super Furry Animals' career – for example, in their song "The Placid Casual", their record label Placid Casual). The band has also made reference to Blur, Elvis Costello, and Wynton Marsalis as major influences in their work.
1994–1995: Early recordings
The earliest Super Furry Animals track commercially available is "Dim Brys: Dim Chwys", recorded in 1994 for Radio Cymru: an ambient piece, the track shows the band's techno roots. However, by the time it was released (on the "Triskedekaphilia" compilation album in August 1995), the band had already put out their debut EP on the Ankst label. The Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantysiliogogogochynygofod (In Space) EP appeared in June 1995 and has been listed in the Guinness Book of Records as having the longest-ever title for an EP.
The Moog Droog EP followed in October 1995, named after the synthesiser manufacturer Robert Moog and the Nadsat term for "friend" in A Clockwork Orange. The EP's title is also a pun on the Welsh "mwg drwg", meaning "wacky baccy" (slang for cannabis, more literally "bad (or naughty) smoke"). The lyrics on all the tracks on both EPs were in Welsh, except for "God! Show Me Magic" from "Moog Droog".
After gigging in London in late 1995, they were noticed by Creation Records boss Alan McGee at the Camden Monarch club, who signed them to his label. Creation was also home to Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine and Teenage Fanclub, and had recently found massive commercial success with Oasis. The band have said that having watched their gig, McGee asked them if they could sing in English rather than Welsh in future shows. In fact, by this stage they were singing in English, but McGee didn't realise because their Welsh accents were so strong. The Super Furry Animals received some criticism in the Welsh media for singing in English, something which the band felt "completely pissed" about. According to drummer Dafydd Ieuan: "It all started when we played this festival in West Wales, and for some reason the Welsh media started foaming at the mouth because we were singing songs in Welsh and English. But they get The Dubliners playing and they don't sing in Irish. It's ridiculous." The band have claimed that the decision to sing in English was taken in order to broaden their fanbase.
1996–1998: Fuzzy Logic to Out Spaced
In February 1996, the band's debut on Creation, "Hometown Unicorn", became New Musical Express's Single of the Week, chosen by guest reviewers Pulp, and the first Super Furry Animals single to chart in the UK Top 50, peaking at No. 47. The follow-up, a re-recording of "God! Show Me Magic", charted at No. 33 upon release in April 1996 and also became NME single of the week. Rawer than the "Moog Droog" version, it clocks in at 1 min 50 secs. In May, their debut album Fuzzy Logic was released, to wide critical acclaim. Sales were slow, with the album peaking at No. 23 in the charts, but it garnered a little more interest when next single "Something 4 the Weekend" (a reworked, more mellow version of the album track) was given considerable radio airplay and charted at No. 18 in July 1996.
The final single from the album, "If You Don't Want Me to Destroy You", was to have been backed by a track called "The Man Don't Give a Fuck". However, there were problems in clearing a sample from "Showbiz Kids" by Steely Dan which formed the basis of the chorus, and it was switched for a different track. The single charted at No. 18. However, Super Furry Animals regarded "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" as one of their best songs and continued their efforts to clear the sample. When they managed this, there was no upcoming release to attach it to – so it came out as a limited edition single in its own right, in December 1996. This ultimately cemented its legendary status and did much to establish Super Furry Animals as cult heroes, as the song contained the word "fuck" over 50 times and therefore received practically no airplay. However, it hit No. 22 in the charts and became Super Furry Animals' standard closing number when they played live.
In early 1997, Super Furry Animals embarked on the NME Brats Tour and completed work on a speedy follow-up to Fuzzy Logic. Two singles preceded the new album, "Hermann ♥'s Pauline" in May and "The International Language of Screaming" in July, hitting No. 26 and No. 24 respectively: these releases were the first to feature cover art from Pete Fowler, who went on to design the sleeves of all their releases up until 2007's Hey Venus. The album, Radiator, hit shelves in August. The reviews were, if anything, better than those for Fuzzy Logic, and it sold more quickly than its predecessor, reaching a peak of No. 8: however, Creation did not serve the album particularly well by releasing it just four days after the long-awaited new effort from Oasis, Be Here Now. Two further singles, "Play It Cool" (released September 1997) and "Demons" (November 1997) both hit No. 27 in the charts, suggesting that Super Furry Animals had hit a commercial ceiling though which they were struggling to break. However, they had established themselves as favourites in the music press, a cut above the majority of their Britpop peers.
After a chance to think about their music and their direction, Super Furry Animals decided to record a new EP in early 1998 at Gorwel Owen's house and released it in May. This was the Ice Hockey Hair EP, widely held as one of their finest moments. ("Ice hockey hair" is a slang term for a mullet.) Featuring four tracks, the EP sampled from Black Uhuru. The title track, a melodic and very moving epic, gained airplay while "Smokin'". In a Melody Maker interview, Super Furry Animals said the "Smokin'" referred to smoking haddock, or to truck drivers' tyres when they're 'burnin' the roads'. It became their most successful single up to this point, hitting No. 12 in the charts and leading to a memorable appearance on "Top of the Pops".
In November 1998, the album Out Spaced was released. This was a collection of songs from the 1995 Ankst releases (including "Dim Brys: Dim Chwys"), the band's favourite B-sides, plus "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" and "Smokin'". A limited edition appeared in a comedy rubber sleeve, shaped like a nipple.
1999–2000: Guerrilla and Mwng
In 1999, NME readers named them 'best new band' in January (this despite the fact it was now three years since they released their debut album). In May, the single "Northern Lites" was released and made No. 11 in the charts. A dense production, with steel drums clattering out a calypso rhythm whilst Rhys sang an irreverent lyric about the El Niño-Southern Oscillation weather phenomenon, it was an apt taster for the new album, Guerrilla. Recorded at the Real World Studios, the album retained SFA's pop melodies but took a less guitar-centric approach to their execution and was their most experimental work to date. Layers of samples over brass, percussion and Gruff's melodic singing produced an album which took the freewheeling approach of 1960s groups such as The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Velvet Underground and updated it to the late 1990s. The album swung from glam and garage rock numbers ("Night Vision", "The Teacher") to novelty techno ("Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home)"), ambient indietronica ("Some Things Come From Nothing") and upbeat drum and bass ("The Door To This House Remains Open"). For the cover art, Pete Fowler created the band's first three-dimensional models, rather than the paintings he had supplied for the Radiator album and singles.
After playing several of the summer festivals, SFA released "Fire in My Heart", the most soulful track from Guerrilla, in August and saw it chart at No. 25. They then embarked on a US and UK tour. SFA finished their UK tour at the Cardiff International Arena in Cardiff, where they showcased the first ever concert in surround sound and broadcast it on the World Wide Web.
January 2000 involved a series of changes for SFA. The last single from Guerrilla, "Do or Die", was released and made No. 20. It was also the last single SFA released on Creation Records, as founder Alan McGee set off to pursue other interests. It had always been SFA's plan to release their next album on their own label, Placid Casual, as it would be a deliberate sidestep from their recent work: a largely acoustic album of Welsh language songs entitled Mwng. Meaning "mane", its lilting melodies established that SFA's songwriting did not have to fall back on head-spinning production tricks. A limited edition (of 3000) 7 inch record, "Ysbeidiau Heulog" (meaning "Sunny Intervals") preceded Mwng in May 2000. It came backed with "Charge", a hard-rock jam recorded as a Peel Session for the BBC. The album, released the same month, sold remarkably well for a non-English LP – it made No. 11 in the charts – and received a rare distinction for a pop record, being commended in Parliament for its efforts in keeping the Welsh language alive.
2000 also saw the Furries contribute two tracks, Free Now and Peter Blake 2000, for the Liverpool Sound Collage project, which was nominated for a Grammy. They undertook this remixing of unreleased Beatles recordings at the invitation of Paul McCartney, whom they had met at the NME Awards, where they had won Best Live Act.
2001–2003: Rings Around the World and Phantom Power
With the demise of Creation, SFA needed to find a new label for their next album. Sony had long held a substantial stake in Creation and offered deals to many ex-Creation artists, including SFA, who signed with one of Sony's subsidiaries, Epic. The band pushed for a deal which allowed them to take a new album elsewhere if the label wasn't interested in releasing it – thereby allowing them to find a home for any esoteric project they might want to undertake in the future.
The greater resources afforded them by Epic were apparent in their first album for the label, Rings Around the World, an album that recaptured the cohesive, experimental feel of Guerrilla but more song-driven and sonically expansive. It is cited by many critics and fans alike as their most polished and accessible work. Again the first single was a good indication of what was to come: "Juxtapozed with U", released in July 2001, was a lush soul record which made No. 14 in the charts. The album followed in the same month and major label marketing muscle made it their biggest-seller to date, reaching No. 3 in the album charts. One of the tracks from the album, "Receptacle For the Respectable" featured Paul McCartney on "carrot and celery rhythm track" (a homage to his performance on the Beach Boys' "Vegetables"). SFA unleashed their experimental side on tracks such as "Sidewalk Serfer Girl" (which switches between light techno-pop and hardcore punk), "[A] Touch Sensitive" (gloomy trip-hop) and "No Sympathy" (which descends into chaotic drum'n'bass), but also apparent was an angrier edge to the lyrics: "Run! Christian, Run!" seemed to be an attack on the complacency of organised religion.
Rings Around the World is also remarkable for being the world's first simultaneous release of an audio and DVD album. It was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2001. The ceremony took place on the day after the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and SFA's performance of the album track "It's Not the End of the World?" took on a somewhat bitter edge. It was released as a single in January 2002 (chart No. 30), following "(Drawing) Rings Around the World" (chart No. 28): neither had that much impact but still received some airplay, notably on BBC Radio 2.
The next album, Phantom Power, relied less on sound experimentation and proved to be a more stripped-down, back-to-basics recording in contrast to the orchestral Rings Around the World. It was also released as both a CD and DVD album in July 2003, preceded by a single, "Golden Retriever", in June (chart No. 13). Although the reviews for the album were generally good and it sold well initially, charting at No. 4, the album broke little new ground by SFA's standards and the band had fallen out of fashion, receiving little coverage in the music press. Another single, "Hello Sunshine", hit No. 31 in October 2003 and was eventually featured on the soundtrack of The O.C..
2004–2005: Phantom Phorce to Love Kraft
Perhaps recognising that their approach to Phantom Power had been a little too straightforward, the group followed it up in 2004 with a remix version, Phantom Phorce, with tracks reworked by the likes of Killa Kela, Four Tet and Brave Captain. They accompanied this with a download single, "Slow Life", which also included the track "Motherfokker", a collaboration with Goldie Lookin Chain, both tracks are now available as a free download via the Placid Casual website. In October 2004 the band released a best of album, Songbook: The Singles, Vol. 1, accompanied by a single – a live version of "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" (chart No. 16).
In early 2005, Gruff Rhys released a solo album Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, ("The Stuttering Generation", and also a play on words as "Atal Genhedlu" means contraception), sung all in Welsh. Gruff played most of the instruments himself, mainly using guitars, drums and his own multi-tracked voice. The band also selected tracks for a volume in the Under the Influence series of compilations, in which artists present the songs that they feel have most contributed to their sound.
In 2005 Super Furry Animals were asked to put together the sixth release from the 'Under The Influence' series - Under the Influence: Super Furry Animals. Each member chose 3 track each - Pryce's selections were Dawn Penn "You Don't Love Me (No, No, No)", Dennis Wilson and Rumbo "Lady" and MC5 "Kick Out the Jams".
Also in 2005 it was reported that the band turned down a US$1.8m advertising deal with Coca-Cola after visiting a Coca-Cola plantation in Colombia with charity War on Want, where they heard of management-directed killings of trade-union members. The company were asking for use of "Hello Sunshine" as part of their campaign. In a statement to British magazine Q, Coca-Cola denied the allegations, stating they had been "an exemplary member of the business community" in Colombia.
In August 2005, Super Furry Animals released their seventh studio effort, Love Kraft, recorded in Spain. This represented a departure from their previous working methods: although all five members had always contributed to the development of the songs, Rhys had been the main songwriter. On Love Kraft this was no longer the case, as Rhys, Bunford, Ieuan and Ciaran all contributed songs and lead vocals. There was only one single from the album, "Lazer Beam", released on 15 August (chart No. 28). The laid-back ambience recalls early-1970s Beach Boys albums such as Surf's Up (which SFA have referred to as one of their favourite albums), whilst the heavy use of strings suggested the likes of Scott Walker and Curtis Mayfield. The album's cool commercial reception (it charted at just No. 19) suggested that they had returned to their familiar status of critically acclaimed cult favourites. Love Kraft was also the last album released under Epic Records, as their contract expired in early 2006.
2006–2008: Rough Trade and Hey Venus!
Ciaran's side project Acid Casuals released their debut album Omni in January 2006 on the Placid Casual label. Drummer Ieuan formed a band known as The Peth which has been described by Rhys in various magazine articles as "Satanic Abba": the band also reunites Rhys Ifans with the SFA family, as he takes lead vocal duties.
The band signed to Rough Trade Records during 2006 and are reportedly working on three projects for the label. Gruff Rhys has also signed for Rough Trade Records as a solo artist in his own right and released a single on 7" vinyl and download entitled "Candylion" in late 2006 which preceded an album of the same name that was released during the second week of 2007. Unlike his debut Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, Candylion is primarily sung in English but has two Welsh tracks and one in "bad Spanish": it is primarily an acoustic album, and came about because Rhys has written several acoustic pop songs that didn't fit with the direction of the new SFA record.
During this time some of the bands' music was used prominently in The Rock-afire Explosion documentary movie, namely Hello Sunshine and Some things Come From Nothing.
Recording sessions took place in a chateau in the south of France in 2007 for the band's first release for Rough Trade, Hey Venus!, which was released on 27 August that year. Gruff himself described the record as "speaker blowing". The album's first single, "Show Your Hand", failed to enter the top 40, their first to do so since 1996's "Hometown Unicorn", despite modest airplay. The album itself fared much better, peaking at No. 11 and was a slight improvement from the sales of Love Kraft. The album became their first to enter the iTunes Music Store top 10 album charts, peaking at No. 9. Over the 2007 Christmas period SFA released a single, "The Gift That Keeps Giving", free from their website.
2009–2014: Dark Days/Light Years and hiatus
On 16 March 2009, Super Furry Animals released their ninth and final studio album, Dark Days/Light Years, digitally via their website. The album's progress was recorded in a series of short films that were shown on the band's website in the build-up to the release. Later in March, they performed the record in its entirety through an exclusive stream on their website. A physical release on Rough Trade Records followed on 21 April, resulting in a number 23 UK Chart placement. Dark Days/Light Years notably featured a guest appearance from Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand on "Inaugural Trams." Dark Days/Light Years received strong critical feedback, with The Guardian writing that "it has more spark and invention than most teen bands manage on their debuts."
In 2010, Super Furry Animals went on what became a five-year hiatus, as bassist Guto Pryce revealed in an interview with Wales Online. Pryce noted that the band expected to reconvene as soon as the members finished with the various projects they were working on.
Super Furry Animals reconvened for one performance on 29 February 2012 at Cardiff City Stadium before a Wales v Costa Rica Gary Speed Memorial Match, in tribute to the late Welsh footballer and team manager.
In 2014, craft brewer The Celt Experience created a tribute "Fuzzy Beer" in collaboration with the band.
2015–2016: Reunion
In May 2015, the band played several gigs from early May to September to accompany a major reissue of their 15-year-old album Mwng, which had been out of print. The same month a biography, Rise of the Super Furry Animals, was published by HarperCollins. In January 2016, the band announced their first North American tour in six years. In May 2016, the band released "Bing Bong", their first single in seven years. The song was released to celebrate the Wales national football team's qualification for UEFA Euro 2016. They headlined the Caught by the River Festival in August 2016, and announced the re-release of Fuzzy Logic. A compilation album, Zoom! The Best of 1995–2016, was released on 4 November 2016. The final tour of their reunion, in which they played both Fuzzy Logic and Radiator in full across the UK and Ireland, took place in December 2016.
2017–present: Second hiatus and Das Koolies
In September 2018, the official Super Furry Animals Twitter feed posted an announcement of a multi-disc set of recordings made at the BBC to be released on 23 November 2018.
In 2019 Bunford, Ciaran, Pryce, and Ieuan reformed without Rhys under the name Das Koolies, an alter ego SFA used around 2000 for an experimental electronic album that was never officially released. Das Koolies released their debut single "It's All About The Dolphins" on 29 January 2020. According to Ciaran, Das Koolies is now their main focus; they are no longer focusing on anything from Super Furry Animals.
Discography
Fuzzy Logic (1996)
Radiator (1997)
Guerrilla (1999)
Mwng (2000)
Rings Around the World (2001)
Phantom Power (2003)
Love Kraft (2005)
Hey Venus! (2007)
Dark Days/Light Years (2009)
References
External links
Super Furry Animals biography from BBC Wales
Musical groups established in 1993
1993 establishments in Wales
Neo-psychedelia groups
Cool Cymru
Welsh alternative rock groups
British psychedelic rock music groups
Britpop groups
Creation Records artists
Welsh-language bands
Musical quintets
Musical groups from Cardiff
Bertelsmann Music Group artists
Epic Records artists
Rough Trade Records artists | false | [
"Willesden F.C. was an English football club based in Willesden, London. The club played at King Edwards Park and Willesden Sports Centre.\n\nHistory\nThe club entered the FA cup for the first time in the 1947–48 season, when it lost to Leavesden 7–1 in an away game. In 1948 the club joined the Spartan League, but left after two seasons. They were founder members of the Delphian League in 1951, but left the league at the end of the 1952–53 season after finishing bottom. They later joined the London League and then joined the Aetolian League when it was established in 1959. They left the league at the end of the 1962–63 season and joined the Spartan League.\n\nIn 1966 they joined the Premier Division of the Greater London League, but finished bottom and were relegated to Division Two in their first season. In 1967–68 they won Division Two and were promoted back to (a renamed) Division One. When the league merged into the Metropolitan–London League in 1971, Willesden were placed in Division One. In 1974 they transferred to Division Two the Athenian League, and two years later they joined Division Two of the Isthmian League.\n\nIn 1978, the club had a dispute with Brent Council over the rental payments for playing at the Willesden Sports Centre Stadium. The Council wanted to raise the rental from £150 per year to £2,083. Moreover, the council had concerns about the financial viability of the club.\n\nThe club left the Isthmian league at the end of the 1980–81 season, when it finished 17th out of 20.\n\nHonours\nGreater London League\nDivision Two champions 1967–68\n\nRecords\nBest FA Cup performance: First qualifying round second replay, 1979–80\nBest FA Vase performance: First round replay 1974–75\n\nSee also\nWillesden F.C. players\n\nReferences\n\nDefunct football clubs in England\nDefunct football clubs in London\nAssociation football clubs disestablished in 1981\nSport in the London Borough of Brent\nSpartan League\nGreat Western Combination\nDelphian League\nLondon League (football)\nAetolian League (football)\nParthenon League\nGreater London League\nMetropolitan–London League\nAthenian League\nIsthmian League\n1981 disestablishments in England\nWillesden",
"Beckenham Town Football Club is a football club based in Beckenham, London, England. They are currently members of the and play at Eden Park Avenue.\n\nHistory\nThe original Beckenham Town were established in the late 19th century, affiliating to the Kent County Football Association in 1887.\n\nIn 1923 the club joined Division One of the London League. They won Division One in 1927–28, and were promoted to the Premier Division. However, after finishing second-from-bottom in their first season in the Premier Division, they ended the 1929–30 season in last place, and were relegated back to Division One.\n\nThe following season saw them finish second in Division One, earning promotion back to the Premier Division. Despite finishing bottom of the Premier Division in 1931–32 they remained in the division, but after repeating the feat in 1932–33, they were relegated back to Division One. After finishing bottom of Division One in 1934–35 the club left the league. They had also entered a team into the Kent County Amateur League a few seasons before, and continued playing in the Premier Division of the Western Section until rejoining the London League in 1951, where they were placed in the Premier Division.\n\nThey remained in the London League's Premier Division until joining the Aetolian League in 1961. This merged with the London League in 1964 to form the Greater London League, with Beckenham placed in Section B. A fifth-place finish in the league's inaugural season saw them win a place in the Premier Division for the 1965–66 season. However, after finishing second-from-bottom of the division that season, they were relegated to Division One. They folded in 1969.\n\nIn 1971 the club was reformed based on the Stanhope Rovers junior team. After playing in the South East London Amateur League, they joined Division Two of the new London Spartan League in 1975. After being runners-up in 1977–78, they were promoted to the Premier Division. In 1982 they transferred to Division One of the Kent League, which became the Premier Division in 1998. They finished as runners–up in 2005–06. The league was subsequently renamed the Southern Counties East League in 2013. The club won both the Kent Senior Trophy and the League Cup in 2013–14, and went on to win the Roy Vinter Shield at the start of the 2014–15 season. In 2019–20 the club were top of the league when the season was abandoned due to the COVID-19 pandemic; this would have been the club's highest finish since reforming in 1971. At the end of the 2020–21 season they were transferred to the Premier Division South of the Combined Counties League.\n\nSeasons-by-season\n\nGround\nThe club played at Stanhope Grove until July 1980 when they moved to Eden Park Avenue. The ground has a capacity of 4,000, of which 120 is seated and covered.\n\nHonours\nLondon League\nDivision One champions 1927–28\nSouthern Counties East League\nChallenge Cup winners 2013–14\nRoy Vinter Shield winners 2014–15\nKent Senior Trophy\nWinners 2013–14\n\nRecords\nHighest league position: 2nd in the Kent League Premier Division, 2005–06\nBest FA Cup performance: Second qualifying round, 1992–93, 2010–11, 2011–12\nBest FA Vase performance: Fourth round, 1980–81\nRecord attendance: 1,562 vs Celebrity XI, friendly match, June 2009\nMost appearances: Lee Fabian, 985\nMost goals: Ricky Bennett\n\nSee also\nBeckenham Town F.C. players\nBeckenham Town F.C. managers\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOfficial website\n\n \nFootball clubs in Kent\nFootball clubs in England\nAssociation football clubs established in 1971\n1971 establishments in England\nSport in the London Borough of Bromley\nLondon League (football)\nGreater London League\nAetolian League (football)\nSpartan League\nSouthern Counties East Football League\nCombined Counties Football League"
] |
[
"Super Furry Animals",
"1999-2000: Guerrilla and Mwng",
"What year did the band start?",
"In 1999, NME readers named them 'best new band' in January (this despite the fact it was now three years since they released their debut album).",
"When were they in London?",
"I don't know."
] | C_9a7f7b8da890471b9697afc151525904_0 | Why did the band decide to sing in English? | 3 | Why did the band Super Furry Animals decide to sing in English? | Super Furry Animals | In 1999, NME readers named them 'best new band' in January (this despite the fact it was now three years since they released their debut album). In May, the single "Northern Lites" was released and made No. 11 in the charts. A dense production, with steel drums clattering out a calypso rhythm whilst Rhys sang an irreverent lyric about the El Nino-Southern Oscillation weather phenomenon, it was an apt taster for the new album, Guerrilla. Recorded at the Real World Studios, the album retained SFA's pop melodies but took a less guitar-centric approach to their execution and was their most experimental work to date. Layers of samples over brass, percussion and Gruff's melodic singing produced an album which took the freewheeling approach of 1960s groups such as The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Velvet Underground and updated it to the late 1990s. The album swung from glam and garage rock numbers ("Night Vision", "The Teacher") to novelty techno ("Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home)"), ambient indietronica ("Some Things Come From Nothing") and upbeat drum and bass ("The Door To This House Remains Open"). For the cover art, Pete Fowler created the band's first three-dimensional models, rather than the paintings he had supplied for the Radiator album and singles. After playing several of the summer festivals, SFA released "Fire in My Heart", the most soulful track from Guerrilla, in August and saw it chart at No. 25. They then embarked on a US and UK tour. SFA finished their UK tour at the Cardiff International Arena in Cardiff, where they showcased the first ever concert in surround sound and broadcast it on the World Wide Web. January 2000 involved a series of changes for SFA. The last single from Guerrilla, "Do or Die", was released and made No. 20. It was also the last single SFA released on Creation Records, as founder Alan McGee set off to pursue other interests. It had always been SFA's plan to release their next album on their own label, Placid Casual, as it would be a deliberate sidestep from their recent work: a largely acoustic album of Welsh language songs entitled Mwng. Meaning "mane", its lilting melodies established that SFA's songwriting did not have to fall back on head-spinning production tricks. A limited edition (of 3000) 7 inch record, "Ysbeidiau Heulog" (meaning "Sunny Intervals") preceded Mwng in May 2000. It came backed with "Charge", a hard-rock jam recorded as a Peel Session for the BBC. The album, released the same month, sold remarkably well for a non-English LP - it made No. 11 in the charts - and received a rare distinction for a pop record, being commended in Parliament for its efforts in keeping the Welsh language alive. 2000 also saw the Furries contribute two tracks, Free Now and Peter Blake 2000, for the Liverpool Sound Collage project, which was nominated for a Grammy. They undertook this remixing of unreleased Beatles recordings at the invitation of Paul McCartney, whom they had met at the NME Awards, where they had won Best Live Act. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Super Furry Animals are a Welsh rock band formed in Cardiff in 1993. Since their formation, the band had consisted of Gruff Rhys (lead vocals, guitar), Huw Bunford (lead guitar, vocals), Guto Pryce (bass guitar), Cian Ciaran (keyboards, synthesisers, various electronics, occasional guitar, vocals), Dafydd Ieuan (drums, vocals) and actor Rhys Ifans.
Super Furry Animals has recorded nine UK Albums Chart Top 25 studio albums (one BPI certified Gold and four certified Silver), plus numerous singles, EPs, compilations and collaborations. The band were known as central to the Cool Cymru era during which they were dominant, and are the act with the most top 75 hits without reaching the UK Singles Chart Top 10. Over the course of nine albums, Super Furry Animals has been described as "one of the most imaginative bands of our time" by Billboard, while according to a 2005 article in NME, "There's a case to be argued that [Super Furry Animals] were the most important band of the past 15 years".
History
1990–1993: Formation
Super Furry Animals formed in Cardiff after being in various other Welsh bands and techno outfits in the area. Rhys, Ieuan and Pryce had been together since the early 1990s and had toured France as a techno group. After Bunford and Ciaran (Ieuan's younger brother) joined, they wrote some songs, and in 1995 signed to Ankst, a Welsh indie label. The band are considered to be part of the renaissance of Welsh music (and art, and literature) in the 1990s: other Welsh bands of the time include the Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, Catatonia and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.
The name of the band came from T-shirts being printed by Rhys' sister. She was making Super Furry Animals T-shirts for the fashion and music collective Acid Casuals (variants of whose name have appeared throughout Super Furry Animals' career – for example, in their song "The Placid Casual", their record label Placid Casual). The band has also made reference to Blur, Elvis Costello, and Wynton Marsalis as major influences in their work.
1994–1995: Early recordings
The earliest Super Furry Animals track commercially available is "Dim Brys: Dim Chwys", recorded in 1994 for Radio Cymru: an ambient piece, the track shows the band's techno roots. However, by the time it was released (on the "Triskedekaphilia" compilation album in August 1995), the band had already put out their debut EP on the Ankst label. The Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantysiliogogogochynygofod (In Space) EP appeared in June 1995 and has been listed in the Guinness Book of Records as having the longest-ever title for an EP.
The Moog Droog EP followed in October 1995, named after the synthesiser manufacturer Robert Moog and the Nadsat term for "friend" in A Clockwork Orange. The EP's title is also a pun on the Welsh "mwg drwg", meaning "wacky baccy" (slang for cannabis, more literally "bad (or naughty) smoke"). The lyrics on all the tracks on both EPs were in Welsh, except for "God! Show Me Magic" from "Moog Droog".
After gigging in London in late 1995, they were noticed by Creation Records boss Alan McGee at the Camden Monarch club, who signed them to his label. Creation was also home to Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine and Teenage Fanclub, and had recently found massive commercial success with Oasis. The band have said that having watched their gig, McGee asked them if they could sing in English rather than Welsh in future shows. In fact, by this stage they were singing in English, but McGee didn't realise because their Welsh accents were so strong. The Super Furry Animals received some criticism in the Welsh media for singing in English, something which the band felt "completely pissed" about. According to drummer Dafydd Ieuan: "It all started when we played this festival in West Wales, and for some reason the Welsh media started foaming at the mouth because we were singing songs in Welsh and English. But they get The Dubliners playing and they don't sing in Irish. It's ridiculous." The band have claimed that the decision to sing in English was taken in order to broaden their fanbase.
1996–1998: Fuzzy Logic to Out Spaced
In February 1996, the band's debut on Creation, "Hometown Unicorn", became New Musical Express's Single of the Week, chosen by guest reviewers Pulp, and the first Super Furry Animals single to chart in the UK Top 50, peaking at No. 47. The follow-up, a re-recording of "God! Show Me Magic", charted at No. 33 upon release in April 1996 and also became NME single of the week. Rawer than the "Moog Droog" version, it clocks in at 1 min 50 secs. In May, their debut album Fuzzy Logic was released, to wide critical acclaim. Sales were slow, with the album peaking at No. 23 in the charts, but it garnered a little more interest when next single "Something 4 the Weekend" (a reworked, more mellow version of the album track) was given considerable radio airplay and charted at No. 18 in July 1996.
The final single from the album, "If You Don't Want Me to Destroy You", was to have been backed by a track called "The Man Don't Give a Fuck". However, there were problems in clearing a sample from "Showbiz Kids" by Steely Dan which formed the basis of the chorus, and it was switched for a different track. The single charted at No. 18. However, Super Furry Animals regarded "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" as one of their best songs and continued their efforts to clear the sample. When they managed this, there was no upcoming release to attach it to – so it came out as a limited edition single in its own right, in December 1996. This ultimately cemented its legendary status and did much to establish Super Furry Animals as cult heroes, as the song contained the word "fuck" over 50 times and therefore received practically no airplay. However, it hit No. 22 in the charts and became Super Furry Animals' standard closing number when they played live.
In early 1997, Super Furry Animals embarked on the NME Brats Tour and completed work on a speedy follow-up to Fuzzy Logic. Two singles preceded the new album, "Hermann ♥'s Pauline" in May and "The International Language of Screaming" in July, hitting No. 26 and No. 24 respectively: these releases were the first to feature cover art from Pete Fowler, who went on to design the sleeves of all their releases up until 2007's Hey Venus. The album, Radiator, hit shelves in August. The reviews were, if anything, better than those for Fuzzy Logic, and it sold more quickly than its predecessor, reaching a peak of No. 8: however, Creation did not serve the album particularly well by releasing it just four days after the long-awaited new effort from Oasis, Be Here Now. Two further singles, "Play It Cool" (released September 1997) and "Demons" (November 1997) both hit No. 27 in the charts, suggesting that Super Furry Animals had hit a commercial ceiling though which they were struggling to break. However, they had established themselves as favourites in the music press, a cut above the majority of their Britpop peers.
After a chance to think about their music and their direction, Super Furry Animals decided to record a new EP in early 1998 at Gorwel Owen's house and released it in May. This was the Ice Hockey Hair EP, widely held as one of their finest moments. ("Ice hockey hair" is a slang term for a mullet.) Featuring four tracks, the EP sampled from Black Uhuru. The title track, a melodic and very moving epic, gained airplay while "Smokin'". In a Melody Maker interview, Super Furry Animals said the "Smokin'" referred to smoking haddock, or to truck drivers' tyres when they're 'burnin' the roads'. It became their most successful single up to this point, hitting No. 12 in the charts and leading to a memorable appearance on "Top of the Pops".
In November 1998, the album Out Spaced was released. This was a collection of songs from the 1995 Ankst releases (including "Dim Brys: Dim Chwys"), the band's favourite B-sides, plus "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" and "Smokin'". A limited edition appeared in a comedy rubber sleeve, shaped like a nipple.
1999–2000: Guerrilla and Mwng
In 1999, NME readers named them 'best new band' in January (this despite the fact it was now three years since they released their debut album). In May, the single "Northern Lites" was released and made No. 11 in the charts. A dense production, with steel drums clattering out a calypso rhythm whilst Rhys sang an irreverent lyric about the El Niño-Southern Oscillation weather phenomenon, it was an apt taster for the new album, Guerrilla. Recorded at the Real World Studios, the album retained SFA's pop melodies but took a less guitar-centric approach to their execution and was their most experimental work to date. Layers of samples over brass, percussion and Gruff's melodic singing produced an album which took the freewheeling approach of 1960s groups such as The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Velvet Underground and updated it to the late 1990s. The album swung from glam and garage rock numbers ("Night Vision", "The Teacher") to novelty techno ("Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home)"), ambient indietronica ("Some Things Come From Nothing") and upbeat drum and bass ("The Door To This House Remains Open"). For the cover art, Pete Fowler created the band's first three-dimensional models, rather than the paintings he had supplied for the Radiator album and singles.
After playing several of the summer festivals, SFA released "Fire in My Heart", the most soulful track from Guerrilla, in August and saw it chart at No. 25. They then embarked on a US and UK tour. SFA finished their UK tour at the Cardiff International Arena in Cardiff, where they showcased the first ever concert in surround sound and broadcast it on the World Wide Web.
January 2000 involved a series of changes for SFA. The last single from Guerrilla, "Do or Die", was released and made No. 20. It was also the last single SFA released on Creation Records, as founder Alan McGee set off to pursue other interests. It had always been SFA's plan to release their next album on their own label, Placid Casual, as it would be a deliberate sidestep from their recent work: a largely acoustic album of Welsh language songs entitled Mwng. Meaning "mane", its lilting melodies established that SFA's songwriting did not have to fall back on head-spinning production tricks. A limited edition (of 3000) 7 inch record, "Ysbeidiau Heulog" (meaning "Sunny Intervals") preceded Mwng in May 2000. It came backed with "Charge", a hard-rock jam recorded as a Peel Session for the BBC. The album, released the same month, sold remarkably well for a non-English LP – it made No. 11 in the charts – and received a rare distinction for a pop record, being commended in Parliament for its efforts in keeping the Welsh language alive.
2000 also saw the Furries contribute two tracks, Free Now and Peter Blake 2000, for the Liverpool Sound Collage project, which was nominated for a Grammy. They undertook this remixing of unreleased Beatles recordings at the invitation of Paul McCartney, whom they had met at the NME Awards, where they had won Best Live Act.
2001–2003: Rings Around the World and Phantom Power
With the demise of Creation, SFA needed to find a new label for their next album. Sony had long held a substantial stake in Creation and offered deals to many ex-Creation artists, including SFA, who signed with one of Sony's subsidiaries, Epic. The band pushed for a deal which allowed them to take a new album elsewhere if the label wasn't interested in releasing it – thereby allowing them to find a home for any esoteric project they might want to undertake in the future.
The greater resources afforded them by Epic were apparent in their first album for the label, Rings Around the World, an album that recaptured the cohesive, experimental feel of Guerrilla but more song-driven and sonically expansive. It is cited by many critics and fans alike as their most polished and accessible work. Again the first single was a good indication of what was to come: "Juxtapozed with U", released in July 2001, was a lush soul record which made No. 14 in the charts. The album followed in the same month and major label marketing muscle made it their biggest-seller to date, reaching No. 3 in the album charts. One of the tracks from the album, "Receptacle For the Respectable" featured Paul McCartney on "carrot and celery rhythm track" (a homage to his performance on the Beach Boys' "Vegetables"). SFA unleashed their experimental side on tracks such as "Sidewalk Serfer Girl" (which switches between light techno-pop and hardcore punk), "[A] Touch Sensitive" (gloomy trip-hop) and "No Sympathy" (which descends into chaotic drum'n'bass), but also apparent was an angrier edge to the lyrics: "Run! Christian, Run!" seemed to be an attack on the complacency of organised religion.
Rings Around the World is also remarkable for being the world's first simultaneous release of an audio and DVD album. It was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2001. The ceremony took place on the day after the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and SFA's performance of the album track "It's Not the End of the World?" took on a somewhat bitter edge. It was released as a single in January 2002 (chart No. 30), following "(Drawing) Rings Around the World" (chart No. 28): neither had that much impact but still received some airplay, notably on BBC Radio 2.
The next album, Phantom Power, relied less on sound experimentation and proved to be a more stripped-down, back-to-basics recording in contrast to the orchestral Rings Around the World. It was also released as both a CD and DVD album in July 2003, preceded by a single, "Golden Retriever", in June (chart No. 13). Although the reviews for the album were generally good and it sold well initially, charting at No. 4, the album broke little new ground by SFA's standards and the band had fallen out of fashion, receiving little coverage in the music press. Another single, "Hello Sunshine", hit No. 31 in October 2003 and was eventually featured on the soundtrack of The O.C..
2004–2005: Phantom Phorce to Love Kraft
Perhaps recognising that their approach to Phantom Power had been a little too straightforward, the group followed it up in 2004 with a remix version, Phantom Phorce, with tracks reworked by the likes of Killa Kela, Four Tet and Brave Captain. They accompanied this with a download single, "Slow Life", which also included the track "Motherfokker", a collaboration with Goldie Lookin Chain, both tracks are now available as a free download via the Placid Casual website. In October 2004 the band released a best of album, Songbook: The Singles, Vol. 1, accompanied by a single – a live version of "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" (chart No. 16).
In early 2005, Gruff Rhys released a solo album Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, ("The Stuttering Generation", and also a play on words as "Atal Genhedlu" means contraception), sung all in Welsh. Gruff played most of the instruments himself, mainly using guitars, drums and his own multi-tracked voice. The band also selected tracks for a volume in the Under the Influence series of compilations, in which artists present the songs that they feel have most contributed to their sound.
In 2005 Super Furry Animals were asked to put together the sixth release from the 'Under The Influence' series - Under the Influence: Super Furry Animals. Each member chose 3 track each - Pryce's selections were Dawn Penn "You Don't Love Me (No, No, No)", Dennis Wilson and Rumbo "Lady" and MC5 "Kick Out the Jams".
Also in 2005 it was reported that the band turned down a US$1.8m advertising deal with Coca-Cola after visiting a Coca-Cola plantation in Colombia with charity War on Want, where they heard of management-directed killings of trade-union members. The company were asking for use of "Hello Sunshine" as part of their campaign. In a statement to British magazine Q, Coca-Cola denied the allegations, stating they had been "an exemplary member of the business community" in Colombia.
In August 2005, Super Furry Animals released their seventh studio effort, Love Kraft, recorded in Spain. This represented a departure from their previous working methods: although all five members had always contributed to the development of the songs, Rhys had been the main songwriter. On Love Kraft this was no longer the case, as Rhys, Bunford, Ieuan and Ciaran all contributed songs and lead vocals. There was only one single from the album, "Lazer Beam", released on 15 August (chart No. 28). The laid-back ambience recalls early-1970s Beach Boys albums such as Surf's Up (which SFA have referred to as one of their favourite albums), whilst the heavy use of strings suggested the likes of Scott Walker and Curtis Mayfield. The album's cool commercial reception (it charted at just No. 19) suggested that they had returned to their familiar status of critically acclaimed cult favourites. Love Kraft was also the last album released under Epic Records, as their contract expired in early 2006.
2006–2008: Rough Trade and Hey Venus!
Ciaran's side project Acid Casuals released their debut album Omni in January 2006 on the Placid Casual label. Drummer Ieuan formed a band known as The Peth which has been described by Rhys in various magazine articles as "Satanic Abba": the band also reunites Rhys Ifans with the SFA family, as he takes lead vocal duties.
The band signed to Rough Trade Records during 2006 and are reportedly working on three projects for the label. Gruff Rhys has also signed for Rough Trade Records as a solo artist in his own right and released a single on 7" vinyl and download entitled "Candylion" in late 2006 which preceded an album of the same name that was released during the second week of 2007. Unlike his debut Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, Candylion is primarily sung in English but has two Welsh tracks and one in "bad Spanish": it is primarily an acoustic album, and came about because Rhys has written several acoustic pop songs that didn't fit with the direction of the new SFA record.
During this time some of the bands' music was used prominently in The Rock-afire Explosion documentary movie, namely Hello Sunshine and Some things Come From Nothing.
Recording sessions took place in a chateau in the south of France in 2007 for the band's first release for Rough Trade, Hey Venus!, which was released on 27 August that year. Gruff himself described the record as "speaker blowing". The album's first single, "Show Your Hand", failed to enter the top 40, their first to do so since 1996's "Hometown Unicorn", despite modest airplay. The album itself fared much better, peaking at No. 11 and was a slight improvement from the sales of Love Kraft. The album became their first to enter the iTunes Music Store top 10 album charts, peaking at No. 9. Over the 2007 Christmas period SFA released a single, "The Gift That Keeps Giving", free from their website.
2009–2014: Dark Days/Light Years and hiatus
On 16 March 2009, Super Furry Animals released their ninth and final studio album, Dark Days/Light Years, digitally via their website. The album's progress was recorded in a series of short films that were shown on the band's website in the build-up to the release. Later in March, they performed the record in its entirety through an exclusive stream on their website. A physical release on Rough Trade Records followed on 21 April, resulting in a number 23 UK Chart placement. Dark Days/Light Years notably featured a guest appearance from Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand on "Inaugural Trams." Dark Days/Light Years received strong critical feedback, with The Guardian writing that "it has more spark and invention than most teen bands manage on their debuts."
In 2010, Super Furry Animals went on what became a five-year hiatus, as bassist Guto Pryce revealed in an interview with Wales Online. Pryce noted that the band expected to reconvene as soon as the members finished with the various projects they were working on.
Super Furry Animals reconvened for one performance on 29 February 2012 at Cardiff City Stadium before a Wales v Costa Rica Gary Speed Memorial Match, in tribute to the late Welsh footballer and team manager.
In 2014, craft brewer The Celt Experience created a tribute "Fuzzy Beer" in collaboration with the band.
2015–2016: Reunion
In May 2015, the band played several gigs from early May to September to accompany a major reissue of their 15-year-old album Mwng, which had been out of print. The same month a biography, Rise of the Super Furry Animals, was published by HarperCollins. In January 2016, the band announced their first North American tour in six years. In May 2016, the band released "Bing Bong", their first single in seven years. The song was released to celebrate the Wales national football team's qualification for UEFA Euro 2016. They headlined the Caught by the River Festival in August 2016, and announced the re-release of Fuzzy Logic. A compilation album, Zoom! The Best of 1995–2016, was released on 4 November 2016. The final tour of their reunion, in which they played both Fuzzy Logic and Radiator in full across the UK and Ireland, took place in December 2016.
2017–present: Second hiatus and Das Koolies
In September 2018, the official Super Furry Animals Twitter feed posted an announcement of a multi-disc set of recordings made at the BBC to be released on 23 November 2018.
In 2019 Bunford, Ciaran, Pryce, and Ieuan reformed without Rhys under the name Das Koolies, an alter ego SFA used around 2000 for an experimental electronic album that was never officially released. Das Koolies released their debut single "It's All About The Dolphins" on 29 January 2020. According to Ciaran, Das Koolies is now their main focus; they are no longer focusing on anything from Super Furry Animals.
Discography
Fuzzy Logic (1996)
Radiator (1997)
Guerrilla (1999)
Mwng (2000)
Rings Around the World (2001)
Phantom Power (2003)
Love Kraft (2005)
Hey Venus! (2007)
Dark Days/Light Years (2009)
References
External links
Super Furry Animals biography from BBC Wales
Musical groups established in 1993
1993 establishments in Wales
Neo-psychedelia groups
Cool Cymru
Welsh alternative rock groups
British psychedelic rock music groups
Britpop groups
Creation Records artists
Welsh-language bands
Musical quintets
Musical groups from Cardiff
Bertelsmann Music Group artists
Epic Records artists
Rough Trade Records artists | false | [
"Emma Anderson (born 10 June 1967) is an English musician. She is best known for being a songwriter, guitarist and singer in the shoegazing/Britpop band Lush.\n\nMusical career\nBorn in Wimbledon, London, the adopted daughter of a former army officer who ran a gentleman's club in Piccadilly, Anderson attended several schools before taking her O-Levels at Queen's College, where she met Miki Berenyi. As keen music fans, they wrote a fanzine called Alphabet Soup. Her first band, which she joined in 1986, was the Rover Girls (which featured Chris P Mowforth and Stuart Watson, who were both later in Silverfish) as a bass player.\n\nIn 1987, while Anderson was at Ealing College of Higher Education studying Humanities and Berenyi was at North London Polytechnic, they formed Lush. Lush played their very first performance at the Camden Falcon in London on 6 March 1988. They went on to reasonable success, having a number of Top 40 hits over an eight-year career. Anderson told Everett True in Melody Maker, \"I remember when I couldn't play, I wasn't in a band, didn't know anyone else who could play, and now we've got a record out on 4AD. I sometimes find it impossible to come to terms with what's happening.\" Anderson and Berenyi were the only women to take part in the 1992 Lollapalooza tour of the United States.\n\nBoth Anderson and Berenyi became major music press celebrities as part of The Scene That Celebrates Itself. Music magazines the NME and Melody Maker gleefully reported their social activities on a regular basis, which could be said to overshadow their increasingly strong songwriting. As drummer Chris Acland stated, \"people seem to want to talk about Lush's relationship to the press more than they want to talk about Lush.\"\n\nOf the sound of Lush, Emma said, \"\"We were kind of punk rock in one way. We did think 'Well, if they can do it, why the fuck can't we?' Basically, our idea was to have extremely loud guitars with much weaker vocals. And, really the vocals were weaker due to nervousness – we'd always be going 'Turn them down! Turn them down!'.\"\"\n\nAfter their biggest hits, the Top 30 \"Single Girl\", \"Ladykillers\" and \"500 (Shake Baby Shake)\" and Top 10 album, Lovelife, the band's drummer Chris Acland took his own life in 1996. The members were devastated and they split in 1996. Lush officially announced their breakup on 23 February 1998.\n\nWhile a member of Lush, Anderson also worked with Drum Club contributing vocals and guitar on \"Spaced Out Locked In\" on their 1993 album Everything Is Now, also playing guitar on \"Sound System\".\n\nIn 1997 Anderson formed a new band with vocalist Lisa O'Neill, Sing-Sing. Emma explained how it started, \"I just started writing songs not really knowing what was going to happen though I kind of knew I didn't want to form another 4-piece indie band. I demoed those songs for 4AD with myself singing but was dropped but I wasn't fazed. I then met Lisa O'Neill via a guy I was going out with at the time. She had worked with Mark Van Hoen whom funnily enough, someone I knew said, was looking for collaborators so it kind of all fell into place and Sing-Sing was born.\"\nThey released two albums – The Joy of Sing-Sing in 2001 and Sing-Sing and I in 2005, before officially disbanding on New Year's Day 2008.\n\nAnderson joined in reforming Lush in 2015, releasing a four-track EP Blind Spot in early 2016.\n\nAnderson currently resides in Hastings.\n\nDiscography\n\nLush\nScar (mini-LP) – October 1989\nGala – December 1990\nSpooky – January 1992\nSplit – June 1994\nLovelife – March 1996\nCiao! Best of Lush – 2001\nBlind Spot – April 2016\n\nSing-Sing\nThe Joy of Sing-Sing – 2001\nSing-Sing and I – 2005\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nSing-Sing's MySpace\n4AD Lush Page\n\n1967 births\nLiving people\nEnglish adoptees\nPeople educated at Queen's College, London\nEnglish women guitarists\nEnglish rock guitarists\nEnglish women singers\nEnglish rock singers\nEnglish songwriters\nPeople from Wimbledon, London\nShoegazing musicians\nLush (band) members",
"The second season of the Serbian reality talent show Prvi glas Srbije. More than 5000 people attended auditions with the same goal - to be the First Voice of Serbia! Contestants had gone through auditions, rehearsals, knock-out rounds, eliminations and only 24 of them went to the Battle Rounds.\n\nStages\n Audition (in front of 3 judges)\n Bootcamp \n Knock-out duels\n Live Shows\n\nAuditions\n\nBattle Rounds \n\nThe number of contestants was reduced to only 13. Initially, there was supposed to be 12 of them but the astonishing performance of Nevena and Mirna's \"Hurt\" amazed judges so they decided to let them both pass this round.\n\nLive Shows \n\nEach week the contestants perform live. Based on the public vote, bottom two go to the \"Knock-Out Duels\" where they perform another song to show the judges why they should stay in competition. After that, all three judges decide together which one deserves to stay and which one is going to be eliminated.\n\nTOP13 \n\nTheme of the night - \"This is me\" - The task for the singers was to represent themselves to the public by choosing a song on their own.\n\n\"Knock-Out Duel\"\n\nTOP12 \n\nTheme of the night - \"Party Song\", the contestants were to sing popular party songs.\n\n\"Knock-Out Duel\"\n\nTOP11 \n\nTheme of the night - \"Hometown\", the contestants were to sing popular songs from their hometowns.\n\n\"Knock-Out Duel\"\n\nTOP10 \n\nTheme of the night - \"Dedicated Song\", the contestants were to sing songs dedicated to someone, mostly to their family members\n\n\"Knock-Out Duel\"\n\nTOP9 \n\nTheme of the night - \"Sexy Song\", the contestants were to sing in the company of sexy dancers.\n\n\"Knock-Out Duel\"\n\nTOP8 \n\nTheme of the night - \"End Of The World\", the contestants were to sing about World ending.\n\n\"Knock-Out Duel\"\n\nTOP7 \n\nTheme of the night - \"Movie's Soundtrack\", the contestants were to sing two songs, one from a Serbian movie and one from an American (English) movie.\nThis is the first live show when each contestant performed two songs.\n\n\"Knock-Out Duel\"\n\nTOP6 \n\nTheme of the night - \"Audience's Songs\" \nTwo weeks before this night, Prva Srpska Televizija made a poll on their official site, where the fans of the show were able to vote for a song they would like to see the contestants sing. One Serbian and one English song were picked for every contestant.\n\n\"Knock-Out Duel\"\n\nTOP5 \n\nTheme of the night - \"Hit Songs\". In this live show, two contestants left the competition.\n\n\"Knock-Out Duel\"\n\nFINALE \n\nFinalists sing three songs. Audience votes for their favourite and contestant with the fewest votes is eliminated. After that judges decide who is the winner.\n\nChart\n\nExternal links \n Official site - Prva.rs\n\n2012 Serbian television seasons\n2013 Serbian television seasons"
] |
[
"Super Furry Animals",
"1999-2000: Guerrilla and Mwng",
"What year did the band start?",
"In 1999, NME readers named them 'best new band' in January (this despite the fact it was now three years since they released their debut album).",
"When were they in London?",
"I don't know.",
"Why did the band decide to sing in English?",
"I don't know."
] | C_9a7f7b8da890471b9697afc151525904_0 | what is waccy baccy | 4 | What is waccy baccy in relation to Super Furry Animals? | Super Furry Animals | In 1999, NME readers named them 'best new band' in January (this despite the fact it was now three years since they released their debut album). In May, the single "Northern Lites" was released and made No. 11 in the charts. A dense production, with steel drums clattering out a calypso rhythm whilst Rhys sang an irreverent lyric about the El Nino-Southern Oscillation weather phenomenon, it was an apt taster for the new album, Guerrilla. Recorded at the Real World Studios, the album retained SFA's pop melodies but took a less guitar-centric approach to their execution and was their most experimental work to date. Layers of samples over brass, percussion and Gruff's melodic singing produced an album which took the freewheeling approach of 1960s groups such as The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Velvet Underground and updated it to the late 1990s. The album swung from glam and garage rock numbers ("Night Vision", "The Teacher") to novelty techno ("Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home)"), ambient indietronica ("Some Things Come From Nothing") and upbeat drum and bass ("The Door To This House Remains Open"). For the cover art, Pete Fowler created the band's first three-dimensional models, rather than the paintings he had supplied for the Radiator album and singles. After playing several of the summer festivals, SFA released "Fire in My Heart", the most soulful track from Guerrilla, in August and saw it chart at No. 25. They then embarked on a US and UK tour. SFA finished their UK tour at the Cardiff International Arena in Cardiff, where they showcased the first ever concert in surround sound and broadcast it on the World Wide Web. January 2000 involved a series of changes for SFA. The last single from Guerrilla, "Do or Die", was released and made No. 20. It was also the last single SFA released on Creation Records, as founder Alan McGee set off to pursue other interests. It had always been SFA's plan to release their next album on their own label, Placid Casual, as it would be a deliberate sidestep from their recent work: a largely acoustic album of Welsh language songs entitled Mwng. Meaning "mane", its lilting melodies established that SFA's songwriting did not have to fall back on head-spinning production tricks. A limited edition (of 3000) 7 inch record, "Ysbeidiau Heulog" (meaning "Sunny Intervals") preceded Mwng in May 2000. It came backed with "Charge", a hard-rock jam recorded as a Peel Session for the BBC. The album, released the same month, sold remarkably well for a non-English LP - it made No. 11 in the charts - and received a rare distinction for a pop record, being commended in Parliament for its efforts in keeping the Welsh language alive. 2000 also saw the Furries contribute two tracks, Free Now and Peter Blake 2000, for the Liverpool Sound Collage project, which was nominated for a Grammy. They undertook this remixing of unreleased Beatles recordings at the invitation of Paul McCartney, whom they had met at the NME Awards, where they had won Best Live Act. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Super Furry Animals are a Welsh rock band formed in Cardiff in 1993. Since their formation, the band had consisted of Gruff Rhys (lead vocals, guitar), Huw Bunford (lead guitar, vocals), Guto Pryce (bass guitar), Cian Ciaran (keyboards, synthesisers, various electronics, occasional guitar, vocals), Dafydd Ieuan (drums, vocals) and actor Rhys Ifans.
Super Furry Animals has recorded nine UK Albums Chart Top 25 studio albums (one BPI certified Gold and four certified Silver), plus numerous singles, EPs, compilations and collaborations. The band were known as central to the Cool Cymru era during which they were dominant, and are the act with the most top 75 hits without reaching the UK Singles Chart Top 10. Over the course of nine albums, Super Furry Animals has been described as "one of the most imaginative bands of our time" by Billboard, while according to a 2005 article in NME, "There's a case to be argued that [Super Furry Animals] were the most important band of the past 15 years".
History
1990–1993: Formation
Super Furry Animals formed in Cardiff after being in various other Welsh bands and techno outfits in the area. Rhys, Ieuan and Pryce had been together since the early 1990s and had toured France as a techno group. After Bunford and Ciaran (Ieuan's younger brother) joined, they wrote some songs, and in 1995 signed to Ankst, a Welsh indie label. The band are considered to be part of the renaissance of Welsh music (and art, and literature) in the 1990s: other Welsh bands of the time include the Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, Catatonia and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.
The name of the band came from T-shirts being printed by Rhys' sister. She was making Super Furry Animals T-shirts for the fashion and music collective Acid Casuals (variants of whose name have appeared throughout Super Furry Animals' career – for example, in their song "The Placid Casual", their record label Placid Casual). The band has also made reference to Blur, Elvis Costello, and Wynton Marsalis as major influences in their work.
1994–1995: Early recordings
The earliest Super Furry Animals track commercially available is "Dim Brys: Dim Chwys", recorded in 1994 for Radio Cymru: an ambient piece, the track shows the band's techno roots. However, by the time it was released (on the "Triskedekaphilia" compilation album in August 1995), the band had already put out their debut EP on the Ankst label. The Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantysiliogogogochynygofod (In Space) EP appeared in June 1995 and has been listed in the Guinness Book of Records as having the longest-ever title for an EP.
The Moog Droog EP followed in October 1995, named after the synthesiser manufacturer Robert Moog and the Nadsat term for "friend" in A Clockwork Orange. The EP's title is also a pun on the Welsh "mwg drwg", meaning "wacky baccy" (slang for cannabis, more literally "bad (or naughty) smoke"). The lyrics on all the tracks on both EPs were in Welsh, except for "God! Show Me Magic" from "Moog Droog".
After gigging in London in late 1995, they were noticed by Creation Records boss Alan McGee at the Camden Monarch club, who signed them to his label. Creation was also home to Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine and Teenage Fanclub, and had recently found massive commercial success with Oasis. The band have said that having watched their gig, McGee asked them if they could sing in English rather than Welsh in future shows. In fact, by this stage they were singing in English, but McGee didn't realise because their Welsh accents were so strong. The Super Furry Animals received some criticism in the Welsh media for singing in English, something which the band felt "completely pissed" about. According to drummer Dafydd Ieuan: "It all started when we played this festival in West Wales, and for some reason the Welsh media started foaming at the mouth because we were singing songs in Welsh and English. But they get The Dubliners playing and they don't sing in Irish. It's ridiculous." The band have claimed that the decision to sing in English was taken in order to broaden their fanbase.
1996–1998: Fuzzy Logic to Out Spaced
In February 1996, the band's debut on Creation, "Hometown Unicorn", became New Musical Express's Single of the Week, chosen by guest reviewers Pulp, and the first Super Furry Animals single to chart in the UK Top 50, peaking at No. 47. The follow-up, a re-recording of "God! Show Me Magic", charted at No. 33 upon release in April 1996 and also became NME single of the week. Rawer than the "Moog Droog" version, it clocks in at 1 min 50 secs. In May, their debut album Fuzzy Logic was released, to wide critical acclaim. Sales were slow, with the album peaking at No. 23 in the charts, but it garnered a little more interest when next single "Something 4 the Weekend" (a reworked, more mellow version of the album track) was given considerable radio airplay and charted at No. 18 in July 1996.
The final single from the album, "If You Don't Want Me to Destroy You", was to have been backed by a track called "The Man Don't Give a Fuck". However, there were problems in clearing a sample from "Showbiz Kids" by Steely Dan which formed the basis of the chorus, and it was switched for a different track. The single charted at No. 18. However, Super Furry Animals regarded "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" as one of their best songs and continued their efforts to clear the sample. When they managed this, there was no upcoming release to attach it to – so it came out as a limited edition single in its own right, in December 1996. This ultimately cemented its legendary status and did much to establish Super Furry Animals as cult heroes, as the song contained the word "fuck" over 50 times and therefore received practically no airplay. However, it hit No. 22 in the charts and became Super Furry Animals' standard closing number when they played live.
In early 1997, Super Furry Animals embarked on the NME Brats Tour and completed work on a speedy follow-up to Fuzzy Logic. Two singles preceded the new album, "Hermann ♥'s Pauline" in May and "The International Language of Screaming" in July, hitting No. 26 and No. 24 respectively: these releases were the first to feature cover art from Pete Fowler, who went on to design the sleeves of all their releases up until 2007's Hey Venus. The album, Radiator, hit shelves in August. The reviews were, if anything, better than those for Fuzzy Logic, and it sold more quickly than its predecessor, reaching a peak of No. 8: however, Creation did not serve the album particularly well by releasing it just four days after the long-awaited new effort from Oasis, Be Here Now. Two further singles, "Play It Cool" (released September 1997) and "Demons" (November 1997) both hit No. 27 in the charts, suggesting that Super Furry Animals had hit a commercial ceiling though which they were struggling to break. However, they had established themselves as favourites in the music press, a cut above the majority of their Britpop peers.
After a chance to think about their music and their direction, Super Furry Animals decided to record a new EP in early 1998 at Gorwel Owen's house and released it in May. This was the Ice Hockey Hair EP, widely held as one of their finest moments. ("Ice hockey hair" is a slang term for a mullet.) Featuring four tracks, the EP sampled from Black Uhuru. The title track, a melodic and very moving epic, gained airplay while "Smokin'". In a Melody Maker interview, Super Furry Animals said the "Smokin'" referred to smoking haddock, or to truck drivers' tyres when they're 'burnin' the roads'. It became their most successful single up to this point, hitting No. 12 in the charts and leading to a memorable appearance on "Top of the Pops".
In November 1998, the album Out Spaced was released. This was a collection of songs from the 1995 Ankst releases (including "Dim Brys: Dim Chwys"), the band's favourite B-sides, plus "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" and "Smokin'". A limited edition appeared in a comedy rubber sleeve, shaped like a nipple.
1999–2000: Guerrilla and Mwng
In 1999, NME readers named them 'best new band' in January (this despite the fact it was now three years since they released their debut album). In May, the single "Northern Lites" was released and made No. 11 in the charts. A dense production, with steel drums clattering out a calypso rhythm whilst Rhys sang an irreverent lyric about the El Niño-Southern Oscillation weather phenomenon, it was an apt taster for the new album, Guerrilla. Recorded at the Real World Studios, the album retained SFA's pop melodies but took a less guitar-centric approach to their execution and was their most experimental work to date. Layers of samples over brass, percussion and Gruff's melodic singing produced an album which took the freewheeling approach of 1960s groups such as The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Velvet Underground and updated it to the late 1990s. The album swung from glam and garage rock numbers ("Night Vision", "The Teacher") to novelty techno ("Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home)"), ambient indietronica ("Some Things Come From Nothing") and upbeat drum and bass ("The Door To This House Remains Open"). For the cover art, Pete Fowler created the band's first three-dimensional models, rather than the paintings he had supplied for the Radiator album and singles.
After playing several of the summer festivals, SFA released "Fire in My Heart", the most soulful track from Guerrilla, in August and saw it chart at No. 25. They then embarked on a US and UK tour. SFA finished their UK tour at the Cardiff International Arena in Cardiff, where they showcased the first ever concert in surround sound and broadcast it on the World Wide Web.
January 2000 involved a series of changes for SFA. The last single from Guerrilla, "Do or Die", was released and made No. 20. It was also the last single SFA released on Creation Records, as founder Alan McGee set off to pursue other interests. It had always been SFA's plan to release their next album on their own label, Placid Casual, as it would be a deliberate sidestep from their recent work: a largely acoustic album of Welsh language songs entitled Mwng. Meaning "mane", its lilting melodies established that SFA's songwriting did not have to fall back on head-spinning production tricks. A limited edition (of 3000) 7 inch record, "Ysbeidiau Heulog" (meaning "Sunny Intervals") preceded Mwng in May 2000. It came backed with "Charge", a hard-rock jam recorded as a Peel Session for the BBC. The album, released the same month, sold remarkably well for a non-English LP – it made No. 11 in the charts – and received a rare distinction for a pop record, being commended in Parliament for its efforts in keeping the Welsh language alive.
2000 also saw the Furries contribute two tracks, Free Now and Peter Blake 2000, for the Liverpool Sound Collage project, which was nominated for a Grammy. They undertook this remixing of unreleased Beatles recordings at the invitation of Paul McCartney, whom they had met at the NME Awards, where they had won Best Live Act.
2001–2003: Rings Around the World and Phantom Power
With the demise of Creation, SFA needed to find a new label for their next album. Sony had long held a substantial stake in Creation and offered deals to many ex-Creation artists, including SFA, who signed with one of Sony's subsidiaries, Epic. The band pushed for a deal which allowed them to take a new album elsewhere if the label wasn't interested in releasing it – thereby allowing them to find a home for any esoteric project they might want to undertake in the future.
The greater resources afforded them by Epic were apparent in their first album for the label, Rings Around the World, an album that recaptured the cohesive, experimental feel of Guerrilla but more song-driven and sonically expansive. It is cited by many critics and fans alike as their most polished and accessible work. Again the first single was a good indication of what was to come: "Juxtapozed with U", released in July 2001, was a lush soul record which made No. 14 in the charts. The album followed in the same month and major label marketing muscle made it their biggest-seller to date, reaching No. 3 in the album charts. One of the tracks from the album, "Receptacle For the Respectable" featured Paul McCartney on "carrot and celery rhythm track" (a homage to his performance on the Beach Boys' "Vegetables"). SFA unleashed their experimental side on tracks such as "Sidewalk Serfer Girl" (which switches between light techno-pop and hardcore punk), "[A] Touch Sensitive" (gloomy trip-hop) and "No Sympathy" (which descends into chaotic drum'n'bass), but also apparent was an angrier edge to the lyrics: "Run! Christian, Run!" seemed to be an attack on the complacency of organised religion.
Rings Around the World is also remarkable for being the world's first simultaneous release of an audio and DVD album. It was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2001. The ceremony took place on the day after the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and SFA's performance of the album track "It's Not the End of the World?" took on a somewhat bitter edge. It was released as a single in January 2002 (chart No. 30), following "(Drawing) Rings Around the World" (chart No. 28): neither had that much impact but still received some airplay, notably on BBC Radio 2.
The next album, Phantom Power, relied less on sound experimentation and proved to be a more stripped-down, back-to-basics recording in contrast to the orchestral Rings Around the World. It was also released as both a CD and DVD album in July 2003, preceded by a single, "Golden Retriever", in June (chart No. 13). Although the reviews for the album were generally good and it sold well initially, charting at No. 4, the album broke little new ground by SFA's standards and the band had fallen out of fashion, receiving little coverage in the music press. Another single, "Hello Sunshine", hit No. 31 in October 2003 and was eventually featured on the soundtrack of The O.C..
2004–2005: Phantom Phorce to Love Kraft
Perhaps recognising that their approach to Phantom Power had been a little too straightforward, the group followed it up in 2004 with a remix version, Phantom Phorce, with tracks reworked by the likes of Killa Kela, Four Tet and Brave Captain. They accompanied this with a download single, "Slow Life", which also included the track "Motherfokker", a collaboration with Goldie Lookin Chain, both tracks are now available as a free download via the Placid Casual website. In October 2004 the band released a best of album, Songbook: The Singles, Vol. 1, accompanied by a single – a live version of "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" (chart No. 16).
In early 2005, Gruff Rhys released a solo album Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, ("The Stuttering Generation", and also a play on words as "Atal Genhedlu" means contraception), sung all in Welsh. Gruff played most of the instruments himself, mainly using guitars, drums and his own multi-tracked voice. The band also selected tracks for a volume in the Under the Influence series of compilations, in which artists present the songs that they feel have most contributed to their sound.
In 2005 Super Furry Animals were asked to put together the sixth release from the 'Under The Influence' series - Under the Influence: Super Furry Animals. Each member chose 3 track each - Pryce's selections were Dawn Penn "You Don't Love Me (No, No, No)", Dennis Wilson and Rumbo "Lady" and MC5 "Kick Out the Jams".
Also in 2005 it was reported that the band turned down a US$1.8m advertising deal with Coca-Cola after visiting a Coca-Cola plantation in Colombia with charity War on Want, where they heard of management-directed killings of trade-union members. The company were asking for use of "Hello Sunshine" as part of their campaign. In a statement to British magazine Q, Coca-Cola denied the allegations, stating they had been "an exemplary member of the business community" in Colombia.
In August 2005, Super Furry Animals released their seventh studio effort, Love Kraft, recorded in Spain. This represented a departure from their previous working methods: although all five members had always contributed to the development of the songs, Rhys had been the main songwriter. On Love Kraft this was no longer the case, as Rhys, Bunford, Ieuan and Ciaran all contributed songs and lead vocals. There was only one single from the album, "Lazer Beam", released on 15 August (chart No. 28). The laid-back ambience recalls early-1970s Beach Boys albums such as Surf's Up (which SFA have referred to as one of their favourite albums), whilst the heavy use of strings suggested the likes of Scott Walker and Curtis Mayfield. The album's cool commercial reception (it charted at just No. 19) suggested that they had returned to their familiar status of critically acclaimed cult favourites. Love Kraft was also the last album released under Epic Records, as their contract expired in early 2006.
2006–2008: Rough Trade and Hey Venus!
Ciaran's side project Acid Casuals released their debut album Omni in January 2006 on the Placid Casual label. Drummer Ieuan formed a band known as The Peth which has been described by Rhys in various magazine articles as "Satanic Abba": the band also reunites Rhys Ifans with the SFA family, as he takes lead vocal duties.
The band signed to Rough Trade Records during 2006 and are reportedly working on three projects for the label. Gruff Rhys has also signed for Rough Trade Records as a solo artist in his own right and released a single on 7" vinyl and download entitled "Candylion" in late 2006 which preceded an album of the same name that was released during the second week of 2007. Unlike his debut Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, Candylion is primarily sung in English but has two Welsh tracks and one in "bad Spanish": it is primarily an acoustic album, and came about because Rhys has written several acoustic pop songs that didn't fit with the direction of the new SFA record.
During this time some of the bands' music was used prominently in The Rock-afire Explosion documentary movie, namely Hello Sunshine and Some things Come From Nothing.
Recording sessions took place in a chateau in the south of France in 2007 for the band's first release for Rough Trade, Hey Venus!, which was released on 27 August that year. Gruff himself described the record as "speaker blowing". The album's first single, "Show Your Hand", failed to enter the top 40, their first to do so since 1996's "Hometown Unicorn", despite modest airplay. The album itself fared much better, peaking at No. 11 and was a slight improvement from the sales of Love Kraft. The album became their first to enter the iTunes Music Store top 10 album charts, peaking at No. 9. Over the 2007 Christmas period SFA released a single, "The Gift That Keeps Giving", free from their website.
2009–2014: Dark Days/Light Years and hiatus
On 16 March 2009, Super Furry Animals released their ninth and final studio album, Dark Days/Light Years, digitally via their website. The album's progress was recorded in a series of short films that were shown on the band's website in the build-up to the release. Later in March, they performed the record in its entirety through an exclusive stream on their website. A physical release on Rough Trade Records followed on 21 April, resulting in a number 23 UK Chart placement. Dark Days/Light Years notably featured a guest appearance from Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand on "Inaugural Trams." Dark Days/Light Years received strong critical feedback, with The Guardian writing that "it has more spark and invention than most teen bands manage on their debuts."
In 2010, Super Furry Animals went on what became a five-year hiatus, as bassist Guto Pryce revealed in an interview with Wales Online. Pryce noted that the band expected to reconvene as soon as the members finished with the various projects they were working on.
Super Furry Animals reconvened for one performance on 29 February 2012 at Cardiff City Stadium before a Wales v Costa Rica Gary Speed Memorial Match, in tribute to the late Welsh footballer and team manager.
In 2014, craft brewer The Celt Experience created a tribute "Fuzzy Beer" in collaboration with the band.
2015–2016: Reunion
In May 2015, the band played several gigs from early May to September to accompany a major reissue of their 15-year-old album Mwng, which had been out of print. The same month a biography, Rise of the Super Furry Animals, was published by HarperCollins. In January 2016, the band announced their first North American tour in six years. In May 2016, the band released "Bing Bong", their first single in seven years. The song was released to celebrate the Wales national football team's qualification for UEFA Euro 2016. They headlined the Caught by the River Festival in August 2016, and announced the re-release of Fuzzy Logic. A compilation album, Zoom! The Best of 1995–2016, was released on 4 November 2016. The final tour of their reunion, in which they played both Fuzzy Logic and Radiator in full across the UK and Ireland, took place in December 2016.
2017–present: Second hiatus and Das Koolies
In September 2018, the official Super Furry Animals Twitter feed posted an announcement of a multi-disc set of recordings made at the BBC to be released on 23 November 2018.
In 2019 Bunford, Ciaran, Pryce, and Ieuan reformed without Rhys under the name Das Koolies, an alter ego SFA used around 2000 for an experimental electronic album that was never officially released. Das Koolies released their debut single "It's All About The Dolphins" on 29 January 2020. According to Ciaran, Das Koolies is now their main focus; they are no longer focusing on anything from Super Furry Animals.
Discography
Fuzzy Logic (1996)
Radiator (1997)
Guerrilla (1999)
Mwng (2000)
Rings Around the World (2001)
Phantom Power (2003)
Love Kraft (2005)
Hey Venus! (2007)
Dark Days/Light Years (2009)
References
External links
Super Furry Animals biography from BBC Wales
Musical groups established in 1993
1993 establishments in Wales
Neo-psychedelia groups
Cool Cymru
Welsh alternative rock groups
British psychedelic rock music groups
Britpop groups
Creation Records artists
Welsh-language bands
Musical quintets
Musical groups from Cardiff
Bertelsmann Music Group artists
Epic Records artists
Rough Trade Records artists | false | [
"Xuasus is the pseudonym of Spanish comicbook artist Juan Jesus Garcia (Mieres, 1968).\n\nBiography\nXuasus' chunky, fully painted style was admired by David Bishop, editor of the Judge Dredd Megazine, in the early 1990s, and the artist was commissioned to work on a number of well-known characters, including Judge Dredd, Judge Anderson, Judge Hershey and the Brit-Cit Brute. Xuasus has also contributed to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Victor titles.\n\nHis latest contribution is the \"Waccy Baccy Races\" series for the magazine Wasted in collaboration with Alan Grant. He now combines his work in comics with film projects.\n\nHe worked as a matte painter and VFX Art Director on the cities of Jerusalem and the Castle of Kerak on Kingdom of Heaven. He also created the virtual Waterfall City for Dinotopia and was a matte painter on Troy, Rome and Harry Potter II. He now works in Vancouver, Canada as a matte painter.\n\nWorks\n\nBibliography\nComics work includes:\n\nJudge Hershey (in Judge Dredd Megazine vol.2 #12, 1992)\nJudge Dredd (in Judge Dredd Megazine vol.2 #19, 21, 27-29 & 34-35, 1993)\nJudge Anderson (in Judge Dredd Megazine vol.2 #54-56, 1994)\nTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\nCommando\nVictor\nX-Bow\nFrance Routes\nBonty\nLa Nueva Espana\nWild Crew\nLletres Asturianes\n\nPartial filmography\n300: Rise of an Empire\n Seventh Son\n Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters\n The Lone Ranger\n Man of Steel\n Jack the Giant Slayer\n Life of Pi\n Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows\n The Borgias\n Priest\n Fast Five\n Battle Los Angeles\n Piranha\n Kingdom of Heaven\nInkheart\nThe Golden Compass\nUnderdog\nRome\nTroy\nHarry Potter II\nDinotopia\n\nReferences\n\n2000 AD profile\n\nExternal links\n\n1968 births\nLiving people\nPeople from Mieres, Asturias\nSpanish comics artists",
"\"It Is What It Is\" is an idiomatic phrase, indicating the immutable nature of an object or circumstance and may refer to:\n It Is What It Is, a 2001 film by Billy Frolick\n It Is What It Is, a 2007 autobiography by David Coulthard\n It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq, a project by Jeremy Deller\n It Is What It Is, a radio show hosted by Sean Baligian\n\nMusic\n B.A.R.S. The Barry Adrian Reese Story or It Is What It Is, a 2007 album by Cassidy\n It Is What It Is (ABN album) (2008)\n It Is What It Is (Johnny Logan album) (2017)\n It Is What It Is (Thundercat album) (2020)\n It Is What It Is, a 1982 album by The Hitmen\n \"It Is What It Is\", a 1988 song by Derrick May from the compilation album Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit\n \"It Is What It Is (What It Is)\", a 1992 song by Adam Again from Dig\n\"It Is What It Is\", a 1995 song by The Highwaymen from the album The Road Goes On Forever\n \"It Is What It Is\", a 2010 song by Lifehouse from Smoke & Mirrors\n \"It Is What It Is\", a 2013 song by Blood Orange from Cupid Deluxe\n \"It Is What It Is\", a 2013 song by Kacey Musgraves from Same Trailer Different Park\n \"It Is What It Is\", a 2016 song by Lecrae from Church Clothes 3\n \"It Is What It Is\", a 2009 song by Vic Chesnutt from At the Cut\n\nSee also \n Fihi Ma Fihi, a Persian prose work by Rumi\n Tautophrase\n What It Is (disambiguation)"
] |
[
"Levon Helm",
"Early years"
] | C_b226146f1fad4c4bb2c3d33ef7d2fdad_1 | when was Helm born? | 1 | when was Levon Helm born? | Levon Helm | Born in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers and great lovers of music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. Young Lavon (as he was christened) began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums during his formative years. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided then to become a musician. Arkansas in the 1940s and 50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles--blues, country and R&B--that, when merged, later became known as rock and roll. Helm was influenced by all these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee. He also saw traveling shows such as F.S. Walcott's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels that featured top African-American artists of the time. Another early influence on Helm was the work of the harmonica player, guitarist and singer Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school. Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by southern country music, blues and rockabilly artists such as Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena. CANNOTANSWER | Arkansas in the 1940s | Mark Lavon "Levon" Helm (May 26, 1940 – April 19, 2012) was an American musician and actor who achieved fame as the drummer and one of the three lead vocalists for The Band. Helm was known for his deeply soulful, country-accented voice, multi-instrumental ability, and creative drumming style, highlighted on many of the Band's recordings, such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek", and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".
Helm also had a successful career as a film actor, appearing as Loretta Lynn's father in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), as Chuck Yeager's friend and colleague Captain Jack Ridley in The Right Stuff (1983), as a Tennessee firearms expert in Shooter (2007), and as General John Bell Hood in In the Electric Mist (2009).
In 1998, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer which caused him to lose his singing voice. After treatment, his cancer eventually went into remission, and he gradually regained the use of his voice. His 2007 comeback album Dirt Farmer earned the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in February 2008, and in November of that year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 91 in its list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time,. In 2010, Electric Dirt, his 2009 follow-up to Dirt Farmer, won the first Grammy Award for Best Americana Album, a category inaugurated in 2010. In 2011, his live album Ramble at the Ryman won the Grammy in the same category. In 2016, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 22 in its list of 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time.
Biography
Early years
Born Mark Lavon Helm in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers who shared a strong affinity for music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided to become a musician. Helm began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums.
Arkansas in the 1940s and '50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles, including traditional Delta blues, electric blues, country (including old-time music) and the incipient genre of rhythm and blues. Helm was influenced by each of these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville. He also saw the last vestiges of minstrelsy and other traveling variety shows, such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, which featured top Black artists of the era.
A key early influence on Helm was Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played electric blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school.
Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by early rock and roll and rockabilly artists, including Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena.
The Hawks
While he was still in high school, Helm was invited to join Ronnie Hawkins's band, the Hawks, a popular bar and club act in the South and Canada where rockabilly acts were very successful. Helm's mother insisted that he graduate from high school before touring with Hawkins, but he was able to play with the Hawks locally on weekends. After his graduation in 1958, Helm joined the Hawks as a full-time member and they moved to Toronto where they signed with Roulette Records in 1959 and released several singles, including a few hits.
Helm reported in his autobiography that fellow Hawks band members had difficulty pronouncing "Lavon" correctly and started calling him "Levon" ( ) because it was easier to pronounce.
In 1961, Helm with bassist Rick Danko backed guitarist Lenny Breau on several tracks recorded at Hallmark Studios in Toronto. These tracks are included on the 2003 release The Hallmark Sessions.
By the early 1960s, Helm and Hawkins had recruited an all-Canadian lineup of musicians: guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel, and organist Garth Hudson, all of whom were multi-instrumentalists. In 1963, the band parted ways with Hawkins and started touring as Levon and the Hawks and later as the Canadian Squires, before changing back to the Hawks. They recorded two singles but remained mostly a popular touring bar band in Texas, Arkansas, Canada, and on the East Coast of the United States where they found regular summer club gigs on the New Jersey shore.
By the mid-1960s, songwriter and musician Bob Dylan was interested in performing electric rock music and asked the Hawks to be his backing band. Disheartened by fans' negative response to Dylan's new sound, Helm left the group in the autumn of 1965 for what turned out to be a two-year layoff, being replaced by a range of touring drummers (most notably Mickey Jones) and Manuel, who began to double on the instrument. Following time with his family in Arkansas and subsequent sojourns in Los Angeles (where he experimented with LSD and performed with Bobby Keys), Memphis and New Orleans (exemplified by work on a nearby oil platform), the eventual result was his return to the group in the autumn of 1967.
After the Hawks toured Europe with Dylan, they followed him back to the U.S. and settled near his home in Woodstock, New York, remaining under salary to Dylan. The Hawks recorded a large number of demos and practice tapes in nearby West Saugerties, New York, playing almost daily with Dylan, who had completely withdrawn from public life following a motorcycle accident in July 1966. These recordings were widely bootlegged and were partially released officially in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. The songs and themes developed during this period played a crucial role in the group's future direction and style. The Hawks also began writing their own songs, with Danko and Manuel also sharing writing credits with Dylan on a few songs.
The Band
Helm returned to the group, then referred to simply as "the band", as it was known around Woodstock. While contemplating a recording contract, Helm had dubbed the band "The Crackers". However, when Robertson and their new manager Albert Grossman worked out the contracts, the group's name was given as "The Band". Under these contracts, the Band was contracted to Grossman, who in turn contracted their services to Capitol Records. This arrangement allowed the Band to release recordings on other labels if the work was done in support of Dylan. Thus the Band was able to play on Dylan's Planet Waves album and to release The Last Waltz, both on other labels. The Band also recorded their own album Music from Big Pink (1968), which catapulted them into stardom. Helm was the Band's only American member.
On Music from Big Pink, Manuel was the most prominent vocalist and Helm sang backup and harmony, with the exception of "The Weight". However, as Manuel's health deteriorated and Robbie Robertson's songwriting increasingly looked to the South for influence and direction, subsequent albums relied more and more on Helm's vocals, alone or in harmony with Danko. Helm was primarily a drummer and vocalist and increasingly sang lead, although, like all his bandmates, he was also a multi-instrumentalist. On occasion Manuel switched to drums while Helm played mandolin, guitar, or bass guitar (while Danko played fiddle) on some songs. Helm played the 12-string guitar backdrop to "Daniel and the Sacred Harp".
Helm remained with the Band until their farewell performance on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, which was the subject of the documentary film The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese. Helm repudiated his involvement with The Last Waltz shortly after the completion of its final scenes. In his autobiography Helm criticized the film and Robertson who produced it.
Solo, acting and the reformed Band
With the breakup of the Band in its original form, Helm began working on a solo-ensemble album, Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars, with Paul Butterfield, Fred Carter, Jr., Emmeretta Marks, Howard Johnson, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Booker T. Jones, and others. Levon Helm and the RCO All-Stars recorded Live at The Palladium NYC, New Year's Eve 1977. The CD album released in March 2006 features over one hour of blues-rock music performed by an ensemble featuring Levon Helm (drums/vocals), Dr. John (keys/vocals), Paul Butterfield (harmonica/vocals), Fred Carter (guitar/vocals), Donald "Duck" Dunn (bass), Cropper (guitar), Lou Marini (saxophones), Howard Johnson (tuba/baritone sax), Tom "Bones" Malone (trombone), and Alan Rubin (trumpet).
This was followed in 1978 by the solo album Levon Helm. More solo albums were released in 1980 and 1982: American Son and (once again) Levon Helm, both produced by Fred Carter, Jr. He also participated in musician Paul Kennerley's 1980 country music concept album, The Legend of Jesse James singing the role of Jesse James alongside Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Charlie Daniels, Albert Lee, and others.
In addition to his work as musician, Helm also acted in several dramatic films. He was cast as Loretta Lynn's father in the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter, followed three years later by a role as U.S. Air Force test pilot and engineer Capt. Jack Ridley, in The Right Stuff. Helm was also the latter film's narrator. 1987's under-appreciated End of the Line featured Levon as a small-town railroad employee alongside Wilford Brimley and Kevin Bacon. He played a Kentucky backwoods preacher in Fire Down Below. He played an eccentric old man in the 2005 film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and appeared as Gen. John Bell Hood in the 2009 film In the Electric Mist. He also had a brief cameo as a weapons expert in the film Shooter with Mark Wahlberg.
In 1983, the Band reunited without Robbie Robertson, at first playing with an expanded lineup that included the entire Cate Brothers Band, but in 1985 paring down and adding Jim Weider on guitar. In 1986, while on tour Manuel committed suicide. Helm, Danko, and Hudson continued in the Band, adding pianist Richard Bell and drummer/vocalist Randy Ciarlante and releasing the album Jericho in 1993 and High on the Hog in 1996. The final album from the Band was the 30th anniversary album, Jubilation released in 1998.
In 1989, Helm and Danko toured with drummer Ringo Starr as part of his All-Starr Band. Other musicians in the band included singer and guitarist Joe Walsh, singer and pianist Dr. John, singer and guitarist Nils Lofgren, singer Billy Preston, saxophonist Clarence Clemons, and drummer Jim Keltner. Garth Hudson was a guest on accordion on some dates. Helm played drums and harmonica and sang "The Weight" and "Up on Cripple Creek" each night.
In the televised 1989 Juno Awards celebration, the Band was inducted into the Juno Awards' Hall of Fame. Helm was not present at the ceremony, but a taped segment of him offering his thanks was broadcast after the acceptance speeches by Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson. Richard Manuel's children accepted the award on behalf of their father. To conclude the televised special, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Robbie Robertson performed "The Weight" with Blue Rodeo.
Helm performed with Danko and Hudson as the Band in 1990 at Roger Waters's epic The Wall – Live in Berlin Concert in Germany to an estimated 300,000 to half a million people.
In 1993, Helm published an autobiography entitled This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band.
The Midnight Ramble
Helm's performance career in the 2000s revolved mainly around the Midnight Ramble at his home and studio, "The Barn," in Woodstock, New York. These concerts, featuring Helm and various musical guests, allowed him to raise money for his medical bills and to resume performing after a bout with cancer that nearly ended his career.
In the late 1990s, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer after suffering hoarseness. Advised to undergo a laryngectomy, he instead underwent an arduous regimen of radiation treatments at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The tumor was then successfully removed, but Helm's vocal cords were damaged, and his clear, powerful tenor voice was replaced by a quiet rasp. Initially Helm only played drums and relied on guest vocalists at the Rambles, but eventually his singing voice grew stronger. On January 10, 2004, he sang again at his Ramble sessions. In 2007, during production of Dirt Farmer, Helm estimated that his singing voice was 80 percent recovered.
The Levon Helm Band featured his daughter Amy Helm, Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, Jim Weider (The Band's last guitarist), Jimmy Vivino, Mike Merritt, Brian Mitchell, Erik Lawrence, Steven Bernstein, Howard Johnson (tuba player in the horn section on the Band's Rock of Ages and The Last Waltz), Jay Collins (Helm's now former son-in-law), Byron Isaacs, and blues harmonica player Little Sammy Davis. Helm hosted Midnight Rambles that were open to the public at his home in Woodstock.
The Midnight Ramble was an outgrowth of an idea Helm explained to Martin Scorsese in The Last Waltz. Earlier in the 20th century, Helm recounted, traveling medicine shows and music shows such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, featuring African-American blues singers and dancers, would put on titillating performances in rural areas. (This was also turned into a song by the Band, "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show," with the name altered so the lyric was easier to sing.)
"After the finale, they'd have the midnight ramble," Helm told Scorsese. With young children off the premises, the show resumed: "The songs would get a little bit juicier. The jokes would get a little funnier and the prettiest dancer would really get down and shake it a few times. A lot of the rock and roll duck walks and moves came from that."
Artists who performed at the Rambles include Helm's former bandmate Garth Hudson, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Dr. John, Mavis Staples, Chris Robinson, Allen Toussaint, Donald Fagen and Jon Herington of Steely Dan, Jimmy Vivino (of the house band on Late Night with Conan O'Brien), the Max Weinberg 7, My Morning Jacket, Billy Bob Thornton, Alexis P. Suter, Sean Costello, the Muddy Waters Tribute Band, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Carolyn Wonderland, Kris Kristofferson, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Justin Townes Earle, Bow Thayer, Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, Rickie Lee Jones, Kate Taylor, Ollabelle, the Holmes Brothers, Catherine Russell, Norah Jones, Arlen Roth, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Phil Lesh (along with his sons Grahame and Brian), Hot Tuna (Jorma Kaukonen introduced the group as "the Secret Squirrels"), Michael Angelo D'Arrigo with various members of the Sistine Chapel, Johnny Johnson, Ithalia, David Bromberg, the Youngers, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.
During this period, Helm switched to the matched grip and adopted a less busy, greatly simplified drumming style, as opposed to the traditional grip he used during his years with the Band.
Helm was busy touring every year during the 2000s, generally traveling by tour bus to venues in eastern Canada and the eastern United States. After 2007, he performed in large venues such the Beacon Theater in New York. Dr. John and Warren Haynes (the Allman Brothers Band, Gov't Mule) and Garth Hudson played at the concerts along with several other guests. At a show in Vancouver Elvis Costello joined to sing "Tears of Rage". The Alexis P. Suter Band was a frequent opening act. Helm was a favorite of radio personality Don Imus and was frequently featured on Imus in the Morning. In the summer of 2009, it was reported that a reality television series centering on the Midnight Ramble was in development.
In 2012, Levon Helm and his "midnight rambles" were featured on the PBS Arts site, "Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders," including a poignant last interview with PBS's Marco Werman.
Dirt Farmer and comeback
The autumn of 2007 saw the release of Dirt Farmer, Helm's first studio solo album since 1982. Dedicated to his parents and co-produced by his daughter Amy, the album combines traditional tunes Levon recalled from his youth with newer songs (by Steve Earle, Paul Kennerley, and others) which flow from similar historical streams. The album was released to almost immediate critical acclaim, and earned him a Grammy Award in the Traditional Folk Album category for 2007. Also in 2007, Helm recorded "Toolin' Around Woodstock", and album with Arlen Roth on which Levon played drums and sang Sweet Little 16 and "Crying Time." This album also featured Levon's daughter Amy, and Roth's daughter Lexie, along with Sonny Landreth and Bill Kirchen.
Helm declined to attend the Grammy Awards ceremony, instead holding a "Midnight Gramble" and celebrating the birth of his grandson, Lavon (Lee) Henry Collins.
In 2008, Helm performed at Warren Haynes's Mountain Jam Music Festival in Hunter, New York playing alongside Haynes on the last day of the three-day festival. Helm also joined guitarist Bob Weir and his band RatDog on stage as they closed out the festival. Helm performed to great acclaim at the 2008 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.
Helm drummed on a couple of tracks for Jorma Kaukonen's February 2009 album River of Time, recorded at the Levon Helm studio.
Helm released the album Electric Dirt on his own label on June 30, 2009. Like Dirt Farmer, an aim of Electric Dirt was to capture of feel of Helm's Midnight Rambles. The album won a best album Grammy for the newly created Americana category in 2010. Helm performed on the CBS television program Late Show with David Letterman on July 9, 2009. He also toured that same year in a supporting role with the band Black Crowes.
A documentary on Helm's day-to-day life, entitled Ain't in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm was released in March 2010. Directed by Jacob Hatley, it made its debut at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas and went on to be screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June 2010. The film had a limited release in select theaters in the United States in the spring of 2013 and was released on DVD and Blu-ray later that year.
On May 11, 2011, Helm released Ramble at the Ryman, a live album recorded during his performance of September 17, 2008 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The album features Helm's band playing six songs by the Band and other cover material, including some songs from previous Helm solo releases. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Americana Album.
Illness and death
In April 2012, during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Cleveland, Robbie Robertson sent "love and prayers" to Helm, fueling speculation about Helm's health. Helm had previously cancelled a number of performances, citing health issues or a slipped disk in his back; his final performances took place in Tarrytown, New York at Tarrytown Music Hall on March 24, and a final Midnight Ramble (with Moonalice as the opening act) in Woodstock on March 31.
On April 17, 2012, Helm's wife Sandy and daughter Amy revealed that he had end-stage throat cancer. They posted the following message on Helm's website:
On April 18, Robertson revealed on his Facebook page that he had a long visit with Helm at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center the previous Sunday. On the same day, Garth Hudson posted on his personal website that he was "too sad for words". He then left a link for a video of himself and the Alexis P. Suter Band performing Bob Dylan's song "Knocking on Heaven's Door". Helm died on April 19, 2012, at 1:30 p.m. (EDT) due to complications from throat cancer at age 71.
Fans were invited to a public wake at Helm's Barn studio complex on April 26. Approximately 2,000 fans came to pay their respects to the rock icon. The following day, after a private funeral service and a procession through the streets of Woodstock, Helm was interred in the Woodstock Cemetery, within sight of the grave of his longtime bandmate and friend Rick Danko. Former President Bill Clinton issued a statement following Helm's passing.
Legacy
George Harrison said that while writing his 1970 song "All Things Must Pass", he imagined Levon Helm singing it.
Elton John's lyricist, Bernie Taupin named the song "Levon" after Helm, although the song is not actually about him. Both John and Taupin cited that they were inspired by Helm; Taupin saying in various interviews that they would "go down to their favourite record stores to buy The Band's records" along with Elton. In 1994, Helm was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Band.
Marc Cohn wrote the song "Listening to Levon" in 2007.
"The Man behind the Drums," written by Robert Earl Keen and Bill Whitbeck, appeared on Keen's 2009 album The Rose Hotel.
Tracy K. Smith's 2011 poem "Alternate Take", included in her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection Life on Mars, is dedicated to Helm. On the day of Helm's death, April 19, 2012, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, in a concert at the First Bank Center in Broomfield, Colorado, paid tribute to Levon by performing their song "The Best of Everything" and dedicating it to him.
At a concert on May 2, 2012, at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Helm. Springsteen called Helm "one of the greatest, greatest voices in country, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll ... staggering ... while playing the drums. Both his voice and his drumming were so incredibly personal. He had a feel on the drums that comes out of certain place in the past and you can't replicate it." Springsteen also said it was one of the songs that he had played with drummer Max Weinberg in Weinberg's audition with the band.
On June 2, 2012, at Mountain Jam, Gov't Mule along with the Levon Helm Band (with Lukas Nelson coming on stage for the closing song) played a tribute set, including "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Up on Cripple Creek,""It Makes No Difference," and closing with "The Weight".
A tribute concert called Love for Levon took place at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey on October 3, 2012. The concert featured many special guests who had collaborated with and were inspired by Helm and the Band, including Roger Waters, Garth Hudson, Joe Walsh, Gregg Allman, Bruce Hornsby, Jorma Kaukonen, John Mayer, Mavis Staples, My Morning Jacket, Marc Cohn, John Hiatt, Allen Toussaint, Jakob Dylan, Mike Gordon, and others. Proceeds from the concert were to "help support the lasting legacy of Levon Helm by helping his estate keep ownership of his home, barn and studio, and to continue the Midnight Ramble Sessions".
At the 2013 Grammy Awards, the Zac Brown Band, Mumford & Sons, Elton John, Mavis Staples, T-Bone Burnett, and Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Levon and other recently deceased musicians. They also dedicated the song to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. In May 2013, the New York State Legislature approved a resolution to name State Route 375—the road which connects State Route 28 with the town of Woodstock—"Levon Helm Memorial Boulevard". Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill on June 20, 2013. In July 2017, U.S. 49 from Marvell, Arkansas to Helena–West Helena was named The Levon Helm Memorial Highway by Act 810 of the Arkansas State Legislature. The Levon Helm Legacy Project is raising money to commission a bronze bust of Helm and to restore his boyhood home. The house, originally located in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, was moved in 2015 to Marvell, where Helm attended school.
Personal life
Helm met singer-songwriter Libby Titus in April 1969, while the Band was recording its second album. They began a lengthy relationship which produced daughter Amy Helm (born December 3, 1970). Amy formed the band Ollabelle and performed with her father's band at the Midnight Rambles and other concerts.
Helm met Sandra Dodd in 1975 in California, while he was still involved with Titus. Helm and Dodd were married on September 7, 1981. They had no children together.
Discography
Studio
Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars (1977)
Levon Helm (1978)
American Son (1980)
Levon Helm (1982)
Dirt Farmer (2007)
Electric Dirt (2009)
Live
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume One (2006)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Two (2006)
Levon Helm & the RCO All Stars: Live at the Palladium NYC, New Years Eve 1977 (2006)
FestivalLink.Net presents: Levon Helm Band MerleFest Ramble (MerleFest, NC 4/26/08)
Ramble at the Ryman (2011)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Three (2014)
Other
The Legend of Jesse James (1980)
Souvenir, Vol. 1 (1998)
The Imus Ranch Record (2008)
The Imus Ranch Record II (2010)
The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams (2011)
With Muddy Waters
The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album (Chess, 1975)
Filmography
References
External links
[ Allmusic]
1940 births
2012 deaths
ABC Records artists
American autobiographers
American country singer-songwriters
American country rock musicians
American folk rock musicians
American male singer-songwriters
American mandolinists
American multi-instrumentalists
American rock drummers
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Grammy Award winners
Male actors from Arkansas
People from Phillips County, Arkansas
Singer-songwriters from Arkansas
The Band members
Vanguard Records artists
20th-century Canadian male musicians
Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band members | true | [
"Mark Alan Helm was an attorney in the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case, where he was a member of the team representing the alleged kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell.\n\nHelm was born on May 31, 1970 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He graduated from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine in 1992 and Vanderbilt University Law School in 1997, after which he practiced criminal defense in New York City, and Salt Lake City.\n\nIn 2004, Helm represented Melissa Ann Rowland, aged 28, a woman in Salt Lake City, Utah, who was charged with murder after the death of one of her near term twins—the result, say prosecutors, of her refusal to have a medically advised caesarean section.\n\nIn 2005, in a case that made national headlines, Helm represented Brian David Mitchell who was charged with the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping and sexual assault. Smart, who was 14 at the time, was kidnapped at knife point from her bedroom on June 5, 2002 and found alive nine months later on March 12, 2003 a few miles from her home in Sandy, Utah.\n\nOn December 17, 2008 Mark Helm was found dead in his home.\n\nSources\nHelm in the Smart Case\n\nHelm, Mark\n1970 births\nHelm, Mark\nHelm, Mark\nVanderbilt University Law School alumni",
"William Helm (March 9, 1837 – April 10, 1919) was the largest individual sheep farmer and noteworthy among the early pioneer settlers of Fresno County, California. He was instrumental in the growth and prosperity of the San Joaquin Valley. Helm was vice-president of the Fresno Bank of Central California, and the president of the Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company.\n\nEarly life\n\nHelm was born in the province of Ontario, Canada on March 9, 1837, about forty miles above Montreal, on the St. Lawrence River. He is the son of George and Mary (Oliver Helm), both of whom were born in Scotland. Brought up on the home farm, Helm acquired an education in the district schools, and under his father's instruction. Helm left home in 1856 to Wisconsin for three years engaged in lumbering and operating a sawmill on the Chippewa River. In 1859, Helm sailed from New York City to San Francisco, California by way of Panama. He traveled to Sacramento and searched for gold in Placer County but soon found it unprofitable. He spent the next three years as a butcher, first in Foresthill, Todds Valley, and then in Bear river in Placer County. He saved his money and decided to raise sheep for a living. In 1865 he married Francis Sawyer Newman, and they had seven children together.\n\nFresno, California\n\nHelm brought his wife and his sheep to Fresno county, which was then a vast space of open land, before the railroad came through the valley. He was one of the earliest settlers to experiment with growing wheat.\n\nHelm was the largest individual sheep grower in Fresno County. In carrying his wool to market at Stockton, he used three wagons, each drawn by ten mules, and spent twelve days in making the round trip. When the railroad came through the valley in 1872, it was a great benefit to Helm.\n\nAt Dry Creek, on section four, Helm bought a ranch six miles northeast of Fresno. He acquired up to 2,640 acres, paying one dollar an acre. He bought additional land to establish a winter camp for his sheep on the present site of the Fresno court house. His herd increased rapidly, at one time owning 22,000 head of sheep.\n\nIn 1881, because of a growing family, Helm bought the block bounded by Fresno, R, Merced and S Streets from Louis Einstein. He built his home there in 1881 where it stood for 71 years. As their daughters married, Helm gave them parts of the block on which to build their homes. The Fresno Community Hospital was built on this block in 1959. In 1901, Helm testified as a character witness in the murder trial of a friend named James Brown, whom Helm stated that he had known since 1886.\n\nDeath\n\nHelm died on April 10, 1919, at the age of 82, following a lingering illness that left him bedridden for seven months. He died at the home of his daughter, Jessie Marie Helm.\n\nHelm, California was named after William Helm.\n\nSee also\nTimeline of Fresno, California\n\nReferences\n\n \n\n1837 births\n1919 deaths\nAmerican farmers\nCanadian emigrants to the United States\nPeople from Fresno, California"
] |
[
"Levon Helm",
"Early years",
"when was Helm born?",
"Arkansas in the 1940s"
] | C_b226146f1fad4c4bb2c3d33ef7d2fdad_1 | who was Helm born to? | 2 | Who was Levon Helm born to? | Levon Helm | Born in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers and great lovers of music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. Young Lavon (as he was christened) began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums during his formative years. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided then to become a musician. Arkansas in the 1940s and 50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles--blues, country and R&B--that, when merged, later became known as rock and roll. Helm was influenced by all these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee. He also saw traveling shows such as F.S. Walcott's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels that featured top African-American artists of the time. Another early influence on Helm was the work of the harmonica player, guitarist and singer Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school. Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by southern country music, blues and rockabilly artists such as Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena. CANNOTANSWER | His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, | Mark Lavon "Levon" Helm (May 26, 1940 – April 19, 2012) was an American musician and actor who achieved fame as the drummer and one of the three lead vocalists for The Band. Helm was known for his deeply soulful, country-accented voice, multi-instrumental ability, and creative drumming style, highlighted on many of the Band's recordings, such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek", and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".
Helm also had a successful career as a film actor, appearing as Loretta Lynn's father in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), as Chuck Yeager's friend and colleague Captain Jack Ridley in The Right Stuff (1983), as a Tennessee firearms expert in Shooter (2007), and as General John Bell Hood in In the Electric Mist (2009).
In 1998, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer which caused him to lose his singing voice. After treatment, his cancer eventually went into remission, and he gradually regained the use of his voice. His 2007 comeback album Dirt Farmer earned the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in February 2008, and in November of that year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 91 in its list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time,. In 2010, Electric Dirt, his 2009 follow-up to Dirt Farmer, won the first Grammy Award for Best Americana Album, a category inaugurated in 2010. In 2011, his live album Ramble at the Ryman won the Grammy in the same category. In 2016, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 22 in its list of 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time.
Biography
Early years
Born Mark Lavon Helm in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers who shared a strong affinity for music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided to become a musician. Helm began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums.
Arkansas in the 1940s and '50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles, including traditional Delta blues, electric blues, country (including old-time music) and the incipient genre of rhythm and blues. Helm was influenced by each of these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville. He also saw the last vestiges of minstrelsy and other traveling variety shows, such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, which featured top Black artists of the era.
A key early influence on Helm was Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played electric blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school.
Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by early rock and roll and rockabilly artists, including Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena.
The Hawks
While he was still in high school, Helm was invited to join Ronnie Hawkins's band, the Hawks, a popular bar and club act in the South and Canada where rockabilly acts were very successful. Helm's mother insisted that he graduate from high school before touring with Hawkins, but he was able to play with the Hawks locally on weekends. After his graduation in 1958, Helm joined the Hawks as a full-time member and they moved to Toronto where they signed with Roulette Records in 1959 and released several singles, including a few hits.
Helm reported in his autobiography that fellow Hawks band members had difficulty pronouncing "Lavon" correctly and started calling him "Levon" ( ) because it was easier to pronounce.
In 1961, Helm with bassist Rick Danko backed guitarist Lenny Breau on several tracks recorded at Hallmark Studios in Toronto. These tracks are included on the 2003 release The Hallmark Sessions.
By the early 1960s, Helm and Hawkins had recruited an all-Canadian lineup of musicians: guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel, and organist Garth Hudson, all of whom were multi-instrumentalists. In 1963, the band parted ways with Hawkins and started touring as Levon and the Hawks and later as the Canadian Squires, before changing back to the Hawks. They recorded two singles but remained mostly a popular touring bar band in Texas, Arkansas, Canada, and on the East Coast of the United States where they found regular summer club gigs on the New Jersey shore.
By the mid-1960s, songwriter and musician Bob Dylan was interested in performing electric rock music and asked the Hawks to be his backing band. Disheartened by fans' negative response to Dylan's new sound, Helm left the group in the autumn of 1965 for what turned out to be a two-year layoff, being replaced by a range of touring drummers (most notably Mickey Jones) and Manuel, who began to double on the instrument. Following time with his family in Arkansas and subsequent sojourns in Los Angeles (where he experimented with LSD and performed with Bobby Keys), Memphis and New Orleans (exemplified by work on a nearby oil platform), the eventual result was his return to the group in the autumn of 1967.
After the Hawks toured Europe with Dylan, they followed him back to the U.S. and settled near his home in Woodstock, New York, remaining under salary to Dylan. The Hawks recorded a large number of demos and practice tapes in nearby West Saugerties, New York, playing almost daily with Dylan, who had completely withdrawn from public life following a motorcycle accident in July 1966. These recordings were widely bootlegged and were partially released officially in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. The songs and themes developed during this period played a crucial role in the group's future direction and style. The Hawks also began writing their own songs, with Danko and Manuel also sharing writing credits with Dylan on a few songs.
The Band
Helm returned to the group, then referred to simply as "the band", as it was known around Woodstock. While contemplating a recording contract, Helm had dubbed the band "The Crackers". However, when Robertson and their new manager Albert Grossman worked out the contracts, the group's name was given as "The Band". Under these contracts, the Band was contracted to Grossman, who in turn contracted their services to Capitol Records. This arrangement allowed the Band to release recordings on other labels if the work was done in support of Dylan. Thus the Band was able to play on Dylan's Planet Waves album and to release The Last Waltz, both on other labels. The Band also recorded their own album Music from Big Pink (1968), which catapulted them into stardom. Helm was the Band's only American member.
On Music from Big Pink, Manuel was the most prominent vocalist and Helm sang backup and harmony, with the exception of "The Weight". However, as Manuel's health deteriorated and Robbie Robertson's songwriting increasingly looked to the South for influence and direction, subsequent albums relied more and more on Helm's vocals, alone or in harmony with Danko. Helm was primarily a drummer and vocalist and increasingly sang lead, although, like all his bandmates, he was also a multi-instrumentalist. On occasion Manuel switched to drums while Helm played mandolin, guitar, or bass guitar (while Danko played fiddle) on some songs. Helm played the 12-string guitar backdrop to "Daniel and the Sacred Harp".
Helm remained with the Band until their farewell performance on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, which was the subject of the documentary film The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese. Helm repudiated his involvement with The Last Waltz shortly after the completion of its final scenes. In his autobiography Helm criticized the film and Robertson who produced it.
Solo, acting and the reformed Band
With the breakup of the Band in its original form, Helm began working on a solo-ensemble album, Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars, with Paul Butterfield, Fred Carter, Jr., Emmeretta Marks, Howard Johnson, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Booker T. Jones, and others. Levon Helm and the RCO All-Stars recorded Live at The Palladium NYC, New Year's Eve 1977. The CD album released in March 2006 features over one hour of blues-rock music performed by an ensemble featuring Levon Helm (drums/vocals), Dr. John (keys/vocals), Paul Butterfield (harmonica/vocals), Fred Carter (guitar/vocals), Donald "Duck" Dunn (bass), Cropper (guitar), Lou Marini (saxophones), Howard Johnson (tuba/baritone sax), Tom "Bones" Malone (trombone), and Alan Rubin (trumpet).
This was followed in 1978 by the solo album Levon Helm. More solo albums were released in 1980 and 1982: American Son and (once again) Levon Helm, both produced by Fred Carter, Jr. He also participated in musician Paul Kennerley's 1980 country music concept album, The Legend of Jesse James singing the role of Jesse James alongside Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Charlie Daniels, Albert Lee, and others.
In addition to his work as musician, Helm also acted in several dramatic films. He was cast as Loretta Lynn's father in the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter, followed three years later by a role as U.S. Air Force test pilot and engineer Capt. Jack Ridley, in The Right Stuff. Helm was also the latter film's narrator. 1987's under-appreciated End of the Line featured Levon as a small-town railroad employee alongside Wilford Brimley and Kevin Bacon. He played a Kentucky backwoods preacher in Fire Down Below. He played an eccentric old man in the 2005 film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and appeared as Gen. John Bell Hood in the 2009 film In the Electric Mist. He also had a brief cameo as a weapons expert in the film Shooter with Mark Wahlberg.
In 1983, the Band reunited without Robbie Robertson, at first playing with an expanded lineup that included the entire Cate Brothers Band, but in 1985 paring down and adding Jim Weider on guitar. In 1986, while on tour Manuel committed suicide. Helm, Danko, and Hudson continued in the Band, adding pianist Richard Bell and drummer/vocalist Randy Ciarlante and releasing the album Jericho in 1993 and High on the Hog in 1996. The final album from the Band was the 30th anniversary album, Jubilation released in 1998.
In 1989, Helm and Danko toured with drummer Ringo Starr as part of his All-Starr Band. Other musicians in the band included singer and guitarist Joe Walsh, singer and pianist Dr. John, singer and guitarist Nils Lofgren, singer Billy Preston, saxophonist Clarence Clemons, and drummer Jim Keltner. Garth Hudson was a guest on accordion on some dates. Helm played drums and harmonica and sang "The Weight" and "Up on Cripple Creek" each night.
In the televised 1989 Juno Awards celebration, the Band was inducted into the Juno Awards' Hall of Fame. Helm was not present at the ceremony, but a taped segment of him offering his thanks was broadcast after the acceptance speeches by Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson. Richard Manuel's children accepted the award on behalf of their father. To conclude the televised special, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Robbie Robertson performed "The Weight" with Blue Rodeo.
Helm performed with Danko and Hudson as the Band in 1990 at Roger Waters's epic The Wall – Live in Berlin Concert in Germany to an estimated 300,000 to half a million people.
In 1993, Helm published an autobiography entitled This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band.
The Midnight Ramble
Helm's performance career in the 2000s revolved mainly around the Midnight Ramble at his home and studio, "The Barn," in Woodstock, New York. These concerts, featuring Helm and various musical guests, allowed him to raise money for his medical bills and to resume performing after a bout with cancer that nearly ended his career.
In the late 1990s, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer after suffering hoarseness. Advised to undergo a laryngectomy, he instead underwent an arduous regimen of radiation treatments at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The tumor was then successfully removed, but Helm's vocal cords were damaged, and his clear, powerful tenor voice was replaced by a quiet rasp. Initially Helm only played drums and relied on guest vocalists at the Rambles, but eventually his singing voice grew stronger. On January 10, 2004, he sang again at his Ramble sessions. In 2007, during production of Dirt Farmer, Helm estimated that his singing voice was 80 percent recovered.
The Levon Helm Band featured his daughter Amy Helm, Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, Jim Weider (The Band's last guitarist), Jimmy Vivino, Mike Merritt, Brian Mitchell, Erik Lawrence, Steven Bernstein, Howard Johnson (tuba player in the horn section on the Band's Rock of Ages and The Last Waltz), Jay Collins (Helm's now former son-in-law), Byron Isaacs, and blues harmonica player Little Sammy Davis. Helm hosted Midnight Rambles that were open to the public at his home in Woodstock.
The Midnight Ramble was an outgrowth of an idea Helm explained to Martin Scorsese in The Last Waltz. Earlier in the 20th century, Helm recounted, traveling medicine shows and music shows such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, featuring African-American blues singers and dancers, would put on titillating performances in rural areas. (This was also turned into a song by the Band, "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show," with the name altered so the lyric was easier to sing.)
"After the finale, they'd have the midnight ramble," Helm told Scorsese. With young children off the premises, the show resumed: "The songs would get a little bit juicier. The jokes would get a little funnier and the prettiest dancer would really get down and shake it a few times. A lot of the rock and roll duck walks and moves came from that."
Artists who performed at the Rambles include Helm's former bandmate Garth Hudson, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Dr. John, Mavis Staples, Chris Robinson, Allen Toussaint, Donald Fagen and Jon Herington of Steely Dan, Jimmy Vivino (of the house band on Late Night with Conan O'Brien), the Max Weinberg 7, My Morning Jacket, Billy Bob Thornton, Alexis P. Suter, Sean Costello, the Muddy Waters Tribute Band, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Carolyn Wonderland, Kris Kristofferson, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Justin Townes Earle, Bow Thayer, Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, Rickie Lee Jones, Kate Taylor, Ollabelle, the Holmes Brothers, Catherine Russell, Norah Jones, Arlen Roth, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Phil Lesh (along with his sons Grahame and Brian), Hot Tuna (Jorma Kaukonen introduced the group as "the Secret Squirrels"), Michael Angelo D'Arrigo with various members of the Sistine Chapel, Johnny Johnson, Ithalia, David Bromberg, the Youngers, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.
During this period, Helm switched to the matched grip and adopted a less busy, greatly simplified drumming style, as opposed to the traditional grip he used during his years with the Band.
Helm was busy touring every year during the 2000s, generally traveling by tour bus to venues in eastern Canada and the eastern United States. After 2007, he performed in large venues such the Beacon Theater in New York. Dr. John and Warren Haynes (the Allman Brothers Band, Gov't Mule) and Garth Hudson played at the concerts along with several other guests. At a show in Vancouver Elvis Costello joined to sing "Tears of Rage". The Alexis P. Suter Band was a frequent opening act. Helm was a favorite of radio personality Don Imus and was frequently featured on Imus in the Morning. In the summer of 2009, it was reported that a reality television series centering on the Midnight Ramble was in development.
In 2012, Levon Helm and his "midnight rambles" were featured on the PBS Arts site, "Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders," including a poignant last interview with PBS's Marco Werman.
Dirt Farmer and comeback
The autumn of 2007 saw the release of Dirt Farmer, Helm's first studio solo album since 1982. Dedicated to his parents and co-produced by his daughter Amy, the album combines traditional tunes Levon recalled from his youth with newer songs (by Steve Earle, Paul Kennerley, and others) which flow from similar historical streams. The album was released to almost immediate critical acclaim, and earned him a Grammy Award in the Traditional Folk Album category for 2007. Also in 2007, Helm recorded "Toolin' Around Woodstock", and album with Arlen Roth on which Levon played drums and sang Sweet Little 16 and "Crying Time." This album also featured Levon's daughter Amy, and Roth's daughter Lexie, along with Sonny Landreth and Bill Kirchen.
Helm declined to attend the Grammy Awards ceremony, instead holding a "Midnight Gramble" and celebrating the birth of his grandson, Lavon (Lee) Henry Collins.
In 2008, Helm performed at Warren Haynes's Mountain Jam Music Festival in Hunter, New York playing alongside Haynes on the last day of the three-day festival. Helm also joined guitarist Bob Weir and his band RatDog on stage as they closed out the festival. Helm performed to great acclaim at the 2008 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.
Helm drummed on a couple of tracks for Jorma Kaukonen's February 2009 album River of Time, recorded at the Levon Helm studio.
Helm released the album Electric Dirt on his own label on June 30, 2009. Like Dirt Farmer, an aim of Electric Dirt was to capture of feel of Helm's Midnight Rambles. The album won a best album Grammy for the newly created Americana category in 2010. Helm performed on the CBS television program Late Show with David Letterman on July 9, 2009. He also toured that same year in a supporting role with the band Black Crowes.
A documentary on Helm's day-to-day life, entitled Ain't in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm was released in March 2010. Directed by Jacob Hatley, it made its debut at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas and went on to be screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June 2010. The film had a limited release in select theaters in the United States in the spring of 2013 and was released on DVD and Blu-ray later that year.
On May 11, 2011, Helm released Ramble at the Ryman, a live album recorded during his performance of September 17, 2008 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The album features Helm's band playing six songs by the Band and other cover material, including some songs from previous Helm solo releases. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Americana Album.
Illness and death
In April 2012, during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Cleveland, Robbie Robertson sent "love and prayers" to Helm, fueling speculation about Helm's health. Helm had previously cancelled a number of performances, citing health issues or a slipped disk in his back; his final performances took place in Tarrytown, New York at Tarrytown Music Hall on March 24, and a final Midnight Ramble (with Moonalice as the opening act) in Woodstock on March 31.
On April 17, 2012, Helm's wife Sandy and daughter Amy revealed that he had end-stage throat cancer. They posted the following message on Helm's website:
On April 18, Robertson revealed on his Facebook page that he had a long visit with Helm at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center the previous Sunday. On the same day, Garth Hudson posted on his personal website that he was "too sad for words". He then left a link for a video of himself and the Alexis P. Suter Band performing Bob Dylan's song "Knocking on Heaven's Door". Helm died on April 19, 2012, at 1:30 p.m. (EDT) due to complications from throat cancer at age 71.
Fans were invited to a public wake at Helm's Barn studio complex on April 26. Approximately 2,000 fans came to pay their respects to the rock icon. The following day, after a private funeral service and a procession through the streets of Woodstock, Helm was interred in the Woodstock Cemetery, within sight of the grave of his longtime bandmate and friend Rick Danko. Former President Bill Clinton issued a statement following Helm's passing.
Legacy
George Harrison said that while writing his 1970 song "All Things Must Pass", he imagined Levon Helm singing it.
Elton John's lyricist, Bernie Taupin named the song "Levon" after Helm, although the song is not actually about him. Both John and Taupin cited that they were inspired by Helm; Taupin saying in various interviews that they would "go down to their favourite record stores to buy The Band's records" along with Elton. In 1994, Helm was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Band.
Marc Cohn wrote the song "Listening to Levon" in 2007.
"The Man behind the Drums," written by Robert Earl Keen and Bill Whitbeck, appeared on Keen's 2009 album The Rose Hotel.
Tracy K. Smith's 2011 poem "Alternate Take", included in her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection Life on Mars, is dedicated to Helm. On the day of Helm's death, April 19, 2012, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, in a concert at the First Bank Center in Broomfield, Colorado, paid tribute to Levon by performing their song "The Best of Everything" and dedicating it to him.
At a concert on May 2, 2012, at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Helm. Springsteen called Helm "one of the greatest, greatest voices in country, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll ... staggering ... while playing the drums. Both his voice and his drumming were so incredibly personal. He had a feel on the drums that comes out of certain place in the past and you can't replicate it." Springsteen also said it was one of the songs that he had played with drummer Max Weinberg in Weinberg's audition with the band.
On June 2, 2012, at Mountain Jam, Gov't Mule along with the Levon Helm Band (with Lukas Nelson coming on stage for the closing song) played a tribute set, including "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Up on Cripple Creek,""It Makes No Difference," and closing with "The Weight".
A tribute concert called Love for Levon took place at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey on October 3, 2012. The concert featured many special guests who had collaborated with and were inspired by Helm and the Band, including Roger Waters, Garth Hudson, Joe Walsh, Gregg Allman, Bruce Hornsby, Jorma Kaukonen, John Mayer, Mavis Staples, My Morning Jacket, Marc Cohn, John Hiatt, Allen Toussaint, Jakob Dylan, Mike Gordon, and others. Proceeds from the concert were to "help support the lasting legacy of Levon Helm by helping his estate keep ownership of his home, barn and studio, and to continue the Midnight Ramble Sessions".
At the 2013 Grammy Awards, the Zac Brown Band, Mumford & Sons, Elton John, Mavis Staples, T-Bone Burnett, and Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Levon and other recently deceased musicians. They also dedicated the song to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. In May 2013, the New York State Legislature approved a resolution to name State Route 375—the road which connects State Route 28 with the town of Woodstock—"Levon Helm Memorial Boulevard". Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill on June 20, 2013. In July 2017, U.S. 49 from Marvell, Arkansas to Helena–West Helena was named The Levon Helm Memorial Highway by Act 810 of the Arkansas State Legislature. The Levon Helm Legacy Project is raising money to commission a bronze bust of Helm and to restore his boyhood home. The house, originally located in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, was moved in 2015 to Marvell, where Helm attended school.
Personal life
Helm met singer-songwriter Libby Titus in April 1969, while the Band was recording its second album. They began a lengthy relationship which produced daughter Amy Helm (born December 3, 1970). Amy formed the band Ollabelle and performed with her father's band at the Midnight Rambles and other concerts.
Helm met Sandra Dodd in 1975 in California, while he was still involved with Titus. Helm and Dodd were married on September 7, 1981. They had no children together.
Discography
Studio
Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars (1977)
Levon Helm (1978)
American Son (1980)
Levon Helm (1982)
Dirt Farmer (2007)
Electric Dirt (2009)
Live
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume One (2006)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Two (2006)
Levon Helm & the RCO All Stars: Live at the Palladium NYC, New Years Eve 1977 (2006)
FestivalLink.Net presents: Levon Helm Band MerleFest Ramble (MerleFest, NC 4/26/08)
Ramble at the Ryman (2011)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Three (2014)
Other
The Legend of Jesse James (1980)
Souvenir, Vol. 1 (1998)
The Imus Ranch Record (2008)
The Imus Ranch Record II (2010)
The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams (2011)
With Muddy Waters
The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album (Chess, 1975)
Filmography
References
External links
[ Allmusic]
1940 births
2012 deaths
ABC Records artists
American autobiographers
American country singer-songwriters
American country rock musicians
American folk rock musicians
American male singer-songwriters
American mandolinists
American multi-instrumentalists
American rock drummers
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Grammy Award winners
Male actors from Arkansas
People from Phillips County, Arkansas
Singer-songwriters from Arkansas
The Band members
Vanguard Records artists
20th-century Canadian male musicians
Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band members | true | [
"Daniel Helm (born April 20, 1995) is an American football tight end for the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at Duke.\n\nProfessional career\n\nLos Angeles Chargers\nHelm was signed by the Los Angeles Chargers as an undrafted free agent on April 27, 2019. He was waived by the Chargers on August 1, 2019.\n\nSan Francisco 49ers (first stint)\nHelm was claimed off waivers by the San Francisco 49ers on August 2, 2019. He was waived on August 31, 2019, during final roster cuts and was re-signed to the 49ers practice squad the following day. Helm was promoted to the 49ers active roster on December 12, 2019, following an injury to Garrett Celek, but did not play in any games. Helm was waived by the 49ers on August 15, 2020.\n\nKansas City Chiefs\nHelm was claimed off waivers by the Kansas City Chiefs on August 16, 2020. He was waived by the Chiefs on September 5, 2020.\n\nTampa Bay Buccaneers\nHelm was signed to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' practice squad on September 22, 2020.\n\nSan Francisco 49ers (second stint)\nHelm was signed off the Buccaneers practice squad by the 49ers on September 29, 2020. He made his NFL debut on October 18, 2020, against the Los Angeles Rams. Helm was waived on October 20, 2020, and was signed to the practice squad the next day. He was elevated to the active roster on November 5 and November 14 for the team's weeks 9 and 10 games against the Green Bay Packers and New Orleans Saints, and reverted to the practice squad after each game. He was placed on the practice squad/COVID-19 list by the team on November 20, and restored to the practice squad and subsequently released on December 3. He was re-signed to the practice squad on December 9. He was elevated to the active roster again on December 19 and December 25 for the weeks 15 and 16 games against the Dallas Cowboys and Arizona Cardinals, and reverted to the practice squad after each game. His practice squad contract with the team expired after the season on January 11, 2021. He was re-signed on March 17, 2021. On June 1, 2021, Helm was waived by 49ers.\n\nLas Vegas Raiders\nOn October 25, 2021, Helm was signed to the Las Vegas Raiders active roster. He was released on January 8, 2022.\n\nAtlanta Falcons\nOn January 20, 2022, Helm signed a reserve/future contract with the Atlanta Falcons.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nSan Francisco 49ers bio\nDuke Blue Devils bio\n\n1995 births\nLiving people\nAmerican football tight ends\nPlayers of American football from Illinois\nDuke Blue Devils football players\nSan Francisco 49ers players\nLos Angeles Chargers players\nPeople from Sangamon County, Illinois\nTampa Bay Buccaneers players\nKansas City Chiefs players\nLas Vegas Raiders players\nAtlanta Falcons players",
"William Helm (March 9, 1837 – April 10, 1919) was the largest individual sheep farmer and noteworthy among the early pioneer settlers of Fresno County, California. He was instrumental in the growth and prosperity of the San Joaquin Valley. Helm was vice-president of the Fresno Bank of Central California, and the president of the Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company.\n\nEarly life\n\nHelm was born in the province of Ontario, Canada on March 9, 1837, about forty miles above Montreal, on the St. Lawrence River. He is the son of George and Mary (Oliver Helm), both of whom were born in Scotland. Brought up on the home farm, Helm acquired an education in the district schools, and under his father's instruction. Helm left home in 1856 to Wisconsin for three years engaged in lumbering and operating a sawmill on the Chippewa River. In 1859, Helm sailed from New York City to San Francisco, California by way of Panama. He traveled to Sacramento and searched for gold in Placer County but soon found it unprofitable. He spent the next three years as a butcher, first in Foresthill, Todds Valley, and then in Bear river in Placer County. He saved his money and decided to raise sheep for a living. In 1865 he married Francis Sawyer Newman, and they had seven children together.\n\nFresno, California\n\nHelm brought his wife and his sheep to Fresno county, which was then a vast space of open land, before the railroad came through the valley. He was one of the earliest settlers to experiment with growing wheat.\n\nHelm was the largest individual sheep grower in Fresno County. In carrying his wool to market at Stockton, he used three wagons, each drawn by ten mules, and spent twelve days in making the round trip. When the railroad came through the valley in 1872, it was a great benefit to Helm.\n\nAt Dry Creek, on section four, Helm bought a ranch six miles northeast of Fresno. He acquired up to 2,640 acres, paying one dollar an acre. He bought additional land to establish a winter camp for his sheep on the present site of the Fresno court house. His herd increased rapidly, at one time owning 22,000 head of sheep.\n\nIn 1881, because of a growing family, Helm bought the block bounded by Fresno, R, Merced and S Streets from Louis Einstein. He built his home there in 1881 where it stood for 71 years. As their daughters married, Helm gave them parts of the block on which to build their homes. The Fresno Community Hospital was built on this block in 1959. In 1901, Helm testified as a character witness in the murder trial of a friend named James Brown, whom Helm stated that he had known since 1886.\n\nDeath\n\nHelm died on April 10, 1919, at the age of 82, following a lingering illness that left him bedridden for seven months. He died at the home of his daughter, Jessie Marie Helm.\n\nHelm, California was named after William Helm.\n\nSee also\nTimeline of Fresno, California\n\nReferences\n\n \n\n1837 births\n1919 deaths\nAmerican farmers\nCanadian emigrants to the United States\nPeople from Fresno, California"
] |
[
"Levon Helm",
"Early years",
"when was Helm born?",
"Arkansas in the 1940s",
"who was Helm born to?",
"His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm,"
] | C_b226146f1fad4c4bb2c3d33ef7d2fdad_1 | Did Helm have any siblings? | 3 | Did Levon Helm have any siblings? | Levon Helm | Born in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers and great lovers of music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. Young Lavon (as he was christened) began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums during his formative years. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided then to become a musician. Arkansas in the 1940s and 50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles--blues, country and R&B--that, when merged, later became known as rock and roll. Helm was influenced by all these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee. He also saw traveling shows such as F.S. Walcott's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels that featured top African-American artists of the time. Another early influence on Helm was the work of the harmonica player, guitarist and singer Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school. Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by southern country music, blues and rockabilly artists such as Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena. CANNOTANSWER | They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. | Mark Lavon "Levon" Helm (May 26, 1940 – April 19, 2012) was an American musician and actor who achieved fame as the drummer and one of the three lead vocalists for The Band. Helm was known for his deeply soulful, country-accented voice, multi-instrumental ability, and creative drumming style, highlighted on many of the Band's recordings, such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek", and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".
Helm also had a successful career as a film actor, appearing as Loretta Lynn's father in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), as Chuck Yeager's friend and colleague Captain Jack Ridley in The Right Stuff (1983), as a Tennessee firearms expert in Shooter (2007), and as General John Bell Hood in In the Electric Mist (2009).
In 1998, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer which caused him to lose his singing voice. After treatment, his cancer eventually went into remission, and he gradually regained the use of his voice. His 2007 comeback album Dirt Farmer earned the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in February 2008, and in November of that year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 91 in its list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time,. In 2010, Electric Dirt, his 2009 follow-up to Dirt Farmer, won the first Grammy Award for Best Americana Album, a category inaugurated in 2010. In 2011, his live album Ramble at the Ryman won the Grammy in the same category. In 2016, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 22 in its list of 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time.
Biography
Early years
Born Mark Lavon Helm in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers who shared a strong affinity for music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided to become a musician. Helm began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums.
Arkansas in the 1940s and '50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles, including traditional Delta blues, electric blues, country (including old-time music) and the incipient genre of rhythm and blues. Helm was influenced by each of these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville. He also saw the last vestiges of minstrelsy and other traveling variety shows, such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, which featured top Black artists of the era.
A key early influence on Helm was Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played electric blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school.
Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by early rock and roll and rockabilly artists, including Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena.
The Hawks
While he was still in high school, Helm was invited to join Ronnie Hawkins's band, the Hawks, a popular bar and club act in the South and Canada where rockabilly acts were very successful. Helm's mother insisted that he graduate from high school before touring with Hawkins, but he was able to play with the Hawks locally on weekends. After his graduation in 1958, Helm joined the Hawks as a full-time member and they moved to Toronto where they signed with Roulette Records in 1959 and released several singles, including a few hits.
Helm reported in his autobiography that fellow Hawks band members had difficulty pronouncing "Lavon" correctly and started calling him "Levon" ( ) because it was easier to pronounce.
In 1961, Helm with bassist Rick Danko backed guitarist Lenny Breau on several tracks recorded at Hallmark Studios in Toronto. These tracks are included on the 2003 release The Hallmark Sessions.
By the early 1960s, Helm and Hawkins had recruited an all-Canadian lineup of musicians: guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel, and organist Garth Hudson, all of whom were multi-instrumentalists. In 1963, the band parted ways with Hawkins and started touring as Levon and the Hawks and later as the Canadian Squires, before changing back to the Hawks. They recorded two singles but remained mostly a popular touring bar band in Texas, Arkansas, Canada, and on the East Coast of the United States where they found regular summer club gigs on the New Jersey shore.
By the mid-1960s, songwriter and musician Bob Dylan was interested in performing electric rock music and asked the Hawks to be his backing band. Disheartened by fans' negative response to Dylan's new sound, Helm left the group in the autumn of 1965 for what turned out to be a two-year layoff, being replaced by a range of touring drummers (most notably Mickey Jones) and Manuel, who began to double on the instrument. Following time with his family in Arkansas and subsequent sojourns in Los Angeles (where he experimented with LSD and performed with Bobby Keys), Memphis and New Orleans (exemplified by work on a nearby oil platform), the eventual result was his return to the group in the autumn of 1967.
After the Hawks toured Europe with Dylan, they followed him back to the U.S. and settled near his home in Woodstock, New York, remaining under salary to Dylan. The Hawks recorded a large number of demos and practice tapes in nearby West Saugerties, New York, playing almost daily with Dylan, who had completely withdrawn from public life following a motorcycle accident in July 1966. These recordings were widely bootlegged and were partially released officially in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. The songs and themes developed during this period played a crucial role in the group's future direction and style. The Hawks also began writing their own songs, with Danko and Manuel also sharing writing credits with Dylan on a few songs.
The Band
Helm returned to the group, then referred to simply as "the band", as it was known around Woodstock. While contemplating a recording contract, Helm had dubbed the band "The Crackers". However, when Robertson and their new manager Albert Grossman worked out the contracts, the group's name was given as "The Band". Under these contracts, the Band was contracted to Grossman, who in turn contracted their services to Capitol Records. This arrangement allowed the Band to release recordings on other labels if the work was done in support of Dylan. Thus the Band was able to play on Dylan's Planet Waves album and to release The Last Waltz, both on other labels. The Band also recorded their own album Music from Big Pink (1968), which catapulted them into stardom. Helm was the Band's only American member.
On Music from Big Pink, Manuel was the most prominent vocalist and Helm sang backup and harmony, with the exception of "The Weight". However, as Manuel's health deteriorated and Robbie Robertson's songwriting increasingly looked to the South for influence and direction, subsequent albums relied more and more on Helm's vocals, alone or in harmony with Danko. Helm was primarily a drummer and vocalist and increasingly sang lead, although, like all his bandmates, he was also a multi-instrumentalist. On occasion Manuel switched to drums while Helm played mandolin, guitar, or bass guitar (while Danko played fiddle) on some songs. Helm played the 12-string guitar backdrop to "Daniel and the Sacred Harp".
Helm remained with the Band until their farewell performance on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, which was the subject of the documentary film The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese. Helm repudiated his involvement with The Last Waltz shortly after the completion of its final scenes. In his autobiography Helm criticized the film and Robertson who produced it.
Solo, acting and the reformed Band
With the breakup of the Band in its original form, Helm began working on a solo-ensemble album, Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars, with Paul Butterfield, Fred Carter, Jr., Emmeretta Marks, Howard Johnson, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Booker T. Jones, and others. Levon Helm and the RCO All-Stars recorded Live at The Palladium NYC, New Year's Eve 1977. The CD album released in March 2006 features over one hour of blues-rock music performed by an ensemble featuring Levon Helm (drums/vocals), Dr. John (keys/vocals), Paul Butterfield (harmonica/vocals), Fred Carter (guitar/vocals), Donald "Duck" Dunn (bass), Cropper (guitar), Lou Marini (saxophones), Howard Johnson (tuba/baritone sax), Tom "Bones" Malone (trombone), and Alan Rubin (trumpet).
This was followed in 1978 by the solo album Levon Helm. More solo albums were released in 1980 and 1982: American Son and (once again) Levon Helm, both produced by Fred Carter, Jr. He also participated in musician Paul Kennerley's 1980 country music concept album, The Legend of Jesse James singing the role of Jesse James alongside Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Charlie Daniels, Albert Lee, and others.
In addition to his work as musician, Helm also acted in several dramatic films. He was cast as Loretta Lynn's father in the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter, followed three years later by a role as U.S. Air Force test pilot and engineer Capt. Jack Ridley, in The Right Stuff. Helm was also the latter film's narrator. 1987's under-appreciated End of the Line featured Levon as a small-town railroad employee alongside Wilford Brimley and Kevin Bacon. He played a Kentucky backwoods preacher in Fire Down Below. He played an eccentric old man in the 2005 film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and appeared as Gen. John Bell Hood in the 2009 film In the Electric Mist. He also had a brief cameo as a weapons expert in the film Shooter with Mark Wahlberg.
In 1983, the Band reunited without Robbie Robertson, at first playing with an expanded lineup that included the entire Cate Brothers Band, but in 1985 paring down and adding Jim Weider on guitar. In 1986, while on tour Manuel committed suicide. Helm, Danko, and Hudson continued in the Band, adding pianist Richard Bell and drummer/vocalist Randy Ciarlante and releasing the album Jericho in 1993 and High on the Hog in 1996. The final album from the Band was the 30th anniversary album, Jubilation released in 1998.
In 1989, Helm and Danko toured with drummer Ringo Starr as part of his All-Starr Band. Other musicians in the band included singer and guitarist Joe Walsh, singer and pianist Dr. John, singer and guitarist Nils Lofgren, singer Billy Preston, saxophonist Clarence Clemons, and drummer Jim Keltner. Garth Hudson was a guest on accordion on some dates. Helm played drums and harmonica and sang "The Weight" and "Up on Cripple Creek" each night.
In the televised 1989 Juno Awards celebration, the Band was inducted into the Juno Awards' Hall of Fame. Helm was not present at the ceremony, but a taped segment of him offering his thanks was broadcast after the acceptance speeches by Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson. Richard Manuel's children accepted the award on behalf of their father. To conclude the televised special, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Robbie Robertson performed "The Weight" with Blue Rodeo.
Helm performed with Danko and Hudson as the Band in 1990 at Roger Waters's epic The Wall – Live in Berlin Concert in Germany to an estimated 300,000 to half a million people.
In 1993, Helm published an autobiography entitled This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band.
The Midnight Ramble
Helm's performance career in the 2000s revolved mainly around the Midnight Ramble at his home and studio, "The Barn," in Woodstock, New York. These concerts, featuring Helm and various musical guests, allowed him to raise money for his medical bills and to resume performing after a bout with cancer that nearly ended his career.
In the late 1990s, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer after suffering hoarseness. Advised to undergo a laryngectomy, he instead underwent an arduous regimen of radiation treatments at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The tumor was then successfully removed, but Helm's vocal cords were damaged, and his clear, powerful tenor voice was replaced by a quiet rasp. Initially Helm only played drums and relied on guest vocalists at the Rambles, but eventually his singing voice grew stronger. On January 10, 2004, he sang again at his Ramble sessions. In 2007, during production of Dirt Farmer, Helm estimated that his singing voice was 80 percent recovered.
The Levon Helm Band featured his daughter Amy Helm, Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, Jim Weider (The Band's last guitarist), Jimmy Vivino, Mike Merritt, Brian Mitchell, Erik Lawrence, Steven Bernstein, Howard Johnson (tuba player in the horn section on the Band's Rock of Ages and The Last Waltz), Jay Collins (Helm's now former son-in-law), Byron Isaacs, and blues harmonica player Little Sammy Davis. Helm hosted Midnight Rambles that were open to the public at his home in Woodstock.
The Midnight Ramble was an outgrowth of an idea Helm explained to Martin Scorsese in The Last Waltz. Earlier in the 20th century, Helm recounted, traveling medicine shows and music shows such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, featuring African-American blues singers and dancers, would put on titillating performances in rural areas. (This was also turned into a song by the Band, "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show," with the name altered so the lyric was easier to sing.)
"After the finale, they'd have the midnight ramble," Helm told Scorsese. With young children off the premises, the show resumed: "The songs would get a little bit juicier. The jokes would get a little funnier and the prettiest dancer would really get down and shake it a few times. A lot of the rock and roll duck walks and moves came from that."
Artists who performed at the Rambles include Helm's former bandmate Garth Hudson, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Dr. John, Mavis Staples, Chris Robinson, Allen Toussaint, Donald Fagen and Jon Herington of Steely Dan, Jimmy Vivino (of the house band on Late Night with Conan O'Brien), the Max Weinberg 7, My Morning Jacket, Billy Bob Thornton, Alexis P. Suter, Sean Costello, the Muddy Waters Tribute Band, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Carolyn Wonderland, Kris Kristofferson, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Justin Townes Earle, Bow Thayer, Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, Rickie Lee Jones, Kate Taylor, Ollabelle, the Holmes Brothers, Catherine Russell, Norah Jones, Arlen Roth, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Phil Lesh (along with his sons Grahame and Brian), Hot Tuna (Jorma Kaukonen introduced the group as "the Secret Squirrels"), Michael Angelo D'Arrigo with various members of the Sistine Chapel, Johnny Johnson, Ithalia, David Bromberg, the Youngers, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.
During this period, Helm switched to the matched grip and adopted a less busy, greatly simplified drumming style, as opposed to the traditional grip he used during his years with the Band.
Helm was busy touring every year during the 2000s, generally traveling by tour bus to venues in eastern Canada and the eastern United States. After 2007, he performed in large venues such the Beacon Theater in New York. Dr. John and Warren Haynes (the Allman Brothers Band, Gov't Mule) and Garth Hudson played at the concerts along with several other guests. At a show in Vancouver Elvis Costello joined to sing "Tears of Rage". The Alexis P. Suter Band was a frequent opening act. Helm was a favorite of radio personality Don Imus and was frequently featured on Imus in the Morning. In the summer of 2009, it was reported that a reality television series centering on the Midnight Ramble was in development.
In 2012, Levon Helm and his "midnight rambles" were featured on the PBS Arts site, "Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders," including a poignant last interview with PBS's Marco Werman.
Dirt Farmer and comeback
The autumn of 2007 saw the release of Dirt Farmer, Helm's first studio solo album since 1982. Dedicated to his parents and co-produced by his daughter Amy, the album combines traditional tunes Levon recalled from his youth with newer songs (by Steve Earle, Paul Kennerley, and others) which flow from similar historical streams. The album was released to almost immediate critical acclaim, and earned him a Grammy Award in the Traditional Folk Album category for 2007. Also in 2007, Helm recorded "Toolin' Around Woodstock", and album with Arlen Roth on which Levon played drums and sang Sweet Little 16 and "Crying Time." This album also featured Levon's daughter Amy, and Roth's daughter Lexie, along with Sonny Landreth and Bill Kirchen.
Helm declined to attend the Grammy Awards ceremony, instead holding a "Midnight Gramble" and celebrating the birth of his grandson, Lavon (Lee) Henry Collins.
In 2008, Helm performed at Warren Haynes's Mountain Jam Music Festival in Hunter, New York playing alongside Haynes on the last day of the three-day festival. Helm also joined guitarist Bob Weir and his band RatDog on stage as they closed out the festival. Helm performed to great acclaim at the 2008 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.
Helm drummed on a couple of tracks for Jorma Kaukonen's February 2009 album River of Time, recorded at the Levon Helm studio.
Helm released the album Electric Dirt on his own label on June 30, 2009. Like Dirt Farmer, an aim of Electric Dirt was to capture of feel of Helm's Midnight Rambles. The album won a best album Grammy for the newly created Americana category in 2010. Helm performed on the CBS television program Late Show with David Letterman on July 9, 2009. He also toured that same year in a supporting role with the band Black Crowes.
A documentary on Helm's day-to-day life, entitled Ain't in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm was released in March 2010. Directed by Jacob Hatley, it made its debut at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas and went on to be screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June 2010. The film had a limited release in select theaters in the United States in the spring of 2013 and was released on DVD and Blu-ray later that year.
On May 11, 2011, Helm released Ramble at the Ryman, a live album recorded during his performance of September 17, 2008 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The album features Helm's band playing six songs by the Band and other cover material, including some songs from previous Helm solo releases. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Americana Album.
Illness and death
In April 2012, during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Cleveland, Robbie Robertson sent "love and prayers" to Helm, fueling speculation about Helm's health. Helm had previously cancelled a number of performances, citing health issues or a slipped disk in his back; his final performances took place in Tarrytown, New York at Tarrytown Music Hall on March 24, and a final Midnight Ramble (with Moonalice as the opening act) in Woodstock on March 31.
On April 17, 2012, Helm's wife Sandy and daughter Amy revealed that he had end-stage throat cancer. They posted the following message on Helm's website:
On April 18, Robertson revealed on his Facebook page that he had a long visit with Helm at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center the previous Sunday. On the same day, Garth Hudson posted on his personal website that he was "too sad for words". He then left a link for a video of himself and the Alexis P. Suter Band performing Bob Dylan's song "Knocking on Heaven's Door". Helm died on April 19, 2012, at 1:30 p.m. (EDT) due to complications from throat cancer at age 71.
Fans were invited to a public wake at Helm's Barn studio complex on April 26. Approximately 2,000 fans came to pay their respects to the rock icon. The following day, after a private funeral service and a procession through the streets of Woodstock, Helm was interred in the Woodstock Cemetery, within sight of the grave of his longtime bandmate and friend Rick Danko. Former President Bill Clinton issued a statement following Helm's passing.
Legacy
George Harrison said that while writing his 1970 song "All Things Must Pass", he imagined Levon Helm singing it.
Elton John's lyricist, Bernie Taupin named the song "Levon" after Helm, although the song is not actually about him. Both John and Taupin cited that they were inspired by Helm; Taupin saying in various interviews that they would "go down to their favourite record stores to buy The Band's records" along with Elton. In 1994, Helm was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Band.
Marc Cohn wrote the song "Listening to Levon" in 2007.
"The Man behind the Drums," written by Robert Earl Keen and Bill Whitbeck, appeared on Keen's 2009 album The Rose Hotel.
Tracy K. Smith's 2011 poem "Alternate Take", included in her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection Life on Mars, is dedicated to Helm. On the day of Helm's death, April 19, 2012, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, in a concert at the First Bank Center in Broomfield, Colorado, paid tribute to Levon by performing their song "The Best of Everything" and dedicating it to him.
At a concert on May 2, 2012, at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Helm. Springsteen called Helm "one of the greatest, greatest voices in country, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll ... staggering ... while playing the drums. Both his voice and his drumming were so incredibly personal. He had a feel on the drums that comes out of certain place in the past and you can't replicate it." Springsteen also said it was one of the songs that he had played with drummer Max Weinberg in Weinberg's audition with the band.
On June 2, 2012, at Mountain Jam, Gov't Mule along with the Levon Helm Band (with Lukas Nelson coming on stage for the closing song) played a tribute set, including "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Up on Cripple Creek,""It Makes No Difference," and closing with "The Weight".
A tribute concert called Love for Levon took place at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey on October 3, 2012. The concert featured many special guests who had collaborated with and were inspired by Helm and the Band, including Roger Waters, Garth Hudson, Joe Walsh, Gregg Allman, Bruce Hornsby, Jorma Kaukonen, John Mayer, Mavis Staples, My Morning Jacket, Marc Cohn, John Hiatt, Allen Toussaint, Jakob Dylan, Mike Gordon, and others. Proceeds from the concert were to "help support the lasting legacy of Levon Helm by helping his estate keep ownership of his home, barn and studio, and to continue the Midnight Ramble Sessions".
At the 2013 Grammy Awards, the Zac Brown Band, Mumford & Sons, Elton John, Mavis Staples, T-Bone Burnett, and Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Levon and other recently deceased musicians. They also dedicated the song to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. In May 2013, the New York State Legislature approved a resolution to name State Route 375—the road which connects State Route 28 with the town of Woodstock—"Levon Helm Memorial Boulevard". Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill on June 20, 2013. In July 2017, U.S. 49 from Marvell, Arkansas to Helena–West Helena was named The Levon Helm Memorial Highway by Act 810 of the Arkansas State Legislature. The Levon Helm Legacy Project is raising money to commission a bronze bust of Helm and to restore his boyhood home. The house, originally located in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, was moved in 2015 to Marvell, where Helm attended school.
Personal life
Helm met singer-songwriter Libby Titus in April 1969, while the Band was recording its second album. They began a lengthy relationship which produced daughter Amy Helm (born December 3, 1970). Amy formed the band Ollabelle and performed with her father's band at the Midnight Rambles and other concerts.
Helm met Sandra Dodd in 1975 in California, while he was still involved with Titus. Helm and Dodd were married on September 7, 1981. They had no children together.
Discography
Studio
Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars (1977)
Levon Helm (1978)
American Son (1980)
Levon Helm (1982)
Dirt Farmer (2007)
Electric Dirt (2009)
Live
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume One (2006)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Two (2006)
Levon Helm & the RCO All Stars: Live at the Palladium NYC, New Years Eve 1977 (2006)
FestivalLink.Net presents: Levon Helm Band MerleFest Ramble (MerleFest, NC 4/26/08)
Ramble at the Ryman (2011)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Three (2014)
Other
The Legend of Jesse James (1980)
Souvenir, Vol. 1 (1998)
The Imus Ranch Record (2008)
The Imus Ranch Record II (2010)
The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams (2011)
With Muddy Waters
The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album (Chess, 1975)
Filmography
References
External links
[ Allmusic]
1940 births
2012 deaths
ABC Records artists
American autobiographers
American country singer-songwriters
American country rock musicians
American folk rock musicians
American male singer-songwriters
American mandolinists
American multi-instrumentalists
American rock drummers
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Grammy Award winners
Male actors from Arkansas
People from Phillips County, Arkansas
Singer-songwriters from Arkansas
The Band members
Vanguard Records artists
20th-century Canadian male musicians
Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band members | true | [
"Weather helm is the tendency of sailing vessels to turn towards the source of wind, creating an unbalanced helm that requires pulling the tiller to windward (i.e. 'to weather') in order to counteract the effect.\n\nWeather helm is the opposite of lee helm. It is generally less troublesome than lee helm.\n\nOverview\nWeather helm is the result of a leeward and aft shift of a vessel's vector center of effort (the direction to which the force generated by the sails is pushing). This shift is caused by excess pressure on the mainsail, which overpowers the windward lateral resistance generated by the jib (or other head sail) and keel or centerboard. This results in an imbalance of force at the stern from windward, and the craft pivots about the center of drag (often near the center of the keel or centerboard), causing the bow to drive windward. Weather helm does not only result from an overpowered main; when a vessel is heeling to leeward, the aft component of keel drag is moved to windward. This creates a force (a turning moment) that pushes the bow to weather. As both an overpowered main and heavy heel occur in the same circumstances, it is sometimes difficult to determine the source of weather helm.\n\nWhile weather helm occurs on any size of vessel, the physical movement of the craft is often more severe for vessels without a keel. This is a result of the smaller blade being very quickly overpowered by the relatively larger mainsail. In keelboats, despite the fact that weather helm is not as readily felt, it can be just as detrimental, as the lateral drag against the blade still exists, along with the need to pull the rudder to an undesirable position (see Mitigation).\n\nA slight amount of weather helm is thought by some sailors to be a desirable situation, both from the standpoint of the \"feel\" of the helm, and the tendency of the boat to head slightly to windward in stronger gusts, to some extent self-feathering the sails. Other sailors disagree and prefer a neutral helm. Weather helm also provides a form of dead man's switch—the boat stops safely in irons if the helm is released for a length of time.\n\nMitigation \nAny action that reduces the angle of heel of a boat that is reaching or beating to windward will help reduce weather helm. Racing sailors use their body weight to bring the boat to a more upright position. Reducing or reefing the total sail area will have the same effect and, counter-intuitively, many boats will sail faster with less sail in a stiff breeze once heel and weather helm have been reduced, due to the reduction in underwater drag (see Over-canvassed sailing). Easing the sheets on aft-most sails, such as the mainsail in a sloop or cutter can have an immediate effect, especially to help with maneuvering. Moving or increasing sail area forward can also help, for example by raising the jib (and maybe lowering the staysail) on a cutter.\n\nSailing off the wind, weather helm may be caused by the imbalance due to fore-and-aft sails all being sheeted out on the same (leeward) side of the boat. Raising a spinnaker or poling out a headsail to windward with a whisker pole can help. Yachts making ocean trade wind crossings have rigged 'twins' - double headsails poled out to opposite sides from the same forestay for extended downwind passages without a mainsail. Square rigged sails also provide relatively symmetric drive off the wind.\n\nAs weather helm requires pulling the rudder through the water at an angle to the intended course, it produces drag and impedes the boat's progress through the water. In the book \"Sailing Illustrated\", Patrick M. Royce defines weather helm as simply a \"heeling sailboat wanting to come head to wind.\" The principle is the same whether the vessel is steered by tiller or wheel; turning the wheel leeward gives the same rudder effect as pulling a tiller windward.\n\nDiscussion \nThe fundamental cause of \"helm\", be it weather or lee, is the differential between the center of effort of the sail plan to the center of lateral resistance of the hull. If the center of pressure is astern of the center of lateral resistance, a weather helm, the tendency of the vessel to want to turn into the wind, or to weather-vane, will result.\n\nIf the situation is reversed, with the center of pressure forward of the center of resistance of the hull, a \"lee\" helm will result, which is generally considered undesirable, if not dangerous. Too much of either helm is not good, since it forces the helmsman to hold the rudder deflected to counter it, thus inducing extra drag beyond what a vessel with neutral or minimal helm would experience.\n\nSee Sailing Theory and Practice by C.A. Marchaj for a mathematical analysis of the dynamics of weather helm.\n\nReferences \n\nSailing manoeuvres",
"John LaRue Helm (July 4, 1802 – September 8, 1867) was the 18th and 24th governor of the U.S. Commonwealth of Kentucky, although his service in that office totaled less than fourteen months. He also represented Hardin County in both houses of the Kentucky General Assembly and was chosen to be the Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives four times. In 1838, his sole bid for federal office ended in defeat when his opponent, Willis Green, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.\n\nHelm was first elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1826; between 1826 and 1843 he served eleven one-year terms in the state house. In 1844, he was elected to the state senate, where he served continuously until he was chosen as the Whig Party nominee for lieutenant governor on a ticket with John J. Crittenden, famous for the Crittenden Compromise. The Whigs won the general election and Helm was elevated to governor on July 31, 1850, when Crittenden resigned to accept an appointment as United States Attorney General in President Millard Fillmore's cabinet. After his service as governor Helm became president of the struggling Louisville and Nashville Railroad. He invested thousands of dollars of his own money in the project and convinced residents along the line's main route to buy stock in the company. In 1859, the line was completed, but the next year Helm resigned over of differences with the board of directors regarding a proposed branch that would extend the line to Memphis, Tennessee.\n\nAlthough he openly opposed secession during the American Civil War, federal military forces labeled Helm a Confederate sympathizer. In September 1862, he was arrested for this alleged sympathy, but Governor James F. Robinson recognized him as he was being transported to a prison in Louisville and had him released. After the war Helm identified with the Democratic Party, and in 1865, Hardin County voters returned him to the state senate. In 1867, he was the state's Democratic candidate for governor. Despite his failing health, Helm made a vigorous canvass of the state and won the general election. He was too weak to travel to Frankfort for his inauguration, so state officials administered the oath of office at his home on September 3, 1867. He died five days later.\n\nEarly life\nIn 1780, Helm's grandfather, Thomas Helm, emigrated to Kentucky from Prince William County, Virginia and founded the settlement of Helm Station near Elizabethtown, Kentucky in Hardin County, where John L. Helm was born on July 4, 1802. He was the eldest of nine children born to George B. Helm, a farmer and politician, and Rebecca LaRue Helm, a descendant of a prominent local pioneer family.\n\nHelm attended the area's public schools and studied with noted educator Duff Green. When Helm was 14 his father fell on hard financial times and Helm returned to work on the family farm. In 1818, he took a better-paying job in the office of Samuel Haycraft, the circuit court clerk of Hardin County. While there he read law with Haycraft, then entered the law office of Ben Tobin in 1821.\n\nAt about this time, Helm's father traveled to Texas to enter into business and rebuild his finances, but he died there in 1822, leaving Helm responsible for his mother and siblings. He was admitted to the bar in 1823, the same year Meade County, Kentucky was formed. There were no lawyers in the county yet, so although Helm continued living in Hardin County he was made Meade's county attorney. His practice grew rapidly and he was soon able to pay off his father's debts and purchase the Helm homestead. Between 1832 and 1840, he built \"Helm Place\" on this land and it remained his home for the rest of his life.\n\nIn 1823, Helm called on Representative Benjamin Hardin. While Hardin and Helm discussed business, Hardin's 14-year-old daughter, Lucinda, entered the room to show her father a map she had drawn. Helm later claimed it was love at first sight, and began to pursue Lucinda's affections. They courted for seven years, married in 1830 and had six daughters and five sons together. One of his sons, Benjamin Hardin Helm, was a Confederate general in the Civil War and was killed at the Battle of Chickamauga.\n\nPolitical career\n\nThe major political issue in Kentucky during Helm's legal training was the Old Court-New Court controversy. Reeling from the panic of 1819, Kentuckians had demanded debt relief. In response, the Kentucky General Assembly passed an act that granted debtors a grace period of two years in repaying their debts unless their creditors would accept payment in the devalued notes of the Bank of the Commonwealth. The Kentucky Court of Appeals struck down the law, claiming it was in violation of the Contract Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The angered legislature attempted to impeach the justices on the Court of Appeals, but lacked the necessary two-thirds majority. Instead, they abolished the Court of Appeals and replaced it with a new court, which was stocked with more sympathetic justices by pro-relief governor John Adair. Both courts claimed to be Kentucky's court of last resort.\n\nThroughout 1825, Helm made speeches and distributed pamphlets in Hardin and surrounding counties, espousing the Old Court position. In 1826, he campaigned as a Whig for a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives. Helm won the election, and at the age of twenty-four became one of the youngest members to serve in the Kentucky General Assembly. An Old Court majority was elected to both houses of the General Assembly in 1826, which then passed legislation abolishing the New Court.\n\nHelm was re-elected to the state House in 1827 and 1830, and was re-elected every year from 1833 to 1837. He served as Speaker of the House in 1835 and 1836. In 1837, there was a three-way race for speaker between Helm, James Turner Morehead and Robert P. Letcher. After nine ballots, Helm withdrew and Letcher was elected speaker.\n\nHelm made his only run for federal office in 1838 and was defeated by Willis Green for a seat in the United States House of Representatives. He returned to the Kentucky House in 1839 and was re-elected in 1842 and 1843, serving as Speaker of the House both years. In 1843, the Kentucky General Assembly proposed to create a new county from part of Hardin County and name it Helm County in honor of John L. Helm. Because of the few dissenting votes on this question, Helm declined the honor and proposed instead that the county be called LaRue County after his mother's family, many of whom still lived in the proposed county. Helm's suggestion was unanimously adopted.\n\nLieutenant governor and governor\n\nIn 1844, Helm was elected to the Kentucky Senate, where he served until 1848. That year he was the Whig candidate for lieutenant governor on a ticket with John J. Crittenden. Helm defeated Democrat John Preston Martin in the general election. The major political question in the state during Helm's time as lieutenant governor was whether to adopt a new state constitution. As a state senator in 1848, Helm had voted to allow the state's citizens to decide the matter in a referendum, but after seeing the document produced by the constitutional convention, he opposed its ratification. In an address to the state senate in 1850, he declared, \"I was for reform, and not for revolution. I was for amending the Constitution, and not for obliterating every vital principle in contained.\" He especially opposed creating an elective judiciary. His antagonism to the constitution put him at odds with his father-in-law, Benjamin Hardin. The two did not reconcile until 1852, as Hardin lay on his deathbed. The new constitution was adopted in 1850 and in June of that year Helm encouraged the people to accept it.\n\nGovernor Crittenden resigned on July 31, 1850 to accept President Millard Fillmore's appointment as attorney general, and Helm ascended to the governorship. As governor, Helm vetoed a legislative plan to cover deficits in the public school fund by drawing money from the state's sinking fund, but the General Assembly overrode the veto. He urged the legislature to fund a survey of the state's mineral reserves and a census of the state's agricultural and manufacturing resources. He called for spending on internal improvements and for raising judges' salaries to attract more qualified jurists to the bench. He also sought a ban on the carrying of concealed deadly weapons. The legislature did not act on any of these proposed reforms. The only part of Helm's agenda that did progress through the General Assembly was election reform.\n\nPresident of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad\n\nHelm was a presidential elector for Winfield Scott in the 1852 presidential election. After this he took twelve years off from politics. As early as 1836, Helm had advocated the construction of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. On October 2, 1854, he became the railroad's second president. The previous president had been forced out of that position after a disagreement with Louisville's board of aldermen, and construction of the line had almost been abandoned.\n\nHelm worked diligently to convince residents along the line's main route of the economic benefits it would bring. He persuaded many of them to help clear and grade land for the line and accept company stock as payment, and succeeded in selling stock subscriptions to people in the same area. Rising labor costs and troubles transporting materials raised expenses far above the projected budget, and at one point Helm personally redeemed $20,000 ($ as of ) of the company's bonds. Meanwhile, some observers accused Helm of mismanaging the company. The company's fortunes improved in 1857 when the city of Louisville provided $300,000 ($ as of ) in financial aid and the line was completed on October 18, 1859. Due to Helm's influence, the railroad's charter required all trains traveling through Elizabethtown to stop there.\n\nBy the time the line was finished, there were public calls from inside and outside the company for Helm to resign, mostly because of his support for a proposed Memphis branch of the railroad. To complete the branch, the Louisville and Nashville would have to complete a line from Bowling Green to Guthrie, Kentucky. There it would join a line owned by the Memphis and Ohio Railroad that began across the state line at Clarksville, Tennessee and extended to Memphis. Supporters believed the branch would economically help both Louisville and Memphis and would lessen their dependence on trade along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Opponents argued that the project was simply a ploy to whip up new support for the struggling railroad. Helm endorsed the Memphis branch in his annual report in 1857.\n\nOn February 4, 1860, two members of the company's board of directors wrote a letter requesting Helm's resignation; they claimed they had voted for his re-election as president of the company with the understanding that he would resign when the main line between Louisville and Nashville was finished. Helm maintained that he felt an obligation to the citizens of Logan County – many of whom he had personally sold stock to – to remain president until the Memphis branch through their county was built. The rift between Helm and the directors continued to widen, however. Helm resigned on February 21, 1860, and was replaced by James Guthrie. The Memphis branch was completed on September 24, 1860.\n\nCivil War and second term as governor\n\nOn January 8, 1861 Helm chaired a meeting in Louisville that advocated for Kentucky's neutrality in the Civil War. Helm was an outspoken opponent of secession, but also denounced the election of Abraham Lincoln and his use of military force to subdue the southern states. Because Helm did not condemn his son, Benjamin, for joining the Confederate Army, federal authorities classified him as a southern sympathizer.\n\nAfter learning of the arrest of former governor Charles S. Morehead by federal authorities, Helm fled to Bowling Green, fearing his own arrest. Through the intervention of Warner Underwood he was able to return home on the condition that he swear an oath of allegiance to the Constitution. Nevertheless, federal soldiers repeatedly entered his home, encouraging his slaves to abandon him, and consuming or destroying his crops. Because the state's courts were closed on account of the war, he was unable to earn a living by practicing law. In short order, his once-substantial fortune was expended, and he resorted to borrowing money to support his family.\n\nIn September 1862, Helm and several other citizens from Hardin County were arrested by Colonel Knox. After several days of confinement in Elizabethtown the prisoners were conducted to Louisville. By chance, Kentucky governor James F. Robinson recognized Helm in the group and negotiated with General Jeremiah Boyle to get him released. Shortly after returning home, Helm learned of Benjamin's death at the Battle of Chickamauga.\n\nAfter the war Helm identified with the Democratic Party, and he returned to the state senate in 1865. During his tenure he chaired the Committee on Federal Relations and fought against punitive and restrictive laws against ex-Confederates. On January 22, 1866, he presented to the state senate a protest against the actions of the United States Congress during the Civil War. It denounced the Reconstruction Amendments on the grounds that they granted powers to the federal government that were reserved for the states, and that they were passed while many southern states were not represented in Congress. He also decried the creation and operation of the Freedmen's Bureau. On January 29, 1867, Helm introduced legislation to organize a meeting in Louisville to rally support for President Andrew Johnson and his efforts to restore the Union.\n\nThe state Democratic Convention met on February 22, 1867, in Frankfort and chose Helm and John W. Stevenson as the party's candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, respectively. Helm resigned his seat in the state senate to accept the nomination. Though his health was frail, he determined to canvass the entire state. He continued his call for an end to Civil War bitterness and proscriptions against those who had sided with the Confederacy. He won the general election over Republican Sidney Barnes and a third party candidate, Judge William B. Kinkead.\n\nThe strenuous campaign took a decisive toll on Helm's already weakened body. He was too weak to travel to Frankfort for his inauguration, so the oath of office was administered at his home on September 3, 1867. Helm's secretary of state read the governor's inaugural address at the Hardin County Courthouse. In it, Helm repeated his intent to remove political disabilities from ex-Confederates. He also charged that Congress was meddling in the affairs of the states. Though he promised protections for blacks, he opposed the idea of black suffrage.\n\nHelm died on September 8, 1867, just five days after his inauguration. He was buried in a family graveyard at Helm Place. Helm Place was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 9, 1976.\n\nReferences\n\nBibliography\n\nFurther reading\n\nExternal links\n\n \n\n \t\n\n \t\n\n1802 births\n1867 deaths\nGovernors of Kentucky\nKentucky Democrats\nKentucky lawyers\nKentucky state senators\nKentucky Whigs\nLieutenant Governors of Kentucky\nLouisville and Nashville Railroad people\n19th-century American railroad executives\nPeople of Kentucky in the American Civil War\nPeople from Hardin County, Kentucky\nPoliticians from Louisville, Kentucky\nSpeakers of the Kentucky House of Representatives\nWhig Party state governors of the United States\n19th-century American politicians\nDemocratic Party state governors of the United States\nLaRue family\nAmerican lawyers admitted to the practice of law by reading law\n19th-century American lawyers"
] |
[
"Levon Helm",
"Early years",
"when was Helm born?",
"Arkansas in the 1940s",
"who was Helm born to?",
"His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm,",
"Did Helm have any siblings?",
"They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age."
] | C_b226146f1fad4c4bb2c3d33ef7d2fdad_1 | Where did Helm go to school? | 4 | Where did Levon Helm go to school? | Levon Helm | Born in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers and great lovers of music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. Young Lavon (as he was christened) began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums during his formative years. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided then to become a musician. Arkansas in the 1940s and 50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles--blues, country and R&B--that, when merged, later became known as rock and roll. Helm was influenced by all these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee. He also saw traveling shows such as F.S. Walcott's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels that featured top African-American artists of the time. Another early influence on Helm was the work of the harmonica player, guitarist and singer Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school. Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by southern country music, blues and rockabilly artists such as Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena. CANNOTANSWER | Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school. | Mark Lavon "Levon" Helm (May 26, 1940 – April 19, 2012) was an American musician and actor who achieved fame as the drummer and one of the three lead vocalists for The Band. Helm was known for his deeply soulful, country-accented voice, multi-instrumental ability, and creative drumming style, highlighted on many of the Band's recordings, such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek", and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".
Helm also had a successful career as a film actor, appearing as Loretta Lynn's father in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), as Chuck Yeager's friend and colleague Captain Jack Ridley in The Right Stuff (1983), as a Tennessee firearms expert in Shooter (2007), and as General John Bell Hood in In the Electric Mist (2009).
In 1998, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer which caused him to lose his singing voice. After treatment, his cancer eventually went into remission, and he gradually regained the use of his voice. His 2007 comeback album Dirt Farmer earned the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in February 2008, and in November of that year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 91 in its list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time,. In 2010, Electric Dirt, his 2009 follow-up to Dirt Farmer, won the first Grammy Award for Best Americana Album, a category inaugurated in 2010. In 2011, his live album Ramble at the Ryman won the Grammy in the same category. In 2016, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 22 in its list of 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time.
Biography
Early years
Born Mark Lavon Helm in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers who shared a strong affinity for music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided to become a musician. Helm began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums.
Arkansas in the 1940s and '50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles, including traditional Delta blues, electric blues, country (including old-time music) and the incipient genre of rhythm and blues. Helm was influenced by each of these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville. He also saw the last vestiges of minstrelsy and other traveling variety shows, such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, which featured top Black artists of the era.
A key early influence on Helm was Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played electric blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school.
Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by early rock and roll and rockabilly artists, including Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena.
The Hawks
While he was still in high school, Helm was invited to join Ronnie Hawkins's band, the Hawks, a popular bar and club act in the South and Canada where rockabilly acts were very successful. Helm's mother insisted that he graduate from high school before touring with Hawkins, but he was able to play with the Hawks locally on weekends. After his graduation in 1958, Helm joined the Hawks as a full-time member and they moved to Toronto where they signed with Roulette Records in 1959 and released several singles, including a few hits.
Helm reported in his autobiography that fellow Hawks band members had difficulty pronouncing "Lavon" correctly and started calling him "Levon" ( ) because it was easier to pronounce.
In 1961, Helm with bassist Rick Danko backed guitarist Lenny Breau on several tracks recorded at Hallmark Studios in Toronto. These tracks are included on the 2003 release The Hallmark Sessions.
By the early 1960s, Helm and Hawkins had recruited an all-Canadian lineup of musicians: guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel, and organist Garth Hudson, all of whom were multi-instrumentalists. In 1963, the band parted ways with Hawkins and started touring as Levon and the Hawks and later as the Canadian Squires, before changing back to the Hawks. They recorded two singles but remained mostly a popular touring bar band in Texas, Arkansas, Canada, and on the East Coast of the United States where they found regular summer club gigs on the New Jersey shore.
By the mid-1960s, songwriter and musician Bob Dylan was interested in performing electric rock music and asked the Hawks to be his backing band. Disheartened by fans' negative response to Dylan's new sound, Helm left the group in the autumn of 1965 for what turned out to be a two-year layoff, being replaced by a range of touring drummers (most notably Mickey Jones) and Manuel, who began to double on the instrument. Following time with his family in Arkansas and subsequent sojourns in Los Angeles (where he experimented with LSD and performed with Bobby Keys), Memphis and New Orleans (exemplified by work on a nearby oil platform), the eventual result was his return to the group in the autumn of 1967.
After the Hawks toured Europe with Dylan, they followed him back to the U.S. and settled near his home in Woodstock, New York, remaining under salary to Dylan. The Hawks recorded a large number of demos and practice tapes in nearby West Saugerties, New York, playing almost daily with Dylan, who had completely withdrawn from public life following a motorcycle accident in July 1966. These recordings were widely bootlegged and were partially released officially in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. The songs and themes developed during this period played a crucial role in the group's future direction and style. The Hawks also began writing their own songs, with Danko and Manuel also sharing writing credits with Dylan on a few songs.
The Band
Helm returned to the group, then referred to simply as "the band", as it was known around Woodstock. While contemplating a recording contract, Helm had dubbed the band "The Crackers". However, when Robertson and their new manager Albert Grossman worked out the contracts, the group's name was given as "The Band". Under these contracts, the Band was contracted to Grossman, who in turn contracted their services to Capitol Records. This arrangement allowed the Band to release recordings on other labels if the work was done in support of Dylan. Thus the Band was able to play on Dylan's Planet Waves album and to release The Last Waltz, both on other labels. The Band also recorded their own album Music from Big Pink (1968), which catapulted them into stardom. Helm was the Band's only American member.
On Music from Big Pink, Manuel was the most prominent vocalist and Helm sang backup and harmony, with the exception of "The Weight". However, as Manuel's health deteriorated and Robbie Robertson's songwriting increasingly looked to the South for influence and direction, subsequent albums relied more and more on Helm's vocals, alone or in harmony with Danko. Helm was primarily a drummer and vocalist and increasingly sang lead, although, like all his bandmates, he was also a multi-instrumentalist. On occasion Manuel switched to drums while Helm played mandolin, guitar, or bass guitar (while Danko played fiddle) on some songs. Helm played the 12-string guitar backdrop to "Daniel and the Sacred Harp".
Helm remained with the Band until their farewell performance on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, which was the subject of the documentary film The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese. Helm repudiated his involvement with The Last Waltz shortly after the completion of its final scenes. In his autobiography Helm criticized the film and Robertson who produced it.
Solo, acting and the reformed Band
With the breakup of the Band in its original form, Helm began working on a solo-ensemble album, Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars, with Paul Butterfield, Fred Carter, Jr., Emmeretta Marks, Howard Johnson, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Booker T. Jones, and others. Levon Helm and the RCO All-Stars recorded Live at The Palladium NYC, New Year's Eve 1977. The CD album released in March 2006 features over one hour of blues-rock music performed by an ensemble featuring Levon Helm (drums/vocals), Dr. John (keys/vocals), Paul Butterfield (harmonica/vocals), Fred Carter (guitar/vocals), Donald "Duck" Dunn (bass), Cropper (guitar), Lou Marini (saxophones), Howard Johnson (tuba/baritone sax), Tom "Bones" Malone (trombone), and Alan Rubin (trumpet).
This was followed in 1978 by the solo album Levon Helm. More solo albums were released in 1980 and 1982: American Son and (once again) Levon Helm, both produced by Fred Carter, Jr. He also participated in musician Paul Kennerley's 1980 country music concept album, The Legend of Jesse James singing the role of Jesse James alongside Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Charlie Daniels, Albert Lee, and others.
In addition to his work as musician, Helm also acted in several dramatic films. He was cast as Loretta Lynn's father in the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter, followed three years later by a role as U.S. Air Force test pilot and engineer Capt. Jack Ridley, in The Right Stuff. Helm was also the latter film's narrator. 1987's under-appreciated End of the Line featured Levon as a small-town railroad employee alongside Wilford Brimley and Kevin Bacon. He played a Kentucky backwoods preacher in Fire Down Below. He played an eccentric old man in the 2005 film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and appeared as Gen. John Bell Hood in the 2009 film In the Electric Mist. He also had a brief cameo as a weapons expert in the film Shooter with Mark Wahlberg.
In 1983, the Band reunited without Robbie Robertson, at first playing with an expanded lineup that included the entire Cate Brothers Band, but in 1985 paring down and adding Jim Weider on guitar. In 1986, while on tour Manuel committed suicide. Helm, Danko, and Hudson continued in the Band, adding pianist Richard Bell and drummer/vocalist Randy Ciarlante and releasing the album Jericho in 1993 and High on the Hog in 1996. The final album from the Band was the 30th anniversary album, Jubilation released in 1998.
In 1989, Helm and Danko toured with drummer Ringo Starr as part of his All-Starr Band. Other musicians in the band included singer and guitarist Joe Walsh, singer and pianist Dr. John, singer and guitarist Nils Lofgren, singer Billy Preston, saxophonist Clarence Clemons, and drummer Jim Keltner. Garth Hudson was a guest on accordion on some dates. Helm played drums and harmonica and sang "The Weight" and "Up on Cripple Creek" each night.
In the televised 1989 Juno Awards celebration, the Band was inducted into the Juno Awards' Hall of Fame. Helm was not present at the ceremony, but a taped segment of him offering his thanks was broadcast after the acceptance speeches by Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson. Richard Manuel's children accepted the award on behalf of their father. To conclude the televised special, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Robbie Robertson performed "The Weight" with Blue Rodeo.
Helm performed with Danko and Hudson as the Band in 1990 at Roger Waters's epic The Wall – Live in Berlin Concert in Germany to an estimated 300,000 to half a million people.
In 1993, Helm published an autobiography entitled This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band.
The Midnight Ramble
Helm's performance career in the 2000s revolved mainly around the Midnight Ramble at his home and studio, "The Barn," in Woodstock, New York. These concerts, featuring Helm and various musical guests, allowed him to raise money for his medical bills and to resume performing after a bout with cancer that nearly ended his career.
In the late 1990s, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer after suffering hoarseness. Advised to undergo a laryngectomy, he instead underwent an arduous regimen of radiation treatments at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The tumor was then successfully removed, but Helm's vocal cords were damaged, and his clear, powerful tenor voice was replaced by a quiet rasp. Initially Helm only played drums and relied on guest vocalists at the Rambles, but eventually his singing voice grew stronger. On January 10, 2004, he sang again at his Ramble sessions. In 2007, during production of Dirt Farmer, Helm estimated that his singing voice was 80 percent recovered.
The Levon Helm Band featured his daughter Amy Helm, Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, Jim Weider (The Band's last guitarist), Jimmy Vivino, Mike Merritt, Brian Mitchell, Erik Lawrence, Steven Bernstein, Howard Johnson (tuba player in the horn section on the Band's Rock of Ages and The Last Waltz), Jay Collins (Helm's now former son-in-law), Byron Isaacs, and blues harmonica player Little Sammy Davis. Helm hosted Midnight Rambles that were open to the public at his home in Woodstock.
The Midnight Ramble was an outgrowth of an idea Helm explained to Martin Scorsese in The Last Waltz. Earlier in the 20th century, Helm recounted, traveling medicine shows and music shows such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, featuring African-American blues singers and dancers, would put on titillating performances in rural areas. (This was also turned into a song by the Band, "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show," with the name altered so the lyric was easier to sing.)
"After the finale, they'd have the midnight ramble," Helm told Scorsese. With young children off the premises, the show resumed: "The songs would get a little bit juicier. The jokes would get a little funnier and the prettiest dancer would really get down and shake it a few times. A lot of the rock and roll duck walks and moves came from that."
Artists who performed at the Rambles include Helm's former bandmate Garth Hudson, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Dr. John, Mavis Staples, Chris Robinson, Allen Toussaint, Donald Fagen and Jon Herington of Steely Dan, Jimmy Vivino (of the house band on Late Night with Conan O'Brien), the Max Weinberg 7, My Morning Jacket, Billy Bob Thornton, Alexis P. Suter, Sean Costello, the Muddy Waters Tribute Band, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Carolyn Wonderland, Kris Kristofferson, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Justin Townes Earle, Bow Thayer, Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, Rickie Lee Jones, Kate Taylor, Ollabelle, the Holmes Brothers, Catherine Russell, Norah Jones, Arlen Roth, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Phil Lesh (along with his sons Grahame and Brian), Hot Tuna (Jorma Kaukonen introduced the group as "the Secret Squirrels"), Michael Angelo D'Arrigo with various members of the Sistine Chapel, Johnny Johnson, Ithalia, David Bromberg, the Youngers, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.
During this period, Helm switched to the matched grip and adopted a less busy, greatly simplified drumming style, as opposed to the traditional grip he used during his years with the Band.
Helm was busy touring every year during the 2000s, generally traveling by tour bus to venues in eastern Canada and the eastern United States. After 2007, he performed in large venues such the Beacon Theater in New York. Dr. John and Warren Haynes (the Allman Brothers Band, Gov't Mule) and Garth Hudson played at the concerts along with several other guests. At a show in Vancouver Elvis Costello joined to sing "Tears of Rage". The Alexis P. Suter Band was a frequent opening act. Helm was a favorite of radio personality Don Imus and was frequently featured on Imus in the Morning. In the summer of 2009, it was reported that a reality television series centering on the Midnight Ramble was in development.
In 2012, Levon Helm and his "midnight rambles" were featured on the PBS Arts site, "Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders," including a poignant last interview with PBS's Marco Werman.
Dirt Farmer and comeback
The autumn of 2007 saw the release of Dirt Farmer, Helm's first studio solo album since 1982. Dedicated to his parents and co-produced by his daughter Amy, the album combines traditional tunes Levon recalled from his youth with newer songs (by Steve Earle, Paul Kennerley, and others) which flow from similar historical streams. The album was released to almost immediate critical acclaim, and earned him a Grammy Award in the Traditional Folk Album category for 2007. Also in 2007, Helm recorded "Toolin' Around Woodstock", and album with Arlen Roth on which Levon played drums and sang Sweet Little 16 and "Crying Time." This album also featured Levon's daughter Amy, and Roth's daughter Lexie, along with Sonny Landreth and Bill Kirchen.
Helm declined to attend the Grammy Awards ceremony, instead holding a "Midnight Gramble" and celebrating the birth of his grandson, Lavon (Lee) Henry Collins.
In 2008, Helm performed at Warren Haynes's Mountain Jam Music Festival in Hunter, New York playing alongside Haynes on the last day of the three-day festival. Helm also joined guitarist Bob Weir and his band RatDog on stage as they closed out the festival. Helm performed to great acclaim at the 2008 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.
Helm drummed on a couple of tracks for Jorma Kaukonen's February 2009 album River of Time, recorded at the Levon Helm studio.
Helm released the album Electric Dirt on his own label on June 30, 2009. Like Dirt Farmer, an aim of Electric Dirt was to capture of feel of Helm's Midnight Rambles. The album won a best album Grammy for the newly created Americana category in 2010. Helm performed on the CBS television program Late Show with David Letterman on July 9, 2009. He also toured that same year in a supporting role with the band Black Crowes.
A documentary on Helm's day-to-day life, entitled Ain't in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm was released in March 2010. Directed by Jacob Hatley, it made its debut at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas and went on to be screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June 2010. The film had a limited release in select theaters in the United States in the spring of 2013 and was released on DVD and Blu-ray later that year.
On May 11, 2011, Helm released Ramble at the Ryman, a live album recorded during his performance of September 17, 2008 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The album features Helm's band playing six songs by the Band and other cover material, including some songs from previous Helm solo releases. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Americana Album.
Illness and death
In April 2012, during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Cleveland, Robbie Robertson sent "love and prayers" to Helm, fueling speculation about Helm's health. Helm had previously cancelled a number of performances, citing health issues or a slipped disk in his back; his final performances took place in Tarrytown, New York at Tarrytown Music Hall on March 24, and a final Midnight Ramble (with Moonalice as the opening act) in Woodstock on March 31.
On April 17, 2012, Helm's wife Sandy and daughter Amy revealed that he had end-stage throat cancer. They posted the following message on Helm's website:
On April 18, Robertson revealed on his Facebook page that he had a long visit with Helm at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center the previous Sunday. On the same day, Garth Hudson posted on his personal website that he was "too sad for words". He then left a link for a video of himself and the Alexis P. Suter Band performing Bob Dylan's song "Knocking on Heaven's Door". Helm died on April 19, 2012, at 1:30 p.m. (EDT) due to complications from throat cancer at age 71.
Fans were invited to a public wake at Helm's Barn studio complex on April 26. Approximately 2,000 fans came to pay their respects to the rock icon. The following day, after a private funeral service and a procession through the streets of Woodstock, Helm was interred in the Woodstock Cemetery, within sight of the grave of his longtime bandmate and friend Rick Danko. Former President Bill Clinton issued a statement following Helm's passing.
Legacy
George Harrison said that while writing his 1970 song "All Things Must Pass", he imagined Levon Helm singing it.
Elton John's lyricist, Bernie Taupin named the song "Levon" after Helm, although the song is not actually about him. Both John and Taupin cited that they were inspired by Helm; Taupin saying in various interviews that they would "go down to their favourite record stores to buy The Band's records" along with Elton. In 1994, Helm was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Band.
Marc Cohn wrote the song "Listening to Levon" in 2007.
"The Man behind the Drums," written by Robert Earl Keen and Bill Whitbeck, appeared on Keen's 2009 album The Rose Hotel.
Tracy K. Smith's 2011 poem "Alternate Take", included in her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection Life on Mars, is dedicated to Helm. On the day of Helm's death, April 19, 2012, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, in a concert at the First Bank Center in Broomfield, Colorado, paid tribute to Levon by performing their song "The Best of Everything" and dedicating it to him.
At a concert on May 2, 2012, at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Helm. Springsteen called Helm "one of the greatest, greatest voices in country, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll ... staggering ... while playing the drums. Both his voice and his drumming were so incredibly personal. He had a feel on the drums that comes out of certain place in the past and you can't replicate it." Springsteen also said it was one of the songs that he had played with drummer Max Weinberg in Weinberg's audition with the band.
On June 2, 2012, at Mountain Jam, Gov't Mule along with the Levon Helm Band (with Lukas Nelson coming on stage for the closing song) played a tribute set, including "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Up on Cripple Creek,""It Makes No Difference," and closing with "The Weight".
A tribute concert called Love for Levon took place at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey on October 3, 2012. The concert featured many special guests who had collaborated with and were inspired by Helm and the Band, including Roger Waters, Garth Hudson, Joe Walsh, Gregg Allman, Bruce Hornsby, Jorma Kaukonen, John Mayer, Mavis Staples, My Morning Jacket, Marc Cohn, John Hiatt, Allen Toussaint, Jakob Dylan, Mike Gordon, and others. Proceeds from the concert were to "help support the lasting legacy of Levon Helm by helping his estate keep ownership of his home, barn and studio, and to continue the Midnight Ramble Sessions".
At the 2013 Grammy Awards, the Zac Brown Band, Mumford & Sons, Elton John, Mavis Staples, T-Bone Burnett, and Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Levon and other recently deceased musicians. They also dedicated the song to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. In May 2013, the New York State Legislature approved a resolution to name State Route 375—the road which connects State Route 28 with the town of Woodstock—"Levon Helm Memorial Boulevard". Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill on June 20, 2013. In July 2017, U.S. 49 from Marvell, Arkansas to Helena–West Helena was named The Levon Helm Memorial Highway by Act 810 of the Arkansas State Legislature. The Levon Helm Legacy Project is raising money to commission a bronze bust of Helm and to restore his boyhood home. The house, originally located in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, was moved in 2015 to Marvell, where Helm attended school.
Personal life
Helm met singer-songwriter Libby Titus in April 1969, while the Band was recording its second album. They began a lengthy relationship which produced daughter Amy Helm (born December 3, 1970). Amy formed the band Ollabelle and performed with her father's band at the Midnight Rambles and other concerts.
Helm met Sandra Dodd in 1975 in California, while he was still involved with Titus. Helm and Dodd were married on September 7, 1981. They had no children together.
Discography
Studio
Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars (1977)
Levon Helm (1978)
American Son (1980)
Levon Helm (1982)
Dirt Farmer (2007)
Electric Dirt (2009)
Live
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume One (2006)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Two (2006)
Levon Helm & the RCO All Stars: Live at the Palladium NYC, New Years Eve 1977 (2006)
FestivalLink.Net presents: Levon Helm Band MerleFest Ramble (MerleFest, NC 4/26/08)
Ramble at the Ryman (2011)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Three (2014)
Other
The Legend of Jesse James (1980)
Souvenir, Vol. 1 (1998)
The Imus Ranch Record (2008)
The Imus Ranch Record II (2010)
The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams (2011)
With Muddy Waters
The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album (Chess, 1975)
Filmography
References
External links
[ Allmusic]
1940 births
2012 deaths
ABC Records artists
American autobiographers
American country singer-songwriters
American country rock musicians
American folk rock musicians
American male singer-songwriters
American mandolinists
American multi-instrumentalists
American rock drummers
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Grammy Award winners
Male actors from Arkansas
People from Phillips County, Arkansas
Singer-songwriters from Arkansas
The Band members
Vanguard Records artists
20th-century Canadian male musicians
Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band members | true | [
"The Frighteners (not to be confused with the film of the same title) is a 1989 spy novel by Donald Hamilton, continuing the adventures of his creation, assassin Matt Helm.\n\nHamilton took a break from writing Matt Helm novels after this book; the next volume would not appear until 1992.\n\nPlot summary\nHelm is assigned to impersonate a rich oil baron in order to track down a shipment of weapons before it can be used to overthrow the Mexican government.\n\nMatt Helm starts by taking the place of an oil millionaire -- one of the assignments where Mac is helping another agency by loaning out the services of his agent, Matt Helm. As usual, Mac is not doing this from purely altruistic purposes and gives Matt his usual warning - \"Don't trust anyone\" in the beginning of the novel. Head of the agency borrowing Matt Helm, a man called Somerset, wants Matt to go into Mexico and help trace a shipment of illegal arms, supposedly being smuggled to be supplied to Mexican revolutionaries by the said millionaire Horace Hosmer Cody.\n\nIn the beginning of the novel, Cody is arrested by Somerset's people and Helm takes his place with a make up job that he thinks will fool no one and it doesn't. Almost all of the story takes place in Mexico where Matt once again runs into his old ally Ramon Solana-Ruiz of the Mexican security.\n\nThe novel has much intrigue and is typical of Matt Helm style action. Most of the characters turn out to be different than from what they are portrayed at the beginning of the story and many of them go through transformation, including some of the dead characters. Matt, of course, succeeds in the mission completing all of the objectives, sometimes with help from others.\n\nExternal links\nSynopsis and summary\n\n1989 American novels\nMatt Helm novels\nNovels set in Mexico\nBallantine Books books",
"Frances Helm (October 14, 1923 - December 30, 2006) was an American stage, film, and television actress whose performing career spanned nearly fifty years.\n\nEarly life\nShe was born Mary Frances Helm in Panama City, Florida. Her parents were Thomas William Helm II and Grace Spencer. Her father started as a bookkeeper for the railroad industry then became an accountant for the state of Virginia, moving the family to Richmond when Helm was very young. She had one older brother. Helm graduated from J. A. C. Chandler Junior High School in June 1937. She graduated from John Marshall High School in June 1940.\n\nFrom the age of ten Helm took piano and voice lessons. Later she studied with Mary Barbour Dixon, who would remain her drama teacher and coach all through secondary school and college. Helm attended the Richmond Professional Institute (RPI) from Fall 1940 through Spring 1942, majoring in Speech and Dramatics. Helm was a member of RPI's Theater Associates, which mounted productions at the school using students and the occasional visiting professional actor. Helm and other RPI drama students also did broadcasts of play readings on the school's radio station. While at the school, Helm dropped her first name for stage billing.\n\nDuring her last term at RPI, her brother returned to Richmond after being wounded at Pearl Harbor. A Radioman 2/C in the USN, Thomas W. Helm had kept firing an antiaircraft gun during the attack despite being severely wounded; the Navy credited him with bringing down a Japanese aircraft. Invalided out of the service in April 1942, he was used for recruiting and bond drives, with his sister accompanying him. She was pictured at Red Cross events and dances with her brother and other servicemen. Frances Helm also joined other volunteer actors to perform a parody of an old-fashioned melodrama, Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, at military bases in Virginia and Maryland.\n\nEarly stage career\nAfter graduating from RPI, Helm moved to New York City, where she took additional drama training at Columbia University while modeling in fashion shows for the Powers Agency. She also worked in radio, both as a voice actress and a personality for variety shows. For one radio show called \"Blind Date\", hosted by Arlene Francis, Helm was matched with a G.I. for an evening at the Stork Club.\n\nDuring late 1945 Helm signed up for a theatrical trial by fire, a six-month stint with one of the Clare Tree Major Touring Companies. She performed in The Golden Apple by Lady Gregory, a short play based on an Irish fairy story.\n\nCome September 1946 Helm joined a more traditional touring company with a revival of Life with Father. Cast as \"Mary Skinner\", the primary love interest, Helm had a lot of publicity during the tour of the Eastern United States. The tour traveled by a large private bus with an attached trailer for sets and props, enabling it to play small towns without train service. The tour finished up in Texas during early March 1947.\n\nFrom April thru May 1947 Helm made an independent color film called The Clam-digger's Daughter, which was never distributed to theaters for exhibition. Helm credited the film, shot on location in Cape Charles, Virginia, with restoring her Southern accent.\n Living up North has made me lose my accent twice. I got it back the first time by moving in with six Mississippi girls who lived in New York, and the second time by appearing in a \"made-in-Virginia\" movie.\n\nShe performed in summer stock during 1947 at the Green Mountain Playhouse in Middlebury, Vermont. From June 1948 Helm appeared in summer stock on Long Island in Parlor Story, which had a short run on Broadway the year before. She then starred in Years Ago, a much more successful recent Broadway comedy.\n\nMister Roberts\nBy August 1948 Helm had joined the national touring company for Mister Roberts, while the original was then in its sixth month on Broadway. Helm was the only female in the large cast, which included her then husband Robert Keith Jr, who was still using his birth name for billing at the time. The play starred Richard Carlson, James Rennie, Murray Hamilton, and Robert Burton, with a young Cliff Robertson. \nAfter several weeks in Detroit, the play went to Chicago for a two-week run that turned into twelve months.\n\nWhile playing Chicago, Helm and other cast members of Mister Roberts put on free plays at veteran's homes in the area. The local newspaper printed photos of Helm with different members of the cast nearly every month, emphasizing her as the only woman in the play. At eleven months into the run the Chicago Tribune published a photo of Helm with her husband in their roles as \"Lt. Ann Girard\" and \"Mannion\".\n\nFrom Chicago the touring company for Mister Roberts moved to Pittsburgh's Nixon Theater in September 1949, with John Forsythe taking over the titular role and Jackie Cooper playing \"Ensign Pulver\". As with critics in Detroit and Chicago, the Pittsburgh reviewer praised Helm for her delivery while noting the brevity of her part. The tour then went to one and two week runs at smaller cities, finally finishing up with a three-month booking in Boston that ended in April 1950. Helm was so reliable in playing every show that the tour finally dispensed with having an understudy for her three minutes on stage.\n\nEarly television\nHelm's first television appearance was for a program called Hollywood Screen Test during October 1950. She did an episode of Philco Television Playhouse in May 1951 followed by an episode of Kraft Television Theatre in November. All of these programs were originally broadcast live from New York City, though the latter program was apparently recorded by kinoscope and re-broadcast to the West Coast the following month.\n\nThe following year she guest starred in episodes of Adventures of Ellery Queen and The Web, both thirty minute live broadcasts. The latter was also recorded by kinoscope and re-broadcast in March 1952. Her third program in as many months was for Armstrong Circle Theater, another New York live broadcast. She did another The Web episode in March 1952, her first TV work alongside her then husband.\n\nHer 1952 performing year having been front-loaded with TV work during the first quarter, Helm did four weekly summer stock plays in Bangor, Maine during June, then one more Television Playhouse episode in November.\n\nShe had little performing work in 1953: an uncredited bit part in Never Wave at a WAC, followed by a highly praised week playing \"Stella Kowalski\" in a stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire, another television episode, then four weeks reprising her roles in Detective Story and Mister Roberts.\n\nValiant Lady\nDuring 1954 Helm toured with Joe E. Brown from July through October in The Show-Off. Discovering in December 1954 that she had been secretly divorced by her husband five months earlier, Helm was forced to take whatever performing work she could find. Since she was still maintaining residency in New York, Helm took on a soap opera role, as \"Linda Kendall\" in Valiant Lady. This fifteen minute television program was broadcast live daily from CBS studios in Manhattan. Helm played a woman with mental issues, which years later her mother said was the hardest role to watch her daughter perform.\n\nHelm's exact tenure on the show is difficult to verify. Credited with 246 episodes during calendar year 1955, the only reliable reference date is a newspaper photo from July 17, 1955, showing her, Sue Randall, and Flora Campbell wearing shorts in Central Park while being rehearsed by director Herb Kenwith. It was certainly over by early November 1955, when Helm did a series of plays at the Paper Mill Playhouse for producer Frank Carrington and an episode of Robert Montgomery Presents. Whatever the dates were, it was Helm's longest recurring television role, and a measure of her determination to remain on the East Coast so long as it was professionally possible.\n\nCoastal commuter\n\n1956-1958\n\nBy 1956 the great majority of television work was in Southern California, and Helm would have to commute between the coasts. She made an episode of Matinee Theater in April 1956 that producer Aubrey Schenck saw; he cast her in the film Revolt at Fort Laramie as a result. After two more episodes of Matinee Theater, she returned to New York to take over Bethel Leslie's role of \"Rachel Brown\" in the original Broadway production of Inherit the Wind. Helm joined the production in November 1956 and remained with it until its closing in June 1957.\n\nThe remainder of 1957 saw her doing two minor plays. Career was already an off-Broadway success when Helm joined it for a week in Philadelphia. One Foot in the Door, with June Havoc and David White, had its premiere with a ten-day tryout in Philadelphia followed by one week in Boston. Critics in both cities panned it.\n\nWith the flop of One Foot in the Door, Helm had to return to the West Coast for more television in late spring 1958. She did three episodes of two different series, but returned to New York later that year for two episodes of a new show called New York Confidential. This show was mainly filmed in New York, but one episode Helm did was made in Jacksonville, Florida.\n\n1959-1960\n\nShe spent late spring and summer of 1959 in a center staged road company production of Look Homeward, Angel, playing engagements in Miami, Philadelphia, and San Diego. While on the West Coast, she filmed an episode of The Millionaire.\n\nHelm returned to the East Coast for trial runs of The Deadly Game, an adaption of A Dangerous Game, during January 1960. After the short tryouts, the play moved to Broadway but lasted only 39 performances from February thru March 1960. As with Mister Roberts, Helm was the only woman in the cast, and appeared only briefly on stage in the final scene. She took advantage of this situation to see the opening acts of other plays then performing on Broadway, telling a columnist \"I'm waiting for the book versions so I can see how these plays end\".\n\n1961-1963\n\nFor 1961 Helm did episodes of six television shows, five of them on the West Coast and one in New York. Early 1962 saw her do two episodes of Everglades! on location in her native Florida.\n\nShe then took the female lead in the West Coast premiere of Critic's Choice, which opened mid-May 1962 in Los Angeles. Meant for a short run, the production was a hit, running so long the original leading man Edward Binns had to be replaced by Ted Knight due to prior performing commitments. As a contrast, a columnist mentioned that while performing the play at nights, Helm went to the Warner Brothers Studio to make an episode of 77 Sunset Strip during the day. During its tenth week the production was converted from front staging to center staging; it closed two weeks later.\n\nHelm also took part in filming The Ugly American in 1962, playing secretary to Marlon Brando's ambassador.\n\nLater that year, Helm temporarily took over the role of \"Nancy Pollock\" on The Edge of Night when actress Ann Flood took three months maternity leave.\n\nIn February 1963 Helm reprised her role in Critic's Choice with Hans Conried for a one-week run in Louisville, Kentucky. A month later she married for the second time.\n\nLater career\nAfter the birth of her daughter in late spring 1964, Helm resumed working in October of that year. She temporarily took on the role of \"Susan Dunbar\" on The Secret Storm, replacing Mary Foskett, who had moved to the West Coast. The show, like many soaps, was still made in New York City at the time. Judy Lewis took over the character on January 7, 1965.\n\nHelm would let a couple of years go by between performing engagements for the rest of her career. She did two TV episodes in 1967, an odd little set of playlets in 1969, before resuming a fuller schedule in 1972. That year saw her join a touring company for the summer season, playing a small role in Remember Me, a comedy by Ronald Alexander. She then had a starring role in Welcome Home, playing opposite Pernell Roberts, in an original play by Edmund Hartmann. The production ran three weeks at Chicago's Ivanhoe Theater.\n\nDuring 1976 Helm did an episode of Kojak then she and Danny Aiello starred in a Broadway flop called Wheelbarrow Closers, which lasted for only 7 previews and 8 performances. She had a smaller role in the original production of Manny in 1979, which lasted for about a month on Broadway. She had better luck with Broadway revivals, albeit in understudy positions, for Morning's at Seven in 1980-81 and You Can't Take It With You in 1983–84.\n\nAs her stage career wound down, Helm continued doing screen work, making an episode of an obscure TV series and the film A Little Sex in 1982. She did two more films, a bit part in Shakedown (1988) and larger role in Electric Moon (1992). Her final performing work was for a TV movie, Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story in 1995.\n\nPersonal life\n\nHelm married Robert Alba Keith on January 3, 1948, in Richmond. They were in Mister Roberts for eighteen months, did at least one television episode together, but separated on July 28, 1953. On December 8, 1954, Helm charged Keith with \"introducing another woman as his wife\", without naming her. Newspapers reported in January 1955 that Keith had already obtained a Mexican divorce six months earlier and remarried to dancer Judy Landon. At a settlement hearing, Helm agreed to accept the divorce and receive $250 monthly alimony from Keith. However, a few weeks later the alimony was set aside on a \"quirk\" of California law wherein only the party filing for divorce could claim alimony.\n \nIn April 1963 Helm married Walter C. Wallace, a former assistant Secretary of Labor in the Eisenhower administration. He was the personnel director for a New York paper company. The couple had one child, a daughter Laura Wallace, born in late spring 1964. They remained married until Helm's death in 2006.\n\nAccording to her obituary in Variety, Helm was a long-time member of the The Player's Club and had served on its board of directors.\n\nStage performances\n\nFilmography\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1923 births\n2006 deaths\n20th-century American actresses\nActresses from Florida\nAmerican film actresses\nAmerican stage actresses\nAmerican television actresses"
] |
[
"Levon Helm",
"Early years",
"when was Helm born?",
"Arkansas in the 1940s",
"who was Helm born to?",
"His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm,",
"Did Helm have any siblings?",
"They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age.",
"Where did Helm go to school?",
"Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school."
] | C_b226146f1fad4c4bb2c3d33ef7d2fdad_1 | Was Helm successful with his high school band? | 5 | Was Levon Helm successful with the high school band? | Levon Helm | Born in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers and great lovers of music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. Young Lavon (as he was christened) began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums during his formative years. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided then to become a musician. Arkansas in the 1940s and 50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles--blues, country and R&B--that, when merged, later became known as rock and roll. Helm was influenced by all these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee. He also saw traveling shows such as F.S. Walcott's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels that featured top African-American artists of the time. Another early influence on Helm was the work of the harmonica player, guitarist and singer Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school. Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by southern country music, blues and rockabilly artists such as Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Mark Lavon "Levon" Helm (May 26, 1940 – April 19, 2012) was an American musician and actor who achieved fame as the drummer and one of the three lead vocalists for The Band. Helm was known for his deeply soulful, country-accented voice, multi-instrumental ability, and creative drumming style, highlighted on many of the Band's recordings, such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek", and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".
Helm also had a successful career as a film actor, appearing as Loretta Lynn's father in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), as Chuck Yeager's friend and colleague Captain Jack Ridley in The Right Stuff (1983), as a Tennessee firearms expert in Shooter (2007), and as General John Bell Hood in In the Electric Mist (2009).
In 1998, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer which caused him to lose his singing voice. After treatment, his cancer eventually went into remission, and he gradually regained the use of his voice. His 2007 comeback album Dirt Farmer earned the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in February 2008, and in November of that year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 91 in its list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time,. In 2010, Electric Dirt, his 2009 follow-up to Dirt Farmer, won the first Grammy Award for Best Americana Album, a category inaugurated in 2010. In 2011, his live album Ramble at the Ryman won the Grammy in the same category. In 2016, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 22 in its list of 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time.
Biography
Early years
Born Mark Lavon Helm in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers who shared a strong affinity for music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided to become a musician. Helm began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums.
Arkansas in the 1940s and '50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles, including traditional Delta blues, electric blues, country (including old-time music) and the incipient genre of rhythm and blues. Helm was influenced by each of these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville. He also saw the last vestiges of minstrelsy and other traveling variety shows, such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, which featured top Black artists of the era.
A key early influence on Helm was Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played electric blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school.
Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by early rock and roll and rockabilly artists, including Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena.
The Hawks
While he was still in high school, Helm was invited to join Ronnie Hawkins's band, the Hawks, a popular bar and club act in the South and Canada where rockabilly acts were very successful. Helm's mother insisted that he graduate from high school before touring with Hawkins, but he was able to play with the Hawks locally on weekends. After his graduation in 1958, Helm joined the Hawks as a full-time member and they moved to Toronto where they signed with Roulette Records in 1959 and released several singles, including a few hits.
Helm reported in his autobiography that fellow Hawks band members had difficulty pronouncing "Lavon" correctly and started calling him "Levon" ( ) because it was easier to pronounce.
In 1961, Helm with bassist Rick Danko backed guitarist Lenny Breau on several tracks recorded at Hallmark Studios in Toronto. These tracks are included on the 2003 release The Hallmark Sessions.
By the early 1960s, Helm and Hawkins had recruited an all-Canadian lineup of musicians: guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel, and organist Garth Hudson, all of whom were multi-instrumentalists. In 1963, the band parted ways with Hawkins and started touring as Levon and the Hawks and later as the Canadian Squires, before changing back to the Hawks. They recorded two singles but remained mostly a popular touring bar band in Texas, Arkansas, Canada, and on the East Coast of the United States where they found regular summer club gigs on the New Jersey shore.
By the mid-1960s, songwriter and musician Bob Dylan was interested in performing electric rock music and asked the Hawks to be his backing band. Disheartened by fans' negative response to Dylan's new sound, Helm left the group in the autumn of 1965 for what turned out to be a two-year layoff, being replaced by a range of touring drummers (most notably Mickey Jones) and Manuel, who began to double on the instrument. Following time with his family in Arkansas and subsequent sojourns in Los Angeles (where he experimented with LSD and performed with Bobby Keys), Memphis and New Orleans (exemplified by work on a nearby oil platform), the eventual result was his return to the group in the autumn of 1967.
After the Hawks toured Europe with Dylan, they followed him back to the U.S. and settled near his home in Woodstock, New York, remaining under salary to Dylan. The Hawks recorded a large number of demos and practice tapes in nearby West Saugerties, New York, playing almost daily with Dylan, who had completely withdrawn from public life following a motorcycle accident in July 1966. These recordings were widely bootlegged and were partially released officially in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. The songs and themes developed during this period played a crucial role in the group's future direction and style. The Hawks also began writing their own songs, with Danko and Manuel also sharing writing credits with Dylan on a few songs.
The Band
Helm returned to the group, then referred to simply as "the band", as it was known around Woodstock. While contemplating a recording contract, Helm had dubbed the band "The Crackers". However, when Robertson and their new manager Albert Grossman worked out the contracts, the group's name was given as "The Band". Under these contracts, the Band was contracted to Grossman, who in turn contracted their services to Capitol Records. This arrangement allowed the Band to release recordings on other labels if the work was done in support of Dylan. Thus the Band was able to play on Dylan's Planet Waves album and to release The Last Waltz, both on other labels. The Band also recorded their own album Music from Big Pink (1968), which catapulted them into stardom. Helm was the Band's only American member.
On Music from Big Pink, Manuel was the most prominent vocalist and Helm sang backup and harmony, with the exception of "The Weight". However, as Manuel's health deteriorated and Robbie Robertson's songwriting increasingly looked to the South for influence and direction, subsequent albums relied more and more on Helm's vocals, alone or in harmony with Danko. Helm was primarily a drummer and vocalist and increasingly sang lead, although, like all his bandmates, he was also a multi-instrumentalist. On occasion Manuel switched to drums while Helm played mandolin, guitar, or bass guitar (while Danko played fiddle) on some songs. Helm played the 12-string guitar backdrop to "Daniel and the Sacred Harp".
Helm remained with the Band until their farewell performance on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, which was the subject of the documentary film The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese. Helm repudiated his involvement with The Last Waltz shortly after the completion of its final scenes. In his autobiography Helm criticized the film and Robertson who produced it.
Solo, acting and the reformed Band
With the breakup of the Band in its original form, Helm began working on a solo-ensemble album, Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars, with Paul Butterfield, Fred Carter, Jr., Emmeretta Marks, Howard Johnson, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Booker T. Jones, and others. Levon Helm and the RCO All-Stars recorded Live at The Palladium NYC, New Year's Eve 1977. The CD album released in March 2006 features over one hour of blues-rock music performed by an ensemble featuring Levon Helm (drums/vocals), Dr. John (keys/vocals), Paul Butterfield (harmonica/vocals), Fred Carter (guitar/vocals), Donald "Duck" Dunn (bass), Cropper (guitar), Lou Marini (saxophones), Howard Johnson (tuba/baritone sax), Tom "Bones" Malone (trombone), and Alan Rubin (trumpet).
This was followed in 1978 by the solo album Levon Helm. More solo albums were released in 1980 and 1982: American Son and (once again) Levon Helm, both produced by Fred Carter, Jr. He also participated in musician Paul Kennerley's 1980 country music concept album, The Legend of Jesse James singing the role of Jesse James alongside Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Charlie Daniels, Albert Lee, and others.
In addition to his work as musician, Helm also acted in several dramatic films. He was cast as Loretta Lynn's father in the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter, followed three years later by a role as U.S. Air Force test pilot and engineer Capt. Jack Ridley, in The Right Stuff. Helm was also the latter film's narrator. 1987's under-appreciated End of the Line featured Levon as a small-town railroad employee alongside Wilford Brimley and Kevin Bacon. He played a Kentucky backwoods preacher in Fire Down Below. He played an eccentric old man in the 2005 film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and appeared as Gen. John Bell Hood in the 2009 film In the Electric Mist. He also had a brief cameo as a weapons expert in the film Shooter with Mark Wahlberg.
In 1983, the Band reunited without Robbie Robertson, at first playing with an expanded lineup that included the entire Cate Brothers Band, but in 1985 paring down and adding Jim Weider on guitar. In 1986, while on tour Manuel committed suicide. Helm, Danko, and Hudson continued in the Band, adding pianist Richard Bell and drummer/vocalist Randy Ciarlante and releasing the album Jericho in 1993 and High on the Hog in 1996. The final album from the Band was the 30th anniversary album, Jubilation released in 1998.
In 1989, Helm and Danko toured with drummer Ringo Starr as part of his All-Starr Band. Other musicians in the band included singer and guitarist Joe Walsh, singer and pianist Dr. John, singer and guitarist Nils Lofgren, singer Billy Preston, saxophonist Clarence Clemons, and drummer Jim Keltner. Garth Hudson was a guest on accordion on some dates. Helm played drums and harmonica and sang "The Weight" and "Up on Cripple Creek" each night.
In the televised 1989 Juno Awards celebration, the Band was inducted into the Juno Awards' Hall of Fame. Helm was not present at the ceremony, but a taped segment of him offering his thanks was broadcast after the acceptance speeches by Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson. Richard Manuel's children accepted the award on behalf of their father. To conclude the televised special, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Robbie Robertson performed "The Weight" with Blue Rodeo.
Helm performed with Danko and Hudson as the Band in 1990 at Roger Waters's epic The Wall – Live in Berlin Concert in Germany to an estimated 300,000 to half a million people.
In 1993, Helm published an autobiography entitled This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band.
The Midnight Ramble
Helm's performance career in the 2000s revolved mainly around the Midnight Ramble at his home and studio, "The Barn," in Woodstock, New York. These concerts, featuring Helm and various musical guests, allowed him to raise money for his medical bills and to resume performing after a bout with cancer that nearly ended his career.
In the late 1990s, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer after suffering hoarseness. Advised to undergo a laryngectomy, he instead underwent an arduous regimen of radiation treatments at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The tumor was then successfully removed, but Helm's vocal cords were damaged, and his clear, powerful tenor voice was replaced by a quiet rasp. Initially Helm only played drums and relied on guest vocalists at the Rambles, but eventually his singing voice grew stronger. On January 10, 2004, he sang again at his Ramble sessions. In 2007, during production of Dirt Farmer, Helm estimated that his singing voice was 80 percent recovered.
The Levon Helm Band featured his daughter Amy Helm, Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, Jim Weider (The Band's last guitarist), Jimmy Vivino, Mike Merritt, Brian Mitchell, Erik Lawrence, Steven Bernstein, Howard Johnson (tuba player in the horn section on the Band's Rock of Ages and The Last Waltz), Jay Collins (Helm's now former son-in-law), Byron Isaacs, and blues harmonica player Little Sammy Davis. Helm hosted Midnight Rambles that were open to the public at his home in Woodstock.
The Midnight Ramble was an outgrowth of an idea Helm explained to Martin Scorsese in The Last Waltz. Earlier in the 20th century, Helm recounted, traveling medicine shows and music shows such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, featuring African-American blues singers and dancers, would put on titillating performances in rural areas. (This was also turned into a song by the Band, "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show," with the name altered so the lyric was easier to sing.)
"After the finale, they'd have the midnight ramble," Helm told Scorsese. With young children off the premises, the show resumed: "The songs would get a little bit juicier. The jokes would get a little funnier and the prettiest dancer would really get down and shake it a few times. A lot of the rock and roll duck walks and moves came from that."
Artists who performed at the Rambles include Helm's former bandmate Garth Hudson, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Dr. John, Mavis Staples, Chris Robinson, Allen Toussaint, Donald Fagen and Jon Herington of Steely Dan, Jimmy Vivino (of the house band on Late Night with Conan O'Brien), the Max Weinberg 7, My Morning Jacket, Billy Bob Thornton, Alexis P. Suter, Sean Costello, the Muddy Waters Tribute Band, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Carolyn Wonderland, Kris Kristofferson, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Justin Townes Earle, Bow Thayer, Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, Rickie Lee Jones, Kate Taylor, Ollabelle, the Holmes Brothers, Catherine Russell, Norah Jones, Arlen Roth, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Phil Lesh (along with his sons Grahame and Brian), Hot Tuna (Jorma Kaukonen introduced the group as "the Secret Squirrels"), Michael Angelo D'Arrigo with various members of the Sistine Chapel, Johnny Johnson, Ithalia, David Bromberg, the Youngers, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.
During this period, Helm switched to the matched grip and adopted a less busy, greatly simplified drumming style, as opposed to the traditional grip he used during his years with the Band.
Helm was busy touring every year during the 2000s, generally traveling by tour bus to venues in eastern Canada and the eastern United States. After 2007, he performed in large venues such the Beacon Theater in New York. Dr. John and Warren Haynes (the Allman Brothers Band, Gov't Mule) and Garth Hudson played at the concerts along with several other guests. At a show in Vancouver Elvis Costello joined to sing "Tears of Rage". The Alexis P. Suter Band was a frequent opening act. Helm was a favorite of radio personality Don Imus and was frequently featured on Imus in the Morning. In the summer of 2009, it was reported that a reality television series centering on the Midnight Ramble was in development.
In 2012, Levon Helm and his "midnight rambles" were featured on the PBS Arts site, "Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders," including a poignant last interview with PBS's Marco Werman.
Dirt Farmer and comeback
The autumn of 2007 saw the release of Dirt Farmer, Helm's first studio solo album since 1982. Dedicated to his parents and co-produced by his daughter Amy, the album combines traditional tunes Levon recalled from his youth with newer songs (by Steve Earle, Paul Kennerley, and others) which flow from similar historical streams. The album was released to almost immediate critical acclaim, and earned him a Grammy Award in the Traditional Folk Album category for 2007. Also in 2007, Helm recorded "Toolin' Around Woodstock", and album with Arlen Roth on which Levon played drums and sang Sweet Little 16 and "Crying Time." This album also featured Levon's daughter Amy, and Roth's daughter Lexie, along with Sonny Landreth and Bill Kirchen.
Helm declined to attend the Grammy Awards ceremony, instead holding a "Midnight Gramble" and celebrating the birth of his grandson, Lavon (Lee) Henry Collins.
In 2008, Helm performed at Warren Haynes's Mountain Jam Music Festival in Hunter, New York playing alongside Haynes on the last day of the three-day festival. Helm also joined guitarist Bob Weir and his band RatDog on stage as they closed out the festival. Helm performed to great acclaim at the 2008 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.
Helm drummed on a couple of tracks for Jorma Kaukonen's February 2009 album River of Time, recorded at the Levon Helm studio.
Helm released the album Electric Dirt on his own label on June 30, 2009. Like Dirt Farmer, an aim of Electric Dirt was to capture of feel of Helm's Midnight Rambles. The album won a best album Grammy for the newly created Americana category in 2010. Helm performed on the CBS television program Late Show with David Letterman on July 9, 2009. He also toured that same year in a supporting role with the band Black Crowes.
A documentary on Helm's day-to-day life, entitled Ain't in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm was released in March 2010. Directed by Jacob Hatley, it made its debut at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas and went on to be screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June 2010. The film had a limited release in select theaters in the United States in the spring of 2013 and was released on DVD and Blu-ray later that year.
On May 11, 2011, Helm released Ramble at the Ryman, a live album recorded during his performance of September 17, 2008 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The album features Helm's band playing six songs by the Band and other cover material, including some songs from previous Helm solo releases. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Americana Album.
Illness and death
In April 2012, during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Cleveland, Robbie Robertson sent "love and prayers" to Helm, fueling speculation about Helm's health. Helm had previously cancelled a number of performances, citing health issues or a slipped disk in his back; his final performances took place in Tarrytown, New York at Tarrytown Music Hall on March 24, and a final Midnight Ramble (with Moonalice as the opening act) in Woodstock on March 31.
On April 17, 2012, Helm's wife Sandy and daughter Amy revealed that he had end-stage throat cancer. They posted the following message on Helm's website:
On April 18, Robertson revealed on his Facebook page that he had a long visit with Helm at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center the previous Sunday. On the same day, Garth Hudson posted on his personal website that he was "too sad for words". He then left a link for a video of himself and the Alexis P. Suter Band performing Bob Dylan's song "Knocking on Heaven's Door". Helm died on April 19, 2012, at 1:30 p.m. (EDT) due to complications from throat cancer at age 71.
Fans were invited to a public wake at Helm's Barn studio complex on April 26. Approximately 2,000 fans came to pay their respects to the rock icon. The following day, after a private funeral service and a procession through the streets of Woodstock, Helm was interred in the Woodstock Cemetery, within sight of the grave of his longtime bandmate and friend Rick Danko. Former President Bill Clinton issued a statement following Helm's passing.
Legacy
George Harrison said that while writing his 1970 song "All Things Must Pass", he imagined Levon Helm singing it.
Elton John's lyricist, Bernie Taupin named the song "Levon" after Helm, although the song is not actually about him. Both John and Taupin cited that they were inspired by Helm; Taupin saying in various interviews that they would "go down to their favourite record stores to buy The Band's records" along with Elton. In 1994, Helm was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Band.
Marc Cohn wrote the song "Listening to Levon" in 2007.
"The Man behind the Drums," written by Robert Earl Keen and Bill Whitbeck, appeared on Keen's 2009 album The Rose Hotel.
Tracy K. Smith's 2011 poem "Alternate Take", included in her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection Life on Mars, is dedicated to Helm. On the day of Helm's death, April 19, 2012, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, in a concert at the First Bank Center in Broomfield, Colorado, paid tribute to Levon by performing their song "The Best of Everything" and dedicating it to him.
At a concert on May 2, 2012, at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Helm. Springsteen called Helm "one of the greatest, greatest voices in country, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll ... staggering ... while playing the drums. Both his voice and his drumming were so incredibly personal. He had a feel on the drums that comes out of certain place in the past and you can't replicate it." Springsteen also said it was one of the songs that he had played with drummer Max Weinberg in Weinberg's audition with the band.
On June 2, 2012, at Mountain Jam, Gov't Mule along with the Levon Helm Band (with Lukas Nelson coming on stage for the closing song) played a tribute set, including "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Up on Cripple Creek,""It Makes No Difference," and closing with "The Weight".
A tribute concert called Love for Levon took place at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey on October 3, 2012. The concert featured many special guests who had collaborated with and were inspired by Helm and the Band, including Roger Waters, Garth Hudson, Joe Walsh, Gregg Allman, Bruce Hornsby, Jorma Kaukonen, John Mayer, Mavis Staples, My Morning Jacket, Marc Cohn, John Hiatt, Allen Toussaint, Jakob Dylan, Mike Gordon, and others. Proceeds from the concert were to "help support the lasting legacy of Levon Helm by helping his estate keep ownership of his home, barn and studio, and to continue the Midnight Ramble Sessions".
At the 2013 Grammy Awards, the Zac Brown Band, Mumford & Sons, Elton John, Mavis Staples, T-Bone Burnett, and Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Levon and other recently deceased musicians. They also dedicated the song to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. In May 2013, the New York State Legislature approved a resolution to name State Route 375—the road which connects State Route 28 with the town of Woodstock—"Levon Helm Memorial Boulevard". Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill on June 20, 2013. In July 2017, U.S. 49 from Marvell, Arkansas to Helena–West Helena was named The Levon Helm Memorial Highway by Act 810 of the Arkansas State Legislature. The Levon Helm Legacy Project is raising money to commission a bronze bust of Helm and to restore his boyhood home. The house, originally located in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, was moved in 2015 to Marvell, where Helm attended school.
Personal life
Helm met singer-songwriter Libby Titus in April 1969, while the Band was recording its second album. They began a lengthy relationship which produced daughter Amy Helm (born December 3, 1970). Amy formed the band Ollabelle and performed with her father's band at the Midnight Rambles and other concerts.
Helm met Sandra Dodd in 1975 in California, while he was still involved with Titus. Helm and Dodd were married on September 7, 1981. They had no children together.
Discography
Studio
Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars (1977)
Levon Helm (1978)
American Son (1980)
Levon Helm (1982)
Dirt Farmer (2007)
Electric Dirt (2009)
Live
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume One (2006)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Two (2006)
Levon Helm & the RCO All Stars: Live at the Palladium NYC, New Years Eve 1977 (2006)
FestivalLink.Net presents: Levon Helm Band MerleFest Ramble (MerleFest, NC 4/26/08)
Ramble at the Ryman (2011)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Three (2014)
Other
The Legend of Jesse James (1980)
Souvenir, Vol. 1 (1998)
The Imus Ranch Record (2008)
The Imus Ranch Record II (2010)
The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams (2011)
With Muddy Waters
The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album (Chess, 1975)
Filmography
References
External links
[ Allmusic]
1940 births
2012 deaths
ABC Records artists
American autobiographers
American country singer-songwriters
American country rock musicians
American folk rock musicians
American male singer-songwriters
American mandolinists
American multi-instrumentalists
American rock drummers
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Grammy Award winners
Male actors from Arkansas
People from Phillips County, Arkansas
Singer-songwriters from Arkansas
The Band members
Vanguard Records artists
20th-century Canadian male musicians
Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band members | false | [
"Mark Lavon \"Levon\" Helm (May 26, 1940 – April 19, 2012) was an American musician and actor who achieved fame as the drummer and one of the three lead vocalists for The Band. Helm was known for his deeply soulful, country-accented voice, multi-instrumental ability, and creative drumming style, highlighted on many of the Band's recordings, such as \"The Weight\", \"Up on Cripple Creek\", and \"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down\".\n\nHelm also had a successful career as a film actor, appearing as Loretta Lynn's father in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), as Chuck Yeager's friend and colleague Captain Jack Ridley in The Right Stuff (1983), as a Tennessee firearms expert in Shooter (2007), and as General John Bell Hood in In the Electric Mist (2009).\n\nIn 1998, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer which caused him to lose his singing voice. After treatment, his cancer eventually went into remission, and he gradually regained the use of his voice. His 2007 comeback album Dirt Farmer earned the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in February 2008, and in November of that year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 91 in its list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time,. In 2010, Electric Dirt, his 2009 follow-up to Dirt Farmer, won the first Grammy Award for Best Americana Album, a category inaugurated in 2010. In 2011, his live album Ramble at the Ryman won the Grammy in the same category. In 2016, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 22 in its list of 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time.\n\nBiography\n\nEarly years\nBorn Mark Lavon Helm in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers who shared a strong affinity for music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided to become a musician. Helm began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums.\n\nArkansas in the 1940s and '50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles, including traditional Delta blues, electric blues, country (including old-time music) and the incipient genre of rhythm and blues. Helm was influenced by each of these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville. He also saw the last vestiges of minstrelsy and other traveling variety shows, such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, which featured top Black artists of the era.\n\nA key early influence on Helm was Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played electric blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James \"Peck\" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school.\n\nHelm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by early rock and roll and rockabilly artists, including Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena.\n\nThe Hawks\nWhile he was still in high school, Helm was invited to join Ronnie Hawkins's band, the Hawks, a popular bar and club act in the South and Canada where rockabilly acts were very successful. Helm's mother insisted that he graduate from high school before touring with Hawkins, but he was able to play with the Hawks locally on weekends. After his graduation in 1958, Helm joined the Hawks as a full-time member and they moved to Toronto where they signed with Roulette Records in 1959 and released several singles, including a few hits.\n\nHelm reported in his autobiography that fellow Hawks band members had difficulty pronouncing \"Lavon\" correctly and started calling him \"Levon\" ( ) because it was easier to pronounce.\n\nIn 1961, Helm with bassist Rick Danko backed guitarist Lenny Breau on several tracks recorded at Hallmark Studios in Toronto. These tracks are included on the 2003 release The Hallmark Sessions.\n\nBy the early 1960s, Helm and Hawkins had recruited an all-Canadian lineup of musicians: guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel, and organist Garth Hudson, all of whom were multi-instrumentalists. In 1963, the band parted ways with Hawkins and started touring as Levon and the Hawks and later as the Canadian Squires, before changing back to the Hawks. They recorded two singles but remained mostly a popular touring bar band in Texas, Arkansas, Canada, and on the East Coast of the United States where they found regular summer club gigs on the New Jersey shore.\n\nBy the mid-1960s, songwriter and musician Bob Dylan was interested in performing electric rock music and asked the Hawks to be his backing band. Disheartened by fans' negative response to Dylan's new sound, Helm left the group in the autumn of 1965 for what turned out to be a two-year layoff, being replaced by a range of touring drummers (most notably Mickey Jones) and Manuel, who began to double on the instrument. Following time with his family in Arkansas and subsequent sojourns in Los Angeles (where he experimented with LSD and performed with Bobby Keys), Memphis and New Orleans (exemplified by work on a nearby oil platform), the eventual result was his return to the group in the autumn of 1967.\n\nAfter the Hawks toured Europe with Dylan, they followed him back to the U.S. and settled near his home in Woodstock, New York, remaining under salary to Dylan. The Hawks recorded a large number of demos and practice tapes in nearby West Saugerties, New York, playing almost daily with Dylan, who had completely withdrawn from public life following a motorcycle accident in July 1966. These recordings were widely bootlegged and were partially released officially in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. The songs and themes developed during this period played a crucial role in the group's future direction and style. The Hawks also began writing their own songs, with Danko and Manuel also sharing writing credits with Dylan on a few songs.\n\nThe Band\n\nHelm returned to the group, then referred to simply as \"the band\", as it was known around Woodstock. While contemplating a recording contract, Helm had dubbed the band \"The Crackers\". However, when Robertson and their new manager Albert Grossman worked out the contracts, the group's name was given as \"The Band\". Under these contracts, the Band was contracted to Grossman, who in turn contracted their services to Capitol Records. This arrangement allowed the Band to release recordings on other labels if the work was done in support of Dylan. Thus the Band was able to play on Dylan's Planet Waves album and to release The Last Waltz, both on other labels. The Band also recorded their own album Music from Big Pink (1968), which catapulted them into stardom. Helm was the Band's only American member.\n\nOn Music from Big Pink, Manuel was the most prominent vocalist and Helm sang backup and harmony, with the exception of \"The Weight\". However, as Manuel's health deteriorated and Robbie Robertson's songwriting increasingly looked to the South for influence and direction, subsequent albums relied more and more on Helm's vocals, alone or in harmony with Danko. Helm was primarily a drummer and vocalist and increasingly sang lead, although, like all his bandmates, he was also a multi-instrumentalist. On occasion Manuel switched to drums while Helm played mandolin, guitar, or bass guitar (while Danko played fiddle) on some songs. Helm played the 12-string guitar backdrop to \"Daniel and the Sacred Harp\".\n\nHelm remained with the Band until their farewell performance on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, which was the subject of the documentary film The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese. Helm repudiated his involvement with The Last Waltz shortly after the completion of its final scenes. In his autobiography Helm criticized the film and Robertson who produced it.\n\nSolo, acting and the reformed Band\nWith the breakup of the Band in its original form, Helm began working on a solo-ensemble album, Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars, with Paul Butterfield, Fred Carter, Jr., Emmeretta Marks, Howard Johnson, Steve Cropper, Donald \"Duck\" Dunn, Booker T. Jones, and others. Levon Helm and the RCO All-Stars recorded Live at The Palladium NYC, New Year's Eve 1977. The CD album released in March 2006 features over one hour of blues-rock music performed by an ensemble featuring Levon Helm (drums/vocals), Dr. John (keys/vocals), Paul Butterfield (harmonica/vocals), Fred Carter (guitar/vocals), Donald \"Duck\" Dunn (bass), Cropper (guitar), Lou Marini (saxophones), Howard Johnson (tuba/baritone sax), Tom \"Bones\" Malone (trombone), and Alan Rubin (trumpet).\n\nThis was followed in 1978 by the solo album Levon Helm. More solo albums were released in 1980 and 1982: American Son and (once again) Levon Helm, both produced by Fred Carter, Jr. He also participated in musician Paul Kennerley's 1980 country music concept album, The Legend of Jesse James singing the role of Jesse James alongside Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Charlie Daniels, Albert Lee, and others.\n\nIn addition to his work as musician, Helm also acted in several dramatic films. He was cast as Loretta Lynn's father in the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter, followed three years later by a role as U.S. Air Force test pilot and engineer Capt. Jack Ridley, in The Right Stuff. Helm was also the latter film's narrator. 1987's under-appreciated End of the Line featured Levon as a small-town railroad employee alongside Wilford Brimley and Kevin Bacon. He played a Kentucky backwoods preacher in Fire Down Below. He played an eccentric old man in the 2005 film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and appeared as Gen. John Bell Hood in the 2009 film In the Electric Mist. He also had a brief cameo as a weapons expert in the film Shooter with Mark Wahlberg.\n\nIn 1983, the Band reunited without Robbie Robertson, at first playing with an expanded lineup that included the entire Cate Brothers Band, but in 1985 paring down and adding Jim Weider on guitar. In 1986, while on tour Manuel committed suicide. Helm, Danko, and Hudson continued in the Band, adding pianist Richard Bell and drummer/vocalist Randy Ciarlante and releasing the album Jericho in 1993 and High on the Hog in 1996. The final album from the Band was the 30th anniversary album, Jubilation released in 1998.\n\nIn 1989, Helm and Danko toured with drummer Ringo Starr as part of his All-Starr Band. Other musicians in the band included singer and guitarist Joe Walsh, singer and pianist Dr. John, singer and guitarist Nils Lofgren, singer Billy Preston, saxophonist Clarence Clemons, and drummer Jim Keltner. Garth Hudson was a guest on accordion on some dates. Helm played drums and harmonica and sang \"The Weight\" and \"Up on Cripple Creek\" each night.\n\nIn the televised 1989 Juno Awards celebration, the Band was inducted into the Juno Awards' Hall of Fame. Helm was not present at the ceremony, but a taped segment of him offering his thanks was broadcast after the acceptance speeches by Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson. Richard Manuel's children accepted the award on behalf of their father. To conclude the televised special, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Robbie Robertson performed \"The Weight\" with Blue Rodeo.\n\nHelm performed with Danko and Hudson as the Band in 1990 at Roger Waters's epic The Wall – Live in Berlin Concert in Germany to an estimated 300,000 to half a million people.\n\nIn 1993, Helm published an autobiography entitled This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band.\n\nThe Midnight Ramble\nHelm's performance career in the 2000s revolved mainly around the Midnight Ramble at his home and studio, \"The Barn,\" in Woodstock, New York. These concerts, featuring Helm and various musical guests, allowed him to raise money for his medical bills and to resume performing after a bout with cancer that nearly ended his career.\n\nIn the late 1990s, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer after suffering hoarseness. Advised to undergo a laryngectomy, he instead underwent an arduous regimen of radiation treatments at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The tumor was then successfully removed, but Helm's vocal cords were damaged, and his clear, powerful tenor voice was replaced by a quiet rasp. Initially Helm only played drums and relied on guest vocalists at the Rambles, but eventually his singing voice grew stronger. On January 10, 2004, he sang again at his Ramble sessions. In 2007, during production of Dirt Farmer, Helm estimated that his singing voice was 80 percent recovered.\n\nThe Levon Helm Band featured his daughter Amy Helm, Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, Jim Weider (The Band's last guitarist), Jimmy Vivino, Mike Merritt, Brian Mitchell, Erik Lawrence, Steven Bernstein, Howard Johnson (tuba player in the horn section on the Band's Rock of Ages and The Last Waltz), Jay Collins (Helm's now former son-in-law), Byron Isaacs, and blues harmonica player Little Sammy Davis. Helm hosted Midnight Rambles that were open to the public at his home in Woodstock.\n\nThe Midnight Ramble was an outgrowth of an idea Helm explained to Martin Scorsese in The Last Waltz. Earlier in the 20th century, Helm recounted, traveling medicine shows and music shows such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, featuring African-American blues singers and dancers, would put on titillating performances in rural areas. (This was also turned into a song by the Band, \"The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show,\" with the name altered so the lyric was easier to sing.)\n\n\"After the finale, they'd have the midnight ramble,\" Helm told Scorsese. With young children off the premises, the show resumed: \"The songs would get a little bit juicier. The jokes would get a little funnier and the prettiest dancer would really get down and shake it a few times. A lot of the rock and roll duck walks and moves came from that.\"\n\nArtists who performed at the Rambles include Helm's former bandmate Garth Hudson, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Dr. John, Mavis Staples, Chris Robinson, Allen Toussaint, Donald Fagen and Jon Herington of Steely Dan, Jimmy Vivino (of the house band on Late Night with Conan O'Brien), the Max Weinberg 7, My Morning Jacket, Billy Bob Thornton, Alexis P. Suter, Sean Costello, the Muddy Waters Tribute Band, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Carolyn Wonderland, Kris Kristofferson, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Justin Townes Earle, Bow Thayer, Luther \"Guitar Junior\" Johnson, Rickie Lee Jones, Kate Taylor, Ollabelle, the Holmes Brothers, Catherine Russell, Norah Jones, Arlen Roth, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Phil Lesh (along with his sons Grahame and Brian), Hot Tuna (Jorma Kaukonen introduced the group as \"the Secret Squirrels\"), Michael Angelo D'Arrigo with various members of the Sistine Chapel, Johnny Johnson, Ithalia, David Bromberg, the Youngers, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.\n\nDuring this period, Helm switched to the matched grip and adopted a less busy, greatly simplified drumming style, as opposed to the traditional grip he used during his years with the Band.\n\nHelm was busy touring every year during the 2000s, generally traveling by tour bus to venues in eastern Canada and the eastern United States. After 2007, he performed in large venues such the Beacon Theater in New York. Dr. John and Warren Haynes (the Allman Brothers Band, Gov't Mule) and Garth Hudson played at the concerts along with several other guests. At a show in Vancouver Elvis Costello joined to sing \"Tears of Rage\". The Alexis P. Suter Band was a frequent opening act. Helm was a favorite of radio personality Don Imus and was frequently featured on Imus in the Morning. In the summer of 2009, it was reported that a reality television series centering on the Midnight Ramble was in development.\n\nIn 2012, Levon Helm and his \"midnight rambles\" were featured on the PBS Arts site, \"Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders,\" including a poignant last interview with PBS's Marco Werman.\n\nDirt Farmer and comeback\nThe autumn of 2007 saw the release of Dirt Farmer, Helm's first studio solo album since 1982. Dedicated to his parents and co-produced by his daughter Amy, the album combines traditional tunes Levon recalled from his youth with newer songs (by Steve Earle, Paul Kennerley, and others) which flow from similar historical streams. The album was released to almost immediate critical acclaim, and earned him a Grammy Award in the Traditional Folk Album category for 2007. Also in 2007, Helm recorded \"Toolin' Around Woodstock\", and album with Arlen Roth on which Levon played drums and sang Sweet Little 16 and \"Crying Time.\" This album also featured Levon's daughter Amy, and Roth's daughter Lexie, along with Sonny Landreth and Bill Kirchen.\n\nHelm declined to attend the Grammy Awards ceremony, instead holding a \"Midnight Gramble\" and celebrating the birth of his grandson, Lavon (Lee) Henry Collins.\n\nIn 2008, Helm performed at Warren Haynes's Mountain Jam Music Festival in Hunter, New York playing alongside Haynes on the last day of the three-day festival. Helm also joined guitarist Bob Weir and his band RatDog on stage as they closed out the festival. Helm performed to great acclaim at the 2008 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.\n\nHelm drummed on a couple of tracks for Jorma Kaukonen's February 2009 album River of Time, recorded at the Levon Helm studio.\n\nHelm released the album Electric Dirt on his own label on June 30, 2009. Like Dirt Farmer, an aim of Electric Dirt was to capture of feel of Helm's Midnight Rambles. The album won a best album Grammy for the newly created Americana category in 2010. Helm performed on the CBS television program Late Show with David Letterman on July 9, 2009. He also toured that same year in a supporting role with the band Black Crowes.\n\nA documentary on Helm's day-to-day life, entitled Ain't in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm was released in March 2010. Directed by Jacob Hatley, it made its debut at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas and went on to be screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June 2010. The film had a limited release in select theaters in the United States in the spring of 2013 and was released on DVD and Blu-ray later that year.\n\nOn May 11, 2011, Helm released Ramble at the Ryman, a live album recorded during his performance of September 17, 2008 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The album features Helm's band playing six songs by the Band and other cover material, including some songs from previous Helm solo releases. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Americana Album.\n\nIllness and death\n\nIn April 2012, during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Cleveland, Robbie Robertson sent \"love and prayers\" to Helm, fueling speculation about Helm's health. Helm had previously cancelled a number of performances, citing health issues or a slipped disk in his back; his final performances took place in Tarrytown, New York at Tarrytown Music Hall on March 24, and a final Midnight Ramble (with Moonalice as the opening act) in Woodstock on March 31.\n\nOn April 17, 2012, Helm's wife Sandy and daughter Amy revealed that he had end-stage throat cancer. They posted the following message on Helm's website:\n\nOn April 18, Robertson revealed on his Facebook page that he had a long visit with Helm at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center the previous Sunday. On the same day, Garth Hudson posted on his personal website that he was \"too sad for words\". He then left a link for a video of himself and the Alexis P. Suter Band performing Bob Dylan's song \"Knocking on Heaven's Door\". Helm died on April 19, 2012, at 1:30 p.m. (EDT) due to complications from throat cancer at age 71.\n\nFans were invited to a public wake at Helm's Barn studio complex on April 26. Approximately 2,000 fans came to pay their respects to the rock icon. The following day, after a private funeral service and a procession through the streets of Woodstock, Helm was interred in the Woodstock Cemetery, within sight of the grave of his longtime bandmate and friend Rick Danko. Former President Bill Clinton issued a statement following Helm's passing.\n\nLegacy\nGeorge Harrison said that while writing his 1970 song \"All Things Must Pass\", he imagined Levon Helm singing it.\n\nElton John's lyricist, Bernie Taupin named the song \"Levon\" after Helm, although the song is not actually about him. Both John and Taupin cited that they were inspired by Helm; Taupin saying in various interviews that they would \"go down to their favourite record stores to buy The Band's records\" along with Elton. In 1994, Helm was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Band.\n\nMarc Cohn wrote the song \"Listening to Levon\" in 2007.\n\"The Man behind the Drums,\" written by Robert Earl Keen and Bill Whitbeck, appeared on Keen's 2009 album The Rose Hotel.\nTracy K. Smith's 2011 poem \"Alternate Take\", included in her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection Life on Mars, is dedicated to Helm. On the day of Helm's death, April 19, 2012, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, in a concert at the First Bank Center in Broomfield, Colorado, paid tribute to Levon by performing their song \"The Best of Everything\" and dedicating it to him.\n\nAt a concert on May 2, 2012, at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed \"The Weight\" as a tribute to Helm. Springsteen called Helm \"one of the greatest, greatest voices in country, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll ... staggering ... while playing the drums. Both his voice and his drumming were so incredibly personal. He had a feel on the drums that comes out of certain place in the past and you can't replicate it.\" Springsteen also said it was one of the songs that he had played with drummer Max Weinberg in Weinberg's audition with the band.\n\nOn June 2, 2012, at Mountain Jam, Gov't Mule along with the Levon Helm Band (with Lukas Nelson coming on stage for the closing song) played a tribute set, including \"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,\" \"Up on Cripple Creek,\"\"It Makes No Difference,\" and closing with \"The Weight\".\n\nA tribute concert called Love for Levon took place at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey on October 3, 2012. The concert featured many special guests who had collaborated with and were inspired by Helm and the Band, including Roger Waters, Garth Hudson, Joe Walsh, Gregg Allman, Bruce Hornsby, Jorma Kaukonen, John Mayer, Mavis Staples, My Morning Jacket, Marc Cohn, John Hiatt, Allen Toussaint, Jakob Dylan, Mike Gordon, and others. Proceeds from the concert were to \"help support the lasting legacy of Levon Helm by helping his estate keep ownership of his home, barn and studio, and to continue the Midnight Ramble Sessions\".\n\nAt the 2013 Grammy Awards, the Zac Brown Band, Mumford & Sons, Elton John, Mavis Staples, T-Bone Burnett, and Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard performed \"The Weight\" as a tribute to Levon and other recently deceased musicians. They also dedicated the song to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. In May 2013, the New York State Legislature approved a resolution to name State Route 375—the road which connects State Route 28 with the town of Woodstock—\"Levon Helm Memorial Boulevard\". Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill on June 20, 2013. In July 2017, U.S. 49 from Marvell, Arkansas to Helena–West Helena was named The Levon Helm Memorial Highway by Act 810 of the Arkansas State Legislature. The Levon Helm Legacy Project is raising money to commission a bronze bust of Helm and to restore his boyhood home. The house, originally located in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, was moved in 2015 to Marvell, where Helm attended school.\n\nPersonal life\nHelm met singer-songwriter Libby Titus in April 1969, while the Band was recording its second album. They began a lengthy relationship which produced daughter Amy Helm (born December 3, 1970). Amy formed the band Ollabelle and performed with her father's band at the Midnight Rambles and other concerts.\n\nHelm met Sandra Dodd in 1975 in California, while he was still involved with Titus. Helm and Dodd were married on September 7, 1981. They had no children together.\n\nDiscography\n\nStudio\nLevon Helm & the RCO All-Stars (1977)\nLevon Helm (1978)\nAmerican Son (1980)\nLevon Helm (1982)\nDirt Farmer (2007)\nElectric Dirt (2009)\n\nLive\nThe Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume One (2006)\nThe Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Two (2006)\nLevon Helm & the RCO All Stars: Live at the Palladium NYC, New Years Eve 1977 (2006)\nFestivalLink.Net presents: Levon Helm Band MerleFest Ramble (MerleFest, NC 4/26/08)\nRamble at the Ryman (2011)\nThe Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Three (2014)\n\nOther\nThe Legend of Jesse James (1980)\nSouvenir, Vol. 1 (1998)\nThe Imus Ranch Record (2008)\nThe Imus Ranch Record II (2010)\nThe Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams (2011)\n\nWith Muddy Waters\nThe Muddy Waters Woodstock Album (Chess, 1975)\n\nFilmography\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n[ Allmusic]\n\n \n1940 births\n2012 deaths\nABC Records artists\nAmerican autobiographers\nAmerican country singer-songwriters\nAmerican country rock musicians\nAmerican folk rock musicians\nAmerican male singer-songwriters\nAmerican mandolinists\nAmerican multi-instrumentalists\nAmerican rock drummers\nDeaths from cancer in New York (state)\nGrammy Award winners\nMale actors from Arkansas\nPeople from Phillips County, Arkansas\nSinger-songwriters from Arkansas\nThe Band members\nVanguard Records artists\n20th-century Canadian male musicians\nRingo Starr & His All-Starr Band members",
"Ryan Helm (born July 24, 1982) is an American heavy metal musician from Nevada, Missouri. He is best known as the former rhythm guitarist of the band Demon Hunter. He currently resides in Winston-Salem, North Carolina where he also owns and operates Helm's Deep recording studio.\n\nCareer\n\nThe Ascendicate (2008–09)\nRyan Helm began his career playing guitar and singing back up vocals in The Ascendicate (which was originally called The 7 Method) from 1999 to 2012. During this time, he helped write and record their first album, To Die as Kings. Though Helm never officially left the band, it is understood that they are on an \"indefinite hiatus\" and will not likely return to the studio or stage.\n\nDemon Hunter (2009–2011)\nOn December 16, 2009, Helm was announced as Demon Hunter's new permanent rhythm guitarist and official replacement for founding member Don Clark. He appears on the band's 2010 album, The World Is a Thorn. From 2009 to 2011, Helm performed exclusively with Demon hunter until announcing his official departure from the band in December 2011. Helm stated that the departure “was inevitable; however, it was on good terms.”\n\nDamien Deadson (2011–present)\nIn 2010, Helm began working on a side project known as Damien Deadson to take a break from playing guitar and pursue his interest in singing. Since his departure from Demon Hunter, Helm has stated that he will be performing with Damien Deadson full-time as of 2012. Damien Deadson's first album A Warm and Dark Embrace was released in January 2012.\n\nDiscography\n\nThe Ascendicate\n To Die as Kings (2009)\n\nDemon Hunter\n The World Is a Thorn (2010)\n\nDamien Deadson\n A Warm and Dark Embrace (2012)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Demon Hunter Official site\n Ryan Helm on The PRP\n Review of Damien Deadson's A Warm and Dark Embrace\n\n1982 births\nLiving people\nAmerican heavy metal guitarists\nSolid State Records artists\n21st-century American guitarists"
] |
[
"Levon Helm",
"Early years",
"when was Helm born?",
"Arkansas in the 1940s",
"who was Helm born to?",
"His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm,",
"Did Helm have any siblings?",
"They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age.",
"Where did Helm go to school?",
"Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school.",
"Was Helm successful with his high school band?",
"I don't know."
] | C_b226146f1fad4c4bb2c3d33ef7d2fdad_1 | What did Helm do after high school? | 6 | What did Levon Helm do after high school? | Levon Helm | Born in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers and great lovers of music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. Young Lavon (as he was christened) began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums during his formative years. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided then to become a musician. Arkansas in the 1940s and 50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles--blues, country and R&B--that, when merged, later became known as rock and roll. Helm was influenced by all these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee. He also saw traveling shows such as F.S. Walcott's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels that featured top African-American artists of the time. Another early influence on Helm was the work of the harmonica player, guitarist and singer Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school. Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by southern country music, blues and rockabilly artists such as Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena. CANNOTANSWER | Helm was influenced by all these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM | Mark Lavon "Levon" Helm (May 26, 1940 – April 19, 2012) was an American musician and actor who achieved fame as the drummer and one of the three lead vocalists for The Band. Helm was known for his deeply soulful, country-accented voice, multi-instrumental ability, and creative drumming style, highlighted on many of the Band's recordings, such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek", and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".
Helm also had a successful career as a film actor, appearing as Loretta Lynn's father in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), as Chuck Yeager's friend and colleague Captain Jack Ridley in The Right Stuff (1983), as a Tennessee firearms expert in Shooter (2007), and as General John Bell Hood in In the Electric Mist (2009).
In 1998, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer which caused him to lose his singing voice. After treatment, his cancer eventually went into remission, and he gradually regained the use of his voice. His 2007 comeback album Dirt Farmer earned the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in February 2008, and in November of that year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 91 in its list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time,. In 2010, Electric Dirt, his 2009 follow-up to Dirt Farmer, won the first Grammy Award for Best Americana Album, a category inaugurated in 2010. In 2011, his live album Ramble at the Ryman won the Grammy in the same category. In 2016, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 22 in its list of 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time.
Biography
Early years
Born Mark Lavon Helm in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers who shared a strong affinity for music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided to become a musician. Helm began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums.
Arkansas in the 1940s and '50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles, including traditional Delta blues, electric blues, country (including old-time music) and the incipient genre of rhythm and blues. Helm was influenced by each of these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville. He also saw the last vestiges of minstrelsy and other traveling variety shows, such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, which featured top Black artists of the era.
A key early influence on Helm was Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played electric blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school.
Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by early rock and roll and rockabilly artists, including Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena.
The Hawks
While he was still in high school, Helm was invited to join Ronnie Hawkins's band, the Hawks, a popular bar and club act in the South and Canada where rockabilly acts were very successful. Helm's mother insisted that he graduate from high school before touring with Hawkins, but he was able to play with the Hawks locally on weekends. After his graduation in 1958, Helm joined the Hawks as a full-time member and they moved to Toronto where they signed with Roulette Records in 1959 and released several singles, including a few hits.
Helm reported in his autobiography that fellow Hawks band members had difficulty pronouncing "Lavon" correctly and started calling him "Levon" ( ) because it was easier to pronounce.
In 1961, Helm with bassist Rick Danko backed guitarist Lenny Breau on several tracks recorded at Hallmark Studios in Toronto. These tracks are included on the 2003 release The Hallmark Sessions.
By the early 1960s, Helm and Hawkins had recruited an all-Canadian lineup of musicians: guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel, and organist Garth Hudson, all of whom were multi-instrumentalists. In 1963, the band parted ways with Hawkins and started touring as Levon and the Hawks and later as the Canadian Squires, before changing back to the Hawks. They recorded two singles but remained mostly a popular touring bar band in Texas, Arkansas, Canada, and on the East Coast of the United States where they found regular summer club gigs on the New Jersey shore.
By the mid-1960s, songwriter and musician Bob Dylan was interested in performing electric rock music and asked the Hawks to be his backing band. Disheartened by fans' negative response to Dylan's new sound, Helm left the group in the autumn of 1965 for what turned out to be a two-year layoff, being replaced by a range of touring drummers (most notably Mickey Jones) and Manuel, who began to double on the instrument. Following time with his family in Arkansas and subsequent sojourns in Los Angeles (where he experimented with LSD and performed with Bobby Keys), Memphis and New Orleans (exemplified by work on a nearby oil platform), the eventual result was his return to the group in the autumn of 1967.
After the Hawks toured Europe with Dylan, they followed him back to the U.S. and settled near his home in Woodstock, New York, remaining under salary to Dylan. The Hawks recorded a large number of demos and practice tapes in nearby West Saugerties, New York, playing almost daily with Dylan, who had completely withdrawn from public life following a motorcycle accident in July 1966. These recordings were widely bootlegged and were partially released officially in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. The songs and themes developed during this period played a crucial role in the group's future direction and style. The Hawks also began writing their own songs, with Danko and Manuel also sharing writing credits with Dylan on a few songs.
The Band
Helm returned to the group, then referred to simply as "the band", as it was known around Woodstock. While contemplating a recording contract, Helm had dubbed the band "The Crackers". However, when Robertson and their new manager Albert Grossman worked out the contracts, the group's name was given as "The Band". Under these contracts, the Band was contracted to Grossman, who in turn contracted their services to Capitol Records. This arrangement allowed the Band to release recordings on other labels if the work was done in support of Dylan. Thus the Band was able to play on Dylan's Planet Waves album and to release The Last Waltz, both on other labels. The Band also recorded their own album Music from Big Pink (1968), which catapulted them into stardom. Helm was the Band's only American member.
On Music from Big Pink, Manuel was the most prominent vocalist and Helm sang backup and harmony, with the exception of "The Weight". However, as Manuel's health deteriorated and Robbie Robertson's songwriting increasingly looked to the South for influence and direction, subsequent albums relied more and more on Helm's vocals, alone or in harmony with Danko. Helm was primarily a drummer and vocalist and increasingly sang lead, although, like all his bandmates, he was also a multi-instrumentalist. On occasion Manuel switched to drums while Helm played mandolin, guitar, or bass guitar (while Danko played fiddle) on some songs. Helm played the 12-string guitar backdrop to "Daniel and the Sacred Harp".
Helm remained with the Band until their farewell performance on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, which was the subject of the documentary film The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese. Helm repudiated his involvement with The Last Waltz shortly after the completion of its final scenes. In his autobiography Helm criticized the film and Robertson who produced it.
Solo, acting and the reformed Band
With the breakup of the Band in its original form, Helm began working on a solo-ensemble album, Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars, with Paul Butterfield, Fred Carter, Jr., Emmeretta Marks, Howard Johnson, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Booker T. Jones, and others. Levon Helm and the RCO All-Stars recorded Live at The Palladium NYC, New Year's Eve 1977. The CD album released in March 2006 features over one hour of blues-rock music performed by an ensemble featuring Levon Helm (drums/vocals), Dr. John (keys/vocals), Paul Butterfield (harmonica/vocals), Fred Carter (guitar/vocals), Donald "Duck" Dunn (bass), Cropper (guitar), Lou Marini (saxophones), Howard Johnson (tuba/baritone sax), Tom "Bones" Malone (trombone), and Alan Rubin (trumpet).
This was followed in 1978 by the solo album Levon Helm. More solo albums were released in 1980 and 1982: American Son and (once again) Levon Helm, both produced by Fred Carter, Jr. He also participated in musician Paul Kennerley's 1980 country music concept album, The Legend of Jesse James singing the role of Jesse James alongside Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Charlie Daniels, Albert Lee, and others.
In addition to his work as musician, Helm also acted in several dramatic films. He was cast as Loretta Lynn's father in the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter, followed three years later by a role as U.S. Air Force test pilot and engineer Capt. Jack Ridley, in The Right Stuff. Helm was also the latter film's narrator. 1987's under-appreciated End of the Line featured Levon as a small-town railroad employee alongside Wilford Brimley and Kevin Bacon. He played a Kentucky backwoods preacher in Fire Down Below. He played an eccentric old man in the 2005 film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and appeared as Gen. John Bell Hood in the 2009 film In the Electric Mist. He also had a brief cameo as a weapons expert in the film Shooter with Mark Wahlberg.
In 1983, the Band reunited without Robbie Robertson, at first playing with an expanded lineup that included the entire Cate Brothers Band, but in 1985 paring down and adding Jim Weider on guitar. In 1986, while on tour Manuel committed suicide. Helm, Danko, and Hudson continued in the Band, adding pianist Richard Bell and drummer/vocalist Randy Ciarlante and releasing the album Jericho in 1993 and High on the Hog in 1996. The final album from the Band was the 30th anniversary album, Jubilation released in 1998.
In 1989, Helm and Danko toured with drummer Ringo Starr as part of his All-Starr Band. Other musicians in the band included singer and guitarist Joe Walsh, singer and pianist Dr. John, singer and guitarist Nils Lofgren, singer Billy Preston, saxophonist Clarence Clemons, and drummer Jim Keltner. Garth Hudson was a guest on accordion on some dates. Helm played drums and harmonica and sang "The Weight" and "Up on Cripple Creek" each night.
In the televised 1989 Juno Awards celebration, the Band was inducted into the Juno Awards' Hall of Fame. Helm was not present at the ceremony, but a taped segment of him offering his thanks was broadcast after the acceptance speeches by Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson. Richard Manuel's children accepted the award on behalf of their father. To conclude the televised special, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Robbie Robertson performed "The Weight" with Blue Rodeo.
Helm performed with Danko and Hudson as the Band in 1990 at Roger Waters's epic The Wall – Live in Berlin Concert in Germany to an estimated 300,000 to half a million people.
In 1993, Helm published an autobiography entitled This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band.
The Midnight Ramble
Helm's performance career in the 2000s revolved mainly around the Midnight Ramble at his home and studio, "The Barn," in Woodstock, New York. These concerts, featuring Helm and various musical guests, allowed him to raise money for his medical bills and to resume performing after a bout with cancer that nearly ended his career.
In the late 1990s, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer after suffering hoarseness. Advised to undergo a laryngectomy, he instead underwent an arduous regimen of radiation treatments at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The tumor was then successfully removed, but Helm's vocal cords were damaged, and his clear, powerful tenor voice was replaced by a quiet rasp. Initially Helm only played drums and relied on guest vocalists at the Rambles, but eventually his singing voice grew stronger. On January 10, 2004, he sang again at his Ramble sessions. In 2007, during production of Dirt Farmer, Helm estimated that his singing voice was 80 percent recovered.
The Levon Helm Band featured his daughter Amy Helm, Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, Jim Weider (The Band's last guitarist), Jimmy Vivino, Mike Merritt, Brian Mitchell, Erik Lawrence, Steven Bernstein, Howard Johnson (tuba player in the horn section on the Band's Rock of Ages and The Last Waltz), Jay Collins (Helm's now former son-in-law), Byron Isaacs, and blues harmonica player Little Sammy Davis. Helm hosted Midnight Rambles that were open to the public at his home in Woodstock.
The Midnight Ramble was an outgrowth of an idea Helm explained to Martin Scorsese in The Last Waltz. Earlier in the 20th century, Helm recounted, traveling medicine shows and music shows such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, featuring African-American blues singers and dancers, would put on titillating performances in rural areas. (This was also turned into a song by the Band, "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show," with the name altered so the lyric was easier to sing.)
"After the finale, they'd have the midnight ramble," Helm told Scorsese. With young children off the premises, the show resumed: "The songs would get a little bit juicier. The jokes would get a little funnier and the prettiest dancer would really get down and shake it a few times. A lot of the rock and roll duck walks and moves came from that."
Artists who performed at the Rambles include Helm's former bandmate Garth Hudson, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Dr. John, Mavis Staples, Chris Robinson, Allen Toussaint, Donald Fagen and Jon Herington of Steely Dan, Jimmy Vivino (of the house band on Late Night with Conan O'Brien), the Max Weinberg 7, My Morning Jacket, Billy Bob Thornton, Alexis P. Suter, Sean Costello, the Muddy Waters Tribute Band, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Carolyn Wonderland, Kris Kristofferson, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Justin Townes Earle, Bow Thayer, Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, Rickie Lee Jones, Kate Taylor, Ollabelle, the Holmes Brothers, Catherine Russell, Norah Jones, Arlen Roth, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Phil Lesh (along with his sons Grahame and Brian), Hot Tuna (Jorma Kaukonen introduced the group as "the Secret Squirrels"), Michael Angelo D'Arrigo with various members of the Sistine Chapel, Johnny Johnson, Ithalia, David Bromberg, the Youngers, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.
During this period, Helm switched to the matched grip and adopted a less busy, greatly simplified drumming style, as opposed to the traditional grip he used during his years with the Band.
Helm was busy touring every year during the 2000s, generally traveling by tour bus to venues in eastern Canada and the eastern United States. After 2007, he performed in large venues such the Beacon Theater in New York. Dr. John and Warren Haynes (the Allman Brothers Band, Gov't Mule) and Garth Hudson played at the concerts along with several other guests. At a show in Vancouver Elvis Costello joined to sing "Tears of Rage". The Alexis P. Suter Band was a frequent opening act. Helm was a favorite of radio personality Don Imus and was frequently featured on Imus in the Morning. In the summer of 2009, it was reported that a reality television series centering on the Midnight Ramble was in development.
In 2012, Levon Helm and his "midnight rambles" were featured on the PBS Arts site, "Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders," including a poignant last interview with PBS's Marco Werman.
Dirt Farmer and comeback
The autumn of 2007 saw the release of Dirt Farmer, Helm's first studio solo album since 1982. Dedicated to his parents and co-produced by his daughter Amy, the album combines traditional tunes Levon recalled from his youth with newer songs (by Steve Earle, Paul Kennerley, and others) which flow from similar historical streams. The album was released to almost immediate critical acclaim, and earned him a Grammy Award in the Traditional Folk Album category for 2007. Also in 2007, Helm recorded "Toolin' Around Woodstock", and album with Arlen Roth on which Levon played drums and sang Sweet Little 16 and "Crying Time." This album also featured Levon's daughter Amy, and Roth's daughter Lexie, along with Sonny Landreth and Bill Kirchen.
Helm declined to attend the Grammy Awards ceremony, instead holding a "Midnight Gramble" and celebrating the birth of his grandson, Lavon (Lee) Henry Collins.
In 2008, Helm performed at Warren Haynes's Mountain Jam Music Festival in Hunter, New York playing alongside Haynes on the last day of the three-day festival. Helm also joined guitarist Bob Weir and his band RatDog on stage as they closed out the festival. Helm performed to great acclaim at the 2008 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.
Helm drummed on a couple of tracks for Jorma Kaukonen's February 2009 album River of Time, recorded at the Levon Helm studio.
Helm released the album Electric Dirt on his own label on June 30, 2009. Like Dirt Farmer, an aim of Electric Dirt was to capture of feel of Helm's Midnight Rambles. The album won a best album Grammy for the newly created Americana category in 2010. Helm performed on the CBS television program Late Show with David Letterman on July 9, 2009. He also toured that same year in a supporting role with the band Black Crowes.
A documentary on Helm's day-to-day life, entitled Ain't in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm was released in March 2010. Directed by Jacob Hatley, it made its debut at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas and went on to be screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June 2010. The film had a limited release in select theaters in the United States in the spring of 2013 and was released on DVD and Blu-ray later that year.
On May 11, 2011, Helm released Ramble at the Ryman, a live album recorded during his performance of September 17, 2008 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The album features Helm's band playing six songs by the Band and other cover material, including some songs from previous Helm solo releases. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Americana Album.
Illness and death
In April 2012, during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Cleveland, Robbie Robertson sent "love and prayers" to Helm, fueling speculation about Helm's health. Helm had previously cancelled a number of performances, citing health issues or a slipped disk in his back; his final performances took place in Tarrytown, New York at Tarrytown Music Hall on March 24, and a final Midnight Ramble (with Moonalice as the opening act) in Woodstock on March 31.
On April 17, 2012, Helm's wife Sandy and daughter Amy revealed that he had end-stage throat cancer. They posted the following message on Helm's website:
On April 18, Robertson revealed on his Facebook page that he had a long visit with Helm at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center the previous Sunday. On the same day, Garth Hudson posted on his personal website that he was "too sad for words". He then left a link for a video of himself and the Alexis P. Suter Band performing Bob Dylan's song "Knocking on Heaven's Door". Helm died on April 19, 2012, at 1:30 p.m. (EDT) due to complications from throat cancer at age 71.
Fans were invited to a public wake at Helm's Barn studio complex on April 26. Approximately 2,000 fans came to pay their respects to the rock icon. The following day, after a private funeral service and a procession through the streets of Woodstock, Helm was interred in the Woodstock Cemetery, within sight of the grave of his longtime bandmate and friend Rick Danko. Former President Bill Clinton issued a statement following Helm's passing.
Legacy
George Harrison said that while writing his 1970 song "All Things Must Pass", he imagined Levon Helm singing it.
Elton John's lyricist, Bernie Taupin named the song "Levon" after Helm, although the song is not actually about him. Both John and Taupin cited that they were inspired by Helm; Taupin saying in various interviews that they would "go down to their favourite record stores to buy The Band's records" along with Elton. In 1994, Helm was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Band.
Marc Cohn wrote the song "Listening to Levon" in 2007.
"The Man behind the Drums," written by Robert Earl Keen and Bill Whitbeck, appeared on Keen's 2009 album The Rose Hotel.
Tracy K. Smith's 2011 poem "Alternate Take", included in her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection Life on Mars, is dedicated to Helm. On the day of Helm's death, April 19, 2012, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, in a concert at the First Bank Center in Broomfield, Colorado, paid tribute to Levon by performing their song "The Best of Everything" and dedicating it to him.
At a concert on May 2, 2012, at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Helm. Springsteen called Helm "one of the greatest, greatest voices in country, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll ... staggering ... while playing the drums. Both his voice and his drumming were so incredibly personal. He had a feel on the drums that comes out of certain place in the past and you can't replicate it." Springsteen also said it was one of the songs that he had played with drummer Max Weinberg in Weinberg's audition with the band.
On June 2, 2012, at Mountain Jam, Gov't Mule along with the Levon Helm Band (with Lukas Nelson coming on stage for the closing song) played a tribute set, including "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Up on Cripple Creek,""It Makes No Difference," and closing with "The Weight".
A tribute concert called Love for Levon took place at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey on October 3, 2012. The concert featured many special guests who had collaborated with and were inspired by Helm and the Band, including Roger Waters, Garth Hudson, Joe Walsh, Gregg Allman, Bruce Hornsby, Jorma Kaukonen, John Mayer, Mavis Staples, My Morning Jacket, Marc Cohn, John Hiatt, Allen Toussaint, Jakob Dylan, Mike Gordon, and others. Proceeds from the concert were to "help support the lasting legacy of Levon Helm by helping his estate keep ownership of his home, barn and studio, and to continue the Midnight Ramble Sessions".
At the 2013 Grammy Awards, the Zac Brown Band, Mumford & Sons, Elton John, Mavis Staples, T-Bone Burnett, and Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Levon and other recently deceased musicians. They also dedicated the song to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. In May 2013, the New York State Legislature approved a resolution to name State Route 375—the road which connects State Route 28 with the town of Woodstock—"Levon Helm Memorial Boulevard". Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill on June 20, 2013. In July 2017, U.S. 49 from Marvell, Arkansas to Helena–West Helena was named The Levon Helm Memorial Highway by Act 810 of the Arkansas State Legislature. The Levon Helm Legacy Project is raising money to commission a bronze bust of Helm and to restore his boyhood home. The house, originally located in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, was moved in 2015 to Marvell, where Helm attended school.
Personal life
Helm met singer-songwriter Libby Titus in April 1969, while the Band was recording its second album. They began a lengthy relationship which produced daughter Amy Helm (born December 3, 1970). Amy formed the band Ollabelle and performed with her father's band at the Midnight Rambles and other concerts.
Helm met Sandra Dodd in 1975 in California, while he was still involved with Titus. Helm and Dodd were married on September 7, 1981. They had no children together.
Discography
Studio
Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars (1977)
Levon Helm (1978)
American Son (1980)
Levon Helm (1982)
Dirt Farmer (2007)
Electric Dirt (2009)
Live
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume One (2006)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Two (2006)
Levon Helm & the RCO All Stars: Live at the Palladium NYC, New Years Eve 1977 (2006)
FestivalLink.Net presents: Levon Helm Band MerleFest Ramble (MerleFest, NC 4/26/08)
Ramble at the Ryman (2011)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Three (2014)
Other
The Legend of Jesse James (1980)
Souvenir, Vol. 1 (1998)
The Imus Ranch Record (2008)
The Imus Ranch Record II (2010)
The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams (2011)
With Muddy Waters
The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album (Chess, 1975)
Filmography
References
External links
[ Allmusic]
1940 births
2012 deaths
ABC Records artists
American autobiographers
American country singer-songwriters
American country rock musicians
American folk rock musicians
American male singer-songwriters
American mandolinists
American multi-instrumentalists
American rock drummers
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Grammy Award winners
Male actors from Arkansas
People from Phillips County, Arkansas
Singer-songwriters from Arkansas
The Band members
Vanguard Records artists
20th-century Canadian male musicians
Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band members | false | [
"Frances Helm (October 14, 1923 - December 30, 2006) was an American stage, film, and television actress whose performing career spanned nearly fifty years.\n\nEarly life\nShe was born Mary Frances Helm in Panama City, Florida. Her parents were Thomas William Helm II and Grace Spencer. Her father started as a bookkeeper for the railroad industry then became an accountant for the state of Virginia, moving the family to Richmond when Helm was very young. She had one older brother. Helm graduated from J. A. C. Chandler Junior High School in June 1937. She graduated from John Marshall High School in June 1940.\n\nFrom the age of ten Helm took piano and voice lessons. Later she studied with Mary Barbour Dixon, who would remain her drama teacher and coach all through secondary school and college. Helm attended the Richmond Professional Institute (RPI) from Fall 1940 through Spring 1942, majoring in Speech and Dramatics. Helm was a member of RPI's Theater Associates, which mounted productions at the school using students and the occasional visiting professional actor. Helm and other RPI drama students also did broadcasts of play readings on the school's radio station. While at the school, Helm dropped her first name for stage billing.\n\nDuring her last term at RPI, her brother returned to Richmond after being wounded at Pearl Harbor. A Radioman 2/C in the USN, Thomas W. Helm had kept firing an antiaircraft gun during the attack despite being severely wounded; the Navy credited him with bringing down a Japanese aircraft. Invalided out of the service in April 1942, he was used for recruiting and bond drives, with his sister accompanying him. She was pictured at Red Cross events and dances with her brother and other servicemen. Frances Helm also joined other volunteer actors to perform a parody of an old-fashioned melodrama, Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, at military bases in Virginia and Maryland.\n\nEarly stage career\nAfter graduating from RPI, Helm moved to New York City, where she took additional drama training at Columbia University while modeling in fashion shows for the Powers Agency. She also worked in radio, both as a voice actress and a personality for variety shows. For one radio show called \"Blind Date\", hosted by Arlene Francis, Helm was matched with a G.I. for an evening at the Stork Club.\n\nDuring late 1945 Helm signed up for a theatrical trial by fire, a six-month stint with one of the Clare Tree Major Touring Companies. She performed in The Golden Apple by Lady Gregory, a short play based on an Irish fairy story.\n\nCome September 1946 Helm joined a more traditional touring company with a revival of Life with Father. Cast as \"Mary Skinner\", the primary love interest, Helm had a lot of publicity during the tour of the Eastern United States. The tour traveled by a large private bus with an attached trailer for sets and props, enabling it to play small towns without train service. The tour finished up in Texas during early March 1947.\n\nFrom April thru May 1947 Helm made an independent color film called The Clam-digger's Daughter, which was never distributed to theaters for exhibition. Helm credited the film, shot on location in Cape Charles, Virginia, with restoring her Southern accent.\n Living up North has made me lose my accent twice. I got it back the first time by moving in with six Mississippi girls who lived in New York, and the second time by appearing in a \"made-in-Virginia\" movie.\n\nShe performed in summer stock during 1947 at the Green Mountain Playhouse in Middlebury, Vermont. From June 1948 Helm appeared in summer stock on Long Island in Parlor Story, which had a short run on Broadway the year before. She then starred in Years Ago, a much more successful recent Broadway comedy.\n\nMister Roberts\nBy August 1948 Helm had joined the national touring company for Mister Roberts, while the original was then in its sixth month on Broadway. Helm was the only female in the large cast, which included her then husband Robert Keith Jr, who was still using his birth name for billing at the time. The play starred Richard Carlson, James Rennie, Murray Hamilton, and Robert Burton, with a young Cliff Robertson. \nAfter several weeks in Detroit, the play went to Chicago for a two-week run that turned into twelve months.\n\nWhile playing Chicago, Helm and other cast members of Mister Roberts put on free plays at veteran's homes in the area. The local newspaper printed photos of Helm with different members of the cast nearly every month, emphasizing her as the only woman in the play. At eleven months into the run the Chicago Tribune published a photo of Helm with her husband in their roles as \"Lt. Ann Girard\" and \"Mannion\".\n\nFrom Chicago the touring company for Mister Roberts moved to Pittsburgh's Nixon Theater in September 1949, with John Forsythe taking over the titular role and Jackie Cooper playing \"Ensign Pulver\". As with critics in Detroit and Chicago, the Pittsburgh reviewer praised Helm for her delivery while noting the brevity of her part. The tour then went to one and two week runs at smaller cities, finally finishing up with a three-month booking in Boston that ended in April 1950. Helm was so reliable in playing every show that the tour finally dispensed with having an understudy for her three minutes on stage.\n\nEarly television\nHelm's first television appearance was for a program called Hollywood Screen Test during October 1950. She did an episode of Philco Television Playhouse in May 1951 followed by an episode of Kraft Television Theatre in November. All of these programs were originally broadcast live from New York City, though the latter program was apparently recorded by kinoscope and re-broadcast to the West Coast the following month.\n\nThe following year she guest starred in episodes of Adventures of Ellery Queen and The Web, both thirty minute live broadcasts. The latter was also recorded by kinoscope and re-broadcast in March 1952. Her third program in as many months was for Armstrong Circle Theater, another New York live broadcast. She did another The Web episode in March 1952, her first TV work alongside her then husband.\n\nHer 1952 performing year having been front-loaded with TV work during the first quarter, Helm did four weekly summer stock plays in Bangor, Maine during June, then one more Television Playhouse episode in November.\n\nShe had little performing work in 1953: an uncredited bit part in Never Wave at a WAC, followed by a highly praised week playing \"Stella Kowalski\" in a stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire, another television episode, then four weeks reprising her roles in Detective Story and Mister Roberts.\n\nValiant Lady\nDuring 1954 Helm toured with Joe E. Brown from July through October in The Show-Off. Discovering in December 1954 that she had been secretly divorced by her husband five months earlier, Helm was forced to take whatever performing work she could find. Since she was still maintaining residency in New York, Helm took on a soap opera role, as \"Linda Kendall\" in Valiant Lady. This fifteen minute television program was broadcast live daily from CBS studios in Manhattan. Helm played a woman with mental issues, which years later her mother said was the hardest role to watch her daughter perform.\n\nHelm's exact tenure on the show is difficult to verify. Credited with 246 episodes during calendar year 1955, the only reliable reference date is a newspaper photo from July 17, 1955, showing her, Sue Randall, and Flora Campbell wearing shorts in Central Park while being rehearsed by director Herb Kenwith. It was certainly over by early November 1955, when Helm did a series of plays at the Paper Mill Playhouse for producer Frank Carrington and an episode of Robert Montgomery Presents. Whatever the dates were, it was Helm's longest recurring television role, and a measure of her determination to remain on the East Coast so long as it was professionally possible.\n\nCoastal commuter\n\n1956-1958\n\nBy 1956 the great majority of television work was in Southern California, and Helm would have to commute between the coasts. She made an episode of Matinee Theater in April 1956 that producer Aubrey Schenck saw; he cast her in the film Revolt at Fort Laramie as a result. After two more episodes of Matinee Theater, she returned to New York to take over Bethel Leslie's role of \"Rachel Brown\" in the original Broadway production of Inherit the Wind. Helm joined the production in November 1956 and remained with it until its closing in June 1957.\n\nThe remainder of 1957 saw her doing two minor plays. Career was already an off-Broadway success when Helm joined it for a week in Philadelphia. One Foot in the Door, with June Havoc and David White, had its premiere with a ten-day tryout in Philadelphia followed by one week in Boston. Critics in both cities panned it.\n\nWith the flop of One Foot in the Door, Helm had to return to the West Coast for more television in late spring 1958. She did three episodes of two different series, but returned to New York later that year for two episodes of a new show called New York Confidential. This show was mainly filmed in New York, but one episode Helm did was made in Jacksonville, Florida.\n\n1959-1960\n\nShe spent late spring and summer of 1959 in a center staged road company production of Look Homeward, Angel, playing engagements in Miami, Philadelphia, and San Diego. While on the West Coast, she filmed an episode of The Millionaire.\n\nHelm returned to the East Coast for trial runs of The Deadly Game, an adaption of A Dangerous Game, during January 1960. After the short tryouts, the play moved to Broadway but lasted only 39 performances from February thru March 1960. As with Mister Roberts, Helm was the only woman in the cast, and appeared only briefly on stage in the final scene. She took advantage of this situation to see the opening acts of other plays then performing on Broadway, telling a columnist \"I'm waiting for the book versions so I can see how these plays end\".\n\n1961-1963\n\nFor 1961 Helm did episodes of six television shows, five of them on the West Coast and one in New York. Early 1962 saw her do two episodes of Everglades! on location in her native Florida.\n\nShe then took the female lead in the West Coast premiere of Critic's Choice, which opened mid-May 1962 in Los Angeles. Meant for a short run, the production was a hit, running so long the original leading man Edward Binns had to be replaced by Ted Knight due to prior performing commitments. As a contrast, a columnist mentioned that while performing the play at nights, Helm went to the Warner Brothers Studio to make an episode of 77 Sunset Strip during the day. During its tenth week the production was converted from front staging to center staging; it closed two weeks later.\n\nHelm also took part in filming The Ugly American in 1962, playing secretary to Marlon Brando's ambassador.\n\nLater that year, Helm temporarily took over the role of \"Nancy Pollock\" on The Edge of Night when actress Ann Flood took three months maternity leave.\n\nIn February 1963 Helm reprised her role in Critic's Choice with Hans Conried for a one-week run in Louisville, Kentucky. A month later she married for the second time.\n\nLater career\nAfter the birth of her daughter in late spring 1964, Helm resumed working in October of that year. She temporarily took on the role of \"Susan Dunbar\" on The Secret Storm, replacing Mary Foskett, who had moved to the West Coast. The show, like many soaps, was still made in New York City at the time. Judy Lewis took over the character on January 7, 1965.\n\nHelm would let a couple of years go by between performing engagements for the rest of her career. She did two TV episodes in 1967, an odd little set of playlets in 1969, before resuming a fuller schedule in 1972. That year saw her join a touring company for the summer season, playing a small role in Remember Me, a comedy by Ronald Alexander. She then had a starring role in Welcome Home, playing opposite Pernell Roberts, in an original play by Edmund Hartmann. The production ran three weeks at Chicago's Ivanhoe Theater.\n\nDuring 1976 Helm did an episode of Kojak then she and Danny Aiello starred in a Broadway flop called Wheelbarrow Closers, which lasted for only 7 previews and 8 performances. She had a smaller role in the original production of Manny in 1979, which lasted for about a month on Broadway. She had better luck with Broadway revivals, albeit in understudy positions, for Morning's at Seven in 1980-81 and You Can't Take It With You in 1983–84.\n\nAs her stage career wound down, Helm continued doing screen work, making an episode of an obscure TV series and the film A Little Sex in 1982. She did two more films, a bit part in Shakedown (1988) and larger role in Electric Moon (1992). Her final performing work was for a TV movie, Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story in 1995.\n\nPersonal life\n\nHelm married Robert Alba Keith on January 3, 1948, in Richmond. They were in Mister Roberts for eighteen months, did at least one television episode together, but separated on July 28, 1953. On December 8, 1954, Helm charged Keith with \"introducing another woman as his wife\", without naming her. Newspapers reported in January 1955 that Keith had already obtained a Mexican divorce six months earlier and remarried to dancer Judy Landon. At a settlement hearing, Helm agreed to accept the divorce and receive $250 monthly alimony from Keith. However, a few weeks later the alimony was set aside on a \"quirk\" of California law wherein only the party filing for divorce could claim alimony.\n \nIn April 1963 Helm married Walter C. Wallace, a former assistant Secretary of Labor in the Eisenhower administration. He was the personnel director for a New York paper company. The couple had one child, a daughter Laura Wallace, born in late spring 1964. They remained married until Helm's death in 2006.\n\nAccording to her obituary in Variety, Helm was a long-time member of the The Player's Club and had served on its board of directors.\n\nStage performances\n\nFilmography\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1923 births\n2006 deaths\n20th-century American actresses\nActresses from Florida\nAmerican film actresses\nAmerican stage actresses\nAmerican television actresses",
"June Helm (September 13, 1924 – February 5, 2004) was an American anthropologist, primarily known for her work with the Dene people in the Mackenzie River drainage.\n\nEarly life and education\nHelm was born in Twin Falls, Idaho in 1924, to William Jennings Helm and Julia Frances (née Dixon) Helm. In 1930, the family moved to Kansas City, Kansas. Helm experienced a solitary childhood, full of illness, and was a shy, anxious child. After high school, Helm enrolled in anthropology at the University of Kansas, because of its modest tuition, and there she completed a year of education. In 1942, her father's machinery repair business experienced a boom, leading to the finances necessary for Helm to transfer to the University of Chicago, her school of choice. Helm graduated with a Bachelor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1944, after completing the two-year program. Helm received her M.A. in 1949. She received encouragement from Robert Redfield and George Peter Murdock, both of whom influenced her study. Helm received her PhD in 1958 from the University of Chicago, after completing her dissertation, which was published by the National Museums of Canada in 1961, titled Lynx Point People.\n\nPersonal life\nIn 1945, Helm married Richard “Scotty” MacNeish, who was a Ph.D candidate in the field of archaeology. In 1949, they moved to Ottawa, Ontario. The two amicably divorced in 1958, at which point Helm returned to Chicago. In 1968, Helm married Pierce King, an architect. The two stayed together until her death.\n\nIn 1989, Helm suffered from a stroke, which resulted in partial paralysis. She continued to teach for another decade, however, retiring in December 1999.\n\nCareer\nIn 1945, Helm and MacNeish travelled to Mexico, where MacNeish completed archaeological field work. This was Helm's introduction to field work, and the next year, she conducted ethnographic research among the people of the region, for her Masters' thesis. Upon Helm and MacNeish's move to Ottawa, Helm became a sessional lecturer at Carlton University, from 1949 to 1959. In the summer of 1950, while MacNeish took part in an archaeological survey of the Mackenzie River, Helm became involved with the Dene people living nearby, to whom she gave the name “The Lynx Point People” in her 1958 dissertation. While working there, Helm learned that they were interested in having their children learn English, so the following summer, Helm returned with Teresa Carterette. The two volunteered as teachers, and also spent time doing fieldwork, to get a better understanding of the people. Helm continued to conduct interviews between 1954 and 1957, contacting people from Chipewyan, Hare and Slavey communities. Upon her return, Helm focused on the history and ethnography of the Slavey communities, of which there was little. Helm made great forays in understanding and relating the culture of the northern Athapaskan people, and she disproved hypotheses or discovered errors in the works of Julian Steward and Leslie Spier.\n\nIn 1957, during a linguistics course, Helm met Nancy Oestreich Lurie, and the two became friends. In 1959, the two went to do fieldwork among the Dogrib people in the Northwest Territories. They returned to work with other Dogrib groups in 1962 and 1967. After this point, Helm continued her research alone, making ten trips to do fieldwork between 1959 and 1979.\n\nHelm worked as a tenured professor of Anthropology at the University of Iowa, having worked there from 1960 to December 1999. When Helm first joined the department, it was the Department of Sociology and Anthropology; she worked towards the creation of separate departments, which came to fruition in 1969, and she served as chair. Helm also established an American Indian and Native Studies program, and serves as the first chair, from 1993–1996.\n\nIn 1996, Helm was contacted by John Zoe, a Dogrib official, and Thomas Andrews, an archaeologist at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, located in Yellowknife, regarding artifacts which had been taken by a graduate student of the University of Iowa in 1894, Frank Russell. Helm assisted in the negotiations for repatriation of the artifacts, particularly a caribou skin tent, which had been too large to exhibit. The negotiations were successful, and the tent was returned to the Dogrib people.\n\nThroughout her career, Helm published 11 books and monographs, and more than 40 articles and chapters. Helm spent the last few years of her life assembling her notes, photographs and records from her fieldwork, and sent them to Yellowknife, to be available to the Dene people.\n\nHonours and accomplishments \nHelm served as an adviser to the Indian Brotherhood of the Northwest Territories (now the Dene Nation), assisting them as a consultant in terms of land claims rights and research in the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry.\n\nHelm served as president of several societies and associations; the Central States Anthropological Society for 1970–1971, the American Ethnological Association from 1981–1983, and the American Anthropological Association from 1986–1987.\n\nIn 1994, Helm was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Helm received the F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Achievement Award in 1995.\n\nHelm's contributions to the University of Iowa have been recognized, particularly with the creation of the June Helm Award for Service and Excellence, which is awarded annually to a graduate student.\n\nPublications by Helm\nAs a sole author\n The Lynx Point People: The Dynamics of a Northern Athapaskan Band Ottawa: National Museum of Canada, 1961.\n The Indians of the Subarctic: A Critical Bibliography. Don Mills, Ontario: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, 1976. \n The People of Denendeh: Ethnohistory of the Indians of Canada's Northwest Territories. Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 2000. \n\nAs editor or coauthor\n Pioneers of American Anthropology: The Uses of Biography. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966.\n Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967.\n\nReferences \n\nFellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences\n1924 births\n2004 deaths\nAmerican anthropologists\nUniversity of Chicago alumni\n20th-century anthropologists\nUniversity of Kansas alumni\nAmerican expatriates in Canada"
] |
[
"Levon Helm",
"Early years",
"when was Helm born?",
"Arkansas in the 1940s",
"who was Helm born to?",
"His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm,",
"Did Helm have any siblings?",
"They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age.",
"Where did Helm go to school?",
"Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school.",
"Was Helm successful with his high school band?",
"I don't know.",
"What did Helm do after high school?",
"Helm was influenced by all these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM"
] | C_b226146f1fad4c4bb2c3d33ef7d2fdad_1 | What styles influenced Helm? | 7 | What styles influenced Levon Helm? | Levon Helm | Born in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers and great lovers of music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. Young Lavon (as he was christened) began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums during his formative years. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided then to become a musician. Arkansas in the 1940s and 50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles--blues, country and R&B--that, when merged, later became known as rock and roll. Helm was influenced by all these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee. He also saw traveling shows such as F.S. Walcott's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels that featured top African-American artists of the time. Another early influence on Helm was the work of the harmonica player, guitarist and singer Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school. Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by southern country music, blues and rockabilly artists such as Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena. CANNOTANSWER | a variety of musical styles--blues, country and R&B-- | Mark Lavon "Levon" Helm (May 26, 1940 – April 19, 2012) was an American musician and actor who achieved fame as the drummer and one of the three lead vocalists for The Band. Helm was known for his deeply soulful, country-accented voice, multi-instrumental ability, and creative drumming style, highlighted on many of the Band's recordings, such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek", and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".
Helm also had a successful career as a film actor, appearing as Loretta Lynn's father in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), as Chuck Yeager's friend and colleague Captain Jack Ridley in The Right Stuff (1983), as a Tennessee firearms expert in Shooter (2007), and as General John Bell Hood in In the Electric Mist (2009).
In 1998, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer which caused him to lose his singing voice. After treatment, his cancer eventually went into remission, and he gradually regained the use of his voice. His 2007 comeback album Dirt Farmer earned the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in February 2008, and in November of that year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 91 in its list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time,. In 2010, Electric Dirt, his 2009 follow-up to Dirt Farmer, won the first Grammy Award for Best Americana Album, a category inaugurated in 2010. In 2011, his live album Ramble at the Ryman won the Grammy in the same category. In 2016, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 22 in its list of 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time.
Biography
Early years
Born Mark Lavon Helm in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers who shared a strong affinity for music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided to become a musician. Helm began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums.
Arkansas in the 1940s and '50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles, including traditional Delta blues, electric blues, country (including old-time music) and the incipient genre of rhythm and blues. Helm was influenced by each of these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville. He also saw the last vestiges of minstrelsy and other traveling variety shows, such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, which featured top Black artists of the era.
A key early influence on Helm was Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played electric blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school.
Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by early rock and roll and rockabilly artists, including Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena.
The Hawks
While he was still in high school, Helm was invited to join Ronnie Hawkins's band, the Hawks, a popular bar and club act in the South and Canada where rockabilly acts were very successful. Helm's mother insisted that he graduate from high school before touring with Hawkins, but he was able to play with the Hawks locally on weekends. After his graduation in 1958, Helm joined the Hawks as a full-time member and they moved to Toronto where they signed with Roulette Records in 1959 and released several singles, including a few hits.
Helm reported in his autobiography that fellow Hawks band members had difficulty pronouncing "Lavon" correctly and started calling him "Levon" ( ) because it was easier to pronounce.
In 1961, Helm with bassist Rick Danko backed guitarist Lenny Breau on several tracks recorded at Hallmark Studios in Toronto. These tracks are included on the 2003 release The Hallmark Sessions.
By the early 1960s, Helm and Hawkins had recruited an all-Canadian lineup of musicians: guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel, and organist Garth Hudson, all of whom were multi-instrumentalists. In 1963, the band parted ways with Hawkins and started touring as Levon and the Hawks and later as the Canadian Squires, before changing back to the Hawks. They recorded two singles but remained mostly a popular touring bar band in Texas, Arkansas, Canada, and on the East Coast of the United States where they found regular summer club gigs on the New Jersey shore.
By the mid-1960s, songwriter and musician Bob Dylan was interested in performing electric rock music and asked the Hawks to be his backing band. Disheartened by fans' negative response to Dylan's new sound, Helm left the group in the autumn of 1965 for what turned out to be a two-year layoff, being replaced by a range of touring drummers (most notably Mickey Jones) and Manuel, who began to double on the instrument. Following time with his family in Arkansas and subsequent sojourns in Los Angeles (where he experimented with LSD and performed with Bobby Keys), Memphis and New Orleans (exemplified by work on a nearby oil platform), the eventual result was his return to the group in the autumn of 1967.
After the Hawks toured Europe with Dylan, they followed him back to the U.S. and settled near his home in Woodstock, New York, remaining under salary to Dylan. The Hawks recorded a large number of demos and practice tapes in nearby West Saugerties, New York, playing almost daily with Dylan, who had completely withdrawn from public life following a motorcycle accident in July 1966. These recordings were widely bootlegged and were partially released officially in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. The songs and themes developed during this period played a crucial role in the group's future direction and style. The Hawks also began writing their own songs, with Danko and Manuel also sharing writing credits with Dylan on a few songs.
The Band
Helm returned to the group, then referred to simply as "the band", as it was known around Woodstock. While contemplating a recording contract, Helm had dubbed the band "The Crackers". However, when Robertson and their new manager Albert Grossman worked out the contracts, the group's name was given as "The Band". Under these contracts, the Band was contracted to Grossman, who in turn contracted their services to Capitol Records. This arrangement allowed the Band to release recordings on other labels if the work was done in support of Dylan. Thus the Band was able to play on Dylan's Planet Waves album and to release The Last Waltz, both on other labels. The Band also recorded their own album Music from Big Pink (1968), which catapulted them into stardom. Helm was the Band's only American member.
On Music from Big Pink, Manuel was the most prominent vocalist and Helm sang backup and harmony, with the exception of "The Weight". However, as Manuel's health deteriorated and Robbie Robertson's songwriting increasingly looked to the South for influence and direction, subsequent albums relied more and more on Helm's vocals, alone or in harmony with Danko. Helm was primarily a drummer and vocalist and increasingly sang lead, although, like all his bandmates, he was also a multi-instrumentalist. On occasion Manuel switched to drums while Helm played mandolin, guitar, or bass guitar (while Danko played fiddle) on some songs. Helm played the 12-string guitar backdrop to "Daniel and the Sacred Harp".
Helm remained with the Band until their farewell performance on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, which was the subject of the documentary film The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese. Helm repudiated his involvement with The Last Waltz shortly after the completion of its final scenes. In his autobiography Helm criticized the film and Robertson who produced it.
Solo, acting and the reformed Band
With the breakup of the Band in its original form, Helm began working on a solo-ensemble album, Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars, with Paul Butterfield, Fred Carter, Jr., Emmeretta Marks, Howard Johnson, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Booker T. Jones, and others. Levon Helm and the RCO All-Stars recorded Live at The Palladium NYC, New Year's Eve 1977. The CD album released in March 2006 features over one hour of blues-rock music performed by an ensemble featuring Levon Helm (drums/vocals), Dr. John (keys/vocals), Paul Butterfield (harmonica/vocals), Fred Carter (guitar/vocals), Donald "Duck" Dunn (bass), Cropper (guitar), Lou Marini (saxophones), Howard Johnson (tuba/baritone sax), Tom "Bones" Malone (trombone), and Alan Rubin (trumpet).
This was followed in 1978 by the solo album Levon Helm. More solo albums were released in 1980 and 1982: American Son and (once again) Levon Helm, both produced by Fred Carter, Jr. He also participated in musician Paul Kennerley's 1980 country music concept album, The Legend of Jesse James singing the role of Jesse James alongside Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Charlie Daniels, Albert Lee, and others.
In addition to his work as musician, Helm also acted in several dramatic films. He was cast as Loretta Lynn's father in the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter, followed three years later by a role as U.S. Air Force test pilot and engineer Capt. Jack Ridley, in The Right Stuff. Helm was also the latter film's narrator. 1987's under-appreciated End of the Line featured Levon as a small-town railroad employee alongside Wilford Brimley and Kevin Bacon. He played a Kentucky backwoods preacher in Fire Down Below. He played an eccentric old man in the 2005 film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and appeared as Gen. John Bell Hood in the 2009 film In the Electric Mist. He also had a brief cameo as a weapons expert in the film Shooter with Mark Wahlberg.
In 1983, the Band reunited without Robbie Robertson, at first playing with an expanded lineup that included the entire Cate Brothers Band, but in 1985 paring down and adding Jim Weider on guitar. In 1986, while on tour Manuel committed suicide. Helm, Danko, and Hudson continued in the Band, adding pianist Richard Bell and drummer/vocalist Randy Ciarlante and releasing the album Jericho in 1993 and High on the Hog in 1996. The final album from the Band was the 30th anniversary album, Jubilation released in 1998.
In 1989, Helm and Danko toured with drummer Ringo Starr as part of his All-Starr Band. Other musicians in the band included singer and guitarist Joe Walsh, singer and pianist Dr. John, singer and guitarist Nils Lofgren, singer Billy Preston, saxophonist Clarence Clemons, and drummer Jim Keltner. Garth Hudson was a guest on accordion on some dates. Helm played drums and harmonica and sang "The Weight" and "Up on Cripple Creek" each night.
In the televised 1989 Juno Awards celebration, the Band was inducted into the Juno Awards' Hall of Fame. Helm was not present at the ceremony, but a taped segment of him offering his thanks was broadcast after the acceptance speeches by Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson. Richard Manuel's children accepted the award on behalf of their father. To conclude the televised special, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Robbie Robertson performed "The Weight" with Blue Rodeo.
Helm performed with Danko and Hudson as the Band in 1990 at Roger Waters's epic The Wall – Live in Berlin Concert in Germany to an estimated 300,000 to half a million people.
In 1993, Helm published an autobiography entitled This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band.
The Midnight Ramble
Helm's performance career in the 2000s revolved mainly around the Midnight Ramble at his home and studio, "The Barn," in Woodstock, New York. These concerts, featuring Helm and various musical guests, allowed him to raise money for his medical bills and to resume performing after a bout with cancer that nearly ended his career.
In the late 1990s, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer after suffering hoarseness. Advised to undergo a laryngectomy, he instead underwent an arduous regimen of radiation treatments at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The tumor was then successfully removed, but Helm's vocal cords were damaged, and his clear, powerful tenor voice was replaced by a quiet rasp. Initially Helm only played drums and relied on guest vocalists at the Rambles, but eventually his singing voice grew stronger. On January 10, 2004, he sang again at his Ramble sessions. In 2007, during production of Dirt Farmer, Helm estimated that his singing voice was 80 percent recovered.
The Levon Helm Band featured his daughter Amy Helm, Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, Jim Weider (The Band's last guitarist), Jimmy Vivino, Mike Merritt, Brian Mitchell, Erik Lawrence, Steven Bernstein, Howard Johnson (tuba player in the horn section on the Band's Rock of Ages and The Last Waltz), Jay Collins (Helm's now former son-in-law), Byron Isaacs, and blues harmonica player Little Sammy Davis. Helm hosted Midnight Rambles that were open to the public at his home in Woodstock.
The Midnight Ramble was an outgrowth of an idea Helm explained to Martin Scorsese in The Last Waltz. Earlier in the 20th century, Helm recounted, traveling medicine shows and music shows such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, featuring African-American blues singers and dancers, would put on titillating performances in rural areas. (This was also turned into a song by the Band, "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show," with the name altered so the lyric was easier to sing.)
"After the finale, they'd have the midnight ramble," Helm told Scorsese. With young children off the premises, the show resumed: "The songs would get a little bit juicier. The jokes would get a little funnier and the prettiest dancer would really get down and shake it a few times. A lot of the rock and roll duck walks and moves came from that."
Artists who performed at the Rambles include Helm's former bandmate Garth Hudson, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Dr. John, Mavis Staples, Chris Robinson, Allen Toussaint, Donald Fagen and Jon Herington of Steely Dan, Jimmy Vivino (of the house band on Late Night with Conan O'Brien), the Max Weinberg 7, My Morning Jacket, Billy Bob Thornton, Alexis P. Suter, Sean Costello, the Muddy Waters Tribute Band, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Carolyn Wonderland, Kris Kristofferson, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Justin Townes Earle, Bow Thayer, Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, Rickie Lee Jones, Kate Taylor, Ollabelle, the Holmes Brothers, Catherine Russell, Norah Jones, Arlen Roth, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Phil Lesh (along with his sons Grahame and Brian), Hot Tuna (Jorma Kaukonen introduced the group as "the Secret Squirrels"), Michael Angelo D'Arrigo with various members of the Sistine Chapel, Johnny Johnson, Ithalia, David Bromberg, the Youngers, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.
During this period, Helm switched to the matched grip and adopted a less busy, greatly simplified drumming style, as opposed to the traditional grip he used during his years with the Band.
Helm was busy touring every year during the 2000s, generally traveling by tour bus to venues in eastern Canada and the eastern United States. After 2007, he performed in large venues such the Beacon Theater in New York. Dr. John and Warren Haynes (the Allman Brothers Band, Gov't Mule) and Garth Hudson played at the concerts along with several other guests. At a show in Vancouver Elvis Costello joined to sing "Tears of Rage". The Alexis P. Suter Band was a frequent opening act. Helm was a favorite of radio personality Don Imus and was frequently featured on Imus in the Morning. In the summer of 2009, it was reported that a reality television series centering on the Midnight Ramble was in development.
In 2012, Levon Helm and his "midnight rambles" were featured on the PBS Arts site, "Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders," including a poignant last interview with PBS's Marco Werman.
Dirt Farmer and comeback
The autumn of 2007 saw the release of Dirt Farmer, Helm's first studio solo album since 1982. Dedicated to his parents and co-produced by his daughter Amy, the album combines traditional tunes Levon recalled from his youth with newer songs (by Steve Earle, Paul Kennerley, and others) which flow from similar historical streams. The album was released to almost immediate critical acclaim, and earned him a Grammy Award in the Traditional Folk Album category for 2007. Also in 2007, Helm recorded "Toolin' Around Woodstock", and album with Arlen Roth on which Levon played drums and sang Sweet Little 16 and "Crying Time." This album also featured Levon's daughter Amy, and Roth's daughter Lexie, along with Sonny Landreth and Bill Kirchen.
Helm declined to attend the Grammy Awards ceremony, instead holding a "Midnight Gramble" and celebrating the birth of his grandson, Lavon (Lee) Henry Collins.
In 2008, Helm performed at Warren Haynes's Mountain Jam Music Festival in Hunter, New York playing alongside Haynes on the last day of the three-day festival. Helm also joined guitarist Bob Weir and his band RatDog on stage as they closed out the festival. Helm performed to great acclaim at the 2008 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.
Helm drummed on a couple of tracks for Jorma Kaukonen's February 2009 album River of Time, recorded at the Levon Helm studio.
Helm released the album Electric Dirt on his own label on June 30, 2009. Like Dirt Farmer, an aim of Electric Dirt was to capture of feel of Helm's Midnight Rambles. The album won a best album Grammy for the newly created Americana category in 2010. Helm performed on the CBS television program Late Show with David Letterman on July 9, 2009. He also toured that same year in a supporting role with the band Black Crowes.
A documentary on Helm's day-to-day life, entitled Ain't in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm was released in March 2010. Directed by Jacob Hatley, it made its debut at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas and went on to be screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June 2010. The film had a limited release in select theaters in the United States in the spring of 2013 and was released on DVD and Blu-ray later that year.
On May 11, 2011, Helm released Ramble at the Ryman, a live album recorded during his performance of September 17, 2008 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The album features Helm's band playing six songs by the Band and other cover material, including some songs from previous Helm solo releases. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Americana Album.
Illness and death
In April 2012, during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Cleveland, Robbie Robertson sent "love and prayers" to Helm, fueling speculation about Helm's health. Helm had previously cancelled a number of performances, citing health issues or a slipped disk in his back; his final performances took place in Tarrytown, New York at Tarrytown Music Hall on March 24, and a final Midnight Ramble (with Moonalice as the opening act) in Woodstock on March 31.
On April 17, 2012, Helm's wife Sandy and daughter Amy revealed that he had end-stage throat cancer. They posted the following message on Helm's website:
On April 18, Robertson revealed on his Facebook page that he had a long visit with Helm at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center the previous Sunday. On the same day, Garth Hudson posted on his personal website that he was "too sad for words". He then left a link for a video of himself and the Alexis P. Suter Band performing Bob Dylan's song "Knocking on Heaven's Door". Helm died on April 19, 2012, at 1:30 p.m. (EDT) due to complications from throat cancer at age 71.
Fans were invited to a public wake at Helm's Barn studio complex on April 26. Approximately 2,000 fans came to pay their respects to the rock icon. The following day, after a private funeral service and a procession through the streets of Woodstock, Helm was interred in the Woodstock Cemetery, within sight of the grave of his longtime bandmate and friend Rick Danko. Former President Bill Clinton issued a statement following Helm's passing.
Legacy
George Harrison said that while writing his 1970 song "All Things Must Pass", he imagined Levon Helm singing it.
Elton John's lyricist, Bernie Taupin named the song "Levon" after Helm, although the song is not actually about him. Both John and Taupin cited that they were inspired by Helm; Taupin saying in various interviews that they would "go down to their favourite record stores to buy The Band's records" along with Elton. In 1994, Helm was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Band.
Marc Cohn wrote the song "Listening to Levon" in 2007.
"The Man behind the Drums," written by Robert Earl Keen and Bill Whitbeck, appeared on Keen's 2009 album The Rose Hotel.
Tracy K. Smith's 2011 poem "Alternate Take", included in her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection Life on Mars, is dedicated to Helm. On the day of Helm's death, April 19, 2012, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, in a concert at the First Bank Center in Broomfield, Colorado, paid tribute to Levon by performing their song "The Best of Everything" and dedicating it to him.
At a concert on May 2, 2012, at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Helm. Springsteen called Helm "one of the greatest, greatest voices in country, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll ... staggering ... while playing the drums. Both his voice and his drumming were so incredibly personal. He had a feel on the drums that comes out of certain place in the past and you can't replicate it." Springsteen also said it was one of the songs that he had played with drummer Max Weinberg in Weinberg's audition with the band.
On June 2, 2012, at Mountain Jam, Gov't Mule along with the Levon Helm Band (with Lukas Nelson coming on stage for the closing song) played a tribute set, including "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Up on Cripple Creek,""It Makes No Difference," and closing with "The Weight".
A tribute concert called Love for Levon took place at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey on October 3, 2012. The concert featured many special guests who had collaborated with and were inspired by Helm and the Band, including Roger Waters, Garth Hudson, Joe Walsh, Gregg Allman, Bruce Hornsby, Jorma Kaukonen, John Mayer, Mavis Staples, My Morning Jacket, Marc Cohn, John Hiatt, Allen Toussaint, Jakob Dylan, Mike Gordon, and others. Proceeds from the concert were to "help support the lasting legacy of Levon Helm by helping his estate keep ownership of his home, barn and studio, and to continue the Midnight Ramble Sessions".
At the 2013 Grammy Awards, the Zac Brown Band, Mumford & Sons, Elton John, Mavis Staples, T-Bone Burnett, and Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Levon and other recently deceased musicians. They also dedicated the song to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. In May 2013, the New York State Legislature approved a resolution to name State Route 375—the road which connects State Route 28 with the town of Woodstock—"Levon Helm Memorial Boulevard". Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill on June 20, 2013. In July 2017, U.S. 49 from Marvell, Arkansas to Helena–West Helena was named The Levon Helm Memorial Highway by Act 810 of the Arkansas State Legislature. The Levon Helm Legacy Project is raising money to commission a bronze bust of Helm and to restore his boyhood home. The house, originally located in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, was moved in 2015 to Marvell, where Helm attended school.
Personal life
Helm met singer-songwriter Libby Titus in April 1969, while the Band was recording its second album. They began a lengthy relationship which produced daughter Amy Helm (born December 3, 1970). Amy formed the band Ollabelle and performed with her father's band at the Midnight Rambles and other concerts.
Helm met Sandra Dodd in 1975 in California, while he was still involved with Titus. Helm and Dodd were married on September 7, 1981. They had no children together.
Discography
Studio
Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars (1977)
Levon Helm (1978)
American Son (1980)
Levon Helm (1982)
Dirt Farmer (2007)
Electric Dirt (2009)
Live
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume One (2006)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Two (2006)
Levon Helm & the RCO All Stars: Live at the Palladium NYC, New Years Eve 1977 (2006)
FestivalLink.Net presents: Levon Helm Band MerleFest Ramble (MerleFest, NC 4/26/08)
Ramble at the Ryman (2011)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Three (2014)
Other
The Legend of Jesse James (1980)
Souvenir, Vol. 1 (1998)
The Imus Ranch Record (2008)
The Imus Ranch Record II (2010)
The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams (2011)
With Muddy Waters
The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album (Chess, 1975)
Filmography
References
External links
[ Allmusic]
1940 births
2012 deaths
ABC Records artists
American autobiographers
American country singer-songwriters
American country rock musicians
American folk rock musicians
American male singer-songwriters
American mandolinists
American multi-instrumentalists
American rock drummers
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Grammy Award winners
Male actors from Arkansas
People from Phillips County, Arkansas
Singer-songwriters from Arkansas
The Band members
Vanguard Records artists
20th-century Canadian male musicians
Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band members | false | [
"Damien Deadson is an American heavy metal project from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States, formed in 2009 by guitarist and vocalist Ryan Helm. As its main producer, singer and songwriter, Helm is the only official member of Damien Deadson and remains solely responsible for its direction.\n\nHistory\n\nFormation (2009)\nDamien Deadson was initially conceived as a solo project by Ryan Helm, who had previously played guitar in the band The Ascendicate, as an opportunity to take a break from guitar and focus on his interest in singing. Ryan began working on Damien Deadson in 2009 but had to put the project on hold after being asked to join the band Demon Hunter. In 2010 Ryan revived the project and began recording tracks in his home studio. Ryan personally recorded and performed all of the vocals and instruments, with the exception of drums. Despite beginning as a studio project, Helm would later put together a touring band for live performances.\n\nSince his departure from Demon Hunter, Ryan Helm has stated that he will be performing as Damien Deadson full-time.\n\nA Warm and Dark Embrace (2011-2012)\nIn late 2011 Ryan Helm announced the independent release of A Warm and Dark Embrace. Despite being officially unreleased to the public, the album was immediately met with positive reviews. The album was released on January 29, 2012. The band plans to tour extensively in support of the album throughout 2012.\n\nMusical style, influences and lyrical themes\nDamien Deadson's style is much darker and more technical than Helm's previous work, and is influenced by a much wider array of styles. The band's sound typically features a heavily down-tuned guitar setup, distinct percussion and occasional samples. Utilizing good neato styles, Damien Deadson typically features growled vocals, screaming, and melodic singing.\n\nHelm listed some bands that have influenced him personally and Damien Deadson's sound: Stabbing Westward, Emmure, Fear Factory, Deftones, Meshuggah, Rammstein, Bury Your Dead, Imogen Heap and Kanye West among others. Helm's music is also heavily influenced by his personal life and experiences.\n\nRyan has stated that, unlike his previous bands, Damien Deadson is not a \"Christian band\" and chooses to instead often focus his lyrical content on more secular topics. Such topics include love, anger, personal strife and self empowerment.\n\nMembers\nCurrent members\nRyan Helm – Lead vocals (founding member)\n\nCurrent touring members\n Adam Moore - Drums\n Tyler Gordon - Guitar\n Thomas Grell - Bass\nFormer touring members\nJosh Behnke – Drums and percussion\nCody Macri – Bass guitar\nLucas Polk – Guitar\nWill Guffin – Guitar\n\nDiscography\nA Warm and Dark Embrace (2012)\nCrown Me, Destroyer (2014)\nShadow Work (2015)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nDamien Deadson at Facebook\n\nAmerican metalcore musical groups\nMusical groups established in 2010\n2010 establishments in North Carolina",
"Helm Boots is a brand of boots in the U.S. The company was founded in 2009 by Joshua Bingaman, an Oklahoma native. The company's boots were manufactured in Turkey before production was relocated to Maine. The boots are designed in Austin and then manufactured in Maine using leather materials from American companies like Horween Leather Company and S. B. Foot Tanning Company.\n\nBoot styles\nSome of the Helm Boots styles include: \nSam: a dress boot with a waxed-canvas panel\nMuller: a simply designed boot with a cap toe and infused rubber dot tread on the leather sole\nPhilips Cooper: a desert boot\nDash: this combines a leather with a monochromatic suede panel and a white boat shoe sole.\n\nOther businesses\nBingaman had opened two coffee shops and a coffee roastery in the Austin, Texas area. He studied how Turkish footwear was made on a trip to visit his aunt.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nHelm Boots website\n\nClothing brands of the United States"
] |
[
"Levon Helm",
"Early years",
"when was Helm born?",
"Arkansas in the 1940s",
"who was Helm born to?",
"His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm,",
"Did Helm have any siblings?",
"They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age.",
"Where did Helm go to school?",
"Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school.",
"Was Helm successful with his high school band?",
"I don't know.",
"What did Helm do after high school?",
"Helm was influenced by all these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM",
"What styles influenced Helm?",
"a variety of musical styles--blues, country and R&B--"
] | C_b226146f1fad4c4bb2c3d33ef7d2fdad_1 | What did Helm do once he was influenced by musical styles? | 8 | What did Levon Helm do after being influenced by musical styles? | Levon Helm | Born in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers and great lovers of music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. Young Lavon (as he was christened) began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums during his formative years. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided then to become a musician. Arkansas in the 1940s and 50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles--blues, country and R&B--that, when merged, later became known as rock and roll. Helm was influenced by all these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee. He also saw traveling shows such as F.S. Walcott's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels that featured top African-American artists of the time. Another early influence on Helm was the work of the harmonica player, guitarist and singer Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school. Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by southern country music, blues and rockabilly artists such as Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena. CANNOTANSWER | Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena. | Mark Lavon "Levon" Helm (May 26, 1940 – April 19, 2012) was an American musician and actor who achieved fame as the drummer and one of the three lead vocalists for The Band. Helm was known for his deeply soulful, country-accented voice, multi-instrumental ability, and creative drumming style, highlighted on many of the Band's recordings, such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek", and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".
Helm also had a successful career as a film actor, appearing as Loretta Lynn's father in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), as Chuck Yeager's friend and colleague Captain Jack Ridley in The Right Stuff (1983), as a Tennessee firearms expert in Shooter (2007), and as General John Bell Hood in In the Electric Mist (2009).
In 1998, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer which caused him to lose his singing voice. After treatment, his cancer eventually went into remission, and he gradually regained the use of his voice. His 2007 comeback album Dirt Farmer earned the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in February 2008, and in November of that year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 91 in its list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time,. In 2010, Electric Dirt, his 2009 follow-up to Dirt Farmer, won the first Grammy Award for Best Americana Album, a category inaugurated in 2010. In 2011, his live album Ramble at the Ryman won the Grammy in the same category. In 2016, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 22 in its list of 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time.
Biography
Early years
Born Mark Lavon Helm in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers who shared a strong affinity for music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided to become a musician. Helm began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums.
Arkansas in the 1940s and '50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles, including traditional Delta blues, electric blues, country (including old-time music) and the incipient genre of rhythm and blues. Helm was influenced by each of these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville. He also saw the last vestiges of minstrelsy and other traveling variety shows, such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, which featured top Black artists of the era.
A key early influence on Helm was Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played electric blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school.
Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by early rock and roll and rockabilly artists, including Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena.
The Hawks
While he was still in high school, Helm was invited to join Ronnie Hawkins's band, the Hawks, a popular bar and club act in the South and Canada where rockabilly acts were very successful. Helm's mother insisted that he graduate from high school before touring with Hawkins, but he was able to play with the Hawks locally on weekends. After his graduation in 1958, Helm joined the Hawks as a full-time member and they moved to Toronto where they signed with Roulette Records in 1959 and released several singles, including a few hits.
Helm reported in his autobiography that fellow Hawks band members had difficulty pronouncing "Lavon" correctly and started calling him "Levon" ( ) because it was easier to pronounce.
In 1961, Helm with bassist Rick Danko backed guitarist Lenny Breau on several tracks recorded at Hallmark Studios in Toronto. These tracks are included on the 2003 release The Hallmark Sessions.
By the early 1960s, Helm and Hawkins had recruited an all-Canadian lineup of musicians: guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel, and organist Garth Hudson, all of whom were multi-instrumentalists. In 1963, the band parted ways with Hawkins and started touring as Levon and the Hawks and later as the Canadian Squires, before changing back to the Hawks. They recorded two singles but remained mostly a popular touring bar band in Texas, Arkansas, Canada, and on the East Coast of the United States where they found regular summer club gigs on the New Jersey shore.
By the mid-1960s, songwriter and musician Bob Dylan was interested in performing electric rock music and asked the Hawks to be his backing band. Disheartened by fans' negative response to Dylan's new sound, Helm left the group in the autumn of 1965 for what turned out to be a two-year layoff, being replaced by a range of touring drummers (most notably Mickey Jones) and Manuel, who began to double on the instrument. Following time with his family in Arkansas and subsequent sojourns in Los Angeles (where he experimented with LSD and performed with Bobby Keys), Memphis and New Orleans (exemplified by work on a nearby oil platform), the eventual result was his return to the group in the autumn of 1967.
After the Hawks toured Europe with Dylan, they followed him back to the U.S. and settled near his home in Woodstock, New York, remaining under salary to Dylan. The Hawks recorded a large number of demos and practice tapes in nearby West Saugerties, New York, playing almost daily with Dylan, who had completely withdrawn from public life following a motorcycle accident in July 1966. These recordings were widely bootlegged and were partially released officially in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. The songs and themes developed during this period played a crucial role in the group's future direction and style. The Hawks also began writing their own songs, with Danko and Manuel also sharing writing credits with Dylan on a few songs.
The Band
Helm returned to the group, then referred to simply as "the band", as it was known around Woodstock. While contemplating a recording contract, Helm had dubbed the band "The Crackers". However, when Robertson and their new manager Albert Grossman worked out the contracts, the group's name was given as "The Band". Under these contracts, the Band was contracted to Grossman, who in turn contracted their services to Capitol Records. This arrangement allowed the Band to release recordings on other labels if the work was done in support of Dylan. Thus the Band was able to play on Dylan's Planet Waves album and to release The Last Waltz, both on other labels. The Band also recorded their own album Music from Big Pink (1968), which catapulted them into stardom. Helm was the Band's only American member.
On Music from Big Pink, Manuel was the most prominent vocalist and Helm sang backup and harmony, with the exception of "The Weight". However, as Manuel's health deteriorated and Robbie Robertson's songwriting increasingly looked to the South for influence and direction, subsequent albums relied more and more on Helm's vocals, alone or in harmony with Danko. Helm was primarily a drummer and vocalist and increasingly sang lead, although, like all his bandmates, he was also a multi-instrumentalist. On occasion Manuel switched to drums while Helm played mandolin, guitar, or bass guitar (while Danko played fiddle) on some songs. Helm played the 12-string guitar backdrop to "Daniel and the Sacred Harp".
Helm remained with the Band until their farewell performance on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, which was the subject of the documentary film The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese. Helm repudiated his involvement with The Last Waltz shortly after the completion of its final scenes. In his autobiography Helm criticized the film and Robertson who produced it.
Solo, acting and the reformed Band
With the breakup of the Band in its original form, Helm began working on a solo-ensemble album, Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars, with Paul Butterfield, Fred Carter, Jr., Emmeretta Marks, Howard Johnson, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Booker T. Jones, and others. Levon Helm and the RCO All-Stars recorded Live at The Palladium NYC, New Year's Eve 1977. The CD album released in March 2006 features over one hour of blues-rock music performed by an ensemble featuring Levon Helm (drums/vocals), Dr. John (keys/vocals), Paul Butterfield (harmonica/vocals), Fred Carter (guitar/vocals), Donald "Duck" Dunn (bass), Cropper (guitar), Lou Marini (saxophones), Howard Johnson (tuba/baritone sax), Tom "Bones" Malone (trombone), and Alan Rubin (trumpet).
This was followed in 1978 by the solo album Levon Helm. More solo albums were released in 1980 and 1982: American Son and (once again) Levon Helm, both produced by Fred Carter, Jr. He also participated in musician Paul Kennerley's 1980 country music concept album, The Legend of Jesse James singing the role of Jesse James alongside Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Charlie Daniels, Albert Lee, and others.
In addition to his work as musician, Helm also acted in several dramatic films. He was cast as Loretta Lynn's father in the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter, followed three years later by a role as U.S. Air Force test pilot and engineer Capt. Jack Ridley, in The Right Stuff. Helm was also the latter film's narrator. 1987's under-appreciated End of the Line featured Levon as a small-town railroad employee alongside Wilford Brimley and Kevin Bacon. He played a Kentucky backwoods preacher in Fire Down Below. He played an eccentric old man in the 2005 film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and appeared as Gen. John Bell Hood in the 2009 film In the Electric Mist. He also had a brief cameo as a weapons expert in the film Shooter with Mark Wahlberg.
In 1983, the Band reunited without Robbie Robertson, at first playing with an expanded lineup that included the entire Cate Brothers Band, but in 1985 paring down and adding Jim Weider on guitar. In 1986, while on tour Manuel committed suicide. Helm, Danko, and Hudson continued in the Band, adding pianist Richard Bell and drummer/vocalist Randy Ciarlante and releasing the album Jericho in 1993 and High on the Hog in 1996. The final album from the Band was the 30th anniversary album, Jubilation released in 1998.
In 1989, Helm and Danko toured with drummer Ringo Starr as part of his All-Starr Band. Other musicians in the band included singer and guitarist Joe Walsh, singer and pianist Dr. John, singer and guitarist Nils Lofgren, singer Billy Preston, saxophonist Clarence Clemons, and drummer Jim Keltner. Garth Hudson was a guest on accordion on some dates. Helm played drums and harmonica and sang "The Weight" and "Up on Cripple Creek" each night.
In the televised 1989 Juno Awards celebration, the Band was inducted into the Juno Awards' Hall of Fame. Helm was not present at the ceremony, but a taped segment of him offering his thanks was broadcast after the acceptance speeches by Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson. Richard Manuel's children accepted the award on behalf of their father. To conclude the televised special, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Robbie Robertson performed "The Weight" with Blue Rodeo.
Helm performed with Danko and Hudson as the Band in 1990 at Roger Waters's epic The Wall – Live in Berlin Concert in Germany to an estimated 300,000 to half a million people.
In 1993, Helm published an autobiography entitled This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band.
The Midnight Ramble
Helm's performance career in the 2000s revolved mainly around the Midnight Ramble at his home and studio, "The Barn," in Woodstock, New York. These concerts, featuring Helm and various musical guests, allowed him to raise money for his medical bills and to resume performing after a bout with cancer that nearly ended his career.
In the late 1990s, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer after suffering hoarseness. Advised to undergo a laryngectomy, he instead underwent an arduous regimen of radiation treatments at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The tumor was then successfully removed, but Helm's vocal cords were damaged, and his clear, powerful tenor voice was replaced by a quiet rasp. Initially Helm only played drums and relied on guest vocalists at the Rambles, but eventually his singing voice grew stronger. On January 10, 2004, he sang again at his Ramble sessions. In 2007, during production of Dirt Farmer, Helm estimated that his singing voice was 80 percent recovered.
The Levon Helm Band featured his daughter Amy Helm, Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, Jim Weider (The Band's last guitarist), Jimmy Vivino, Mike Merritt, Brian Mitchell, Erik Lawrence, Steven Bernstein, Howard Johnson (tuba player in the horn section on the Band's Rock of Ages and The Last Waltz), Jay Collins (Helm's now former son-in-law), Byron Isaacs, and blues harmonica player Little Sammy Davis. Helm hosted Midnight Rambles that were open to the public at his home in Woodstock.
The Midnight Ramble was an outgrowth of an idea Helm explained to Martin Scorsese in The Last Waltz. Earlier in the 20th century, Helm recounted, traveling medicine shows and music shows such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, featuring African-American blues singers and dancers, would put on titillating performances in rural areas. (This was also turned into a song by the Band, "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show," with the name altered so the lyric was easier to sing.)
"After the finale, they'd have the midnight ramble," Helm told Scorsese. With young children off the premises, the show resumed: "The songs would get a little bit juicier. The jokes would get a little funnier and the prettiest dancer would really get down and shake it a few times. A lot of the rock and roll duck walks and moves came from that."
Artists who performed at the Rambles include Helm's former bandmate Garth Hudson, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Dr. John, Mavis Staples, Chris Robinson, Allen Toussaint, Donald Fagen and Jon Herington of Steely Dan, Jimmy Vivino (of the house band on Late Night with Conan O'Brien), the Max Weinberg 7, My Morning Jacket, Billy Bob Thornton, Alexis P. Suter, Sean Costello, the Muddy Waters Tribute Band, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Carolyn Wonderland, Kris Kristofferson, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Justin Townes Earle, Bow Thayer, Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, Rickie Lee Jones, Kate Taylor, Ollabelle, the Holmes Brothers, Catherine Russell, Norah Jones, Arlen Roth, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Phil Lesh (along with his sons Grahame and Brian), Hot Tuna (Jorma Kaukonen introduced the group as "the Secret Squirrels"), Michael Angelo D'Arrigo with various members of the Sistine Chapel, Johnny Johnson, Ithalia, David Bromberg, the Youngers, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.
During this period, Helm switched to the matched grip and adopted a less busy, greatly simplified drumming style, as opposed to the traditional grip he used during his years with the Band.
Helm was busy touring every year during the 2000s, generally traveling by tour bus to venues in eastern Canada and the eastern United States. After 2007, he performed in large venues such the Beacon Theater in New York. Dr. John and Warren Haynes (the Allman Brothers Band, Gov't Mule) and Garth Hudson played at the concerts along with several other guests. At a show in Vancouver Elvis Costello joined to sing "Tears of Rage". The Alexis P. Suter Band was a frequent opening act. Helm was a favorite of radio personality Don Imus and was frequently featured on Imus in the Morning. In the summer of 2009, it was reported that a reality television series centering on the Midnight Ramble was in development.
In 2012, Levon Helm and his "midnight rambles" were featured on the PBS Arts site, "Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders," including a poignant last interview with PBS's Marco Werman.
Dirt Farmer and comeback
The autumn of 2007 saw the release of Dirt Farmer, Helm's first studio solo album since 1982. Dedicated to his parents and co-produced by his daughter Amy, the album combines traditional tunes Levon recalled from his youth with newer songs (by Steve Earle, Paul Kennerley, and others) which flow from similar historical streams. The album was released to almost immediate critical acclaim, and earned him a Grammy Award in the Traditional Folk Album category for 2007. Also in 2007, Helm recorded "Toolin' Around Woodstock", and album with Arlen Roth on which Levon played drums and sang Sweet Little 16 and "Crying Time." This album also featured Levon's daughter Amy, and Roth's daughter Lexie, along with Sonny Landreth and Bill Kirchen.
Helm declined to attend the Grammy Awards ceremony, instead holding a "Midnight Gramble" and celebrating the birth of his grandson, Lavon (Lee) Henry Collins.
In 2008, Helm performed at Warren Haynes's Mountain Jam Music Festival in Hunter, New York playing alongside Haynes on the last day of the three-day festival. Helm also joined guitarist Bob Weir and his band RatDog on stage as they closed out the festival. Helm performed to great acclaim at the 2008 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.
Helm drummed on a couple of tracks for Jorma Kaukonen's February 2009 album River of Time, recorded at the Levon Helm studio.
Helm released the album Electric Dirt on his own label on June 30, 2009. Like Dirt Farmer, an aim of Electric Dirt was to capture of feel of Helm's Midnight Rambles. The album won a best album Grammy for the newly created Americana category in 2010. Helm performed on the CBS television program Late Show with David Letterman on July 9, 2009. He also toured that same year in a supporting role with the band Black Crowes.
A documentary on Helm's day-to-day life, entitled Ain't in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm was released in March 2010. Directed by Jacob Hatley, it made its debut at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas and went on to be screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June 2010. The film had a limited release in select theaters in the United States in the spring of 2013 and was released on DVD and Blu-ray later that year.
On May 11, 2011, Helm released Ramble at the Ryman, a live album recorded during his performance of September 17, 2008 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The album features Helm's band playing six songs by the Band and other cover material, including some songs from previous Helm solo releases. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Americana Album.
Illness and death
In April 2012, during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Cleveland, Robbie Robertson sent "love and prayers" to Helm, fueling speculation about Helm's health. Helm had previously cancelled a number of performances, citing health issues or a slipped disk in his back; his final performances took place in Tarrytown, New York at Tarrytown Music Hall on March 24, and a final Midnight Ramble (with Moonalice as the opening act) in Woodstock on March 31.
On April 17, 2012, Helm's wife Sandy and daughter Amy revealed that he had end-stage throat cancer. They posted the following message on Helm's website:
On April 18, Robertson revealed on his Facebook page that he had a long visit with Helm at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center the previous Sunday. On the same day, Garth Hudson posted on his personal website that he was "too sad for words". He then left a link for a video of himself and the Alexis P. Suter Band performing Bob Dylan's song "Knocking on Heaven's Door". Helm died on April 19, 2012, at 1:30 p.m. (EDT) due to complications from throat cancer at age 71.
Fans were invited to a public wake at Helm's Barn studio complex on April 26. Approximately 2,000 fans came to pay their respects to the rock icon. The following day, after a private funeral service and a procession through the streets of Woodstock, Helm was interred in the Woodstock Cemetery, within sight of the grave of his longtime bandmate and friend Rick Danko. Former President Bill Clinton issued a statement following Helm's passing.
Legacy
George Harrison said that while writing his 1970 song "All Things Must Pass", he imagined Levon Helm singing it.
Elton John's lyricist, Bernie Taupin named the song "Levon" after Helm, although the song is not actually about him. Both John and Taupin cited that they were inspired by Helm; Taupin saying in various interviews that they would "go down to their favourite record stores to buy The Band's records" along with Elton. In 1994, Helm was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Band.
Marc Cohn wrote the song "Listening to Levon" in 2007.
"The Man behind the Drums," written by Robert Earl Keen and Bill Whitbeck, appeared on Keen's 2009 album The Rose Hotel.
Tracy K. Smith's 2011 poem "Alternate Take", included in her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection Life on Mars, is dedicated to Helm. On the day of Helm's death, April 19, 2012, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, in a concert at the First Bank Center in Broomfield, Colorado, paid tribute to Levon by performing their song "The Best of Everything" and dedicating it to him.
At a concert on May 2, 2012, at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Helm. Springsteen called Helm "one of the greatest, greatest voices in country, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll ... staggering ... while playing the drums. Both his voice and his drumming were so incredibly personal. He had a feel on the drums that comes out of certain place in the past and you can't replicate it." Springsteen also said it was one of the songs that he had played with drummer Max Weinberg in Weinberg's audition with the band.
On June 2, 2012, at Mountain Jam, Gov't Mule along with the Levon Helm Band (with Lukas Nelson coming on stage for the closing song) played a tribute set, including "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Up on Cripple Creek,""It Makes No Difference," and closing with "The Weight".
A tribute concert called Love for Levon took place at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey on October 3, 2012. The concert featured many special guests who had collaborated with and were inspired by Helm and the Band, including Roger Waters, Garth Hudson, Joe Walsh, Gregg Allman, Bruce Hornsby, Jorma Kaukonen, John Mayer, Mavis Staples, My Morning Jacket, Marc Cohn, John Hiatt, Allen Toussaint, Jakob Dylan, Mike Gordon, and others. Proceeds from the concert were to "help support the lasting legacy of Levon Helm by helping his estate keep ownership of his home, barn and studio, and to continue the Midnight Ramble Sessions".
At the 2013 Grammy Awards, the Zac Brown Band, Mumford & Sons, Elton John, Mavis Staples, T-Bone Burnett, and Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard performed "The Weight" as a tribute to Levon and other recently deceased musicians. They also dedicated the song to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. In May 2013, the New York State Legislature approved a resolution to name State Route 375—the road which connects State Route 28 with the town of Woodstock—"Levon Helm Memorial Boulevard". Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill on June 20, 2013. In July 2017, U.S. 49 from Marvell, Arkansas to Helena–West Helena was named The Levon Helm Memorial Highway by Act 810 of the Arkansas State Legislature. The Levon Helm Legacy Project is raising money to commission a bronze bust of Helm and to restore his boyhood home. The house, originally located in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, was moved in 2015 to Marvell, where Helm attended school.
Personal life
Helm met singer-songwriter Libby Titus in April 1969, while the Band was recording its second album. They began a lengthy relationship which produced daughter Amy Helm (born December 3, 1970). Amy formed the band Ollabelle and performed with her father's band at the Midnight Rambles and other concerts.
Helm met Sandra Dodd in 1975 in California, while he was still involved with Titus. Helm and Dodd were married on September 7, 1981. They had no children together.
Discography
Studio
Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars (1977)
Levon Helm (1978)
American Son (1980)
Levon Helm (1982)
Dirt Farmer (2007)
Electric Dirt (2009)
Live
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume One (2006)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Two (2006)
Levon Helm & the RCO All Stars: Live at the Palladium NYC, New Years Eve 1977 (2006)
FestivalLink.Net presents: Levon Helm Band MerleFest Ramble (MerleFest, NC 4/26/08)
Ramble at the Ryman (2011)
The Midnight Ramble Sessions, Volume Three (2014)
Other
The Legend of Jesse James (1980)
Souvenir, Vol. 1 (1998)
The Imus Ranch Record (2008)
The Imus Ranch Record II (2010)
The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams (2011)
With Muddy Waters
The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album (Chess, 1975)
Filmography
References
External links
[ Allmusic]
1940 births
2012 deaths
ABC Records artists
American autobiographers
American country singer-songwriters
American country rock musicians
American folk rock musicians
American male singer-songwriters
American mandolinists
American multi-instrumentalists
American rock drummers
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Grammy Award winners
Male actors from Arkansas
People from Phillips County, Arkansas
Singer-songwriters from Arkansas
The Band members
Vanguard Records artists
20th-century Canadian male musicians
Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band members | true | [
"Damien Deadson is an American heavy metal project from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States, formed in 2009 by guitarist and vocalist Ryan Helm. As its main producer, singer and songwriter, Helm is the only official member of Damien Deadson and remains solely responsible for its direction.\n\nHistory\n\nFormation (2009)\nDamien Deadson was initially conceived as a solo project by Ryan Helm, who had previously played guitar in the band The Ascendicate, as an opportunity to take a break from guitar and focus on his interest in singing. Ryan began working on Damien Deadson in 2009 but had to put the project on hold after being asked to join the band Demon Hunter. In 2010 Ryan revived the project and began recording tracks in his home studio. Ryan personally recorded and performed all of the vocals and instruments, with the exception of drums. Despite beginning as a studio project, Helm would later put together a touring band for live performances.\n\nSince his departure from Demon Hunter, Ryan Helm has stated that he will be performing as Damien Deadson full-time.\n\nA Warm and Dark Embrace (2011-2012)\nIn late 2011 Ryan Helm announced the independent release of A Warm and Dark Embrace. Despite being officially unreleased to the public, the album was immediately met with positive reviews. The album was released on January 29, 2012. The band plans to tour extensively in support of the album throughout 2012.\n\nMusical style, influences and lyrical themes\nDamien Deadson's style is much darker and more technical than Helm's previous work, and is influenced by a much wider array of styles. The band's sound typically features a heavily down-tuned guitar setup, distinct percussion and occasional samples. Utilizing good neato styles, Damien Deadson typically features growled vocals, screaming, and melodic singing.\n\nHelm listed some bands that have influenced him personally and Damien Deadson's sound: Stabbing Westward, Emmure, Fear Factory, Deftones, Meshuggah, Rammstein, Bury Your Dead, Imogen Heap and Kanye West among others. Helm's music is also heavily influenced by his personal life and experiences.\n\nRyan has stated that, unlike his previous bands, Damien Deadson is not a \"Christian band\" and chooses to instead often focus his lyrical content on more secular topics. Such topics include love, anger, personal strife and self empowerment.\n\nMembers\nCurrent members\nRyan Helm – Lead vocals (founding member)\n\nCurrent touring members\n Adam Moore - Drums\n Tyler Gordon - Guitar\n Thomas Grell - Bass\nFormer touring members\nJosh Behnke – Drums and percussion\nCody Macri – Bass guitar\nLucas Polk – Guitar\nWill Guffin – Guitar\n\nDiscography\nA Warm and Dark Embrace (2012)\nCrown Me, Destroyer (2014)\nShadow Work (2015)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nDamien Deadson at Facebook\n\nAmerican metalcore musical groups\nMusical groups established in 2010\n2010 establishments in North Carolina",
"\"Midnight Lady\" is the first track on Marvin Gaye's 1982 album, Midnight Love. It contains sly references to Rick James and his hit, \"Super Freak\".\n\nBackground\nBy the recording of Midnight Love, Gaye was influenced by the different musical styles that were dominating the pop music scene of the 1980s from synthpop and new wave artists such as Duran Duran to rock artists such as John Lennon, a pop music contemporary he was often compared to, reggae legend Bob Marley and funk/R&B artists such as Prince, Michael Jackson and Rick James. For this song, the musical style of James, which mixed styles of funk, synthpop and new wave particularly on James' biggest crossover hit, \"Superfreak\", influenced the direction of what became \"Midnight Lady\". In its alternate demo version, later released on the Midnight Love and the Sexual Healing Sessions album, it's titled as \"Clique Games/Rick James\".\n\nAccording to biographer David Ritz, Gaye told him, \"Most of my life happens after midnight. Call me the 'Midnight Man'.\" Gaye played on most of the instruments on the song except for drums by James Gadson, the horn section by David Stout and The L.A. Horn Section and guitar by Gordon Banks. In the song, Gaye references going to a party \"last Saturday night\" where \"the club was rocking/superfreaks were hanging out/wall to wall\" and \"something's going on in the men's room\". Throughout the song, Gaye continues referencing the woman he's after as a \"superfreak\". Lyrically wise and musically wise, the influence of \"Superfreak\" was prominent. In one verse, Gaye tells the woman, \"somebody said you was a superfreak/I'm here to tell you I'm a superfreak, baby.\" Gaye would later admit he was influenced by James for the duration of the album as it progressed. The song was never released as a single but was issued as the first track off Midnight Love.\n\nCredits\nLead and background vocals by Marvin Gaye\nWritten, arranged and produced by Marvin Gaye\nAll instruments by Marvin Gaye except where notified:\nJames Gadson - drums\nGordon Banks - guitar\nDavid Stout and The L.A. Horn Section - horns\nHorn arrangement by McKinley T. Jackson\n\n1982 songs\nMarvin Gaye songs\nSongs written by Marvin Gaye\nSong recordings produced by Marvin Gaye"
] |
[
"Rudy Giuliani",
"Appointees as defendants"
] | C_7a9b28f537444b1fa4b7ec7d83b31da1_1 | How many appointees acted as defendants? | 1 | How many appointees acted as defendants for Rudy Giuliani? | Rudy Giuliani | Several of Giuliani's appointees to head City agencies became defendants in criminal proceedings. In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding, to head the New York City Housing Development Corporation, although Harding had neither a college degree nor relevant experience. In 2005, Harding pleaded guilty to defrauding the Housing Development Corporation and to possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Russell Harding committed suicide in 2012. In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury after lying to a grand jury about a car that Harding bought for him with City funds. Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign. Giuliani appointed him as the Commissioner of the Department of Correction and then as the Police Commissioner. Giuliani was also the godfather to Kerik's two youngest children. After Giuliani left office, Kerik was subject to state and federal investigations resulting in his pleading guilty in 2006, in a Bronx Supreme Court, to two unrelated ethics violations. Kerik was ordered to pay $221,000 in fines. Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009, in a New York district court, to eight federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements, and on February 18, 2010, he was sentenced to four years in federal prison. Giuliani was not implicated in any of the proceedings. CANNOTANSWER | In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding, | Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and disbarred attorney who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 1983 and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989.
Giuliani led the 1980s federal prosecution of New York City mafia bosses as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. After a failed campaign for Mayor of New York City in the 1989 election, he succeeded in 1993, and was reelected in 1997, campaigning on a "tough on crime" platform. He led New York's controversial "civic cleanup" as its mayor from 1994 to 2001. Mayor Giuliani appointed an outsider, William Bratton, as New York City's new police commissioner. Reforming the police department's administration and policing practices, they applied the broken windows theory, which cites social disorder, like disrepair and vandalism, for attracting loitering addicts, panhandlers, and prostitutes, followed by serious and violent criminals. In particular, Giuliani focused on removing panhandlers and sex clubs from Times Square, promoting a "family values" vibe and a return to the area's earlier focus on business, theater, and the arts. As crime rates fell steeply, well ahead of the national average pace, Giuliani was widely credited, though later critics cite other contributing factors. In 2000, he ran against First Lady Hillary Clinton for a US Senate seat from New York, but left the race once diagnosed with prostate cancer. For his mayoral leadership after the September11 attacks in 2001, he was called "America's mayor". He was named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2001, and was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
In 2002, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners, and acquired, but later sold, an investment banking firm, Giuliani Capital Advisors. In 2005, he joined a law firm, renamed Bracewell & Giuliani. Vying for the Republican Party's 2008 presidential nomination, Giuliani was an early frontrunner, yet did poorly in the primary election, withdrew, and endorsed the party's subsequent nominee, John McCain. Declining to run for New York governor in 2010 and for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, Giuliani focused on the activities of his business firms. In addition, he has often been engaged for public speaking, political commentary, and Republican campaign support.
Giuliani joined President Donald Trump's personal legal team in April 2018. His activities as Trump's attorney have drawn renewed media scrutiny, including allegations that he engaged in corruption and profiteering. In late 2019, Giuliani was reportedly under federal investigation for violating lobbying laws, and possibly several other charges, as a central figure in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which resulted in Trump's first impeachment. Following the 2020 presidential election, he represented Trump in many lawsuits filed in attempts to overturn the election results, making false and debunked allegations about rigged voting machines, polling place fraud, and an international communist conspiracy. As a consequence, his license to practice law was suspended in New York State in June 2021 and in the District of Columbia in July 2021.
Early life
Giuliani was born in the East Flatbush section, then an Italian-American enclave, in New York City's borough of Brooklyn, the only child of working-class parents Helen (née D'Avanzo; 1909–2002) and Harold Angelo Giuliani (1908–1981), both children of Italian immigrants. Giuliani is of Tuscan descent on his father's side, as his paternal grandparents (Rodolfo and Evangelina Giuliani) were born in Montecatini Terme, Tuscany, Italy. He was raised a Roman Catholic. Harold Giuliani, a plumber and a bartender, had trouble holding a job, was convicted of felony assault and robbery, and served prison time in Sing Sing. Once released, he worked as an enforcer for his brother-in-law Leo D'Avanzo, who operated an organized crime-affiliated loan sharking and gambling ring at a restaurant in Brooklyn. The couple lived in East Flatbush until Harold died of prostate cancer in 1981, whereupon Helen moved to Manhattan's Upper East Side.
When Giuliani was seven years old in 1951, his family moved from Brooklyn to Garden City South, where he attended the local Catholic school, St. Anne's. Later, he commuted back to Brooklyn to attend Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, graduating in 1961.
Giuliani attended Manhattan College in Riverdale, Bronx, where he majored in political science with a minor in philosophy and considered becoming a priest.
Giuliani was elected president of his class in his sophomore year, but was not re-elected in his junior year. He joined the Phi Rho Pi college forensic fraternity and honor society. He graduated in 1965. Giuliani decided to forgo the priesthood and instead attended the New York University School of Law in Manhattan, where he made the NYU Law Review and graduated cum laude with a Juris Doctor degree in 1968.
Giuliani started his political life as a Democrat. He volunteered for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968. He also worked as a Democratic Party committeeman on Long Island in the mid-1960s and voted for George McGovern for president in 1972.
Legal career
Upon graduation from law school, Giuliani clerked for Judge Lloyd Francis MacMahon, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.
Giuliani did not serve in the military during the Vietnam War. His conscription was deferred while he was enrolled at Manhattan College and NYU Law. Upon graduation from the latter in 1968, he was classified 1-A (available for military service), but in 1969 he was reclassified 2-A (essential civilian) as Judge MacMahon's law clerk. In 1970, Giuliani was reclassified 1-A but received a high 308 draft lottery number and was not called up for service.
Giuliani switched his party registration from Democratic to Independent in 1975. This occurred during a period of time in which he was recruited for a position in Washington, D.C. with the Ford administration: Giuliani served as the Associate Deputy Attorney General and chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Harold "Ace" Tyler.
His first high-profile prosecution was of Democratic U.S. Representative Bertram L. Podell (NY-13), who was convicted of corruption. Podell pleaded guilty to conspiracy and conflict of interest for accepting more than $41,000 in campaign contributions and legal fees from a Florida airline to obtain federal rights for a Bahama route. Podell, who maintained a legal practice while serving in Congress, said the payments were legitimate legal fees. The Washington Post later reported: "The trial catapulted future New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani to front-page status when, as assistant U.S. attorney, he relentlessly cross-examined an initially calm Rep. Podell. The congressman reportedly grew more flustered and eventually decided to plead guilty."
From 1977 to 1981, during the Carter administration, Giuliani practiced law at the Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler law firm, as chief of staff to his former boss, Ace Tyler. In later years, Tyler became "disillusioned" by what Tyler described as Giuliani's time as US Attorney, criticizing several of his prosecutions as "overkill".
On December 8, 1980, one month after the election of Ronald Reagan brought Republicans back to power in Washington, he switched his party affiliation from Independent to Republican. Giuliani later said the switches were because he found Democratic policies "naïve", and that "by the time I moved to Washington, the Republicans had come to make more sense to me." Others suggested that the switches were made in order to get positions in the Justice Department. Giuliani's mother maintained in 1988 that he "only became a Republican after he began to get all these jobs from them. He's definitely not a conservative Republican. He thinks he is, but he isn't. He still feels very sorry for the poor."
In 1981, Giuliani was named Associate Attorney General in the Reagan administration, the third-highest position in the Department of Justice. As Associate Attorney General, Giuliani supervised the U.S. Attorney Offices' federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the United States Marshals Service. In a well-publicized 1982 case, Giuliani testified in defense of the federal government's "detention posture" regarding the internment of more than 2,000 Haitian asylum seekers who had entered the country illegally. The U.S. government disputed the assertion that most of the detainees had fled their country due to political persecution, alleging instead that they were "economic migrants". In defense of the government's position, Giuliani testified that "political repression, at least in general, does not exist" under President of Haiti Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime.
In 1983, Giuliani was appointed to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which was technically a demotion but was sought by Giuliani because of his desire to personally litigate cases and because the SDNY is considered the highest profile United States Attorney's Office in the country, and as such, is often used by those who have held the position as a springboard for running for public office. It was in this position that he first gained national prominence by prosecuting numerous high-profile cases, resulting in the convictions of Wall Street figures Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. He also focused on prosecuting drug dealers, organized crime, and corruption in government. He amassed a record of 4,152 convictions and 25 reversals. As a federal prosecutor, Giuliani was credited with bringing the perp walk, parading of suspects in front of the previously alerted media, into common use as a prosecutorial tool. After Giuliani "patented the perp walk", the tool was used by increasing numbers of prosecutors nationwide.
Giuliani's critics claimed that he arranged for people to be arrested, then dropped charges for lack of evidence on high-profile cases rather than going to trial. In a few cases, his arrests of alleged white-collar criminals at their workplaces with charges later dropped or lessened, sparked controversy, and damaged the reputations of the alleged "perps". He claimed veteran stock trader Richard Wigton, of Kidder, Peabody & Co., was guilty of insider trading; in February 1987, he had officers handcuff Wigton and march him through the company's trading floor, with Wigton in tears. Giuliani had his agents arrest Tim Tabor, a young arbitrageur and former colleague of Wigton, so late that he had to stay overnight in jail before posting bond.
Within three months, charges were dropped against both Wigton and Tabor; Giuliani said, "We're not going to go to trial. We're just the tip of the iceberg," but no further charges were forthcoming and the investigation did not end until Giuliani's successor was in place. Giuliani's high-profile raid of the Princeton/Newport firm ended with the defendants having their cases overturned on appeal on the grounds that what they had been convicted of were not crimes.
Mafia Commission trial
In the Mafia Commission Trial, which ran from February 25, 1985, through November 19, 1986, Giuliani indicted eleven organized crime figures, including the heads of New York City's so-called "Five Families", under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) on charges including extortion, labor racketeering, and murder for hire. Time magazine called this "Case of Cases" possibly "the most significant assault on the infrastructure of organized crime since the high command of the Chicago Mafia was swept away in 1943", and quoted Giuliani's stated intention: "Our approach is to wipe out the five families." Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano evaded conviction when he and his underboss, Thomas Bilotti, were murdered on the streets of Midtown Manhattan on December 16, 1985. However, three heads of the Five Families were sentenced to 100 years in prison on January 13, 1987. Genovese and Colombo leaders, Tony Salerno and Carmine Persico received additional sentences in separate trials, with 70-year and 39-year sentences to run consecutively. He was assisted by three Assistant United States Attorneys: Michael Chertoff, the eventual second United States Secretary of Homeland Security and co-author of the Patriot Act; John Savarese, now a partner at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz; and Gil Childers, a later deputy chief of the criminal division for the Southern District of New York and now managing director in the legal department at Goldman Sachs.
According to an FBI memo revealed in 2007, leaders of the Five Families voted in late 1986 on whether to issue a contract for Giuliani's death. Heads of the Lucchese, Bonanno, and Genovese families rejected the idea, though Colombo and Gambino leaders, Carmine Persico and John Gotti, encouraged assassination. In 2014, it was revealed by a former Sicilian Mafia member and informant, Rosario Naimo, that Salvatore Riina, a notorious Sicilian Mafia leader, had ordered a murder contract on Giuliani during the mid-1980s. Riina allegedly was suspicious of Giuliani's efforts prosecuting the American Mafia and was worried that he might have spoken with Italian anti-mafia prosecutors and politicians, including Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who were both murdered in 1992 in separate car bombings. According to Giuliani, the Sicilian Mafia offered $800,000 for his death during his first year as mayor of New York in 1994.
Boesky, Milken trials
Ivan Boesky, a Wall Street arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of about $200million by betting on corporate takeovers, was originally investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for making investments based on tips received from corporate insiders, leading the way for the US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York to investigate as well. These stock and options acquisitions were sometimes brazen, with massive purchases occurring only a few days before a corporation announced a takeover. Although insider trading of this kind was illegal, laws prohibiting it were rarely enforced until Boesky was prosecuted. Boesky cooperated with the SEC and informed on several others, including junk bond trader Michael Milken. Per agreement with Giuliani, Boesky received a -year prison sentence along with a $100million fine. In 1989, Giuliani charged Milken under the RICO Act with 98 counts of racketeering and fraud. In a highly publicized case, Milken was indicted by a grand jury on these charges.
Mayoral campaigns
Giuliani was U.S. Attorney until January 1989, resigning as the Reagan administration ended. He garnered criticism until he left office for his handling of cases, and was accused of prosecuting cases to further his political ambitions. He joined the law firm White & Case in New York City as a partner. He remained with White & Case until May 1990, when he joined the law firm Anderson Kill Olick & Oshinsky, also in New York City.
1989
Giuliani first ran for New York City mayor in 1989, when he attempted to unseat three-term incumbent Ed Koch. He won the September 1989 Republican Party primary election against business magnate Ronald Lauder, in a campaign marked by claims that Giuliani was not a true Republican after an acrimonious debate between the two men. In the Democratic primary, Koch was upset by Manhattan Borough president David Dinkins.
In the general election, Giuliani ran as the fusion candidate of both the Republican and the Liberal parties. The Conservative Party, which had often co-lined the Republican party candidate, withheld support from Giuliani and ran Lauder instead. Conservative Party leaders were unhappy with Giuliani on ideological grounds. They cited the Liberal Party's endorsement statement that Giuliani "agreed with the Liberal Party's views on affirmative action, gay rights, gun control, school prayer and tuition tax credits".
During two televised debates, Giuliani framed himself as an agent of change, saying, "I'm the reformer," that "If we keep going merrily along, this city's going down," and that electing Dinkins would represent "more of the same, more of the rotten politics that have been dragging us down". Giuliani pointed out that Dinkins had not filed a tax return for many years and of several other ethical missteps, in particular a stock transfer to his son. Dinkins filed several years of returns and said the tax matter had been fully paid off. He denied other wrongdoing, saying "what we need is a mayor, not a prosecutor," and that Giuliani refused to say "the R-wordhe doesn't like to admit he's a Republican". Dinkins won the endorsements of three of the four daily New York newspapers, while Giuliani won approval from the New York Post.
In the end, Giuliani lost to Dinkins by a margin of 47,080 votes out of 1,899,845 votes cast, in the closest election in New York City's history. The closeness of the race was particularly noteworthy considering the small percentage of New York City residents who are registered Republicans and resulted in Giuliani being the presumptive nominee for a rematch with Dinkins at the next election.
1993
Four years after his defeat to Dinkins, Giuliani again ran for mayor. Once again, Giuliani also ran on the Liberal Party line but not the Conservative Party line, which ran activist George Marlin.
Although crime had begun to fall during the Dinkins administration, Giuliani's campaign capitalized on the perception that crime was uncontrolled in the city following events such as the Crown Heights riot and the Family Red Apple boycott. The year prior to the election, Giuliani was a key speaker at a Patrolmen's Benevolent Association rally opposing Dinkins, in which Giuliani blamed the police department's low morale on Dinkins' leadership. The rally quickly devolved into a riot, with nearly 4,000 off-duty police officers storming the City Hall and blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.
In his pitch to lower crime rates in the city, Giuliani promised to focus police resources toward shutting down petty crimes and nuisances as a way of restoring the quality of life:
Dinkins and Giuliani never debated during the campaign, because they were never able to agree on how to approach a debate. Dinkins was endorsed by The New York Times and Newsday, while Giuliani was endorsed by the New York Post and, in a key switch from 1989, the Daily News. Giuliani went to visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, seeking his blessing and endorsement.
On election day, Giuliani's campaign hired off-duty cops, firefighters, and corrections officers to monitor polling places in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and The Bronx for cases of voter fraud. Despite objections from the Dinkins campaign, who claimed that the effort would intimidate Democratic voters, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly assigned an additional 52 police captains and 3,500 officers to monitor the city's polling places.
Giuliani won by a margin of 53,367 votes. He became the first Republican elected Mayor of New York City since John Lindsay in 1965. Similar to the election four years prior, Giuliani performed particularly well in the white ethnic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Giuliani saw especially high returns in the borough of Staten Island, as a referendum to consider allowing the borough to secede from New York City was on the ballot.
1997
Giuliani's opponent in 1997 was Democratic Manhattan Borough president Ruth Messinger, who had beaten Al Sharpton in the September 9, 1997 Democratic primary. In the general election, Giuliani once again had the Liberal Party and not the Conservative Party listing. Giuliani ran an aggressive campaign, parlaying his image as a tough leader who had cleaned up the city. Giuliani's popularity was at its highest point to date, with a late October 1997 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showing him as having a 68 percent approval rating; 70 percent of New Yorkers were satisfied with life in the city and 64 percent said things were better in the city compared to four years previously.
Throughout the campaign he was well ahead in the polls and had a strong fund-raising advantage over Messinger. On her part, Messinger lost the support of several usually Democratic constituencies, including gay organizations and large labor unions. The local daily newspapersThe New York Times, Daily News, New York Post and Newsdayall endorsed Giuliani over Messinger.
In the end, Giuliani won 58% of the vote to Messinger's 41%, and became the first registered Republican to win a second term as mayor while on the Republican line since Fiorello H. La Guardia in 1941. Voter turnout was the lowest in twelve years, with 38% of registered voters casting ballots. The margin of victory included gains in his share of the African American vote (20% compared to 1993's 5%) and the Hispanic vote (43% from 37%) while maintaining his base of white ethnic, Catholic and Jewish voters from 1993.
Mayoralty
Giuliani served as mayor of New York City from 1994 through 2001.
Law enforcement
In Giuliani's first term as mayor, the New York City Police Departmentat the instigation of Commissioner Bill Brattonadopted an aggressive enforcement/deterrent strategy based on James Q. Wilson's "Broken Windows" approach. This involved crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as graffiti, turnstile jumping, cannabis possession, and aggressive panhandling by "squeegee men", on the theory that this would send a message that order would be maintained. The legal underpinning for removing the "squeegee men" from the streets was developed under Giuliani's predecessor, Mayor David Dinkins. Bratton, with Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple, also created and instituted CompStat, a computer-driven comparative statistical approach to mapping crime geographically and in terms of emerging criminal patterns, as well as charting officer performance by quantifying criminal apprehensions. Critics of the system assert that it creates an environment in which police officials are encouraged to underreport or otherwise manipulate crime data. An extensive study found a high correlation between crime rates reported by the police through CompStat and rates of crime available from other sources, suggesting there had been no manipulation. The CompStat initiative won the 1996 Innovations in Government Award from the Kennedy School of Government.
During Giuliani's administration, crime rates dropped in New York City. The extent to which Giuliani deserves the credit is disputed. Crime rates in New York City had started to drop in 1991 under previous mayor David Dinkins, three years before Giuliani took office. The rates of most crimes, including all categories of violent crime, made consecutive declines during the last 36 months of Dinkins's four-year term, ending a 30-year upward spiral. A small nationwide drop in crime preceded Giuliani's election, and some critics say he may have been the beneficiary of a trend already in progress. Additional contributing factors to the overall decline in New York City crime during the 1990s were the addition of 7,000 officers to the NYPD, lobbied for and hired by the Dinkins administration, and an overall improvement in the national economy. Changing demographics were a key factor contributing to crime rate reductions, which were similar across the country during this time. Because the crime index is based on that of the FBI, which is self-reported by police departments, some have alleged that crimes were shifted into categories the FBI does not collect.
Some studies conclude that the decline in New York City's crime rate in the 1990s and 2000s exceeds all national figures and therefore should be linked with a local dynamic that was not present as such anywhere else in the country: what University of California, Berkeley sociologist Frank Zimring calls "the most focused form of policing in history". In his book The Great American Crime Decline, Zimring argues that "up to half of New York's crime drop in the 1990s, and virtually 100 percent of its continuing crime decline since 2000, has resulted from policing."
Bratton was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1996. Giuliani reportedly forced Bratton out after two years, in what was seen as a battle of two large egos in which Giuliani was not tolerant of Bratton's celebrity. Bratton went on to become chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Giuliani's term also saw allegations of civil rights abuses and other police misconduct under other commissioners after Bratton's departure. There were police shootings of unarmed suspects, and the scandals surrounding the torture of Abner Louima and the killings of Amadou Diallo, Gidone Busch and Patrick Dorismond. Giuliani supported the New York City Police Department, for example by releasing what he called Dorismond's "extensive criminal record" to the public, including a sealed juvenile file.
City services
The Giuliani administration advocated the privatization of the city's public schools, which he called "dysfunctional", and advocated the reduction of state funding for them. He advocated for a voucher-based system to promote private schooling. Giuliani supported protection for illegal immigrants. He continued a policy of preventing city employees from contacting the Immigration and Naturalization Service about immigration violations, on the grounds that illegal aliens should be able to take actions such as sending their children to school or reporting crimes to the police without fear of deportation.
During his mayoralty, gay and lesbian New Yorkers received domestic partnership rights. Giuliani induced the city's Democratic-controlled New York City Council, which had avoided the issue for years, to pass legislation providing broad protection for same-sex partners. In 1998, he codified local law by granting all city employees equal benefits for their domestic partners.
2000 U.S. Senate campaign
Due to term limits, Giuliani was ineligible to run in 2001 for a third term as mayor. In November 1998, four-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement and Giuliani immediately indicated an interest in running in the 2000 election for the now-open seat. Due to his high profile and visibility Giuliani was supported by the state Republican Party. Giuliani's entrance led Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel and others to recruit then-First Lady Hillary Clinton to run for Moynihan's seat, hoping she might combat his star power.
An early January 1999 poll showed Giuliani trailing Clinton by ten points. In April 1999, Giuliani formed an exploratory committee in connection with the Senate run. By January 2000, polling for the race dramatically reversed, with Giuliani now pulling nine points ahead of Clinton, in part because his campaign was able to take advantage of several campaign stumbles by Clinton. Nevertheless, the Giuliani campaign was showing some structural weaknesses; so closely identified with New York City, he had somewhat limited appeal to normally Republican voters in Upstate New York. The New York Police Department's fatal shooting of Patrick Dorismond in March 2000 inflamed Giuliani's already strained relations with the city's minority communities, and Clinton seized on it as a major campaign issue. By April 2000, reports showed Clinton gaining upstate and generally outworking Giuliani, who said his duties as mayor prevented him from campaigning more. Clinton was now eight to ten points ahead of Giuliani in the polls.
Then followed four tumultuous weeks in which Giuliani learned he had prostate cancer and needed treatment; his extramarital relationship with Judith Nathan became public and the subject of a media frenzy; and he announced a separation from his wife Donna Hanover. After much indecision, on May 19, Giuliani announced his withdrawal from the Senate race.
September 11 terrorist attacks
Response
Giuliani received nationwide attention in the aftermath of the September11 attacks. He made frequent appearances on radio and television on September11 and afterwardsfor example, to indicate that tunnels would be closed as a precautionary measure, and that there was no reason to believe the dispersion of chemical or biological weaponry into the air was a factor in the attack. In his public statements, Giuliani said:
The 9/11 attacks occurred on the scheduled date of the mayoral primary to select the Democratic and Republican candidates to succeed Giuliani. The primary was immediately delayed two weeks to September 25. During this period, Giuliani sought an unprecedented three-month emergency extension of his term from January1 to April1 under the New York State Constitution (Article3 Section 25). He threatened to challenge the law imposing term limits on elected city officials and run for another full four-year term, if the primary candidates did not consent to the extension of his mayoralty. In the end leaders in the State Assembly and Senate indicated that they did not believe the extension was necessary. The election proceeded as scheduled, and the winning candidate, the Giuliani-endorsed Republican convert Michael Bloomberg, took office on January 1, 2002, per normal custom.
Giuliani claimed to have been at the Ground Zero site "as often, if not more, than most workers... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them." Some 9/11 workers have objected to those claims. While his appointment logs were unavailable for the six days immediately following the attacks, Giuliani logged 29 hours at the site over three months beginning September 17. This contrasted with recovery workers at the site who spent this much time at the site in two to three days.
When Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal suggested the attacks were an indication that the United States "should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause," Giuliani asserted, "There is no moral equivalent for this act. There is no justification for it... And one of the reasons I think this happened is because people were engaged in moral equivalency in not understanding the difference between liberal democracies like the United States, like Israel, and terrorist states and those who condone terrorism. So I think not only are those statements wrong, they're part of the problem." Giuliani subsequently rejected the prince's $10million donation to disaster relief in the aftermath of the attack.
Emergency command center location and communications problems
Giuliani has been widely criticized for his decision to locate the Office of Emergency Management headquarters on the 23rd floor inside the 7 World Trade Center building. Those opposing the decision perceived the office as a target for a terrorist attack in light of the previous terrorist attack against the World Trade Center in 1993. The office was unable to coordinate efforts between police and firefighters properly while evacuating its headquarters. Large tanks of diesel fuel were placed in 7World Trade to power the command center. In May 1997, Giuliani put responsibility for selecting the location on Jerome M. Hauer, who had served under Giuliani from 1996 to 2000 before being appointed by him as New York City's first Director of Emergency Management. Hauer has taken exception to that account in interviews and provided Fox News and New York Magazine with a memo demonstrating that he recommended a location in Brooklyn but was overruled by Giuliani. Television journalist Chris Wallace interviewed Giuliani on May 13, 2007, about his 1997 decision to locate the command center at the World Trade Center. Giuliani laughed during Wallace's questions and said that Hauer recommended the World Trade Center site and claimed that Hauer said the WTC site was the best location. Wallace presented Giuliani a photocopy of Hauer's directive letter. The letter urged Giuliani to locate the command center in Brooklyn, instead of lower Manhattan. The February 1996 memo read, "The [Brooklyn] building is secure and not as visible a target as buildings in Lower Manhattan."
In January 2008, an eight-page memo was revealed which detailed the New York City Police Department's opposition in 1998 to location of the city's emergency command center at the Trade Center site. The Giuliani administration overrode these concerns.
The 9/11 Commission Report noted that lack of preparedness could have led to the deaths of first responders at the scene of the attacks. The Commission noted that the radios in use by the fire department were the same radios which had been criticized for their ineffectiveness following the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. Family members of 9/11 victims have said these radios were a complaint of emergency services responders for years. The radios were not working when Fire Department chiefs ordered the 343 firefighters inside the towers to evacuate, and they remained in the towers as the towers collapsed. However, when Giuliani testified before the 9/11 Commission he said the firefighters ignored the evacuation order out of an effort to save lives. Giuliani testified to the commission, where some family members of responders who had died in the attacks appeared to protest his statements. A 1994 mayoral office study of the radios indicated that they were faulty. Replacement radios were purchased in a $33million no-bid contract with Motorola, and implemented in early 2001. However, the radios were recalled in March 2001 after a probationary firefighter's calls for help at a house fire could not be picked up by others at the scene, leaving firemen with the old analog radios from 1993. A book later published by Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, argued that the commission had not pursued a tough enough line of questioning with Giuliani.
An October 2001 study by the National Institute of Environmental Safety and Health said cleanup workers lacked adequate protective gear.
Public reaction
Giuliani gained international attention in the wake of the attacks and was widely hailed for his leadership role during the crisis. Polls taken just six weeks after the attack showed a 79 percent approval rating among New York City voters. This was a dramatic increase over the 36 percent rating he had received a year earlier, which was an average at the end of a two-term mayorship. Oprah Winfrey called him "America's Mayor" at a 9/11 memorial service held at Yankee Stadium on September 23, 2001. Other voices denied it was the mayor who had pulled the city together. "You didn't bring us together, our pain brought us together and our decency brought us together. We would have come together if Bozo was the mayor," said civil rights activist Al Sharpton, in a statement largely supported by Fernando Ferrer, one of three main candidates for the mayoralty at the end of 2001. "He was a power-hungry person," Sharpton also said.
Giuliani was praised by some for his close involvement with the rescue and recovery efforts, but others argue that "Giuliani has exaggerated the role he played after the terrorist attacks, casting himself as a hero for political gain." Giuliani has collected $11.4million from speaking fees in a single year (with increased demand after the attacks). Before September11, Giuliani's assets were estimated to be somewhat less than $2million, but his net worth could now be as high as 30 times that amount. He has made most of his money since leaving office.
Time Person of the Year
On December 24, 2001, Time magazine named Giuliani its Person of the Year for 2001. Time observed that, before 9/11, Giuliani's public image had been that of a rigid, self-righteous, ambitious politician. After 9/11, and perhaps owing also to his bout with prostate cancer, his public image became that of a man who could be counted on to unite a city in the midst of its greatest crisis. Historian Vincent J. Cannato concluded in September 2006:
Aftermath
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was given an honorary knighthood (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani initially downplayed the health effects arising from the September 11 attacks in the Financial District and lower Manhattan areas in the vicinity of the World Trade Center site. He moved quickly to reopen Wall Street, and it was reopened on September 17. In the first month after the attacks, he said "The air quality is safe and acceptable."
Giuliani took control away from agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, leaving the "largely unknown" city Department of Design and Construction in charge of recovery and cleanup. Documents indicate that the Giuliani administration never enforced federal requirements requiring the wearing of respirators. Concurrently, the administration threatened companies with dismissal if cleanup work slowed. In June 2007, Christie Todd Whitman, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), reportedly said the EPA had pushed for workers at the WTC site to wear respirators but she had been blocked by Giuliani. She said she believed the subsequent lung disease and deaths suffered by WTC responders were a result of these actions. However, former deputy mayor Joe Lhota, then with the Giuliani campaign, replied, "All workers at Ground Zero were instructed repeatedly to wear their respirators."
Giuliani asked the city's Congressional delegation to limit the city's liability for Ground Zero illnesses to a total of $350million. Two years after Giuliani finished his term, FEMA appropriated $1billion to a special insurance fund, called the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company, to protect the city against 9/11 lawsuits.
In February 2007, the International Association of Fire Fighters issued a letter asserting that Giuliani rushed to conclude the recovery effort once gold and silver had been recovered from World Trade Center vaults and thereby prevented the remains of many victims from being recovered: "Mayor Giuliani's actions meant that fire fighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills Landfill," it said, adding: "Hundreds remained entombed in Ground Zero when Giuliani gave up on them." Lawyers for the International Association of Fire Fighters seek to interview Giuliani under oath as part of a federal legal action alleging that New York City negligently dumped body parts and other human remains in the Fresh Kills Landfill.
Post-mayoralty
Politics
Before 2008 election
Since leaving office as mayor, Giuliani has remained politically active by campaigning for Republican candidates for political offices at all levels. When George Pataki became Governor in 1995, this represented the first time the positions of both Mayor and Governor were held simultaneously by Republicans since John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. Giuliani and Pataki were instrumental in bringing the 2004 Republican National Convention to New York City. He was a speaker at the convention, and endorsed President George W. Bush for re-election by recalling that immediately after the World Trade Center towers fell,
Similarly, in June 2006, Giuliani started a website called Solutions America to help elect Republican candidates across the nation.
After campaigning on Bush's behalf in the U.S. presidential election of 2004, he was reportedly the top choice for Secretary of Homeland Security after Tom Ridge's resignation. When suggestions were made that Giuliani's confirmation hearings would be marred by details of his past affairs and scandals, he turned down the offer and instead recommended his friend and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. After the formal announcement of Kerik's nomination, information about Kerik's pastmost notably, that he had ties to organized crime, had failed to properly report gifts he had received, had been sued for sexual harassment and had employed an undocumented alien as a domestic servantbecame known, and Kerik withdrew his nomination.
On March 15, 2006, Congress formed the Iraq Study Group (ISG). This bipartisan ten-person panel, of which Giuliani was one of the members, was charged with assessing the Iraq War and making recommendations. They would eventually unanimously conclude that contrary to Bush administration assertions, "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" and called for "changes in the primary mission" that would allow "the United States to begin to move its forces out of Iraq".
On May 24, 2006, after missing all the group's meetings, including a briefing from General David Petraeus, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, Giuliani resigned from the panel, citing "previous time commitments". Giuliani's fundraising schedule had kept him from participating in the panel, a schedule which raised $11.4million in speaking fees over fourteen months, and that Giuliani had been forced to resign after being given "an ultimatum to either show up for meetings or leave the group" by group leader James Baker. Giuliani subsequently said he had started thinking about running for president, and being on the panel might give it a political spin.
Giuliani was described by Newsweek in January 2007 as "one of the most consistent cheerleaders for the president's handling of the war in Iraq" and as of June 2007, he remained one of the few candidates for president to unequivocally support both the basis for the invasion and the execution of the war.
Giuliani spoke in support of the removal of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK, also PMOI, MKO) from the United States State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The group was on the State Department list from 1997 until September 2012. They were placed on the list for killing six Americans in Iran during the 1970s and attempting to attack the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992. Giuliani, along with other former government officials and politicians Ed Rendell, R. James Woolsey, Porter Goss, Louis Freeh, Michael Mukasey, James L. Jones, Tom Ridge, and Howard Dean, were criticized for their involvement with the group. Some were subpoenaed during an inquiry about who was paying the prominent individuals' speaking fees. Giuliani and others wrote an article for the conservative publication National Review stating their position that the group should not be classified as a terrorist organization. They supported their position by pointing out that the United Kingdom and the European Union had already removed the group from their terrorism lists. They further assert that only the United States and Iran still listed it as a terrorist group. However, Canada did not delist the group until December 2012.
2008 presidential campaign
In November 2006, Giuliani announced the formation of an exploratory committee toward a run for the presidency in 2008. In February 2007, he filed a "statement of candidacy" and confirmed on the television program Larry King Live that he was indeed running.
Early polls showed Giuliani with one of the highest levels of name recognition ever recorded along with high levels of support among the Republican candidates. Throughout most of 2007, he was the leader in most nationwide opinion polling among Republicans. Senator John McCain, who ranked a close second behind the New York Mayor, had faded, and most polls showed Giuliani to have more support than any of the other declared Republican candidates, with only former Senator Fred Thompson and former Governor Mitt Romney showing greater support in some per-state Republican polls. On November 7, 2007, Giuliani's campaign received an endorsement from evangelist, Christian Broadcasting Network founder, and past presidential candidate Pat Robertson. This was viewed by political observers as a possibly key development in the race, as it gave credence that evangelicals and other social conservatives could support Giuliani despite some of his positions on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.
Giuliani's campaign hit a difficult stretch during the last two months of 2007, when Bernard Kerik, whom Giuliani had recommended for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security, was indicted on 16 counts of tax fraud and other federal charges. The media reported that when Giuliani was the mayor of New York, he billed several tens of thousands of dollars of mayoral security expenses to obscure city agencies. Those expenses were incurred while he visited Judith Nathan, with whom he was having an extramarital affair (later analysis showed the billing to likely be unrelated to hiding Nathan). Several stories were published in the press regarding clients of Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani who were in opposition to goals of American foreign policy. Giuliani's national poll numbers began steadily slipping and his unusual strategy of focusing more on later, multi-primary big states rather than the smaller, first-voting states was seen at risk.
Despite his strategy, Giuliani competed to a substantial extent in the January 8, 2008, New Hampshire primary but finished a distant fourth with 9percent of the vote. Similar poor results continued in other early contests, when Giuliani's staff went without pay in order to focus all efforts on the crucial late January Florida Republican primary. The shift of the electorate's focus from national security to the state of the economy also hurt Giuliani, as did the resurgence of McCain's similarly themed campaign. On January 29, 2008, Giuliani finished a distant third in the Florida result with 15percent of the vote, trailing McCain and Romney. Facing declining polls and lost leads in the upcoming large Super Tuesday states, including that of his home New York, Giuliani withdrew from the race on January 30, endorsing McCain.
Giuliani's campaign ended up $3.6million in arrears, and in June 2008 Giuliani sought to retire the debt by proposing to appear at Republican fundraisers during the 2008 general election, and have part of the proceeds go towards his campaign. During the 2008 Republican National Convention, Giuliani gave a prime-time speech that praised McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, while criticizing Democratic nominee Barack Obama. He cited Palin's executive experience as a mayor and governor and belittled Obama's lack of same, and his remarks were met with wild applause from the delegates. Giuliani continued to be one of McCain's most active surrogates during the remainder of McCain's eventually unsuccessful campaign.
After 2008 election
Following the end of his presidential campaign, Giuliani's "high appearance fees dropped like a stone". He returned to work at both Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani. His consultancy work included advising Keiko Fujimori with her presidential campaign during the 2011 Peruvian general election. Giuliani also explored hosting a syndicated radio show, and was reported to be in talks with Westwood One about replacing Bill O'Reilly before that position went to Fred Thompson (another unsuccessful 2008 GOP presidential primary candidate). During the March 2009 AIG bonus payments controversy, Giuliani called for U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to step down and said the Obama administration lacked executive competence in dealing with the ongoing financial crisis.
Giuliani said his political career was not necessarily over, and did not rule out a 2010 New York gubernatorial or 2012 presidential bid. A November 2008 Siena College poll indicated that although Governor David Patersonpromoted to the office via the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal a year beforewas popular among New Yorkers, he would have just a slight lead over Giuliani in a hypothetical matchup. By February 2009, after the prolonged Senate appointment process, a Siena College poll indicated that Paterson was losing popularity among New Yorkers, and showed Giuliani with a fifteen-point lead in the hypothetical contest. In January 2009, Giuliani said he would not decide on a gubernatorial run for another six to eight months, adding that he thought it would not be fair to the governor to start campaigning early while the governor tries to focus on his job. Giuliani worked to retire his presidential campaign debt, but by the end of March 2009 it was still $2.4million in arrears, the largest such remaining amount for any of the 2008 contenders. In April 2009, Giuliani strongly opposed Paterson's announced push for same-sex marriage in New York and said it would likely cause a backlash that could put Republicans in statewide office in 2010. By late August 2009, there were still conflicting reports about whether Giuliani was likely to run.
On December 23, 2009, Giuliani announced that he would not seek any office in 2010, saying "The main reason has to do with my two enterprises: Bracewell & Giuliani and Giuliani Partners. I'm very busy in both." The decisions signaled a possible end to Giuliani's political career. During the 2010 midterm elections, Giuliani endorsed and campaigned for Bob Ehrlich and Marco Rubio.
On October 11, 2011, Giuliani announced that he was not running for president. According to Kevin Law, the Director of the Long Island Association, Giuliani believed that "As a moderate, he thought it was a pretty significant challenge. He said it's tough to be a moderate and succeed in GOP primaries," Giuliani said "If it's too late for (New Jersey Governor) Chris Christie, it's too late for me."
At a Republican fund-raising event in February 2015, Giuliani said, "I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president Obama loves America," and "He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country." In response to criticism of the remarks, Giuliani said, "Some people thought it was racistI thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother... This isn't racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism." White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said he agreed with Giuliani "that it was a horrible thing to say", but he would leave it up to the people who heard Giuliani directly to assess whether the remarks were appropriate for the event. Although he received some support for his controversial comments, Giuliani said he also received several death threats within 48 hours.
Relationship with Donald Trump
Presidential campaign supporter
Giuliani supported Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He gave a prime time speech during the first night of the 2016 Republican National Convention. Earlier in the day, Giuliani and former 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson appeared at an event for the pro-Trump Great America PAC. Giuliani also appeared in a Great America PAC ad entitled "Leadership". Giuliani's and Jeff Sessions's appearances were staples at Trump campaign rallies.
During the campaign, Giuliani praised Trump for his worldwide accomplishments and helping fellow New Yorkers in their time of need. He defended Trump against allegations of racism, sexual assault, and not paying any federal income taxes for as long as two decades.
In August 2016, Giuliani, while campaigning for Trump, claimed that in the "eight years before Obama" became president, "we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States". It was noted that 9/11 happened during George W. Bush's first term. Politifact brought up four more counter-examples (the 2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting, the 2002 D.C. sniper attacks, the 2006 Seattle Jewish Federation shooting and the 2006 UNC SUV attack) to Giuliani's claim. Giuliani later said he was using "abbreviated language".
Giuliani was believed to be a likely pick for Secretary of State in the Trump administration. However, on December 9, 2016, Trump announced that Giuliani had removed his name from consideration for any Cabinet post.
Advisor to the president
The president-elect named Giuliani his informal cybersecurity adviser on January 12, 2017. The status of this informal role for Giuliani is unclear because, in November 2018, Trump created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), headed by Christopher Krebs as director and Matthew Travis as deputy. In the weeks following his appointment, Giuliani was forced to consult an Apple Store Genius Bar when he "was locked out of his iPhone because he had forgotten the passcode and entered the wrong one at least 10 times", belying his putative expertise in the field.
In January 2017, Giuliani said he advised President Trump in matters relating to Executive Order 13769, which barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days. The order also suspended the admission of all refugees for 120 days.
Giuliani has drawn scrutiny over his ties to foreign nations, regarding not registering per the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Personal lawyer
In mid April 2018, Giuliani joined Trump's legal team, which dealt with the special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Giuliani said his goal was to negotiate a swift end to the investigation.
In early May, Giuliani made public that Trump had reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen $130,000 that Cohen had paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels for her agreement not to talk about her alleged affair with Trump. Cohen had earlier insisted he used his own money to pay Daniels, and he implied that he had not been reimbursed. Trump had previously said he knew nothing about the matter. Within a week, Giuliani said some of his own statements regarding this matter were "more rumor than anything else".
Later in May 2018, Giuliani, who was asked on whether the promotion of the Spygate conspiracy theory is meant to discredit the special counsel investigation, said the investigators "are giving us the material to do it. Of course, we have to do it in defending the president... it is for public opinion" on whether to "impeach or not impeach" Trump. In June 2018, Giuliani claimed that a sitting president cannot be indicted: "I don't know how you can indict while he's in office. No matter what it is. If President Trump shot [then-FBI director] James Comey, he'd be impeached the next day. Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him."
In June 2018, Giuliani also said Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because "our recollection keeps changing". In early July, Giuliani characterized that Trump had previously asked Comey to "give him [then-national security adviser Michael Flynn] a break". In mid-August, Giuliani denied making this comment: "What I said was, that is what Comey is saying Trump said." On August 19 on Meet the Press, Giuliani argued that Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because Trump could be "trapped into perjury" just by telling "somebody's version of the truth. Not the truth." Giuliani's argument continued: "Truth isn't truth." Giuliani later clarified that he was "referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements".
In late July, Giuliani defended Trump by saying "collusion is not a crime" and that Trump had done nothing wrong because he "didn't hack" or "pay for the hacking". He later elaborated that his comments were a "very, very familiar lawyer's argument" to "attack the legitimacy of the special counsel investigation". He also described and denied several supposed allegations that have never been publicly raised, regarding two earlier meetings among Trump campaign officials to set up the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with Russian citizens. In late August, Giuliani said the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower "meeting was originally for the purpose of getting information about Hillary Clinton".
Additionally in late July, Giuliani attacked Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as an "incredible liar", two months after calling Cohen an "honest, honorable lawyer". In mid-August, Giuliani defended Trump by saying: "The president's an honest man."
It was reported in early September that Giuliani said the White House could and likely would prevent the special counsel investigation from making public certain information in its final report which would be covered by executive privilege. Also according to Giuliani, Trump's personal legal team is already preparing a "counter-report" to refute the potential special counsel investigation's report.
Giuliani privately urged Trump in 2017 to extradite Fethullah Gülen.
In late 2019, Giuliani represented Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, meeting with the Justice Department to ask not to bring charges against him.
In an interview with Olivia Nuzzi in New York magazine, Giuliani, who is a Roman Catholic of Italian descent, said, "Don't tell me I'm anti-Semitic if I oppose George Soros... I'm more of a Jew than Soros is." George Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew who survived The Holocaust. The Anti-Defamation League replied, "Mr. Giuliani should apologize and retract his comments immediately unless he seeks to dog whistle to hardcore anti-Semites and white supremacists who believe this garbage."
In the last days of the Trump administration, when White House aides were soliciting fees to lobby for presidential pardons, Giuliani said that while he'd heard that large fees were being offered, he did not work on clemency cases, saying "I have enough money. I'm not starving."
As of February 16, 2021, Giuliani was reportedly not actively involved in any of Trump's pending legal cases.
Attempts to get Ukraine to carry out investigations
Since at least May 2019, Giuliani has been urging Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the oil company Burisma, whose board of directors once included Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, and to check for irregularities in Ukraine's investigation of Paul Manafort. He said such investigations would benefit his client's defense, and that his efforts had Trump's full support. Toward this end, Giuliani met with Ukrainian officials throughout 2019. In July 2019, Buzzfeed News reported that two Soviet-born Americans, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were liaisons between Giuliani and Ukrainian government officials in this effort. Parnas and Fruman, prolific Republican donors, have neither registered as foreign agents in the United States, nor been evaluated and approved by the State Department. Giuliani responded, "This (report) is a pathetic effort to cover up what are enormous allegations of criminality by the Biden family." Yet by September 2019, there had been no clear evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
As of October 1, 2019, Giuliani hired former Watergate prosecutor Jon Sale to represent him in the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment investigation. The committee also issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents related to the Ukraine scandal. The New York Times reported on October 11, 2019, that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which Giuliani had once led, was investigating him for violating lobbying laws related to his activities in Ukraine. The following month, Bloomberg News reported that the investigation could extend to bribery of foreign officials or conspiracy, and The Wall Street Journal reported Giuliani was being investigated for a possible profit motive in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. Giuliani has denied having any interest in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. In late November, the Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors had just issued subpoenas to multiple associates of Giuliani to potentially investigate certain individuals, apparently including Giuliani, on numerous potential charges, including money laundering, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements to the federal government, and mail/wire fraud.
Parnas and Fruman were arrested for campaign finance violations while attempting to board a one-way flight to Frankfurt from Washington Dulles International Airport on October 9, 2019. Giuliani was paid $500,000 to consult for Lev Parnas's company named "Fraud Guarantee". Republican donor and Trump supporter Long Island attorney Charles Gucciardo paid Giuliani on behalf of Fraud Guarantee in two $250,000 payments, in September and October 2018. Fruman eventually pled guilty in September 2021 to having solicited a contribution by a foreign national.
In May 2019, Giuliani described Ukraine's chief prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko as a "much more honest guy" than his predecessor, Viktor Shokin. After Lutsenko was removed from office, he said in September 2019 that he found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, and that he had met Giuliani about ten times. Giuliani then reversed his stance, saying that Shokin is the one people "should have spoken to", while Lutsenko acted "corruptly" and "is exactly the prosecutor that Joe Biden put in in order to tank the case".
In September 2019, as reports surfaced that a whistleblower was alleging high-level misconduct related to Ukraine, Giuliani went on CNN to discuss the story. When asked if he had tried to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden, he initially replied "No, actually I didn't," but thirty seconds later said, "Of course I did." In a later tweet he seemed to confirm reports that Trump had withheld military assistance funds scheduled for Ukraine unless they carried out the investigation. He said, "The reality is that the president of the United States, whoever he is, has every right to tell the president of another country you better straighten out the corruption in your country if you want me to give you a lot of money. If you're so damn corrupt that you can't investigate allegationsour money is going to get squandered."
Tom Bossert, a former Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump administration, described Giuliani's theory that Ukraine was involved in 2016 U.S. election interference as "debunked"; Giuliani responded that Bossert "doesn't know what the hell he's talking about".
On September 30, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents concerning the Ukraine scandal to Committee members by October 15, 2019. On October 2, 2019, Steve Linick, the State Department's inspector general, delivered a 40-page packet of apparent disinformation regarding former vice president Joe Biden and former Ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, to Capitol Hill. Linick told congressional aides his office questioned Ulrich Brechbuhl, Pompeo's advisor about the origins of the packet. Brechbuhl noted the packet came to him from Pompeo, who said it "came over", and Brechbuhl reportedly presumed it was from the White House. Later that day, Giuliani acknowledged he passed the packet to Pompeo regarding the Ukraine and attacks on Yovanovich. In a November 2019 interview he confirmed that he had "needed Yovanovitch out of the way" because she was going to make his investigations difficult. "They (the State Department) told me they would investigate it," Giuliani added. Giuliani persuaded Trump to remove Yovanovich from office in spring 2019. By April 2021, the U.S attorney's office in Manhattan was investigating the role of Giuliani and his associates in Yovanovitch's removal.
U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that Trump delegated American foreign policy on Ukraine to Giuliani. The late 2019 impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump centered around Giuliani's actions involving Ukraine. In the compiled testimony and in the December reports of the House Intelligence Committee, Giuliani's name was mentioned more than any but Trump's. Some experts suggested that Giuliani may have violated the Logan Act.
On November 22, 2019, Giuliani sent a letter to Senator Lindsey Graham, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, informing him of at least three witnesses from Ukraine who Giuliani claimed had direct oral, documentary, and recorded evidence of Democratic criminal conspiracy with Ukrainians to prevent Trump's election and, after his election, to remove him from office via contrived charges. Giuliani's letter also claims that the witnesses had evidence of the Biden family's involvement in bribery, money laundering, Hobbs Act extortion, and other possible crimes. The letter sought Graham's help obtaining U.S. visas for the witnesses to testify. The next month, Graham invited Giuliani to share his findings with the Judiciary Committee, and soon advised him "to share what he got from Ukraine with the [intelligence community] to make sure it's not Russia propaganda".
Dmytry Firtash is a Ukrainian oligarch who is prominent in the natural gas sector. In 2017, the Justice Department characterized him as being an "upper echelon (associate) of Russian organized crime". Since his 2014 arrest in Vienna, Austria at the request of American authorities, he has been living there on $155 million bail while fighting extradition to the United States on bribery and racketeering charges, and has been seeking to have the charges dropped. Firtash's attorneys obtained a September 2019 statement from Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general who was forced out under pressure from multiple countries and non-governmental organizations, as conveyed to Ukraine by Joe Biden. Shokin falsely asserted in the statement that Biden actually had him fired because he refused to stop his investigation into Burisma. Giuliani, who asserts he has "nothing to do with" and has "never met or talked to" Firtash, promoted the statement in television appearances as purported evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens. Giuliani told CNN he met with a Firtash attorney for two hours in New York City at the time he was seeking information about the Bidens.
Firtash is represented by Trump and Giuliani associates Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, having hired them on Parnas's recommendation in July 2019. The New York Times reported in November 2019 that Giuliani had directed Parnas to approach Firtash with the recommendation, with the proposition that Firtash could help provide damaging information on Biden, which Parna's attorney described was "part of any potential resolution to [Firtash's] extradition matter". Shokin's statement notes that it was prepared "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash ('DF'), for use in legal proceedings in Austria". Giuliani presented the Shokin statement during American television appearances. Bloomberg News reported on October 18 that during the summer of 2019 Firtash associates began attempting to dig up dirt on the Bidens in an effort to solicit Giuliani's assistance with Firtash's legal matters. Bloomberg News also reported that its sources told them Giuliani's high-profile publicity of the Shokin statement had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political quid pro quo. diGenova has said he has known U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr for thirty years, as they both worked in the Reagan Justice Department. The Washington Post reported on October 22 that after they began representing Firtash, Toensing and diGenova secured a rare face-to-face meeting with Barr to argue the Firtash charges should be dropped, but he declined to intervene.
On October 18, The New York Times reported that weeks earlier, before his associates Parnas and Fruman were indicted, Giuliani met with officials with the criminal and fraud divisions of the Justice Department regarding what Giuliani characterized as a "very, very sensitive" foreign bribery case involving a client of his. The Times did not name whom the case involved, but shortly after publication of the story Giuliani told a reporter it was not Firtash. Two days later, the Justice Department said its officials would not have met with Giuliani had they known his associates were under investigation by the SDNY.
On December 3, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee's report included phone records acquired via subpoenas, including numerous phone calls made by Giuliani between April and August 2019. Calls involved Giuliani in contact with Kurt Volker, Republican Representative and House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, Lev Parnas, numbers associated with the Office of Management and Budget and the White House switchboard, and an unidentified White House official whose phone number is referenced as "-1". Chairman Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee announced after the report's release that his committee was investigating whether "-1" referred to President Trump, citing grand jury evidence from the trial of convicted Trump-associate Roger Stone in which the phone number "-1" was shown to have referred to Trump. Writing for The Washington Post, analyst Philip Bump reasoned that Giuliani's calls with "-1" are 'likely' calls with Trump citing that Giuliani speaks longer with "-1" than any other person, "-1" always calls Giuliani, and generally after Giuliani calls the White House switchboard, and timing of some of President Trump's actions shortly after Giuliani's calls with "-1" ended.
In early December 2019, while the House Judiciary Committee began holding public hearings for the impeachment inquiry, Giuliani returned to Ukraine to interview former Ukrainian officials for a documentary series seeking to discredit the impeachment proceedings. U.S. officials told The Washington Post that Giuliani would have been considered a target of Russian intelligence efforts from early in Trump's presidency, and particularly after Giuliani turned his focus to Ukraine — a former Soviet republic under attack from Russia and with deep penetration by Russian intelligence services. Analysts say Trump's and Giuliani's habit of communicating over unencrypted lines makes it highly likely that foreign intelligence agencies could be listening in on the president's unsecured calls with Giuliani; and that foreign intelligence agencies often collect intelligence about a primary target through monitoring communications of other people who interact with that target.
In a December 2019 opinion piece, former FBI director, CIA director and federal judge William Webster wrote of "a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love". In addition to chastising President Trump and attorney general Bill Barr, Webster wrote he was "profoundly disappointed in another longtime, respected friend, Rudy Giuliani" because his "activities of late concerning Ukraine have, at a minimum, failed the smell test of propriety". Since 2005, Webster had served as the chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
NBC News reported in December 2020 that SDNY investigators, which were reported in late 2019 to be investigating Giuliani's activities, had discussed with Justice Department officials in Washington the possibility of acquiring Giuliani's emails, which might require headquarters approval due to protection by attorney–client privilege. The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY had requested a search warrant of Giuliani's electronic records in summer 2020, but were met with resistance from high-level political appointees in the Washington headquarters, ostensibly because the election was near, while career officials were supportive of the search warrant. The Justice Department generally avoids taking significant actions relating to political figures that might become public within sixty days of an election. Senior political appointees nevertheless opposed the effort after the election, noting Giuliani played a leading role in challenging the election results. The officials deferred the matter to the incoming Biden administration.
Federal investigators in Manhattan executed search warrants on the early morning of April 28, 2021 at Giuliani's office and Upper East Side apartment, seizing his electronic devices and searching the apartment. FBI agents also executed a search warrant that day on Toensing's Washington, D.C.-area home and confiscated her cellphone. In April 2021, Giuliani's attorney said investigators told him they had searched his client's iCloud account beginning in late 2019, later arguing to a judge that the search was illegal and so the subsequent raid on Giuliani's properties was "fruit of this poisoned tree," demanding to review documents justifying the iCloud search. In May 2021, the SDNY confirmed in a court filing that in late 2019 it obtained search warrants for Giuliani's iCloud account, and that of Toensing, as part of "an ongoing, multi-year grand jury investigation into conduct involving Giuliani, Toensing, and others," and argued that attorneys for Giuliani and Toensing were not entitled to review the underlying documents of the warrants prior to any charges. Giuiliani and Toensing asserted their attorney-client privilege with clients may have been violated by the iCloud searches, which investigators disputed, saying they employed a "filter team" to prevent them from seeing information potentially protected by attorney-client privilege. Federal judge J. Paul Oetken days later ruled in favor of investigators regarding the warrant documents and granted their request for a special master to ensure attorney-client privilege was maintained. The special master released more than 3,000 of Giuliani's communications to prosecutors in January 2022, agreeing to withhold forty messages for which Giuliani had asserted "privilege and/or highly personal" status and rejecting 37 such assertions.
The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY was scrutinizing Giuliani's association with Firtash in efforts to discredit the Bidens, and efforts to lobby the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs. Time reported in May 2021 it had spoken with three unidentified witnesses who said they were questioned by investigators, two of whom said they had worked with Giuliani while cooperating with investigators; one witness said investigators were particularly interested in Giuliani's association with Firtash.
United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 found that Ukrainian politician Andrii Derkach was among proxies of Russian intelligence who promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about Biden "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration". Giuliani met with Derkach in December 2019.
In April 2021, Forensic News reported that the SDNY investigation into Giuliani had expanded to include a criminal probe of Derkach and Andrii Artemenko. The New York Times confirmed weeks later that Derkach was the subject of a criminal investigation into foreign interference in the 2020 United States elections. "Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have been investigating whether several Ukrainian officials helped orchestrate a wide-ranging plan to meddle in the 2020 presidential campaign, including using Rudolph W. Giuliani to spread their misleading claims about President Biden and tilt the election in Donald J. Trump's favor," the Times reported.
On June 8, 2021, CNN uncovered exclusive audio of a 2019 phone call from Giuliani to Ukraine, stating that "Rudy Giuliani relentlessly pressured and coaxed the Ukrainian government in 2019 to investigate baseless conspiracies about then-candidate Joe Biden."
2020 election lawsuits
In November 2020, after Joe Biden was named president-elect, Trump placed Giuliani in charge of lawsuits related to alleged voter irregularities in the 2020 United States presidential election. Trump designated Giuliani to lead a legal team to challenge the election results. This team—a self-described "elite strike force" that included Sidney Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing and Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis—appeared at a November 19 press conference in which they made numerous false and unsubstantiated assertions revolving around an international Communist conspiracy, rigged voting machines, and polling place fraud.
Giuliani repeatedly publicly denounced the use of provisional ballots (in which the poll worker does not see the voter's name on the rolls, so the voter swears an affidavit oath that they are registered to vote), arguing that the practice enables fraud, although Giuliani himself had cast this type of ballot on October 31, 2020, in Manhattan.
By January 8, 2021, Trump and his team had lost 63 lawsuits. A month later, Giuliani was no longer representing Trump in any pending cases, according to a Trump adviser. While Trump continued to fundraise, purportedly for his election-related legal fights, as of the end of July 2021 he had not given any of this money to Giuliani. In October 2021, in another context, Trump remarked: "I do pay my lawyers when they do a good job."
In December 2021, two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye” Moss, sued Giuliani for defamation.
Pennsylvania lawsuit
One early lawsuit sought to invalidate up to 700,000 mail-in ballots and stop Pennsylvania from certifying its election results. Giuliani claimed to have signed affidavits attesting to voter fraud and election official misconduct in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Despite not having argued a case in any courtroom for over three decades, Giuliani applied for special permission to represent the Trump presidential campaign in the federal court of Pennsylvania. (In his application, he misrepresented his status with the District of Columbia Bar, claiming that he was a member in good standing, whereas D.C. had suspended him for nonpayment of fees.) In his first day in court on the case, which was November 17, 2020, Giuliani struggled with rudimentary legal processes and was accused by lawyers for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State of making legal arguments that were "disgraceful in an American courtroom". Judge Matthew Brann questioned how Giuliani could justify "asking this court to invalidate some 6.8 million votes thereby disenfranchising every single voter in the commonwealth."
His federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania was dismissed with prejudice on November 21, 2020, with the judge citing "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations" which were "unsupported by evidence". Giuliani and Jenna Ellis reacted by stating that the ruling "helps" the Trump campaign "get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court". They also pointed out that the judge, Matthew W. Brann, was "Obama-appointed", though Brann is also a Republican and a former member of the right-leaning Federalist Society.
The Trump campaign appealed the lawsuit to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel on November 27 rejected the Trump campaign's attempt to undo Pennsylvania's vote certification, because the Trump campaign's "claims have no merit". The panel also ruled that the District Court was correct in preventing the Trump campaign from conducting a second amendment of its complaint. An amendment would be pointless, ruled the judges, because the Trump campaign was not bringing facts before the court, and not even alleging fraud. Judge Stephanos Bibas highlighted that Giuliani himself told the district court that the Trump campaign "doesn't plead fraud", and that this "is not a fraud case". The panel concluded that neither "specific allegations" nor "proof" was provided in this case, and that the Trump campaign "cannot win this lawsuit".
Giuliani and Ellis reacted to the appeals court ruling by condemning the "activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania". Of the three Appeal Court judges, Stephanos Bibas, who delivered the opinion, was appointed by Trump himself, while judges D. Brooks Smith and Michael Chagares were appointed by Republican president George W. Bush.
Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits
As part of Giuliani's allegations that voting machines had been rigged, he made several false assertions about two rival companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. These false claims included that Smartmatic owned Dominion; that Dominion voting machines used Smartmatic software; that Dominion voting machines sent vote data to Smartmatic at foreign locations; that Dominion was founded by the former socialist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez; and that Dominion is a "radical-left" company with connections to antifa.
Both companies sued Giuliani and Fox News. Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Giuliani on January 25, 2021, seeking $1.3billion in damages, and separately sued Fox News for $1.6 billion. On February 4, 2021, Smartmatic also filed a lawsuit that accused Giuliani, Fox News, some hosts at Fox News, and Sidney Powell of engaging in a "disinformation campaign" against the company, and asked for $2.7billion in damages.
On September 10, 2021, Fox News told Giuliani that neither he nor his son Andrew would be allowed on their network for nearly three months.
Attack on the Capitol
On January 6, 2021, Giuliani spoke at a "Save America March" rally on the Ellipse that was attended by Trump supporters protesting the election results. He repeated conspiracy theories that voting machines used in the election were "crooked" and called for "trial by combat". Trump supporters subsequently stormed the U.S. Capitol in a riot that resulted in the deaths of five people, including a police officer, and temporarily disrupted the counting of the Electoral College vote.
Giuliani had reportedly been calling Republican lawmakers to urge them to delay the electoral vote count in order to ultimately throw the election to Trump. Giuliani attempted to contact Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Trump ally, around 7:00p.m. on January 6, after the Capitol storming, to ask him to "try to just slow it down" by objecting to multiple states and "raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrowideally until the end of tomorrow". However, Giuliani mistakenly left the message on the voicemail of another senator, who leaked the recording to The Dispatch. Rick Perlstein, a noted historian of the American conservative political movement, termed Giuliani's attempts to slow certification in the wake of the riot as treasonous. "Sedition. Open and shut. He talked about the time that was being opened up. He was welcoming, and using, the violence. This needs to be investigated," Perlstein tweeted on January 11, 2021.
Giuliani faced criticism for his appearance at the rally and the Capitol riot that followed it. Former Congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called for the arrest of Giuliani, President Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. Manhattan College president Brennan O'Donnell stated in a January7 open letter to the college community, "one of the loudest voices fueling the anger, hatred, and violence that spilled out yesterday is a graduate of our College, Rudolph Giuliani. His conduct as a leader of the campaign to de-legitimize the election and disenfranchise millions of votershas been and continues to be a repudiation of the deepest values of his alma mater."
On January 11, the New York State Bar Association, an advocacy group for the legal profession in New York state, announced that it was launching an investigation into whether Giuliani should be removed from its membership rolls, noting both Giuliani's comments to the Trump supporter rally at the Ellipse on January 6, and that it "has received hundreds of complaints in recent months about Mr. Giuliani and his baseless efforts on behalf of President Trump to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 presidential election and, after the votes were cast, to overturn its legitimate results". Removal from the group's membership rolls would not directly disbar Giuliani from practicing law in New York. New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman and lawyers' group Lawyers Defending American Democracy, also filed a complaints against Giuliani with the Attorney Grievance Committee of the First Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court, which has the authority to discipline and disbar licensed New York lawyers.
Also on January 11, 2021, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said that he is looking at whether to charge Giuliani, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Representative Mo Brooks, with inciting the violent attack.
On January 29, Giuliani falsely claimed that The Lincoln Project played a role in the organization of the Capitol riot. In response, Steve Schmidt announced that the group would be taking legal action against Giuliani for defamation.
On March 5, 2021, Representative Eric Swalwell filed a civil lawsuit against Giuliani and three others (Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Representative Mo Brooks), seeking damages for their alleged role in inciting the Capitol riot.
Giuliani was subpoenaed in January 2022 to testify before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Suspension of law license
On June 24, 2021, a New York appellate court suspended Giuliani's law license. The panel of five justices found that there was "uncontroverted" evidence that Giuliani made "demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public" and that "These false statements were made to improperly bolster (Giuliani's) narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client." The court concluded that Giuliani's conduct "immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law". His license was also suspended in Washington D.C. on July 7, 2021.
Giuliani Partners
After leaving the New York City mayor's office, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners LLC, in 2002, a firm that has been categorized by multiple media outlets as a lobbying entity capitalizing on Giuliani's name recognition, and which has been the subject of allegations surrounding staff hired by Giuliani and due to the firm's chosen client base. Over five years, Giuliani Partners earned more than $100million.
In June 2007, he stepped down as CEO and Chairman of Giuliani Partners, although this action was not made public until December 4, 2007; he maintained his equity interest in the firm. Giuliani subsequently returned to active participation in the firm following the election. In late 2009, Giuliani announced that they had a security consulting contract with Rio de Janeiro, Brazil regarding the 2016 Summer Olympics. He faced criticism in 2012 for advising people once allied with Slobodan Milošević who had lauded Serbian war criminals.
Bracewell & Giuliani
In 2005, Giuliani joined the law firm of Bracewell & Patterson LLP (renamed Bracewell & Giuliani LLP) as a name partner and basis for the expanding firm's new New York office. When he joined the Texas-based firm he brought Marc Mukasey, the son of Attorney General Michael Mukasey, into the firm.
Despite a busy schedule, Giuliani was highly active in the day-to-day business of the law firm, which was a high-profile supplier of legal and lobbying services to the oil, gas, and energy industries. Its aggressive defense of pollution-causing coal-fired power plants threatened to cause political risk for Giuliani, but association with the firm helped Giuliani achieve fund-raising success in Texas. In 2006, Giuliani acted as the lead counsel and lead spokesmen for Bracewell & Giuliani client Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, during their negotiations with federal prosecutors over charges that the pharmaceutical company misled the public about OxyContin's addictive properties. The agreement reached resulted in Purdue Pharma and some of its executives paying $634.5million in fines.
Bracewell & Giuliani represented corporate clients before many U.S. government departments and agencies. Some clients have worked with corporations and foreign governments.
Giuliani left the firm in January 2016, by "amicable agreement", and the firm was rebranded as Bracewell LLP.
Greenberg Traurig
In January 2016, Giuliani moved to the law firm Greenberg Traurig, where he served as the global chairman for Greenberg's cybersecurity and crisis management group, as well as a senior advisor to the firm's executive chairman. In April 2018, he took an unpaid leave of absence when he joined Trump's legal defense team. He resigned from the firm on May 9, 2018.
Lobbying in Romania
In August 2018, Giuliani was retained by Freeh Group International Solutions, a global consulting firm run by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, which paid him a fee to lobby Romanian president Klaus Iohannis to change Romania's anti-corruption policy and reduce the role of the National Anticorruption Directorate. Giuliani argued that the anti-corruption efforts had gone too far.
Podcast
In January 2020, Giuliani launched a podcast, Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
Personal life
Marriages and relationships
Giuliani married Regina Peruggi, whom he had known since childhood, on October 26, 1968. The marriage was in trouble by the mid-1970s and they agreed to a trial separation in 1975. Peruggi did not accompany him to Washington when he accepted the job in the Attorney General's Office. Giuliani met local television personality Donna Hanover sometime in 1982, and they began dating when she was working in Miami. Giuliani filed for legal separation from Peruggi on August 12, 1982. The Giuliani-Peruggi marriage legally ended in two ways: a civil divorce was issued by the end of 1982, while a Roman Catholic church annulment of the marriage was granted at the end of 1983, reportedly because Giuliani had discovered that he and Peruggi were second cousins. Alan Placa, Giuliani's best man, later became a priest and helped secure the annulment. Giuliani and Peruggi had no children.
Giuliani married Hanover in a Catholic ceremony at St. Monica's Church in Manhattan on April 15, 1984. They had two children, Andrew and Caroline Rose, who is a filmmaker in the LGBTQ+ community and has described herself as "multiverses apart" from her father.
Giuliani was still married to Hanover in May 1999 when he met Judith Nathan, a sales manager for a pharmaceutical company, at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar. By 1996, Donna Hanover had reverted to her professional name and virtually stopped appearing in public with her husband amid rumors of marital problems. Nathan and Giuliani formed an ongoing relationship. In summer 1999, Giuliani charged the costs for his NYPD security detail to obscure city agencies in order to keep his relationship with Nathan from public scrutiny. The police department began providing Nathan with city-provided chauffeur services in early 2000.
By March 2000, Giuliani had stopped wearing his wedding ring. The appearances that he and Nathan made at functions and events became publicly visible, although they were not mentioned in the press. The Daily News and the New York Post both broke news of Giuliani's relationship with Nathan in early May 2000. Giuliani first publicly acknowledged her on May 3, 2000, when he said Judith was his "very good friend".
On May 10, 2000, Giuliani held a press conference to announce that he intended to separate from Hanover. Giuliani had not informed Hanover about his plans before the press conference. This was an omission for which Giuliani was widely criticized. Giuliani then went on to praise Nathan as a "very, very fine woman" and said about Hanover that "over the course of some period of time in many ways, we've grown to live independent and separate lives." Hours later Hanover said, "I had hoped that we could keep this marriage together. For several years, it was difficult to participate in Rudy's public life because of his relationship with one staff member."
Giuliani moved out of Gracie Mansion by August 2001 and into an apartment with a couple he was friends with. Giuliani filed for divorce from Hanover in October 2000, and a public battle broke out between their representatives. Nathan was barred by court order from entering Gracie Mansion or meeting his children before the divorce was final.
In May 2001, Giuliani's attorney revealed that Giuliani was impotent due to prostate cancer treatments and had not had sex with Nathan for the preceding year. "You don't get through treatment for cancer and radiation all by yourself," Giuliani said. "You need people to help you and care for you and support you. And I'm very fortunate I had a lot of people who did that, but nobody did more to help me than Judith Nathan." In a court case, Giuliani argued that he planned to introduce Nathan to his children on Father's Day 2001 and that Hanover had prevented this visit. Giuliani and Hanover finally settled their divorce case in July 2002 after his mayoralty had ended, with Giuliani paying Hanover a $6.8million settlement and granting her custody of their children. Giuliani married Nathan on May 24, 2003, and gained a stepdaughter, Whitney. It was also Nathan's third marriage after two divorces.
By March 2007, The New York Times and the Daily News reported that Giuliani had become estranged from both his son Andrew and his daughter Caroline. In 2014, he said his relationship with his children was better than ever, and was spotted eating and playing golf with Andrew.
Nathan filed for divorce from Giuliani on April 4, 2018, after 15 years of marriage. According to an interview with New York magazine, "For a variety of reasons that I know as a spouse and a nurse... he has become a different man." The divorce was settled on December 10, 2019.
In October 2020, following myriad joint public appearances, Giuliani confirmed that he is in a relationship with Maria Ryan, a nurse practitioner and hospital administrator whom his ex-wife Nathan has alleged to have been his mistress for an indeterminate period during their marriage. As of 2018, Ryan was married to United States Marine Corps veteran Robert Ryan, with Giuliani characterizing the couple as platonic friends in response to contemporaneous press inquiries.
Prostate cancer
In April 1981, Giuliani's father died, at age 73, of prostate cancer, at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center. 19 years later, in April 2000, Giuliani, then aged 55, was diagnosed with prostate cancer following a prostate biopsy, after an elevated screening PSA. Giuliani chose a combination prostate cancer treatment consisting of four months of neoadjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy, then low dose-rate prostate brachytherapy with permanent implantation of ninety TheraSeed radioactive palladium-103 seeds in his prostate in September 2000, followed two months later by five weeks of fifteen-minute, five-days-a-week external beam radiotherapy at Mount Sinai Medical Center, with five months of adjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy.
COVID-19
On December 6, 2020, Trump announced that Giuliani had contracted COVID-19. Giuliani was admitted to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital the same day. He was discharged from the hospital on December 9.
It was unclear when he received the positive test. In the days leading up to the announcement, Giuliani had been to multiple indoor hearings without wearing a mask, and requested that others remove their masks. The Arizona Legislature closed for one week starting on December 7, 2020, as 15 current and future members had met with Giuliani. He had also met with Republican legislators in Michigan and Georgia, potentially exposing them.
Religious beliefs
Giuliani has declined to comment publicly on his religious practice and beliefs, although he identifies religion as an important part of his life. When asked if he is a practicing Catholic, Giuliani answered, "My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not-so-good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests."
Television appearances
Giuliani was reportedly revealed to be the first unmasking on the seventh season of The Masked Singer, which caused judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke to storm off the set.
Awards and honors
In 1998, Giuliani received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York".
House of Savoy: Knight Grand Cross (motu proprio) of the Order of Merit of Savoy (December 2001)
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2001
In 2002, the Episcopal Diocese of New York gave Giuliani the Fiorello LaGuardia Public Service Award for Valor and Leadership in the Time of Global Crisis.
Also in 2002, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan awarded Giuliani the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award.
In 2002, he received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually byJefferson Awards.
In 2003, Giuliani received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award
In 2004, construction began on the Rudolph W. Giuliani Trauma Center at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York.
In 2005, Giuliani received honorary degrees from Loyola College in Maryland and Middlebury College. In 2007, Giuliani received an honorary Doctorate in Public Administration from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. In 2021, Middlebury announced that it was revoking the degree given to Giuliani.
In 2006, Rudy and Judith Giuliani were honored by the American Heart Association at its annual Heart of the Hamptons benefit in Water Mill, New York.
In 2007, Giuliani was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), receiving the NIAF Special Achievement Award for Public Service.
In 2007, Giuliani was awarded the Margaret Thatcher Medal of Freedom by the Atlantic Bridge.
In the 2009 graduation ceremony for Drexel University's Earle Mack School of Law, Giuliani was the keynote speaker and recipient of an honorary degree. In 2021, Drexel announced that it was rescinding the degree.
Giuliani was the Robert C. Vance Distinguished Lecturer at Central Connecticut State University in 2013.
Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa, University of Rhode Island, 2003 (revoked January 2022)
Media references
In 1993, Giuliani made a cameo appearance as himself in the Seinfeld episode "The Non-Fat Yogurt", which is a fictionalized account of the 1993 mayoral election. Giuliani's scenes were filmed the morning after his real world election.
In 2003, Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story was released starring actor James Woods as Giuliani.
In 2018, Giuliani was portrayed multiple times on Saturday Night Live by Kate McKinnon. McKinnon continued portraying him in 2019.
In 2020, Giuliani made a cameo appearance on a Netflix true crime limited series' Fear City: New York vs The Mafia, talking about his role in leading the 1980s federal prosecution of the Five Families.
In 2020, Giuliani made an unwitting appearance in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. In the mockumentary film, Giuliani agrees to an interview with Borat's "daughter", Tutar (played by actress Maria Bakalova), who is disguised as a reporter. When invited to Tutar's hotel room, Giuliani proceeds to lie on her bed and reach inside his trousers; they are immediately interrupted by Borat, who says: "She 15. She too old for you." Giuliani later disregarded the accusation, calling it a "complete fabrication" and saying he was rather "tucking in [his] shirt after taking off the recording equipment". In 2021, Giuliani won two Razzie awards for his part in the film – for Worst Supporting Actor and, with his pants zipper for Worst Screen Combo.
See also
Disputes surrounding the 2020 United States presidential election results
Electoral history of Rudy Giuliani
Political positions of Rudy Giuliani
Public image of Rudy Giuliani
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Timeline of New York City, 1990s–2000s
References
Further reading
Barrett, Wayne, (2000). Rudy!: An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani. Basic Books; (Reprint by Diane Publishing Co.).
Brodeur, Christopher X. (2002). Perverted Little Creep: Mayor Giuliani vs Mayor Brodeur. ExtremeNY books, .
Dinkins, David N.; Knobler, Peter (2013). A Mayor's Life: Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic. PublicAffairs,
Gonzalez, Juan, (2002). Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse. New Press, .
Koch, Edward I. (1999). Giuliani: Nasty Man. Barricade Books. .
Mandery, Evan (1999). The Campaign: Rudy Giuliani, Ruth Messinger, Al Sharpton, and the Race to Be Mayor of New York City. Westview Press, .
Newfield, Jack, (2003). The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania. Thunder's Mouth Press, .
Paterson, David "Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity."Skyhorse Publishing. New York, New York, 2020.
Polner, Robert, (2005). America's Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani's New York. Soft Skull Press, .
Polner, Robert, (2007). America's Mayor, America's President? The Strange Career of Rudy Giuliani. [Preface by Jimmy Breslin] Soft Skull Press, .
External links
La Guardia and Wagner Archives/The Giuliani Collection
TPM infographic: Tracking Rudy Giuliani's Foreign Dealings
Suspension of Giuliani's New York State law license — Attorney Grievance Committee for the Supreme Court of the State of New York Appellate Division
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Donald Trump litigation
Golden Raspberry Award winners
Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Knights of the Order of Merit of Savoy
Living people
Manhattan College alumni
American politicians of Italian descent
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
Mayors of New York City
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Time Person of the Year
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Candidates in the 2008 United States presidential election
Writers from Brooklyn | false | [
"Caroline Biggs is an Irish lawyer who has been a judge of the High Court since October 2021. She previously practiced as a barrister where she specialised in criminal law.\n\nEarly life \nBiggs attended University College Dublin from where she graduated with a BCL degree in 1995.\n\nLegal career \nShe was called to the Irish bar in 1997 and became a senior counsel in 2009. She specialised in criminal law, appearing both for defendants and on behalf of the Director of Public Prosecutions. She acted in cases involving drug offences, assault, sexual offences, tax offences and homicide.\n\nIn 2018, she was appointed to chair a group of representatives from government departments and bodies to respond to recommendations on addressing child abuse.\n\nJudicial career \nBiggs was nominated to the High Court in September 2021. She was one of five new judges created to deal with the increase in legal cases as the Covid pandemic eased. Other appointees were Marguerite Bolger, Emily Egan, Cian Ferriter and David Holland. She was appointed on 5 October 2021.\n\nReferences\n\nLiving people\nHigh Court judges (Ireland)\nIrish women judges\nAlumni of University College Dublin\nAlumni of King's Inns\n21st-century Irish judges\n21st-century women judges\nYear of birth missing (living people)",
"This is a list of United States ambassadors appointed by the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump.\n\nAmbassadorships are often used as a form of political patronage to reward high-profile or important supporters of the president. The most visible ambassadorships are often distributed either in this way or to the president's ideological or partisan confreres. Most ambassadorships, however, are assigned to foreign service officers who have spent their career in the State Department. Regardless, all ambassadors must be formally appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. While all ambassadors serve at the president's pleasure and may be dismissed at any time, career diplomats usually serve tours of roughly three years before receiving a new assignment; political appointees customarily tender their resignations upon the inauguration of a new president.\n\n44% of Trump's appointees were political, a substantially higher percentage than typical. As of October 2018, 92% of Trump's appointees were white and 74% were male, with zero black women.\n\nColor key\n Denotes announced appointees who are serving in an acting capacity.\n Denotes confirmed appointees to nations who are political appointees (rather than career foreign service officers).\n Denotes confirmed appointees who are Career Members of the Senior Executive Service.\n\nAmbassadors to foreign states\n\nAmericas\n\nAfrica\n\nMiddle East\n\nAsia\n\nEurope\n\nOceania\n\nAmbassadors to international organizations\n\nAmbassador and representatives to the United Nations and related organizations\n\nAmbassadors and representatives to other international organizations\n\nAmbassadors-at-large\n\nSee also \n List of ambassadors appointed by Joe Biden\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Chiefs of Mission by Country\n Chiefs of Mission to International Organizations\nAmerican Foreign Service Association\n\n2010s politics-related lists\n Ambassadors\n Trump"
] |
[
"Rudy Giuliani",
"Appointees as defendants",
"How many appointees acted as defendants?",
"In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding,"
] | C_7a9b28f537444b1fa4b7ec7d83b31da1_1 | Did he appoint anyone else? | 2 | Did Rudy Giuliani appoint anyone else besides Russell Harding? | Rudy Giuliani | Several of Giuliani's appointees to head City agencies became defendants in criminal proceedings. In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding, to head the New York City Housing Development Corporation, although Harding had neither a college degree nor relevant experience. In 2005, Harding pleaded guilty to defrauding the Housing Development Corporation and to possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Russell Harding committed suicide in 2012. In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury after lying to a grand jury about a car that Harding bought for him with City funds. Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign. Giuliani appointed him as the Commissioner of the Department of Correction and then as the Police Commissioner. Giuliani was also the godfather to Kerik's two youngest children. After Giuliani left office, Kerik was subject to state and federal investigations resulting in his pleading guilty in 2006, in a Bronx Supreme Court, to two unrelated ethics violations. Kerik was ordered to pay $221,000 in fines. Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009, in a New York district court, to eight federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements, and on February 18, 2010, he was sentenced to four years in federal prison. Giuliani was not implicated in any of the proceedings. CANNOTANSWER | In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury | Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and disbarred attorney who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 1983 and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989.
Giuliani led the 1980s federal prosecution of New York City mafia bosses as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. After a failed campaign for Mayor of New York City in the 1989 election, he succeeded in 1993, and was reelected in 1997, campaigning on a "tough on crime" platform. He led New York's controversial "civic cleanup" as its mayor from 1994 to 2001. Mayor Giuliani appointed an outsider, William Bratton, as New York City's new police commissioner. Reforming the police department's administration and policing practices, they applied the broken windows theory, which cites social disorder, like disrepair and vandalism, for attracting loitering addicts, panhandlers, and prostitutes, followed by serious and violent criminals. In particular, Giuliani focused on removing panhandlers and sex clubs from Times Square, promoting a "family values" vibe and a return to the area's earlier focus on business, theater, and the arts. As crime rates fell steeply, well ahead of the national average pace, Giuliani was widely credited, though later critics cite other contributing factors. In 2000, he ran against First Lady Hillary Clinton for a US Senate seat from New York, but left the race once diagnosed with prostate cancer. For his mayoral leadership after the September11 attacks in 2001, he was called "America's mayor". He was named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2001, and was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
In 2002, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners, and acquired, but later sold, an investment banking firm, Giuliani Capital Advisors. In 2005, he joined a law firm, renamed Bracewell & Giuliani. Vying for the Republican Party's 2008 presidential nomination, Giuliani was an early frontrunner, yet did poorly in the primary election, withdrew, and endorsed the party's subsequent nominee, John McCain. Declining to run for New York governor in 2010 and for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, Giuliani focused on the activities of his business firms. In addition, he has often been engaged for public speaking, political commentary, and Republican campaign support.
Giuliani joined President Donald Trump's personal legal team in April 2018. His activities as Trump's attorney have drawn renewed media scrutiny, including allegations that he engaged in corruption and profiteering. In late 2019, Giuliani was reportedly under federal investigation for violating lobbying laws, and possibly several other charges, as a central figure in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which resulted in Trump's first impeachment. Following the 2020 presidential election, he represented Trump in many lawsuits filed in attempts to overturn the election results, making false and debunked allegations about rigged voting machines, polling place fraud, and an international communist conspiracy. As a consequence, his license to practice law was suspended in New York State in June 2021 and in the District of Columbia in July 2021.
Early life
Giuliani was born in the East Flatbush section, then an Italian-American enclave, in New York City's borough of Brooklyn, the only child of working-class parents Helen (née D'Avanzo; 1909–2002) and Harold Angelo Giuliani (1908–1981), both children of Italian immigrants. Giuliani is of Tuscan descent on his father's side, as his paternal grandparents (Rodolfo and Evangelina Giuliani) were born in Montecatini Terme, Tuscany, Italy. He was raised a Roman Catholic. Harold Giuliani, a plumber and a bartender, had trouble holding a job, was convicted of felony assault and robbery, and served prison time in Sing Sing. Once released, he worked as an enforcer for his brother-in-law Leo D'Avanzo, who operated an organized crime-affiliated loan sharking and gambling ring at a restaurant in Brooklyn. The couple lived in East Flatbush until Harold died of prostate cancer in 1981, whereupon Helen moved to Manhattan's Upper East Side.
When Giuliani was seven years old in 1951, his family moved from Brooklyn to Garden City South, where he attended the local Catholic school, St. Anne's. Later, he commuted back to Brooklyn to attend Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, graduating in 1961.
Giuliani attended Manhattan College in Riverdale, Bronx, where he majored in political science with a minor in philosophy and considered becoming a priest.
Giuliani was elected president of his class in his sophomore year, but was not re-elected in his junior year. He joined the Phi Rho Pi college forensic fraternity and honor society. He graduated in 1965. Giuliani decided to forgo the priesthood and instead attended the New York University School of Law in Manhattan, where he made the NYU Law Review and graduated cum laude with a Juris Doctor degree in 1968.
Giuliani started his political life as a Democrat. He volunteered for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968. He also worked as a Democratic Party committeeman on Long Island in the mid-1960s and voted for George McGovern for president in 1972.
Legal career
Upon graduation from law school, Giuliani clerked for Judge Lloyd Francis MacMahon, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.
Giuliani did not serve in the military during the Vietnam War. His conscription was deferred while he was enrolled at Manhattan College and NYU Law. Upon graduation from the latter in 1968, he was classified 1-A (available for military service), but in 1969 he was reclassified 2-A (essential civilian) as Judge MacMahon's law clerk. In 1970, Giuliani was reclassified 1-A but received a high 308 draft lottery number and was not called up for service.
Giuliani switched his party registration from Democratic to Independent in 1975. This occurred during a period of time in which he was recruited for a position in Washington, D.C. with the Ford administration: Giuliani served as the Associate Deputy Attorney General and chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Harold "Ace" Tyler.
His first high-profile prosecution was of Democratic U.S. Representative Bertram L. Podell (NY-13), who was convicted of corruption. Podell pleaded guilty to conspiracy and conflict of interest for accepting more than $41,000 in campaign contributions and legal fees from a Florida airline to obtain federal rights for a Bahama route. Podell, who maintained a legal practice while serving in Congress, said the payments were legitimate legal fees. The Washington Post later reported: "The trial catapulted future New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani to front-page status when, as assistant U.S. attorney, he relentlessly cross-examined an initially calm Rep. Podell. The congressman reportedly grew more flustered and eventually decided to plead guilty."
From 1977 to 1981, during the Carter administration, Giuliani practiced law at the Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler law firm, as chief of staff to his former boss, Ace Tyler. In later years, Tyler became "disillusioned" by what Tyler described as Giuliani's time as US Attorney, criticizing several of his prosecutions as "overkill".
On December 8, 1980, one month after the election of Ronald Reagan brought Republicans back to power in Washington, he switched his party affiliation from Independent to Republican. Giuliani later said the switches were because he found Democratic policies "naïve", and that "by the time I moved to Washington, the Republicans had come to make more sense to me." Others suggested that the switches were made in order to get positions in the Justice Department. Giuliani's mother maintained in 1988 that he "only became a Republican after he began to get all these jobs from them. He's definitely not a conservative Republican. He thinks he is, but he isn't. He still feels very sorry for the poor."
In 1981, Giuliani was named Associate Attorney General in the Reagan administration, the third-highest position in the Department of Justice. As Associate Attorney General, Giuliani supervised the U.S. Attorney Offices' federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the United States Marshals Service. In a well-publicized 1982 case, Giuliani testified in defense of the federal government's "detention posture" regarding the internment of more than 2,000 Haitian asylum seekers who had entered the country illegally. The U.S. government disputed the assertion that most of the detainees had fled their country due to political persecution, alleging instead that they were "economic migrants". In defense of the government's position, Giuliani testified that "political repression, at least in general, does not exist" under President of Haiti Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime.
In 1983, Giuliani was appointed to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which was technically a demotion but was sought by Giuliani because of his desire to personally litigate cases and because the SDNY is considered the highest profile United States Attorney's Office in the country, and as such, is often used by those who have held the position as a springboard for running for public office. It was in this position that he first gained national prominence by prosecuting numerous high-profile cases, resulting in the convictions of Wall Street figures Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. He also focused on prosecuting drug dealers, organized crime, and corruption in government. He amassed a record of 4,152 convictions and 25 reversals. As a federal prosecutor, Giuliani was credited with bringing the perp walk, parading of suspects in front of the previously alerted media, into common use as a prosecutorial tool. After Giuliani "patented the perp walk", the tool was used by increasing numbers of prosecutors nationwide.
Giuliani's critics claimed that he arranged for people to be arrested, then dropped charges for lack of evidence on high-profile cases rather than going to trial. In a few cases, his arrests of alleged white-collar criminals at their workplaces with charges later dropped or lessened, sparked controversy, and damaged the reputations of the alleged "perps". He claimed veteran stock trader Richard Wigton, of Kidder, Peabody & Co., was guilty of insider trading; in February 1987, he had officers handcuff Wigton and march him through the company's trading floor, with Wigton in tears. Giuliani had his agents arrest Tim Tabor, a young arbitrageur and former colleague of Wigton, so late that he had to stay overnight in jail before posting bond.
Within three months, charges were dropped against both Wigton and Tabor; Giuliani said, "We're not going to go to trial. We're just the tip of the iceberg," but no further charges were forthcoming and the investigation did not end until Giuliani's successor was in place. Giuliani's high-profile raid of the Princeton/Newport firm ended with the defendants having their cases overturned on appeal on the grounds that what they had been convicted of were not crimes.
Mafia Commission trial
In the Mafia Commission Trial, which ran from February 25, 1985, through November 19, 1986, Giuliani indicted eleven organized crime figures, including the heads of New York City's so-called "Five Families", under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) on charges including extortion, labor racketeering, and murder for hire. Time magazine called this "Case of Cases" possibly "the most significant assault on the infrastructure of organized crime since the high command of the Chicago Mafia was swept away in 1943", and quoted Giuliani's stated intention: "Our approach is to wipe out the five families." Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano evaded conviction when he and his underboss, Thomas Bilotti, were murdered on the streets of Midtown Manhattan on December 16, 1985. However, three heads of the Five Families were sentenced to 100 years in prison on January 13, 1987. Genovese and Colombo leaders, Tony Salerno and Carmine Persico received additional sentences in separate trials, with 70-year and 39-year sentences to run consecutively. He was assisted by three Assistant United States Attorneys: Michael Chertoff, the eventual second United States Secretary of Homeland Security and co-author of the Patriot Act; John Savarese, now a partner at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz; and Gil Childers, a later deputy chief of the criminal division for the Southern District of New York and now managing director in the legal department at Goldman Sachs.
According to an FBI memo revealed in 2007, leaders of the Five Families voted in late 1986 on whether to issue a contract for Giuliani's death. Heads of the Lucchese, Bonanno, and Genovese families rejected the idea, though Colombo and Gambino leaders, Carmine Persico and John Gotti, encouraged assassination. In 2014, it was revealed by a former Sicilian Mafia member and informant, Rosario Naimo, that Salvatore Riina, a notorious Sicilian Mafia leader, had ordered a murder contract on Giuliani during the mid-1980s. Riina allegedly was suspicious of Giuliani's efforts prosecuting the American Mafia and was worried that he might have spoken with Italian anti-mafia prosecutors and politicians, including Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who were both murdered in 1992 in separate car bombings. According to Giuliani, the Sicilian Mafia offered $800,000 for his death during his first year as mayor of New York in 1994.
Boesky, Milken trials
Ivan Boesky, a Wall Street arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of about $200million by betting on corporate takeovers, was originally investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for making investments based on tips received from corporate insiders, leading the way for the US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York to investigate as well. These stock and options acquisitions were sometimes brazen, with massive purchases occurring only a few days before a corporation announced a takeover. Although insider trading of this kind was illegal, laws prohibiting it were rarely enforced until Boesky was prosecuted. Boesky cooperated with the SEC and informed on several others, including junk bond trader Michael Milken. Per agreement with Giuliani, Boesky received a -year prison sentence along with a $100million fine. In 1989, Giuliani charged Milken under the RICO Act with 98 counts of racketeering and fraud. In a highly publicized case, Milken was indicted by a grand jury on these charges.
Mayoral campaigns
Giuliani was U.S. Attorney until January 1989, resigning as the Reagan administration ended. He garnered criticism until he left office for his handling of cases, and was accused of prosecuting cases to further his political ambitions. He joined the law firm White & Case in New York City as a partner. He remained with White & Case until May 1990, when he joined the law firm Anderson Kill Olick & Oshinsky, also in New York City.
1989
Giuliani first ran for New York City mayor in 1989, when he attempted to unseat three-term incumbent Ed Koch. He won the September 1989 Republican Party primary election against business magnate Ronald Lauder, in a campaign marked by claims that Giuliani was not a true Republican after an acrimonious debate between the two men. In the Democratic primary, Koch was upset by Manhattan Borough president David Dinkins.
In the general election, Giuliani ran as the fusion candidate of both the Republican and the Liberal parties. The Conservative Party, which had often co-lined the Republican party candidate, withheld support from Giuliani and ran Lauder instead. Conservative Party leaders were unhappy with Giuliani on ideological grounds. They cited the Liberal Party's endorsement statement that Giuliani "agreed with the Liberal Party's views on affirmative action, gay rights, gun control, school prayer and tuition tax credits".
During two televised debates, Giuliani framed himself as an agent of change, saying, "I'm the reformer," that "If we keep going merrily along, this city's going down," and that electing Dinkins would represent "more of the same, more of the rotten politics that have been dragging us down". Giuliani pointed out that Dinkins had not filed a tax return for many years and of several other ethical missteps, in particular a stock transfer to his son. Dinkins filed several years of returns and said the tax matter had been fully paid off. He denied other wrongdoing, saying "what we need is a mayor, not a prosecutor," and that Giuliani refused to say "the R-wordhe doesn't like to admit he's a Republican". Dinkins won the endorsements of three of the four daily New York newspapers, while Giuliani won approval from the New York Post.
In the end, Giuliani lost to Dinkins by a margin of 47,080 votes out of 1,899,845 votes cast, in the closest election in New York City's history. The closeness of the race was particularly noteworthy considering the small percentage of New York City residents who are registered Republicans and resulted in Giuliani being the presumptive nominee for a rematch with Dinkins at the next election.
1993
Four years after his defeat to Dinkins, Giuliani again ran for mayor. Once again, Giuliani also ran on the Liberal Party line but not the Conservative Party line, which ran activist George Marlin.
Although crime had begun to fall during the Dinkins administration, Giuliani's campaign capitalized on the perception that crime was uncontrolled in the city following events such as the Crown Heights riot and the Family Red Apple boycott. The year prior to the election, Giuliani was a key speaker at a Patrolmen's Benevolent Association rally opposing Dinkins, in which Giuliani blamed the police department's low morale on Dinkins' leadership. The rally quickly devolved into a riot, with nearly 4,000 off-duty police officers storming the City Hall and blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.
In his pitch to lower crime rates in the city, Giuliani promised to focus police resources toward shutting down petty crimes and nuisances as a way of restoring the quality of life:
Dinkins and Giuliani never debated during the campaign, because they were never able to agree on how to approach a debate. Dinkins was endorsed by The New York Times and Newsday, while Giuliani was endorsed by the New York Post and, in a key switch from 1989, the Daily News. Giuliani went to visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, seeking his blessing and endorsement.
On election day, Giuliani's campaign hired off-duty cops, firefighters, and corrections officers to monitor polling places in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and The Bronx for cases of voter fraud. Despite objections from the Dinkins campaign, who claimed that the effort would intimidate Democratic voters, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly assigned an additional 52 police captains and 3,500 officers to monitor the city's polling places.
Giuliani won by a margin of 53,367 votes. He became the first Republican elected Mayor of New York City since John Lindsay in 1965. Similar to the election four years prior, Giuliani performed particularly well in the white ethnic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Giuliani saw especially high returns in the borough of Staten Island, as a referendum to consider allowing the borough to secede from New York City was on the ballot.
1997
Giuliani's opponent in 1997 was Democratic Manhattan Borough president Ruth Messinger, who had beaten Al Sharpton in the September 9, 1997 Democratic primary. In the general election, Giuliani once again had the Liberal Party and not the Conservative Party listing. Giuliani ran an aggressive campaign, parlaying his image as a tough leader who had cleaned up the city. Giuliani's popularity was at its highest point to date, with a late October 1997 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showing him as having a 68 percent approval rating; 70 percent of New Yorkers were satisfied with life in the city and 64 percent said things were better in the city compared to four years previously.
Throughout the campaign he was well ahead in the polls and had a strong fund-raising advantage over Messinger. On her part, Messinger lost the support of several usually Democratic constituencies, including gay organizations and large labor unions. The local daily newspapersThe New York Times, Daily News, New York Post and Newsdayall endorsed Giuliani over Messinger.
In the end, Giuliani won 58% of the vote to Messinger's 41%, and became the first registered Republican to win a second term as mayor while on the Republican line since Fiorello H. La Guardia in 1941. Voter turnout was the lowest in twelve years, with 38% of registered voters casting ballots. The margin of victory included gains in his share of the African American vote (20% compared to 1993's 5%) and the Hispanic vote (43% from 37%) while maintaining his base of white ethnic, Catholic and Jewish voters from 1993.
Mayoralty
Giuliani served as mayor of New York City from 1994 through 2001.
Law enforcement
In Giuliani's first term as mayor, the New York City Police Departmentat the instigation of Commissioner Bill Brattonadopted an aggressive enforcement/deterrent strategy based on James Q. Wilson's "Broken Windows" approach. This involved crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as graffiti, turnstile jumping, cannabis possession, and aggressive panhandling by "squeegee men", on the theory that this would send a message that order would be maintained. The legal underpinning for removing the "squeegee men" from the streets was developed under Giuliani's predecessor, Mayor David Dinkins. Bratton, with Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple, also created and instituted CompStat, a computer-driven comparative statistical approach to mapping crime geographically and in terms of emerging criminal patterns, as well as charting officer performance by quantifying criminal apprehensions. Critics of the system assert that it creates an environment in which police officials are encouraged to underreport or otherwise manipulate crime data. An extensive study found a high correlation between crime rates reported by the police through CompStat and rates of crime available from other sources, suggesting there had been no manipulation. The CompStat initiative won the 1996 Innovations in Government Award from the Kennedy School of Government.
During Giuliani's administration, crime rates dropped in New York City. The extent to which Giuliani deserves the credit is disputed. Crime rates in New York City had started to drop in 1991 under previous mayor David Dinkins, three years before Giuliani took office. The rates of most crimes, including all categories of violent crime, made consecutive declines during the last 36 months of Dinkins's four-year term, ending a 30-year upward spiral. A small nationwide drop in crime preceded Giuliani's election, and some critics say he may have been the beneficiary of a trend already in progress. Additional contributing factors to the overall decline in New York City crime during the 1990s were the addition of 7,000 officers to the NYPD, lobbied for and hired by the Dinkins administration, and an overall improvement in the national economy. Changing demographics were a key factor contributing to crime rate reductions, which were similar across the country during this time. Because the crime index is based on that of the FBI, which is self-reported by police departments, some have alleged that crimes were shifted into categories the FBI does not collect.
Some studies conclude that the decline in New York City's crime rate in the 1990s and 2000s exceeds all national figures and therefore should be linked with a local dynamic that was not present as such anywhere else in the country: what University of California, Berkeley sociologist Frank Zimring calls "the most focused form of policing in history". In his book The Great American Crime Decline, Zimring argues that "up to half of New York's crime drop in the 1990s, and virtually 100 percent of its continuing crime decline since 2000, has resulted from policing."
Bratton was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1996. Giuliani reportedly forced Bratton out after two years, in what was seen as a battle of two large egos in which Giuliani was not tolerant of Bratton's celebrity. Bratton went on to become chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Giuliani's term also saw allegations of civil rights abuses and other police misconduct under other commissioners after Bratton's departure. There were police shootings of unarmed suspects, and the scandals surrounding the torture of Abner Louima and the killings of Amadou Diallo, Gidone Busch and Patrick Dorismond. Giuliani supported the New York City Police Department, for example by releasing what he called Dorismond's "extensive criminal record" to the public, including a sealed juvenile file.
City services
The Giuliani administration advocated the privatization of the city's public schools, which he called "dysfunctional", and advocated the reduction of state funding for them. He advocated for a voucher-based system to promote private schooling. Giuliani supported protection for illegal immigrants. He continued a policy of preventing city employees from contacting the Immigration and Naturalization Service about immigration violations, on the grounds that illegal aliens should be able to take actions such as sending their children to school or reporting crimes to the police without fear of deportation.
During his mayoralty, gay and lesbian New Yorkers received domestic partnership rights. Giuliani induced the city's Democratic-controlled New York City Council, which had avoided the issue for years, to pass legislation providing broad protection for same-sex partners. In 1998, he codified local law by granting all city employees equal benefits for their domestic partners.
2000 U.S. Senate campaign
Due to term limits, Giuliani was ineligible to run in 2001 for a third term as mayor. In November 1998, four-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement and Giuliani immediately indicated an interest in running in the 2000 election for the now-open seat. Due to his high profile and visibility Giuliani was supported by the state Republican Party. Giuliani's entrance led Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel and others to recruit then-First Lady Hillary Clinton to run for Moynihan's seat, hoping she might combat his star power.
An early January 1999 poll showed Giuliani trailing Clinton by ten points. In April 1999, Giuliani formed an exploratory committee in connection with the Senate run. By January 2000, polling for the race dramatically reversed, with Giuliani now pulling nine points ahead of Clinton, in part because his campaign was able to take advantage of several campaign stumbles by Clinton. Nevertheless, the Giuliani campaign was showing some structural weaknesses; so closely identified with New York City, he had somewhat limited appeal to normally Republican voters in Upstate New York. The New York Police Department's fatal shooting of Patrick Dorismond in March 2000 inflamed Giuliani's already strained relations with the city's minority communities, and Clinton seized on it as a major campaign issue. By April 2000, reports showed Clinton gaining upstate and generally outworking Giuliani, who said his duties as mayor prevented him from campaigning more. Clinton was now eight to ten points ahead of Giuliani in the polls.
Then followed four tumultuous weeks in which Giuliani learned he had prostate cancer and needed treatment; his extramarital relationship with Judith Nathan became public and the subject of a media frenzy; and he announced a separation from his wife Donna Hanover. After much indecision, on May 19, Giuliani announced his withdrawal from the Senate race.
September 11 terrorist attacks
Response
Giuliani received nationwide attention in the aftermath of the September11 attacks. He made frequent appearances on radio and television on September11 and afterwardsfor example, to indicate that tunnels would be closed as a precautionary measure, and that there was no reason to believe the dispersion of chemical or biological weaponry into the air was a factor in the attack. In his public statements, Giuliani said:
The 9/11 attacks occurred on the scheduled date of the mayoral primary to select the Democratic and Republican candidates to succeed Giuliani. The primary was immediately delayed two weeks to September 25. During this period, Giuliani sought an unprecedented three-month emergency extension of his term from January1 to April1 under the New York State Constitution (Article3 Section 25). He threatened to challenge the law imposing term limits on elected city officials and run for another full four-year term, if the primary candidates did not consent to the extension of his mayoralty. In the end leaders in the State Assembly and Senate indicated that they did not believe the extension was necessary. The election proceeded as scheduled, and the winning candidate, the Giuliani-endorsed Republican convert Michael Bloomberg, took office on January 1, 2002, per normal custom.
Giuliani claimed to have been at the Ground Zero site "as often, if not more, than most workers... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them." Some 9/11 workers have objected to those claims. While his appointment logs were unavailable for the six days immediately following the attacks, Giuliani logged 29 hours at the site over three months beginning September 17. This contrasted with recovery workers at the site who spent this much time at the site in two to three days.
When Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal suggested the attacks were an indication that the United States "should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause," Giuliani asserted, "There is no moral equivalent for this act. There is no justification for it... And one of the reasons I think this happened is because people were engaged in moral equivalency in not understanding the difference between liberal democracies like the United States, like Israel, and terrorist states and those who condone terrorism. So I think not only are those statements wrong, they're part of the problem." Giuliani subsequently rejected the prince's $10million donation to disaster relief in the aftermath of the attack.
Emergency command center location and communications problems
Giuliani has been widely criticized for his decision to locate the Office of Emergency Management headquarters on the 23rd floor inside the 7 World Trade Center building. Those opposing the decision perceived the office as a target for a terrorist attack in light of the previous terrorist attack against the World Trade Center in 1993. The office was unable to coordinate efforts between police and firefighters properly while evacuating its headquarters. Large tanks of diesel fuel were placed in 7World Trade to power the command center. In May 1997, Giuliani put responsibility for selecting the location on Jerome M. Hauer, who had served under Giuliani from 1996 to 2000 before being appointed by him as New York City's first Director of Emergency Management. Hauer has taken exception to that account in interviews and provided Fox News and New York Magazine with a memo demonstrating that he recommended a location in Brooklyn but was overruled by Giuliani. Television journalist Chris Wallace interviewed Giuliani on May 13, 2007, about his 1997 decision to locate the command center at the World Trade Center. Giuliani laughed during Wallace's questions and said that Hauer recommended the World Trade Center site and claimed that Hauer said the WTC site was the best location. Wallace presented Giuliani a photocopy of Hauer's directive letter. The letter urged Giuliani to locate the command center in Brooklyn, instead of lower Manhattan. The February 1996 memo read, "The [Brooklyn] building is secure and not as visible a target as buildings in Lower Manhattan."
In January 2008, an eight-page memo was revealed which detailed the New York City Police Department's opposition in 1998 to location of the city's emergency command center at the Trade Center site. The Giuliani administration overrode these concerns.
The 9/11 Commission Report noted that lack of preparedness could have led to the deaths of first responders at the scene of the attacks. The Commission noted that the radios in use by the fire department were the same radios which had been criticized for their ineffectiveness following the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. Family members of 9/11 victims have said these radios were a complaint of emergency services responders for years. The radios were not working when Fire Department chiefs ordered the 343 firefighters inside the towers to evacuate, and they remained in the towers as the towers collapsed. However, when Giuliani testified before the 9/11 Commission he said the firefighters ignored the evacuation order out of an effort to save lives. Giuliani testified to the commission, where some family members of responders who had died in the attacks appeared to protest his statements. A 1994 mayoral office study of the radios indicated that they were faulty. Replacement radios were purchased in a $33million no-bid contract with Motorola, and implemented in early 2001. However, the radios were recalled in March 2001 after a probationary firefighter's calls for help at a house fire could not be picked up by others at the scene, leaving firemen with the old analog radios from 1993. A book later published by Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, argued that the commission had not pursued a tough enough line of questioning with Giuliani.
An October 2001 study by the National Institute of Environmental Safety and Health said cleanup workers lacked adequate protective gear.
Public reaction
Giuliani gained international attention in the wake of the attacks and was widely hailed for his leadership role during the crisis. Polls taken just six weeks after the attack showed a 79 percent approval rating among New York City voters. This was a dramatic increase over the 36 percent rating he had received a year earlier, which was an average at the end of a two-term mayorship. Oprah Winfrey called him "America's Mayor" at a 9/11 memorial service held at Yankee Stadium on September 23, 2001. Other voices denied it was the mayor who had pulled the city together. "You didn't bring us together, our pain brought us together and our decency brought us together. We would have come together if Bozo was the mayor," said civil rights activist Al Sharpton, in a statement largely supported by Fernando Ferrer, one of three main candidates for the mayoralty at the end of 2001. "He was a power-hungry person," Sharpton also said.
Giuliani was praised by some for his close involvement with the rescue and recovery efforts, but others argue that "Giuliani has exaggerated the role he played after the terrorist attacks, casting himself as a hero for political gain." Giuliani has collected $11.4million from speaking fees in a single year (with increased demand after the attacks). Before September11, Giuliani's assets were estimated to be somewhat less than $2million, but his net worth could now be as high as 30 times that amount. He has made most of his money since leaving office.
Time Person of the Year
On December 24, 2001, Time magazine named Giuliani its Person of the Year for 2001. Time observed that, before 9/11, Giuliani's public image had been that of a rigid, self-righteous, ambitious politician. After 9/11, and perhaps owing also to his bout with prostate cancer, his public image became that of a man who could be counted on to unite a city in the midst of its greatest crisis. Historian Vincent J. Cannato concluded in September 2006:
Aftermath
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was given an honorary knighthood (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani initially downplayed the health effects arising from the September 11 attacks in the Financial District and lower Manhattan areas in the vicinity of the World Trade Center site. He moved quickly to reopen Wall Street, and it was reopened on September 17. In the first month after the attacks, he said "The air quality is safe and acceptable."
Giuliani took control away from agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, leaving the "largely unknown" city Department of Design and Construction in charge of recovery and cleanup. Documents indicate that the Giuliani administration never enforced federal requirements requiring the wearing of respirators. Concurrently, the administration threatened companies with dismissal if cleanup work slowed. In June 2007, Christie Todd Whitman, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), reportedly said the EPA had pushed for workers at the WTC site to wear respirators but she had been blocked by Giuliani. She said she believed the subsequent lung disease and deaths suffered by WTC responders were a result of these actions. However, former deputy mayor Joe Lhota, then with the Giuliani campaign, replied, "All workers at Ground Zero were instructed repeatedly to wear their respirators."
Giuliani asked the city's Congressional delegation to limit the city's liability for Ground Zero illnesses to a total of $350million. Two years after Giuliani finished his term, FEMA appropriated $1billion to a special insurance fund, called the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company, to protect the city against 9/11 lawsuits.
In February 2007, the International Association of Fire Fighters issued a letter asserting that Giuliani rushed to conclude the recovery effort once gold and silver had been recovered from World Trade Center vaults and thereby prevented the remains of many victims from being recovered: "Mayor Giuliani's actions meant that fire fighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills Landfill," it said, adding: "Hundreds remained entombed in Ground Zero when Giuliani gave up on them." Lawyers for the International Association of Fire Fighters seek to interview Giuliani under oath as part of a federal legal action alleging that New York City negligently dumped body parts and other human remains in the Fresh Kills Landfill.
Post-mayoralty
Politics
Before 2008 election
Since leaving office as mayor, Giuliani has remained politically active by campaigning for Republican candidates for political offices at all levels. When George Pataki became Governor in 1995, this represented the first time the positions of both Mayor and Governor were held simultaneously by Republicans since John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. Giuliani and Pataki were instrumental in bringing the 2004 Republican National Convention to New York City. He was a speaker at the convention, and endorsed President George W. Bush for re-election by recalling that immediately after the World Trade Center towers fell,
Similarly, in June 2006, Giuliani started a website called Solutions America to help elect Republican candidates across the nation.
After campaigning on Bush's behalf in the U.S. presidential election of 2004, he was reportedly the top choice for Secretary of Homeland Security after Tom Ridge's resignation. When suggestions were made that Giuliani's confirmation hearings would be marred by details of his past affairs and scandals, he turned down the offer and instead recommended his friend and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. After the formal announcement of Kerik's nomination, information about Kerik's pastmost notably, that he had ties to organized crime, had failed to properly report gifts he had received, had been sued for sexual harassment and had employed an undocumented alien as a domestic servantbecame known, and Kerik withdrew his nomination.
On March 15, 2006, Congress formed the Iraq Study Group (ISG). This bipartisan ten-person panel, of which Giuliani was one of the members, was charged with assessing the Iraq War and making recommendations. They would eventually unanimously conclude that contrary to Bush administration assertions, "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" and called for "changes in the primary mission" that would allow "the United States to begin to move its forces out of Iraq".
On May 24, 2006, after missing all the group's meetings, including a briefing from General David Petraeus, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, Giuliani resigned from the panel, citing "previous time commitments". Giuliani's fundraising schedule had kept him from participating in the panel, a schedule which raised $11.4million in speaking fees over fourteen months, and that Giuliani had been forced to resign after being given "an ultimatum to either show up for meetings or leave the group" by group leader James Baker. Giuliani subsequently said he had started thinking about running for president, and being on the panel might give it a political spin.
Giuliani was described by Newsweek in January 2007 as "one of the most consistent cheerleaders for the president's handling of the war in Iraq" and as of June 2007, he remained one of the few candidates for president to unequivocally support both the basis for the invasion and the execution of the war.
Giuliani spoke in support of the removal of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK, also PMOI, MKO) from the United States State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The group was on the State Department list from 1997 until September 2012. They were placed on the list for killing six Americans in Iran during the 1970s and attempting to attack the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992. Giuliani, along with other former government officials and politicians Ed Rendell, R. James Woolsey, Porter Goss, Louis Freeh, Michael Mukasey, James L. Jones, Tom Ridge, and Howard Dean, were criticized for their involvement with the group. Some were subpoenaed during an inquiry about who was paying the prominent individuals' speaking fees. Giuliani and others wrote an article for the conservative publication National Review stating their position that the group should not be classified as a terrorist organization. They supported their position by pointing out that the United Kingdom and the European Union had already removed the group from their terrorism lists. They further assert that only the United States and Iran still listed it as a terrorist group. However, Canada did not delist the group until December 2012.
2008 presidential campaign
In November 2006, Giuliani announced the formation of an exploratory committee toward a run for the presidency in 2008. In February 2007, he filed a "statement of candidacy" and confirmed on the television program Larry King Live that he was indeed running.
Early polls showed Giuliani with one of the highest levels of name recognition ever recorded along with high levels of support among the Republican candidates. Throughout most of 2007, he was the leader in most nationwide opinion polling among Republicans. Senator John McCain, who ranked a close second behind the New York Mayor, had faded, and most polls showed Giuliani to have more support than any of the other declared Republican candidates, with only former Senator Fred Thompson and former Governor Mitt Romney showing greater support in some per-state Republican polls. On November 7, 2007, Giuliani's campaign received an endorsement from evangelist, Christian Broadcasting Network founder, and past presidential candidate Pat Robertson. This was viewed by political observers as a possibly key development in the race, as it gave credence that evangelicals and other social conservatives could support Giuliani despite some of his positions on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.
Giuliani's campaign hit a difficult stretch during the last two months of 2007, when Bernard Kerik, whom Giuliani had recommended for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security, was indicted on 16 counts of tax fraud and other federal charges. The media reported that when Giuliani was the mayor of New York, he billed several tens of thousands of dollars of mayoral security expenses to obscure city agencies. Those expenses were incurred while he visited Judith Nathan, with whom he was having an extramarital affair (later analysis showed the billing to likely be unrelated to hiding Nathan). Several stories were published in the press regarding clients of Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani who were in opposition to goals of American foreign policy. Giuliani's national poll numbers began steadily slipping and his unusual strategy of focusing more on later, multi-primary big states rather than the smaller, first-voting states was seen at risk.
Despite his strategy, Giuliani competed to a substantial extent in the January 8, 2008, New Hampshire primary but finished a distant fourth with 9percent of the vote. Similar poor results continued in other early contests, when Giuliani's staff went without pay in order to focus all efforts on the crucial late January Florida Republican primary. The shift of the electorate's focus from national security to the state of the economy also hurt Giuliani, as did the resurgence of McCain's similarly themed campaign. On January 29, 2008, Giuliani finished a distant third in the Florida result with 15percent of the vote, trailing McCain and Romney. Facing declining polls and lost leads in the upcoming large Super Tuesday states, including that of his home New York, Giuliani withdrew from the race on January 30, endorsing McCain.
Giuliani's campaign ended up $3.6million in arrears, and in June 2008 Giuliani sought to retire the debt by proposing to appear at Republican fundraisers during the 2008 general election, and have part of the proceeds go towards his campaign. During the 2008 Republican National Convention, Giuliani gave a prime-time speech that praised McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, while criticizing Democratic nominee Barack Obama. He cited Palin's executive experience as a mayor and governor and belittled Obama's lack of same, and his remarks were met with wild applause from the delegates. Giuliani continued to be one of McCain's most active surrogates during the remainder of McCain's eventually unsuccessful campaign.
After 2008 election
Following the end of his presidential campaign, Giuliani's "high appearance fees dropped like a stone". He returned to work at both Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani. His consultancy work included advising Keiko Fujimori with her presidential campaign during the 2011 Peruvian general election. Giuliani also explored hosting a syndicated radio show, and was reported to be in talks with Westwood One about replacing Bill O'Reilly before that position went to Fred Thompson (another unsuccessful 2008 GOP presidential primary candidate). During the March 2009 AIG bonus payments controversy, Giuliani called for U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to step down and said the Obama administration lacked executive competence in dealing with the ongoing financial crisis.
Giuliani said his political career was not necessarily over, and did not rule out a 2010 New York gubernatorial or 2012 presidential bid. A November 2008 Siena College poll indicated that although Governor David Patersonpromoted to the office via the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal a year beforewas popular among New Yorkers, he would have just a slight lead over Giuliani in a hypothetical matchup. By February 2009, after the prolonged Senate appointment process, a Siena College poll indicated that Paterson was losing popularity among New Yorkers, and showed Giuliani with a fifteen-point lead in the hypothetical contest. In January 2009, Giuliani said he would not decide on a gubernatorial run for another six to eight months, adding that he thought it would not be fair to the governor to start campaigning early while the governor tries to focus on his job. Giuliani worked to retire his presidential campaign debt, but by the end of March 2009 it was still $2.4million in arrears, the largest such remaining amount for any of the 2008 contenders. In April 2009, Giuliani strongly opposed Paterson's announced push for same-sex marriage in New York and said it would likely cause a backlash that could put Republicans in statewide office in 2010. By late August 2009, there were still conflicting reports about whether Giuliani was likely to run.
On December 23, 2009, Giuliani announced that he would not seek any office in 2010, saying "The main reason has to do with my two enterprises: Bracewell & Giuliani and Giuliani Partners. I'm very busy in both." The decisions signaled a possible end to Giuliani's political career. During the 2010 midterm elections, Giuliani endorsed and campaigned for Bob Ehrlich and Marco Rubio.
On October 11, 2011, Giuliani announced that he was not running for president. According to Kevin Law, the Director of the Long Island Association, Giuliani believed that "As a moderate, he thought it was a pretty significant challenge. He said it's tough to be a moderate and succeed in GOP primaries," Giuliani said "If it's too late for (New Jersey Governor) Chris Christie, it's too late for me."
At a Republican fund-raising event in February 2015, Giuliani said, "I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president Obama loves America," and "He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country." In response to criticism of the remarks, Giuliani said, "Some people thought it was racistI thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother... This isn't racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism." White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said he agreed with Giuliani "that it was a horrible thing to say", but he would leave it up to the people who heard Giuliani directly to assess whether the remarks were appropriate for the event. Although he received some support for his controversial comments, Giuliani said he also received several death threats within 48 hours.
Relationship with Donald Trump
Presidential campaign supporter
Giuliani supported Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He gave a prime time speech during the first night of the 2016 Republican National Convention. Earlier in the day, Giuliani and former 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson appeared at an event for the pro-Trump Great America PAC. Giuliani also appeared in a Great America PAC ad entitled "Leadership". Giuliani's and Jeff Sessions's appearances were staples at Trump campaign rallies.
During the campaign, Giuliani praised Trump for his worldwide accomplishments and helping fellow New Yorkers in their time of need. He defended Trump against allegations of racism, sexual assault, and not paying any federal income taxes for as long as two decades.
In August 2016, Giuliani, while campaigning for Trump, claimed that in the "eight years before Obama" became president, "we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States". It was noted that 9/11 happened during George W. Bush's first term. Politifact brought up four more counter-examples (the 2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting, the 2002 D.C. sniper attacks, the 2006 Seattle Jewish Federation shooting and the 2006 UNC SUV attack) to Giuliani's claim. Giuliani later said he was using "abbreviated language".
Giuliani was believed to be a likely pick for Secretary of State in the Trump administration. However, on December 9, 2016, Trump announced that Giuliani had removed his name from consideration for any Cabinet post.
Advisor to the president
The president-elect named Giuliani his informal cybersecurity adviser on January 12, 2017. The status of this informal role for Giuliani is unclear because, in November 2018, Trump created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), headed by Christopher Krebs as director and Matthew Travis as deputy. In the weeks following his appointment, Giuliani was forced to consult an Apple Store Genius Bar when he "was locked out of his iPhone because he had forgotten the passcode and entered the wrong one at least 10 times", belying his putative expertise in the field.
In January 2017, Giuliani said he advised President Trump in matters relating to Executive Order 13769, which barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days. The order also suspended the admission of all refugees for 120 days.
Giuliani has drawn scrutiny over his ties to foreign nations, regarding not registering per the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Personal lawyer
In mid April 2018, Giuliani joined Trump's legal team, which dealt with the special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Giuliani said his goal was to negotiate a swift end to the investigation.
In early May, Giuliani made public that Trump had reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen $130,000 that Cohen had paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels for her agreement not to talk about her alleged affair with Trump. Cohen had earlier insisted he used his own money to pay Daniels, and he implied that he had not been reimbursed. Trump had previously said he knew nothing about the matter. Within a week, Giuliani said some of his own statements regarding this matter were "more rumor than anything else".
Later in May 2018, Giuliani, who was asked on whether the promotion of the Spygate conspiracy theory is meant to discredit the special counsel investigation, said the investigators "are giving us the material to do it. Of course, we have to do it in defending the president... it is for public opinion" on whether to "impeach or not impeach" Trump. In June 2018, Giuliani claimed that a sitting president cannot be indicted: "I don't know how you can indict while he's in office. No matter what it is. If President Trump shot [then-FBI director] James Comey, he'd be impeached the next day. Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him."
In June 2018, Giuliani also said Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because "our recollection keeps changing". In early July, Giuliani characterized that Trump had previously asked Comey to "give him [then-national security adviser Michael Flynn] a break". In mid-August, Giuliani denied making this comment: "What I said was, that is what Comey is saying Trump said." On August 19 on Meet the Press, Giuliani argued that Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because Trump could be "trapped into perjury" just by telling "somebody's version of the truth. Not the truth." Giuliani's argument continued: "Truth isn't truth." Giuliani later clarified that he was "referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements".
In late July, Giuliani defended Trump by saying "collusion is not a crime" and that Trump had done nothing wrong because he "didn't hack" or "pay for the hacking". He later elaborated that his comments were a "very, very familiar lawyer's argument" to "attack the legitimacy of the special counsel investigation". He also described and denied several supposed allegations that have never been publicly raised, regarding two earlier meetings among Trump campaign officials to set up the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with Russian citizens. In late August, Giuliani said the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower "meeting was originally for the purpose of getting information about Hillary Clinton".
Additionally in late July, Giuliani attacked Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as an "incredible liar", two months after calling Cohen an "honest, honorable lawyer". In mid-August, Giuliani defended Trump by saying: "The president's an honest man."
It was reported in early September that Giuliani said the White House could and likely would prevent the special counsel investigation from making public certain information in its final report which would be covered by executive privilege. Also according to Giuliani, Trump's personal legal team is already preparing a "counter-report" to refute the potential special counsel investigation's report.
Giuliani privately urged Trump in 2017 to extradite Fethullah Gülen.
In late 2019, Giuliani represented Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, meeting with the Justice Department to ask not to bring charges against him.
In an interview with Olivia Nuzzi in New York magazine, Giuliani, who is a Roman Catholic of Italian descent, said, "Don't tell me I'm anti-Semitic if I oppose George Soros... I'm more of a Jew than Soros is." George Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew who survived The Holocaust. The Anti-Defamation League replied, "Mr. Giuliani should apologize and retract his comments immediately unless he seeks to dog whistle to hardcore anti-Semites and white supremacists who believe this garbage."
In the last days of the Trump administration, when White House aides were soliciting fees to lobby for presidential pardons, Giuliani said that while he'd heard that large fees were being offered, he did not work on clemency cases, saying "I have enough money. I'm not starving."
As of February 16, 2021, Giuliani was reportedly not actively involved in any of Trump's pending legal cases.
Attempts to get Ukraine to carry out investigations
Since at least May 2019, Giuliani has been urging Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the oil company Burisma, whose board of directors once included Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, and to check for irregularities in Ukraine's investigation of Paul Manafort. He said such investigations would benefit his client's defense, and that his efforts had Trump's full support. Toward this end, Giuliani met with Ukrainian officials throughout 2019. In July 2019, Buzzfeed News reported that two Soviet-born Americans, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were liaisons between Giuliani and Ukrainian government officials in this effort. Parnas and Fruman, prolific Republican donors, have neither registered as foreign agents in the United States, nor been evaluated and approved by the State Department. Giuliani responded, "This (report) is a pathetic effort to cover up what are enormous allegations of criminality by the Biden family." Yet by September 2019, there had been no clear evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
As of October 1, 2019, Giuliani hired former Watergate prosecutor Jon Sale to represent him in the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment investigation. The committee also issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents related to the Ukraine scandal. The New York Times reported on October 11, 2019, that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which Giuliani had once led, was investigating him for violating lobbying laws related to his activities in Ukraine. The following month, Bloomberg News reported that the investigation could extend to bribery of foreign officials or conspiracy, and The Wall Street Journal reported Giuliani was being investigated for a possible profit motive in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. Giuliani has denied having any interest in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. In late November, the Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors had just issued subpoenas to multiple associates of Giuliani to potentially investigate certain individuals, apparently including Giuliani, on numerous potential charges, including money laundering, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements to the federal government, and mail/wire fraud.
Parnas and Fruman were arrested for campaign finance violations while attempting to board a one-way flight to Frankfurt from Washington Dulles International Airport on October 9, 2019. Giuliani was paid $500,000 to consult for Lev Parnas's company named "Fraud Guarantee". Republican donor and Trump supporter Long Island attorney Charles Gucciardo paid Giuliani on behalf of Fraud Guarantee in two $250,000 payments, in September and October 2018. Fruman eventually pled guilty in September 2021 to having solicited a contribution by a foreign national.
In May 2019, Giuliani described Ukraine's chief prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko as a "much more honest guy" than his predecessor, Viktor Shokin. After Lutsenko was removed from office, he said in September 2019 that he found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, and that he had met Giuliani about ten times. Giuliani then reversed his stance, saying that Shokin is the one people "should have spoken to", while Lutsenko acted "corruptly" and "is exactly the prosecutor that Joe Biden put in in order to tank the case".
In September 2019, as reports surfaced that a whistleblower was alleging high-level misconduct related to Ukraine, Giuliani went on CNN to discuss the story. When asked if he had tried to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden, he initially replied "No, actually I didn't," but thirty seconds later said, "Of course I did." In a later tweet he seemed to confirm reports that Trump had withheld military assistance funds scheduled for Ukraine unless they carried out the investigation. He said, "The reality is that the president of the United States, whoever he is, has every right to tell the president of another country you better straighten out the corruption in your country if you want me to give you a lot of money. If you're so damn corrupt that you can't investigate allegationsour money is going to get squandered."
Tom Bossert, a former Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump administration, described Giuliani's theory that Ukraine was involved in 2016 U.S. election interference as "debunked"; Giuliani responded that Bossert "doesn't know what the hell he's talking about".
On September 30, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents concerning the Ukraine scandal to Committee members by October 15, 2019. On October 2, 2019, Steve Linick, the State Department's inspector general, delivered a 40-page packet of apparent disinformation regarding former vice president Joe Biden and former Ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, to Capitol Hill. Linick told congressional aides his office questioned Ulrich Brechbuhl, Pompeo's advisor about the origins of the packet. Brechbuhl noted the packet came to him from Pompeo, who said it "came over", and Brechbuhl reportedly presumed it was from the White House. Later that day, Giuliani acknowledged he passed the packet to Pompeo regarding the Ukraine and attacks on Yovanovich. In a November 2019 interview he confirmed that he had "needed Yovanovitch out of the way" because she was going to make his investigations difficult. "They (the State Department) told me they would investigate it," Giuliani added. Giuliani persuaded Trump to remove Yovanovich from office in spring 2019. By April 2021, the U.S attorney's office in Manhattan was investigating the role of Giuliani and his associates in Yovanovitch's removal.
U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that Trump delegated American foreign policy on Ukraine to Giuliani. The late 2019 impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump centered around Giuliani's actions involving Ukraine. In the compiled testimony and in the December reports of the House Intelligence Committee, Giuliani's name was mentioned more than any but Trump's. Some experts suggested that Giuliani may have violated the Logan Act.
On November 22, 2019, Giuliani sent a letter to Senator Lindsey Graham, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, informing him of at least three witnesses from Ukraine who Giuliani claimed had direct oral, documentary, and recorded evidence of Democratic criminal conspiracy with Ukrainians to prevent Trump's election and, after his election, to remove him from office via contrived charges. Giuliani's letter also claims that the witnesses had evidence of the Biden family's involvement in bribery, money laundering, Hobbs Act extortion, and other possible crimes. The letter sought Graham's help obtaining U.S. visas for the witnesses to testify. The next month, Graham invited Giuliani to share his findings with the Judiciary Committee, and soon advised him "to share what he got from Ukraine with the [intelligence community] to make sure it's not Russia propaganda".
Dmytry Firtash is a Ukrainian oligarch who is prominent in the natural gas sector. In 2017, the Justice Department characterized him as being an "upper echelon (associate) of Russian organized crime". Since his 2014 arrest in Vienna, Austria at the request of American authorities, he has been living there on $155 million bail while fighting extradition to the United States on bribery and racketeering charges, and has been seeking to have the charges dropped. Firtash's attorneys obtained a September 2019 statement from Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general who was forced out under pressure from multiple countries and non-governmental organizations, as conveyed to Ukraine by Joe Biden. Shokin falsely asserted in the statement that Biden actually had him fired because he refused to stop his investigation into Burisma. Giuliani, who asserts he has "nothing to do with" and has "never met or talked to" Firtash, promoted the statement in television appearances as purported evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens. Giuliani told CNN he met with a Firtash attorney for two hours in New York City at the time he was seeking information about the Bidens.
Firtash is represented by Trump and Giuliani associates Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, having hired them on Parnas's recommendation in July 2019. The New York Times reported in November 2019 that Giuliani had directed Parnas to approach Firtash with the recommendation, with the proposition that Firtash could help provide damaging information on Biden, which Parna's attorney described was "part of any potential resolution to [Firtash's] extradition matter". Shokin's statement notes that it was prepared "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash ('DF'), for use in legal proceedings in Austria". Giuliani presented the Shokin statement during American television appearances. Bloomberg News reported on October 18 that during the summer of 2019 Firtash associates began attempting to dig up dirt on the Bidens in an effort to solicit Giuliani's assistance with Firtash's legal matters. Bloomberg News also reported that its sources told them Giuliani's high-profile publicity of the Shokin statement had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political quid pro quo. diGenova has said he has known U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr for thirty years, as they both worked in the Reagan Justice Department. The Washington Post reported on October 22 that after they began representing Firtash, Toensing and diGenova secured a rare face-to-face meeting with Barr to argue the Firtash charges should be dropped, but he declined to intervene.
On October 18, The New York Times reported that weeks earlier, before his associates Parnas and Fruman were indicted, Giuliani met with officials with the criminal and fraud divisions of the Justice Department regarding what Giuliani characterized as a "very, very sensitive" foreign bribery case involving a client of his. The Times did not name whom the case involved, but shortly after publication of the story Giuliani told a reporter it was not Firtash. Two days later, the Justice Department said its officials would not have met with Giuliani had they known his associates were under investigation by the SDNY.
On December 3, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee's report included phone records acquired via subpoenas, including numerous phone calls made by Giuliani between April and August 2019. Calls involved Giuliani in contact with Kurt Volker, Republican Representative and House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, Lev Parnas, numbers associated with the Office of Management and Budget and the White House switchboard, and an unidentified White House official whose phone number is referenced as "-1". Chairman Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee announced after the report's release that his committee was investigating whether "-1" referred to President Trump, citing grand jury evidence from the trial of convicted Trump-associate Roger Stone in which the phone number "-1" was shown to have referred to Trump. Writing for The Washington Post, analyst Philip Bump reasoned that Giuliani's calls with "-1" are 'likely' calls with Trump citing that Giuliani speaks longer with "-1" than any other person, "-1" always calls Giuliani, and generally after Giuliani calls the White House switchboard, and timing of some of President Trump's actions shortly after Giuliani's calls with "-1" ended.
In early December 2019, while the House Judiciary Committee began holding public hearings for the impeachment inquiry, Giuliani returned to Ukraine to interview former Ukrainian officials for a documentary series seeking to discredit the impeachment proceedings. U.S. officials told The Washington Post that Giuliani would have been considered a target of Russian intelligence efforts from early in Trump's presidency, and particularly after Giuliani turned his focus to Ukraine — a former Soviet republic under attack from Russia and with deep penetration by Russian intelligence services. Analysts say Trump's and Giuliani's habit of communicating over unencrypted lines makes it highly likely that foreign intelligence agencies could be listening in on the president's unsecured calls with Giuliani; and that foreign intelligence agencies often collect intelligence about a primary target through monitoring communications of other people who interact with that target.
In a December 2019 opinion piece, former FBI director, CIA director and federal judge William Webster wrote of "a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love". In addition to chastising President Trump and attorney general Bill Barr, Webster wrote he was "profoundly disappointed in another longtime, respected friend, Rudy Giuliani" because his "activities of late concerning Ukraine have, at a minimum, failed the smell test of propriety". Since 2005, Webster had served as the chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
NBC News reported in December 2020 that SDNY investigators, which were reported in late 2019 to be investigating Giuliani's activities, had discussed with Justice Department officials in Washington the possibility of acquiring Giuliani's emails, which might require headquarters approval due to protection by attorney–client privilege. The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY had requested a search warrant of Giuliani's electronic records in summer 2020, but were met with resistance from high-level political appointees in the Washington headquarters, ostensibly because the election was near, while career officials were supportive of the search warrant. The Justice Department generally avoids taking significant actions relating to political figures that might become public within sixty days of an election. Senior political appointees nevertheless opposed the effort after the election, noting Giuliani played a leading role in challenging the election results. The officials deferred the matter to the incoming Biden administration.
Federal investigators in Manhattan executed search warrants on the early morning of April 28, 2021 at Giuliani's office and Upper East Side apartment, seizing his electronic devices and searching the apartment. FBI agents also executed a search warrant that day on Toensing's Washington, D.C.-area home and confiscated her cellphone. In April 2021, Giuliani's attorney said investigators told him they had searched his client's iCloud account beginning in late 2019, later arguing to a judge that the search was illegal and so the subsequent raid on Giuliani's properties was "fruit of this poisoned tree," demanding to review documents justifying the iCloud search. In May 2021, the SDNY confirmed in a court filing that in late 2019 it obtained search warrants for Giuliani's iCloud account, and that of Toensing, as part of "an ongoing, multi-year grand jury investigation into conduct involving Giuliani, Toensing, and others," and argued that attorneys for Giuliani and Toensing were not entitled to review the underlying documents of the warrants prior to any charges. Giuiliani and Toensing asserted their attorney-client privilege with clients may have been violated by the iCloud searches, which investigators disputed, saying they employed a "filter team" to prevent them from seeing information potentially protected by attorney-client privilege. Federal judge J. Paul Oetken days later ruled in favor of investigators regarding the warrant documents and granted their request for a special master to ensure attorney-client privilege was maintained. The special master released more than 3,000 of Giuliani's communications to prosecutors in January 2022, agreeing to withhold forty messages for which Giuliani had asserted "privilege and/or highly personal" status and rejecting 37 such assertions.
The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY was scrutinizing Giuliani's association with Firtash in efforts to discredit the Bidens, and efforts to lobby the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs. Time reported in May 2021 it had spoken with three unidentified witnesses who said they were questioned by investigators, two of whom said they had worked with Giuliani while cooperating with investigators; one witness said investigators were particularly interested in Giuliani's association with Firtash.
United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 found that Ukrainian politician Andrii Derkach was among proxies of Russian intelligence who promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about Biden "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration". Giuliani met with Derkach in December 2019.
In April 2021, Forensic News reported that the SDNY investigation into Giuliani had expanded to include a criminal probe of Derkach and Andrii Artemenko. The New York Times confirmed weeks later that Derkach was the subject of a criminal investigation into foreign interference in the 2020 United States elections. "Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have been investigating whether several Ukrainian officials helped orchestrate a wide-ranging plan to meddle in the 2020 presidential campaign, including using Rudolph W. Giuliani to spread their misleading claims about President Biden and tilt the election in Donald J. Trump's favor," the Times reported.
On June 8, 2021, CNN uncovered exclusive audio of a 2019 phone call from Giuliani to Ukraine, stating that "Rudy Giuliani relentlessly pressured and coaxed the Ukrainian government in 2019 to investigate baseless conspiracies about then-candidate Joe Biden."
2020 election lawsuits
In November 2020, after Joe Biden was named president-elect, Trump placed Giuliani in charge of lawsuits related to alleged voter irregularities in the 2020 United States presidential election. Trump designated Giuliani to lead a legal team to challenge the election results. This team—a self-described "elite strike force" that included Sidney Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing and Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis—appeared at a November 19 press conference in which they made numerous false and unsubstantiated assertions revolving around an international Communist conspiracy, rigged voting machines, and polling place fraud.
Giuliani repeatedly publicly denounced the use of provisional ballots (in which the poll worker does not see the voter's name on the rolls, so the voter swears an affidavit oath that they are registered to vote), arguing that the practice enables fraud, although Giuliani himself had cast this type of ballot on October 31, 2020, in Manhattan.
By January 8, 2021, Trump and his team had lost 63 lawsuits. A month later, Giuliani was no longer representing Trump in any pending cases, according to a Trump adviser. While Trump continued to fundraise, purportedly for his election-related legal fights, as of the end of July 2021 he had not given any of this money to Giuliani. In October 2021, in another context, Trump remarked: "I do pay my lawyers when they do a good job."
In December 2021, two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye” Moss, sued Giuliani for defamation.
Pennsylvania lawsuit
One early lawsuit sought to invalidate up to 700,000 mail-in ballots and stop Pennsylvania from certifying its election results. Giuliani claimed to have signed affidavits attesting to voter fraud and election official misconduct in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Despite not having argued a case in any courtroom for over three decades, Giuliani applied for special permission to represent the Trump presidential campaign in the federal court of Pennsylvania. (In his application, he misrepresented his status with the District of Columbia Bar, claiming that he was a member in good standing, whereas D.C. had suspended him for nonpayment of fees.) In his first day in court on the case, which was November 17, 2020, Giuliani struggled with rudimentary legal processes and was accused by lawyers for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State of making legal arguments that were "disgraceful in an American courtroom". Judge Matthew Brann questioned how Giuliani could justify "asking this court to invalidate some 6.8 million votes thereby disenfranchising every single voter in the commonwealth."
His federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania was dismissed with prejudice on November 21, 2020, with the judge citing "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations" which were "unsupported by evidence". Giuliani and Jenna Ellis reacted by stating that the ruling "helps" the Trump campaign "get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court". They also pointed out that the judge, Matthew W. Brann, was "Obama-appointed", though Brann is also a Republican and a former member of the right-leaning Federalist Society.
The Trump campaign appealed the lawsuit to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel on November 27 rejected the Trump campaign's attempt to undo Pennsylvania's vote certification, because the Trump campaign's "claims have no merit". The panel also ruled that the District Court was correct in preventing the Trump campaign from conducting a second amendment of its complaint. An amendment would be pointless, ruled the judges, because the Trump campaign was not bringing facts before the court, and not even alleging fraud. Judge Stephanos Bibas highlighted that Giuliani himself told the district court that the Trump campaign "doesn't plead fraud", and that this "is not a fraud case". The panel concluded that neither "specific allegations" nor "proof" was provided in this case, and that the Trump campaign "cannot win this lawsuit".
Giuliani and Ellis reacted to the appeals court ruling by condemning the "activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania". Of the three Appeal Court judges, Stephanos Bibas, who delivered the opinion, was appointed by Trump himself, while judges D. Brooks Smith and Michael Chagares were appointed by Republican president George W. Bush.
Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits
As part of Giuliani's allegations that voting machines had been rigged, he made several false assertions about two rival companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. These false claims included that Smartmatic owned Dominion; that Dominion voting machines used Smartmatic software; that Dominion voting machines sent vote data to Smartmatic at foreign locations; that Dominion was founded by the former socialist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez; and that Dominion is a "radical-left" company with connections to antifa.
Both companies sued Giuliani and Fox News. Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Giuliani on January 25, 2021, seeking $1.3billion in damages, and separately sued Fox News for $1.6 billion. On February 4, 2021, Smartmatic also filed a lawsuit that accused Giuliani, Fox News, some hosts at Fox News, and Sidney Powell of engaging in a "disinformation campaign" against the company, and asked for $2.7billion in damages.
On September 10, 2021, Fox News told Giuliani that neither he nor his son Andrew would be allowed on their network for nearly three months.
Attack on the Capitol
On January 6, 2021, Giuliani spoke at a "Save America March" rally on the Ellipse that was attended by Trump supporters protesting the election results. He repeated conspiracy theories that voting machines used in the election were "crooked" and called for "trial by combat". Trump supporters subsequently stormed the U.S. Capitol in a riot that resulted in the deaths of five people, including a police officer, and temporarily disrupted the counting of the Electoral College vote.
Giuliani had reportedly been calling Republican lawmakers to urge them to delay the electoral vote count in order to ultimately throw the election to Trump. Giuliani attempted to contact Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Trump ally, around 7:00p.m. on January 6, after the Capitol storming, to ask him to "try to just slow it down" by objecting to multiple states and "raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrowideally until the end of tomorrow". However, Giuliani mistakenly left the message on the voicemail of another senator, who leaked the recording to The Dispatch. Rick Perlstein, a noted historian of the American conservative political movement, termed Giuliani's attempts to slow certification in the wake of the riot as treasonous. "Sedition. Open and shut. He talked about the time that was being opened up. He was welcoming, and using, the violence. This needs to be investigated," Perlstein tweeted on January 11, 2021.
Giuliani faced criticism for his appearance at the rally and the Capitol riot that followed it. Former Congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called for the arrest of Giuliani, President Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. Manhattan College president Brennan O'Donnell stated in a January7 open letter to the college community, "one of the loudest voices fueling the anger, hatred, and violence that spilled out yesterday is a graduate of our College, Rudolph Giuliani. His conduct as a leader of the campaign to de-legitimize the election and disenfranchise millions of votershas been and continues to be a repudiation of the deepest values of his alma mater."
On January 11, the New York State Bar Association, an advocacy group for the legal profession in New York state, announced that it was launching an investigation into whether Giuliani should be removed from its membership rolls, noting both Giuliani's comments to the Trump supporter rally at the Ellipse on January 6, and that it "has received hundreds of complaints in recent months about Mr. Giuliani and his baseless efforts on behalf of President Trump to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 presidential election and, after the votes were cast, to overturn its legitimate results". Removal from the group's membership rolls would not directly disbar Giuliani from practicing law in New York. New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman and lawyers' group Lawyers Defending American Democracy, also filed a complaints against Giuliani with the Attorney Grievance Committee of the First Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court, which has the authority to discipline and disbar licensed New York lawyers.
Also on January 11, 2021, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said that he is looking at whether to charge Giuliani, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Representative Mo Brooks, with inciting the violent attack.
On January 29, Giuliani falsely claimed that The Lincoln Project played a role in the organization of the Capitol riot. In response, Steve Schmidt announced that the group would be taking legal action against Giuliani for defamation.
On March 5, 2021, Representative Eric Swalwell filed a civil lawsuit against Giuliani and three others (Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Representative Mo Brooks), seeking damages for their alleged role in inciting the Capitol riot.
Giuliani was subpoenaed in January 2022 to testify before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Suspension of law license
On June 24, 2021, a New York appellate court suspended Giuliani's law license. The panel of five justices found that there was "uncontroverted" evidence that Giuliani made "demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public" and that "These false statements were made to improperly bolster (Giuliani's) narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client." The court concluded that Giuliani's conduct "immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law". His license was also suspended in Washington D.C. on July 7, 2021.
Giuliani Partners
After leaving the New York City mayor's office, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners LLC, in 2002, a firm that has been categorized by multiple media outlets as a lobbying entity capitalizing on Giuliani's name recognition, and which has been the subject of allegations surrounding staff hired by Giuliani and due to the firm's chosen client base. Over five years, Giuliani Partners earned more than $100million.
In June 2007, he stepped down as CEO and Chairman of Giuliani Partners, although this action was not made public until December 4, 2007; he maintained his equity interest in the firm. Giuliani subsequently returned to active participation in the firm following the election. In late 2009, Giuliani announced that they had a security consulting contract with Rio de Janeiro, Brazil regarding the 2016 Summer Olympics. He faced criticism in 2012 for advising people once allied with Slobodan Milošević who had lauded Serbian war criminals.
Bracewell & Giuliani
In 2005, Giuliani joined the law firm of Bracewell & Patterson LLP (renamed Bracewell & Giuliani LLP) as a name partner and basis for the expanding firm's new New York office. When he joined the Texas-based firm he brought Marc Mukasey, the son of Attorney General Michael Mukasey, into the firm.
Despite a busy schedule, Giuliani was highly active in the day-to-day business of the law firm, which was a high-profile supplier of legal and lobbying services to the oil, gas, and energy industries. Its aggressive defense of pollution-causing coal-fired power plants threatened to cause political risk for Giuliani, but association with the firm helped Giuliani achieve fund-raising success in Texas. In 2006, Giuliani acted as the lead counsel and lead spokesmen for Bracewell & Giuliani client Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, during their negotiations with federal prosecutors over charges that the pharmaceutical company misled the public about OxyContin's addictive properties. The agreement reached resulted in Purdue Pharma and some of its executives paying $634.5million in fines.
Bracewell & Giuliani represented corporate clients before many U.S. government departments and agencies. Some clients have worked with corporations and foreign governments.
Giuliani left the firm in January 2016, by "amicable agreement", and the firm was rebranded as Bracewell LLP.
Greenberg Traurig
In January 2016, Giuliani moved to the law firm Greenberg Traurig, where he served as the global chairman for Greenberg's cybersecurity and crisis management group, as well as a senior advisor to the firm's executive chairman. In April 2018, he took an unpaid leave of absence when he joined Trump's legal defense team. He resigned from the firm on May 9, 2018.
Lobbying in Romania
In August 2018, Giuliani was retained by Freeh Group International Solutions, a global consulting firm run by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, which paid him a fee to lobby Romanian president Klaus Iohannis to change Romania's anti-corruption policy and reduce the role of the National Anticorruption Directorate. Giuliani argued that the anti-corruption efforts had gone too far.
Podcast
In January 2020, Giuliani launched a podcast, Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
Personal life
Marriages and relationships
Giuliani married Regina Peruggi, whom he had known since childhood, on October 26, 1968. The marriage was in trouble by the mid-1970s and they agreed to a trial separation in 1975. Peruggi did not accompany him to Washington when he accepted the job in the Attorney General's Office. Giuliani met local television personality Donna Hanover sometime in 1982, and they began dating when she was working in Miami. Giuliani filed for legal separation from Peruggi on August 12, 1982. The Giuliani-Peruggi marriage legally ended in two ways: a civil divorce was issued by the end of 1982, while a Roman Catholic church annulment of the marriage was granted at the end of 1983, reportedly because Giuliani had discovered that he and Peruggi were second cousins. Alan Placa, Giuliani's best man, later became a priest and helped secure the annulment. Giuliani and Peruggi had no children.
Giuliani married Hanover in a Catholic ceremony at St. Monica's Church in Manhattan on April 15, 1984. They had two children, Andrew and Caroline Rose, who is a filmmaker in the LGBTQ+ community and has described herself as "multiverses apart" from her father.
Giuliani was still married to Hanover in May 1999 when he met Judith Nathan, a sales manager for a pharmaceutical company, at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar. By 1996, Donna Hanover had reverted to her professional name and virtually stopped appearing in public with her husband amid rumors of marital problems. Nathan and Giuliani formed an ongoing relationship. In summer 1999, Giuliani charged the costs for his NYPD security detail to obscure city agencies in order to keep his relationship with Nathan from public scrutiny. The police department began providing Nathan with city-provided chauffeur services in early 2000.
By March 2000, Giuliani had stopped wearing his wedding ring. The appearances that he and Nathan made at functions and events became publicly visible, although they were not mentioned in the press. The Daily News and the New York Post both broke news of Giuliani's relationship with Nathan in early May 2000. Giuliani first publicly acknowledged her on May 3, 2000, when he said Judith was his "very good friend".
On May 10, 2000, Giuliani held a press conference to announce that he intended to separate from Hanover. Giuliani had not informed Hanover about his plans before the press conference. This was an omission for which Giuliani was widely criticized. Giuliani then went on to praise Nathan as a "very, very fine woman" and said about Hanover that "over the course of some period of time in many ways, we've grown to live independent and separate lives." Hours later Hanover said, "I had hoped that we could keep this marriage together. For several years, it was difficult to participate in Rudy's public life because of his relationship with one staff member."
Giuliani moved out of Gracie Mansion by August 2001 and into an apartment with a couple he was friends with. Giuliani filed for divorce from Hanover in October 2000, and a public battle broke out between their representatives. Nathan was barred by court order from entering Gracie Mansion or meeting his children before the divorce was final.
In May 2001, Giuliani's attorney revealed that Giuliani was impotent due to prostate cancer treatments and had not had sex with Nathan for the preceding year. "You don't get through treatment for cancer and radiation all by yourself," Giuliani said. "You need people to help you and care for you and support you. And I'm very fortunate I had a lot of people who did that, but nobody did more to help me than Judith Nathan." In a court case, Giuliani argued that he planned to introduce Nathan to his children on Father's Day 2001 and that Hanover had prevented this visit. Giuliani and Hanover finally settled their divorce case in July 2002 after his mayoralty had ended, with Giuliani paying Hanover a $6.8million settlement and granting her custody of their children. Giuliani married Nathan on May 24, 2003, and gained a stepdaughter, Whitney. It was also Nathan's third marriage after two divorces.
By March 2007, The New York Times and the Daily News reported that Giuliani had become estranged from both his son Andrew and his daughter Caroline. In 2014, he said his relationship with his children was better than ever, and was spotted eating and playing golf with Andrew.
Nathan filed for divorce from Giuliani on April 4, 2018, after 15 years of marriage. According to an interview with New York magazine, "For a variety of reasons that I know as a spouse and a nurse... he has become a different man." The divorce was settled on December 10, 2019.
In October 2020, following myriad joint public appearances, Giuliani confirmed that he is in a relationship with Maria Ryan, a nurse practitioner and hospital administrator whom his ex-wife Nathan has alleged to have been his mistress for an indeterminate period during their marriage. As of 2018, Ryan was married to United States Marine Corps veteran Robert Ryan, with Giuliani characterizing the couple as platonic friends in response to contemporaneous press inquiries.
Prostate cancer
In April 1981, Giuliani's father died, at age 73, of prostate cancer, at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center. 19 years later, in April 2000, Giuliani, then aged 55, was diagnosed with prostate cancer following a prostate biopsy, after an elevated screening PSA. Giuliani chose a combination prostate cancer treatment consisting of four months of neoadjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy, then low dose-rate prostate brachytherapy with permanent implantation of ninety TheraSeed radioactive palladium-103 seeds in his prostate in September 2000, followed two months later by five weeks of fifteen-minute, five-days-a-week external beam radiotherapy at Mount Sinai Medical Center, with five months of adjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy.
COVID-19
On December 6, 2020, Trump announced that Giuliani had contracted COVID-19. Giuliani was admitted to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital the same day. He was discharged from the hospital on December 9.
It was unclear when he received the positive test. In the days leading up to the announcement, Giuliani had been to multiple indoor hearings without wearing a mask, and requested that others remove their masks. The Arizona Legislature closed for one week starting on December 7, 2020, as 15 current and future members had met with Giuliani. He had also met with Republican legislators in Michigan and Georgia, potentially exposing them.
Religious beliefs
Giuliani has declined to comment publicly on his religious practice and beliefs, although he identifies religion as an important part of his life. When asked if he is a practicing Catholic, Giuliani answered, "My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not-so-good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests."
Television appearances
Giuliani was reportedly revealed to be the first unmasking on the seventh season of The Masked Singer, which caused judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke to storm off the set.
Awards and honors
In 1998, Giuliani received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York".
House of Savoy: Knight Grand Cross (motu proprio) of the Order of Merit of Savoy (December 2001)
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2001
In 2002, the Episcopal Diocese of New York gave Giuliani the Fiorello LaGuardia Public Service Award for Valor and Leadership in the Time of Global Crisis.
Also in 2002, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan awarded Giuliani the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award.
In 2002, he received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually byJefferson Awards.
In 2003, Giuliani received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award
In 2004, construction began on the Rudolph W. Giuliani Trauma Center at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York.
In 2005, Giuliani received honorary degrees from Loyola College in Maryland and Middlebury College. In 2007, Giuliani received an honorary Doctorate in Public Administration from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. In 2021, Middlebury announced that it was revoking the degree given to Giuliani.
In 2006, Rudy and Judith Giuliani were honored by the American Heart Association at its annual Heart of the Hamptons benefit in Water Mill, New York.
In 2007, Giuliani was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), receiving the NIAF Special Achievement Award for Public Service.
In 2007, Giuliani was awarded the Margaret Thatcher Medal of Freedom by the Atlantic Bridge.
In the 2009 graduation ceremony for Drexel University's Earle Mack School of Law, Giuliani was the keynote speaker and recipient of an honorary degree. In 2021, Drexel announced that it was rescinding the degree.
Giuliani was the Robert C. Vance Distinguished Lecturer at Central Connecticut State University in 2013.
Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa, University of Rhode Island, 2003 (revoked January 2022)
Media references
In 1993, Giuliani made a cameo appearance as himself in the Seinfeld episode "The Non-Fat Yogurt", which is a fictionalized account of the 1993 mayoral election. Giuliani's scenes were filmed the morning after his real world election.
In 2003, Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story was released starring actor James Woods as Giuliani.
In 2018, Giuliani was portrayed multiple times on Saturday Night Live by Kate McKinnon. McKinnon continued portraying him in 2019.
In 2020, Giuliani made a cameo appearance on a Netflix true crime limited series' Fear City: New York vs The Mafia, talking about his role in leading the 1980s federal prosecution of the Five Families.
In 2020, Giuliani made an unwitting appearance in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. In the mockumentary film, Giuliani agrees to an interview with Borat's "daughter", Tutar (played by actress Maria Bakalova), who is disguised as a reporter. When invited to Tutar's hotel room, Giuliani proceeds to lie on her bed and reach inside his trousers; they are immediately interrupted by Borat, who says: "She 15. She too old for you." Giuliani later disregarded the accusation, calling it a "complete fabrication" and saying he was rather "tucking in [his] shirt after taking off the recording equipment". In 2021, Giuliani won two Razzie awards for his part in the film – for Worst Supporting Actor and, with his pants zipper for Worst Screen Combo.
See also
Disputes surrounding the 2020 United States presidential election results
Electoral history of Rudy Giuliani
Political positions of Rudy Giuliani
Public image of Rudy Giuliani
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Timeline of New York City, 1990s–2000s
References
Further reading
Barrett, Wayne, (2000). Rudy!: An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani. Basic Books; (Reprint by Diane Publishing Co.).
Brodeur, Christopher X. (2002). Perverted Little Creep: Mayor Giuliani vs Mayor Brodeur. ExtremeNY books, .
Dinkins, David N.; Knobler, Peter (2013). A Mayor's Life: Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic. PublicAffairs,
Gonzalez, Juan, (2002). Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse. New Press, .
Koch, Edward I. (1999). Giuliani: Nasty Man. Barricade Books. .
Mandery, Evan (1999). The Campaign: Rudy Giuliani, Ruth Messinger, Al Sharpton, and the Race to Be Mayor of New York City. Westview Press, .
Newfield, Jack, (2003). The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania. Thunder's Mouth Press, .
Paterson, David "Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity."Skyhorse Publishing. New York, New York, 2020.
Polner, Robert, (2005). America's Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani's New York. Soft Skull Press, .
Polner, Robert, (2007). America's Mayor, America's President? The Strange Career of Rudy Giuliani. [Preface by Jimmy Breslin] Soft Skull Press, .
External links
La Guardia and Wagner Archives/The Giuliani Collection
TPM infographic: Tracking Rudy Giuliani's Foreign Dealings
Suspension of Giuliani's New York State law license — Attorney Grievance Committee for the Supreme Court of the State of New York Appellate Division
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Writers from Brooklyn | false | [
"Anyone Else may refer to:\n \"Anyone Else\" (Collin Raye song), 1999\n \"Anyone Else\" (Matt Cardle song), 2012",
"Vice President for Economic Affairs () is a government position in Iran whose officeholder acts as a Vice President of Iran. Mohsen Rezaei currently serves in the position, being appointed on 25 August 2021.\n\nAs existence of this office is not obligatory by law, the responsibilities and authorities vested in this position could vary and many presidents did not appoint anyone in the capacity.\n\nList of officeholders\n\nReferences \n\nVice presidents of Iran"
] |
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"Rudy Giuliani",
"Appointees as defendants",
"How many appointees acted as defendants?",
"In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding,",
"Did he appoint anyone else?",
"In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury"
] | C_7a9b28f537444b1fa4b7ec7d83b31da1_1 | how many defendants were there? | 3 | how many defendants were there for Richard Roberts? | Rudy Giuliani | Several of Giuliani's appointees to head City agencies became defendants in criminal proceedings. In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding, to head the New York City Housing Development Corporation, although Harding had neither a college degree nor relevant experience. In 2005, Harding pleaded guilty to defrauding the Housing Development Corporation and to possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Russell Harding committed suicide in 2012. In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury after lying to a grand jury about a car that Harding bought for him with City funds. Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign. Giuliani appointed him as the Commissioner of the Department of Correction and then as the Police Commissioner. Giuliani was also the godfather to Kerik's two youngest children. After Giuliani left office, Kerik was subject to state and federal investigations resulting in his pleading guilty in 2006, in a Bronx Supreme Court, to two unrelated ethics violations. Kerik was ordered to pay $221,000 in fines. Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009, in a New York district court, to eight federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements, and on February 18, 2010, he was sentenced to four years in federal prison. Giuliani was not implicated in any of the proceedings. CANNOTANSWER | Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign. | Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and disbarred attorney who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 1983 and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989.
Giuliani led the 1980s federal prosecution of New York City mafia bosses as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. After a failed campaign for Mayor of New York City in the 1989 election, he succeeded in 1993, and was reelected in 1997, campaigning on a "tough on crime" platform. He led New York's controversial "civic cleanup" as its mayor from 1994 to 2001. Mayor Giuliani appointed an outsider, William Bratton, as New York City's new police commissioner. Reforming the police department's administration and policing practices, they applied the broken windows theory, which cites social disorder, like disrepair and vandalism, for attracting loitering addicts, panhandlers, and prostitutes, followed by serious and violent criminals. In particular, Giuliani focused on removing panhandlers and sex clubs from Times Square, promoting a "family values" vibe and a return to the area's earlier focus on business, theater, and the arts. As crime rates fell steeply, well ahead of the national average pace, Giuliani was widely credited, though later critics cite other contributing factors. In 2000, he ran against First Lady Hillary Clinton for a US Senate seat from New York, but left the race once diagnosed with prostate cancer. For his mayoral leadership after the September11 attacks in 2001, he was called "America's mayor". He was named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2001, and was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
In 2002, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners, and acquired, but later sold, an investment banking firm, Giuliani Capital Advisors. In 2005, he joined a law firm, renamed Bracewell & Giuliani. Vying for the Republican Party's 2008 presidential nomination, Giuliani was an early frontrunner, yet did poorly in the primary election, withdrew, and endorsed the party's subsequent nominee, John McCain. Declining to run for New York governor in 2010 and for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, Giuliani focused on the activities of his business firms. In addition, he has often been engaged for public speaking, political commentary, and Republican campaign support.
Giuliani joined President Donald Trump's personal legal team in April 2018. His activities as Trump's attorney have drawn renewed media scrutiny, including allegations that he engaged in corruption and profiteering. In late 2019, Giuliani was reportedly under federal investigation for violating lobbying laws, and possibly several other charges, as a central figure in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which resulted in Trump's first impeachment. Following the 2020 presidential election, he represented Trump in many lawsuits filed in attempts to overturn the election results, making false and debunked allegations about rigged voting machines, polling place fraud, and an international communist conspiracy. As a consequence, his license to practice law was suspended in New York State in June 2021 and in the District of Columbia in July 2021.
Early life
Giuliani was born in the East Flatbush section, then an Italian-American enclave, in New York City's borough of Brooklyn, the only child of working-class parents Helen (née D'Avanzo; 1909–2002) and Harold Angelo Giuliani (1908–1981), both children of Italian immigrants. Giuliani is of Tuscan descent on his father's side, as his paternal grandparents (Rodolfo and Evangelina Giuliani) were born in Montecatini Terme, Tuscany, Italy. He was raised a Roman Catholic. Harold Giuliani, a plumber and a bartender, had trouble holding a job, was convicted of felony assault and robbery, and served prison time in Sing Sing. Once released, he worked as an enforcer for his brother-in-law Leo D'Avanzo, who operated an organized crime-affiliated loan sharking and gambling ring at a restaurant in Brooklyn. The couple lived in East Flatbush until Harold died of prostate cancer in 1981, whereupon Helen moved to Manhattan's Upper East Side.
When Giuliani was seven years old in 1951, his family moved from Brooklyn to Garden City South, where he attended the local Catholic school, St. Anne's. Later, he commuted back to Brooklyn to attend Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, graduating in 1961.
Giuliani attended Manhattan College in Riverdale, Bronx, where he majored in political science with a minor in philosophy and considered becoming a priest.
Giuliani was elected president of his class in his sophomore year, but was not re-elected in his junior year. He joined the Phi Rho Pi college forensic fraternity and honor society. He graduated in 1965. Giuliani decided to forgo the priesthood and instead attended the New York University School of Law in Manhattan, where he made the NYU Law Review and graduated cum laude with a Juris Doctor degree in 1968.
Giuliani started his political life as a Democrat. He volunteered for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968. He also worked as a Democratic Party committeeman on Long Island in the mid-1960s and voted for George McGovern for president in 1972.
Legal career
Upon graduation from law school, Giuliani clerked for Judge Lloyd Francis MacMahon, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.
Giuliani did not serve in the military during the Vietnam War. His conscription was deferred while he was enrolled at Manhattan College and NYU Law. Upon graduation from the latter in 1968, he was classified 1-A (available for military service), but in 1969 he was reclassified 2-A (essential civilian) as Judge MacMahon's law clerk. In 1970, Giuliani was reclassified 1-A but received a high 308 draft lottery number and was not called up for service.
Giuliani switched his party registration from Democratic to Independent in 1975. This occurred during a period of time in which he was recruited for a position in Washington, D.C. with the Ford administration: Giuliani served as the Associate Deputy Attorney General and chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Harold "Ace" Tyler.
His first high-profile prosecution was of Democratic U.S. Representative Bertram L. Podell (NY-13), who was convicted of corruption. Podell pleaded guilty to conspiracy and conflict of interest for accepting more than $41,000 in campaign contributions and legal fees from a Florida airline to obtain federal rights for a Bahama route. Podell, who maintained a legal practice while serving in Congress, said the payments were legitimate legal fees. The Washington Post later reported: "The trial catapulted future New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani to front-page status when, as assistant U.S. attorney, he relentlessly cross-examined an initially calm Rep. Podell. The congressman reportedly grew more flustered and eventually decided to plead guilty."
From 1977 to 1981, during the Carter administration, Giuliani practiced law at the Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler law firm, as chief of staff to his former boss, Ace Tyler. In later years, Tyler became "disillusioned" by what Tyler described as Giuliani's time as US Attorney, criticizing several of his prosecutions as "overkill".
On December 8, 1980, one month after the election of Ronald Reagan brought Republicans back to power in Washington, he switched his party affiliation from Independent to Republican. Giuliani later said the switches were because he found Democratic policies "naïve", and that "by the time I moved to Washington, the Republicans had come to make more sense to me." Others suggested that the switches were made in order to get positions in the Justice Department. Giuliani's mother maintained in 1988 that he "only became a Republican after he began to get all these jobs from them. He's definitely not a conservative Republican. He thinks he is, but he isn't. He still feels very sorry for the poor."
In 1981, Giuliani was named Associate Attorney General in the Reagan administration, the third-highest position in the Department of Justice. As Associate Attorney General, Giuliani supervised the U.S. Attorney Offices' federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the United States Marshals Service. In a well-publicized 1982 case, Giuliani testified in defense of the federal government's "detention posture" regarding the internment of more than 2,000 Haitian asylum seekers who had entered the country illegally. The U.S. government disputed the assertion that most of the detainees had fled their country due to political persecution, alleging instead that they were "economic migrants". In defense of the government's position, Giuliani testified that "political repression, at least in general, does not exist" under President of Haiti Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime.
In 1983, Giuliani was appointed to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which was technically a demotion but was sought by Giuliani because of his desire to personally litigate cases and because the SDNY is considered the highest profile United States Attorney's Office in the country, and as such, is often used by those who have held the position as a springboard for running for public office. It was in this position that he first gained national prominence by prosecuting numerous high-profile cases, resulting in the convictions of Wall Street figures Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. He also focused on prosecuting drug dealers, organized crime, and corruption in government. He amassed a record of 4,152 convictions and 25 reversals. As a federal prosecutor, Giuliani was credited with bringing the perp walk, parading of suspects in front of the previously alerted media, into common use as a prosecutorial tool. After Giuliani "patented the perp walk", the tool was used by increasing numbers of prosecutors nationwide.
Giuliani's critics claimed that he arranged for people to be arrested, then dropped charges for lack of evidence on high-profile cases rather than going to trial. In a few cases, his arrests of alleged white-collar criminals at their workplaces with charges later dropped or lessened, sparked controversy, and damaged the reputations of the alleged "perps". He claimed veteran stock trader Richard Wigton, of Kidder, Peabody & Co., was guilty of insider trading; in February 1987, he had officers handcuff Wigton and march him through the company's trading floor, with Wigton in tears. Giuliani had his agents arrest Tim Tabor, a young arbitrageur and former colleague of Wigton, so late that he had to stay overnight in jail before posting bond.
Within three months, charges were dropped against both Wigton and Tabor; Giuliani said, "We're not going to go to trial. We're just the tip of the iceberg," but no further charges were forthcoming and the investigation did not end until Giuliani's successor was in place. Giuliani's high-profile raid of the Princeton/Newport firm ended with the defendants having their cases overturned on appeal on the grounds that what they had been convicted of were not crimes.
Mafia Commission trial
In the Mafia Commission Trial, which ran from February 25, 1985, through November 19, 1986, Giuliani indicted eleven organized crime figures, including the heads of New York City's so-called "Five Families", under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) on charges including extortion, labor racketeering, and murder for hire. Time magazine called this "Case of Cases" possibly "the most significant assault on the infrastructure of organized crime since the high command of the Chicago Mafia was swept away in 1943", and quoted Giuliani's stated intention: "Our approach is to wipe out the five families." Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano evaded conviction when he and his underboss, Thomas Bilotti, were murdered on the streets of Midtown Manhattan on December 16, 1985. However, three heads of the Five Families were sentenced to 100 years in prison on January 13, 1987. Genovese and Colombo leaders, Tony Salerno and Carmine Persico received additional sentences in separate trials, with 70-year and 39-year sentences to run consecutively. He was assisted by three Assistant United States Attorneys: Michael Chertoff, the eventual second United States Secretary of Homeland Security and co-author of the Patriot Act; John Savarese, now a partner at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz; and Gil Childers, a later deputy chief of the criminal division for the Southern District of New York and now managing director in the legal department at Goldman Sachs.
According to an FBI memo revealed in 2007, leaders of the Five Families voted in late 1986 on whether to issue a contract for Giuliani's death. Heads of the Lucchese, Bonanno, and Genovese families rejected the idea, though Colombo and Gambino leaders, Carmine Persico and John Gotti, encouraged assassination. In 2014, it was revealed by a former Sicilian Mafia member and informant, Rosario Naimo, that Salvatore Riina, a notorious Sicilian Mafia leader, had ordered a murder contract on Giuliani during the mid-1980s. Riina allegedly was suspicious of Giuliani's efforts prosecuting the American Mafia and was worried that he might have spoken with Italian anti-mafia prosecutors and politicians, including Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who were both murdered in 1992 in separate car bombings. According to Giuliani, the Sicilian Mafia offered $800,000 for his death during his first year as mayor of New York in 1994.
Boesky, Milken trials
Ivan Boesky, a Wall Street arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of about $200million by betting on corporate takeovers, was originally investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for making investments based on tips received from corporate insiders, leading the way for the US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York to investigate as well. These stock and options acquisitions were sometimes brazen, with massive purchases occurring only a few days before a corporation announced a takeover. Although insider trading of this kind was illegal, laws prohibiting it were rarely enforced until Boesky was prosecuted. Boesky cooperated with the SEC and informed on several others, including junk bond trader Michael Milken. Per agreement with Giuliani, Boesky received a -year prison sentence along with a $100million fine. In 1989, Giuliani charged Milken under the RICO Act with 98 counts of racketeering and fraud. In a highly publicized case, Milken was indicted by a grand jury on these charges.
Mayoral campaigns
Giuliani was U.S. Attorney until January 1989, resigning as the Reagan administration ended. He garnered criticism until he left office for his handling of cases, and was accused of prosecuting cases to further his political ambitions. He joined the law firm White & Case in New York City as a partner. He remained with White & Case until May 1990, when he joined the law firm Anderson Kill Olick & Oshinsky, also in New York City.
1989
Giuliani first ran for New York City mayor in 1989, when he attempted to unseat three-term incumbent Ed Koch. He won the September 1989 Republican Party primary election against business magnate Ronald Lauder, in a campaign marked by claims that Giuliani was not a true Republican after an acrimonious debate between the two men. In the Democratic primary, Koch was upset by Manhattan Borough president David Dinkins.
In the general election, Giuliani ran as the fusion candidate of both the Republican and the Liberal parties. The Conservative Party, which had often co-lined the Republican party candidate, withheld support from Giuliani and ran Lauder instead. Conservative Party leaders were unhappy with Giuliani on ideological grounds. They cited the Liberal Party's endorsement statement that Giuliani "agreed with the Liberal Party's views on affirmative action, gay rights, gun control, school prayer and tuition tax credits".
During two televised debates, Giuliani framed himself as an agent of change, saying, "I'm the reformer," that "If we keep going merrily along, this city's going down," and that electing Dinkins would represent "more of the same, more of the rotten politics that have been dragging us down". Giuliani pointed out that Dinkins had not filed a tax return for many years and of several other ethical missteps, in particular a stock transfer to his son. Dinkins filed several years of returns and said the tax matter had been fully paid off. He denied other wrongdoing, saying "what we need is a mayor, not a prosecutor," and that Giuliani refused to say "the R-wordhe doesn't like to admit he's a Republican". Dinkins won the endorsements of three of the four daily New York newspapers, while Giuliani won approval from the New York Post.
In the end, Giuliani lost to Dinkins by a margin of 47,080 votes out of 1,899,845 votes cast, in the closest election in New York City's history. The closeness of the race was particularly noteworthy considering the small percentage of New York City residents who are registered Republicans and resulted in Giuliani being the presumptive nominee for a rematch with Dinkins at the next election.
1993
Four years after his defeat to Dinkins, Giuliani again ran for mayor. Once again, Giuliani also ran on the Liberal Party line but not the Conservative Party line, which ran activist George Marlin.
Although crime had begun to fall during the Dinkins administration, Giuliani's campaign capitalized on the perception that crime was uncontrolled in the city following events such as the Crown Heights riot and the Family Red Apple boycott. The year prior to the election, Giuliani was a key speaker at a Patrolmen's Benevolent Association rally opposing Dinkins, in which Giuliani blamed the police department's low morale on Dinkins' leadership. The rally quickly devolved into a riot, with nearly 4,000 off-duty police officers storming the City Hall and blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.
In his pitch to lower crime rates in the city, Giuliani promised to focus police resources toward shutting down petty crimes and nuisances as a way of restoring the quality of life:
Dinkins and Giuliani never debated during the campaign, because they were never able to agree on how to approach a debate. Dinkins was endorsed by The New York Times and Newsday, while Giuliani was endorsed by the New York Post and, in a key switch from 1989, the Daily News. Giuliani went to visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, seeking his blessing and endorsement.
On election day, Giuliani's campaign hired off-duty cops, firefighters, and corrections officers to monitor polling places in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and The Bronx for cases of voter fraud. Despite objections from the Dinkins campaign, who claimed that the effort would intimidate Democratic voters, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly assigned an additional 52 police captains and 3,500 officers to monitor the city's polling places.
Giuliani won by a margin of 53,367 votes. He became the first Republican elected Mayor of New York City since John Lindsay in 1965. Similar to the election four years prior, Giuliani performed particularly well in the white ethnic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Giuliani saw especially high returns in the borough of Staten Island, as a referendum to consider allowing the borough to secede from New York City was on the ballot.
1997
Giuliani's opponent in 1997 was Democratic Manhattan Borough president Ruth Messinger, who had beaten Al Sharpton in the September 9, 1997 Democratic primary. In the general election, Giuliani once again had the Liberal Party and not the Conservative Party listing. Giuliani ran an aggressive campaign, parlaying his image as a tough leader who had cleaned up the city. Giuliani's popularity was at its highest point to date, with a late October 1997 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showing him as having a 68 percent approval rating; 70 percent of New Yorkers were satisfied with life in the city and 64 percent said things were better in the city compared to four years previously.
Throughout the campaign he was well ahead in the polls and had a strong fund-raising advantage over Messinger. On her part, Messinger lost the support of several usually Democratic constituencies, including gay organizations and large labor unions. The local daily newspapersThe New York Times, Daily News, New York Post and Newsdayall endorsed Giuliani over Messinger.
In the end, Giuliani won 58% of the vote to Messinger's 41%, and became the first registered Republican to win a second term as mayor while on the Republican line since Fiorello H. La Guardia in 1941. Voter turnout was the lowest in twelve years, with 38% of registered voters casting ballots. The margin of victory included gains in his share of the African American vote (20% compared to 1993's 5%) and the Hispanic vote (43% from 37%) while maintaining his base of white ethnic, Catholic and Jewish voters from 1993.
Mayoralty
Giuliani served as mayor of New York City from 1994 through 2001.
Law enforcement
In Giuliani's first term as mayor, the New York City Police Departmentat the instigation of Commissioner Bill Brattonadopted an aggressive enforcement/deterrent strategy based on James Q. Wilson's "Broken Windows" approach. This involved crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as graffiti, turnstile jumping, cannabis possession, and aggressive panhandling by "squeegee men", on the theory that this would send a message that order would be maintained. The legal underpinning for removing the "squeegee men" from the streets was developed under Giuliani's predecessor, Mayor David Dinkins. Bratton, with Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple, also created and instituted CompStat, a computer-driven comparative statistical approach to mapping crime geographically and in terms of emerging criminal patterns, as well as charting officer performance by quantifying criminal apprehensions. Critics of the system assert that it creates an environment in which police officials are encouraged to underreport or otherwise manipulate crime data. An extensive study found a high correlation between crime rates reported by the police through CompStat and rates of crime available from other sources, suggesting there had been no manipulation. The CompStat initiative won the 1996 Innovations in Government Award from the Kennedy School of Government.
During Giuliani's administration, crime rates dropped in New York City. The extent to which Giuliani deserves the credit is disputed. Crime rates in New York City had started to drop in 1991 under previous mayor David Dinkins, three years before Giuliani took office. The rates of most crimes, including all categories of violent crime, made consecutive declines during the last 36 months of Dinkins's four-year term, ending a 30-year upward spiral. A small nationwide drop in crime preceded Giuliani's election, and some critics say he may have been the beneficiary of a trend already in progress. Additional contributing factors to the overall decline in New York City crime during the 1990s were the addition of 7,000 officers to the NYPD, lobbied for and hired by the Dinkins administration, and an overall improvement in the national economy. Changing demographics were a key factor contributing to crime rate reductions, which were similar across the country during this time. Because the crime index is based on that of the FBI, which is self-reported by police departments, some have alleged that crimes were shifted into categories the FBI does not collect.
Some studies conclude that the decline in New York City's crime rate in the 1990s and 2000s exceeds all national figures and therefore should be linked with a local dynamic that was not present as such anywhere else in the country: what University of California, Berkeley sociologist Frank Zimring calls "the most focused form of policing in history". In his book The Great American Crime Decline, Zimring argues that "up to half of New York's crime drop in the 1990s, and virtually 100 percent of its continuing crime decline since 2000, has resulted from policing."
Bratton was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1996. Giuliani reportedly forced Bratton out after two years, in what was seen as a battle of two large egos in which Giuliani was not tolerant of Bratton's celebrity. Bratton went on to become chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Giuliani's term also saw allegations of civil rights abuses and other police misconduct under other commissioners after Bratton's departure. There were police shootings of unarmed suspects, and the scandals surrounding the torture of Abner Louima and the killings of Amadou Diallo, Gidone Busch and Patrick Dorismond. Giuliani supported the New York City Police Department, for example by releasing what he called Dorismond's "extensive criminal record" to the public, including a sealed juvenile file.
City services
The Giuliani administration advocated the privatization of the city's public schools, which he called "dysfunctional", and advocated the reduction of state funding for them. He advocated for a voucher-based system to promote private schooling. Giuliani supported protection for illegal immigrants. He continued a policy of preventing city employees from contacting the Immigration and Naturalization Service about immigration violations, on the grounds that illegal aliens should be able to take actions such as sending their children to school or reporting crimes to the police without fear of deportation.
During his mayoralty, gay and lesbian New Yorkers received domestic partnership rights. Giuliani induced the city's Democratic-controlled New York City Council, which had avoided the issue for years, to pass legislation providing broad protection for same-sex partners. In 1998, he codified local law by granting all city employees equal benefits for their domestic partners.
2000 U.S. Senate campaign
Due to term limits, Giuliani was ineligible to run in 2001 for a third term as mayor. In November 1998, four-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement and Giuliani immediately indicated an interest in running in the 2000 election for the now-open seat. Due to his high profile and visibility Giuliani was supported by the state Republican Party. Giuliani's entrance led Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel and others to recruit then-First Lady Hillary Clinton to run for Moynihan's seat, hoping she might combat his star power.
An early January 1999 poll showed Giuliani trailing Clinton by ten points. In April 1999, Giuliani formed an exploratory committee in connection with the Senate run. By January 2000, polling for the race dramatically reversed, with Giuliani now pulling nine points ahead of Clinton, in part because his campaign was able to take advantage of several campaign stumbles by Clinton. Nevertheless, the Giuliani campaign was showing some structural weaknesses; so closely identified with New York City, he had somewhat limited appeal to normally Republican voters in Upstate New York. The New York Police Department's fatal shooting of Patrick Dorismond in March 2000 inflamed Giuliani's already strained relations with the city's minority communities, and Clinton seized on it as a major campaign issue. By April 2000, reports showed Clinton gaining upstate and generally outworking Giuliani, who said his duties as mayor prevented him from campaigning more. Clinton was now eight to ten points ahead of Giuliani in the polls.
Then followed four tumultuous weeks in which Giuliani learned he had prostate cancer and needed treatment; his extramarital relationship with Judith Nathan became public and the subject of a media frenzy; and he announced a separation from his wife Donna Hanover. After much indecision, on May 19, Giuliani announced his withdrawal from the Senate race.
September 11 terrorist attacks
Response
Giuliani received nationwide attention in the aftermath of the September11 attacks. He made frequent appearances on radio and television on September11 and afterwardsfor example, to indicate that tunnels would be closed as a precautionary measure, and that there was no reason to believe the dispersion of chemical or biological weaponry into the air was a factor in the attack. In his public statements, Giuliani said:
The 9/11 attacks occurred on the scheduled date of the mayoral primary to select the Democratic and Republican candidates to succeed Giuliani. The primary was immediately delayed two weeks to September 25. During this period, Giuliani sought an unprecedented three-month emergency extension of his term from January1 to April1 under the New York State Constitution (Article3 Section 25). He threatened to challenge the law imposing term limits on elected city officials and run for another full four-year term, if the primary candidates did not consent to the extension of his mayoralty. In the end leaders in the State Assembly and Senate indicated that they did not believe the extension was necessary. The election proceeded as scheduled, and the winning candidate, the Giuliani-endorsed Republican convert Michael Bloomberg, took office on January 1, 2002, per normal custom.
Giuliani claimed to have been at the Ground Zero site "as often, if not more, than most workers... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them." Some 9/11 workers have objected to those claims. While his appointment logs were unavailable for the six days immediately following the attacks, Giuliani logged 29 hours at the site over three months beginning September 17. This contrasted with recovery workers at the site who spent this much time at the site in two to three days.
When Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal suggested the attacks were an indication that the United States "should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause," Giuliani asserted, "There is no moral equivalent for this act. There is no justification for it... And one of the reasons I think this happened is because people were engaged in moral equivalency in not understanding the difference between liberal democracies like the United States, like Israel, and terrorist states and those who condone terrorism. So I think not only are those statements wrong, they're part of the problem." Giuliani subsequently rejected the prince's $10million donation to disaster relief in the aftermath of the attack.
Emergency command center location and communications problems
Giuliani has been widely criticized for his decision to locate the Office of Emergency Management headquarters on the 23rd floor inside the 7 World Trade Center building. Those opposing the decision perceived the office as a target for a terrorist attack in light of the previous terrorist attack against the World Trade Center in 1993. The office was unable to coordinate efforts between police and firefighters properly while evacuating its headquarters. Large tanks of diesel fuel were placed in 7World Trade to power the command center. In May 1997, Giuliani put responsibility for selecting the location on Jerome M. Hauer, who had served under Giuliani from 1996 to 2000 before being appointed by him as New York City's first Director of Emergency Management. Hauer has taken exception to that account in interviews and provided Fox News and New York Magazine with a memo demonstrating that he recommended a location in Brooklyn but was overruled by Giuliani. Television journalist Chris Wallace interviewed Giuliani on May 13, 2007, about his 1997 decision to locate the command center at the World Trade Center. Giuliani laughed during Wallace's questions and said that Hauer recommended the World Trade Center site and claimed that Hauer said the WTC site was the best location. Wallace presented Giuliani a photocopy of Hauer's directive letter. The letter urged Giuliani to locate the command center in Brooklyn, instead of lower Manhattan. The February 1996 memo read, "The [Brooklyn] building is secure and not as visible a target as buildings in Lower Manhattan."
In January 2008, an eight-page memo was revealed which detailed the New York City Police Department's opposition in 1998 to location of the city's emergency command center at the Trade Center site. The Giuliani administration overrode these concerns.
The 9/11 Commission Report noted that lack of preparedness could have led to the deaths of first responders at the scene of the attacks. The Commission noted that the radios in use by the fire department were the same radios which had been criticized for their ineffectiveness following the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. Family members of 9/11 victims have said these radios were a complaint of emergency services responders for years. The radios were not working when Fire Department chiefs ordered the 343 firefighters inside the towers to evacuate, and they remained in the towers as the towers collapsed. However, when Giuliani testified before the 9/11 Commission he said the firefighters ignored the evacuation order out of an effort to save lives. Giuliani testified to the commission, where some family members of responders who had died in the attacks appeared to protest his statements. A 1994 mayoral office study of the radios indicated that they were faulty. Replacement radios were purchased in a $33million no-bid contract with Motorola, and implemented in early 2001. However, the radios were recalled in March 2001 after a probationary firefighter's calls for help at a house fire could not be picked up by others at the scene, leaving firemen with the old analog radios from 1993. A book later published by Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, argued that the commission had not pursued a tough enough line of questioning with Giuliani.
An October 2001 study by the National Institute of Environmental Safety and Health said cleanup workers lacked adequate protective gear.
Public reaction
Giuliani gained international attention in the wake of the attacks and was widely hailed for his leadership role during the crisis. Polls taken just six weeks after the attack showed a 79 percent approval rating among New York City voters. This was a dramatic increase over the 36 percent rating he had received a year earlier, which was an average at the end of a two-term mayorship. Oprah Winfrey called him "America's Mayor" at a 9/11 memorial service held at Yankee Stadium on September 23, 2001. Other voices denied it was the mayor who had pulled the city together. "You didn't bring us together, our pain brought us together and our decency brought us together. We would have come together if Bozo was the mayor," said civil rights activist Al Sharpton, in a statement largely supported by Fernando Ferrer, one of three main candidates for the mayoralty at the end of 2001. "He was a power-hungry person," Sharpton also said.
Giuliani was praised by some for his close involvement with the rescue and recovery efforts, but others argue that "Giuliani has exaggerated the role he played after the terrorist attacks, casting himself as a hero for political gain." Giuliani has collected $11.4million from speaking fees in a single year (with increased demand after the attacks). Before September11, Giuliani's assets were estimated to be somewhat less than $2million, but his net worth could now be as high as 30 times that amount. He has made most of his money since leaving office.
Time Person of the Year
On December 24, 2001, Time magazine named Giuliani its Person of the Year for 2001. Time observed that, before 9/11, Giuliani's public image had been that of a rigid, self-righteous, ambitious politician. After 9/11, and perhaps owing also to his bout with prostate cancer, his public image became that of a man who could be counted on to unite a city in the midst of its greatest crisis. Historian Vincent J. Cannato concluded in September 2006:
Aftermath
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was given an honorary knighthood (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani initially downplayed the health effects arising from the September 11 attacks in the Financial District and lower Manhattan areas in the vicinity of the World Trade Center site. He moved quickly to reopen Wall Street, and it was reopened on September 17. In the first month after the attacks, he said "The air quality is safe and acceptable."
Giuliani took control away from agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, leaving the "largely unknown" city Department of Design and Construction in charge of recovery and cleanup. Documents indicate that the Giuliani administration never enforced federal requirements requiring the wearing of respirators. Concurrently, the administration threatened companies with dismissal if cleanup work slowed. In June 2007, Christie Todd Whitman, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), reportedly said the EPA had pushed for workers at the WTC site to wear respirators but she had been blocked by Giuliani. She said she believed the subsequent lung disease and deaths suffered by WTC responders were a result of these actions. However, former deputy mayor Joe Lhota, then with the Giuliani campaign, replied, "All workers at Ground Zero were instructed repeatedly to wear their respirators."
Giuliani asked the city's Congressional delegation to limit the city's liability for Ground Zero illnesses to a total of $350million. Two years after Giuliani finished his term, FEMA appropriated $1billion to a special insurance fund, called the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company, to protect the city against 9/11 lawsuits.
In February 2007, the International Association of Fire Fighters issued a letter asserting that Giuliani rushed to conclude the recovery effort once gold and silver had been recovered from World Trade Center vaults and thereby prevented the remains of many victims from being recovered: "Mayor Giuliani's actions meant that fire fighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills Landfill," it said, adding: "Hundreds remained entombed in Ground Zero when Giuliani gave up on them." Lawyers for the International Association of Fire Fighters seek to interview Giuliani under oath as part of a federal legal action alleging that New York City negligently dumped body parts and other human remains in the Fresh Kills Landfill.
Post-mayoralty
Politics
Before 2008 election
Since leaving office as mayor, Giuliani has remained politically active by campaigning for Republican candidates for political offices at all levels. When George Pataki became Governor in 1995, this represented the first time the positions of both Mayor and Governor were held simultaneously by Republicans since John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. Giuliani and Pataki were instrumental in bringing the 2004 Republican National Convention to New York City. He was a speaker at the convention, and endorsed President George W. Bush for re-election by recalling that immediately after the World Trade Center towers fell,
Similarly, in June 2006, Giuliani started a website called Solutions America to help elect Republican candidates across the nation.
After campaigning on Bush's behalf in the U.S. presidential election of 2004, he was reportedly the top choice for Secretary of Homeland Security after Tom Ridge's resignation. When suggestions were made that Giuliani's confirmation hearings would be marred by details of his past affairs and scandals, he turned down the offer and instead recommended his friend and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. After the formal announcement of Kerik's nomination, information about Kerik's pastmost notably, that he had ties to organized crime, had failed to properly report gifts he had received, had been sued for sexual harassment and had employed an undocumented alien as a domestic servantbecame known, and Kerik withdrew his nomination.
On March 15, 2006, Congress formed the Iraq Study Group (ISG). This bipartisan ten-person panel, of which Giuliani was one of the members, was charged with assessing the Iraq War and making recommendations. They would eventually unanimously conclude that contrary to Bush administration assertions, "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" and called for "changes in the primary mission" that would allow "the United States to begin to move its forces out of Iraq".
On May 24, 2006, after missing all the group's meetings, including a briefing from General David Petraeus, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, Giuliani resigned from the panel, citing "previous time commitments". Giuliani's fundraising schedule had kept him from participating in the panel, a schedule which raised $11.4million in speaking fees over fourteen months, and that Giuliani had been forced to resign after being given "an ultimatum to either show up for meetings or leave the group" by group leader James Baker. Giuliani subsequently said he had started thinking about running for president, and being on the panel might give it a political spin.
Giuliani was described by Newsweek in January 2007 as "one of the most consistent cheerleaders for the president's handling of the war in Iraq" and as of June 2007, he remained one of the few candidates for president to unequivocally support both the basis for the invasion and the execution of the war.
Giuliani spoke in support of the removal of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK, also PMOI, MKO) from the United States State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The group was on the State Department list from 1997 until September 2012. They were placed on the list for killing six Americans in Iran during the 1970s and attempting to attack the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992. Giuliani, along with other former government officials and politicians Ed Rendell, R. James Woolsey, Porter Goss, Louis Freeh, Michael Mukasey, James L. Jones, Tom Ridge, and Howard Dean, were criticized for their involvement with the group. Some were subpoenaed during an inquiry about who was paying the prominent individuals' speaking fees. Giuliani and others wrote an article for the conservative publication National Review stating their position that the group should not be classified as a terrorist organization. They supported their position by pointing out that the United Kingdom and the European Union had already removed the group from their terrorism lists. They further assert that only the United States and Iran still listed it as a terrorist group. However, Canada did not delist the group until December 2012.
2008 presidential campaign
In November 2006, Giuliani announced the formation of an exploratory committee toward a run for the presidency in 2008. In February 2007, he filed a "statement of candidacy" and confirmed on the television program Larry King Live that he was indeed running.
Early polls showed Giuliani with one of the highest levels of name recognition ever recorded along with high levels of support among the Republican candidates. Throughout most of 2007, he was the leader in most nationwide opinion polling among Republicans. Senator John McCain, who ranked a close second behind the New York Mayor, had faded, and most polls showed Giuliani to have more support than any of the other declared Republican candidates, with only former Senator Fred Thompson and former Governor Mitt Romney showing greater support in some per-state Republican polls. On November 7, 2007, Giuliani's campaign received an endorsement from evangelist, Christian Broadcasting Network founder, and past presidential candidate Pat Robertson. This was viewed by political observers as a possibly key development in the race, as it gave credence that evangelicals and other social conservatives could support Giuliani despite some of his positions on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.
Giuliani's campaign hit a difficult stretch during the last two months of 2007, when Bernard Kerik, whom Giuliani had recommended for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security, was indicted on 16 counts of tax fraud and other federal charges. The media reported that when Giuliani was the mayor of New York, he billed several tens of thousands of dollars of mayoral security expenses to obscure city agencies. Those expenses were incurred while he visited Judith Nathan, with whom he was having an extramarital affair (later analysis showed the billing to likely be unrelated to hiding Nathan). Several stories were published in the press regarding clients of Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani who were in opposition to goals of American foreign policy. Giuliani's national poll numbers began steadily slipping and his unusual strategy of focusing more on later, multi-primary big states rather than the smaller, first-voting states was seen at risk.
Despite his strategy, Giuliani competed to a substantial extent in the January 8, 2008, New Hampshire primary but finished a distant fourth with 9percent of the vote. Similar poor results continued in other early contests, when Giuliani's staff went without pay in order to focus all efforts on the crucial late January Florida Republican primary. The shift of the electorate's focus from national security to the state of the economy also hurt Giuliani, as did the resurgence of McCain's similarly themed campaign. On January 29, 2008, Giuliani finished a distant third in the Florida result with 15percent of the vote, trailing McCain and Romney. Facing declining polls and lost leads in the upcoming large Super Tuesday states, including that of his home New York, Giuliani withdrew from the race on January 30, endorsing McCain.
Giuliani's campaign ended up $3.6million in arrears, and in June 2008 Giuliani sought to retire the debt by proposing to appear at Republican fundraisers during the 2008 general election, and have part of the proceeds go towards his campaign. During the 2008 Republican National Convention, Giuliani gave a prime-time speech that praised McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, while criticizing Democratic nominee Barack Obama. He cited Palin's executive experience as a mayor and governor and belittled Obama's lack of same, and his remarks were met with wild applause from the delegates. Giuliani continued to be one of McCain's most active surrogates during the remainder of McCain's eventually unsuccessful campaign.
After 2008 election
Following the end of his presidential campaign, Giuliani's "high appearance fees dropped like a stone". He returned to work at both Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani. His consultancy work included advising Keiko Fujimori with her presidential campaign during the 2011 Peruvian general election. Giuliani also explored hosting a syndicated radio show, and was reported to be in talks with Westwood One about replacing Bill O'Reilly before that position went to Fred Thompson (another unsuccessful 2008 GOP presidential primary candidate). During the March 2009 AIG bonus payments controversy, Giuliani called for U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to step down and said the Obama administration lacked executive competence in dealing with the ongoing financial crisis.
Giuliani said his political career was not necessarily over, and did not rule out a 2010 New York gubernatorial or 2012 presidential bid. A November 2008 Siena College poll indicated that although Governor David Patersonpromoted to the office via the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal a year beforewas popular among New Yorkers, he would have just a slight lead over Giuliani in a hypothetical matchup. By February 2009, after the prolonged Senate appointment process, a Siena College poll indicated that Paterson was losing popularity among New Yorkers, and showed Giuliani with a fifteen-point lead in the hypothetical contest. In January 2009, Giuliani said he would not decide on a gubernatorial run for another six to eight months, adding that he thought it would not be fair to the governor to start campaigning early while the governor tries to focus on his job. Giuliani worked to retire his presidential campaign debt, but by the end of March 2009 it was still $2.4million in arrears, the largest such remaining amount for any of the 2008 contenders. In April 2009, Giuliani strongly opposed Paterson's announced push for same-sex marriage in New York and said it would likely cause a backlash that could put Republicans in statewide office in 2010. By late August 2009, there were still conflicting reports about whether Giuliani was likely to run.
On December 23, 2009, Giuliani announced that he would not seek any office in 2010, saying "The main reason has to do with my two enterprises: Bracewell & Giuliani and Giuliani Partners. I'm very busy in both." The decisions signaled a possible end to Giuliani's political career. During the 2010 midterm elections, Giuliani endorsed and campaigned for Bob Ehrlich and Marco Rubio.
On October 11, 2011, Giuliani announced that he was not running for president. According to Kevin Law, the Director of the Long Island Association, Giuliani believed that "As a moderate, he thought it was a pretty significant challenge. He said it's tough to be a moderate and succeed in GOP primaries," Giuliani said "If it's too late for (New Jersey Governor) Chris Christie, it's too late for me."
At a Republican fund-raising event in February 2015, Giuliani said, "I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president Obama loves America," and "He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country." In response to criticism of the remarks, Giuliani said, "Some people thought it was racistI thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother... This isn't racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism." White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said he agreed with Giuliani "that it was a horrible thing to say", but he would leave it up to the people who heard Giuliani directly to assess whether the remarks were appropriate for the event. Although he received some support for his controversial comments, Giuliani said he also received several death threats within 48 hours.
Relationship with Donald Trump
Presidential campaign supporter
Giuliani supported Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He gave a prime time speech during the first night of the 2016 Republican National Convention. Earlier in the day, Giuliani and former 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson appeared at an event for the pro-Trump Great America PAC. Giuliani also appeared in a Great America PAC ad entitled "Leadership". Giuliani's and Jeff Sessions's appearances were staples at Trump campaign rallies.
During the campaign, Giuliani praised Trump for his worldwide accomplishments and helping fellow New Yorkers in their time of need. He defended Trump against allegations of racism, sexual assault, and not paying any federal income taxes for as long as two decades.
In August 2016, Giuliani, while campaigning for Trump, claimed that in the "eight years before Obama" became president, "we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States". It was noted that 9/11 happened during George W. Bush's first term. Politifact brought up four more counter-examples (the 2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting, the 2002 D.C. sniper attacks, the 2006 Seattle Jewish Federation shooting and the 2006 UNC SUV attack) to Giuliani's claim. Giuliani later said he was using "abbreviated language".
Giuliani was believed to be a likely pick for Secretary of State in the Trump administration. However, on December 9, 2016, Trump announced that Giuliani had removed his name from consideration for any Cabinet post.
Advisor to the president
The president-elect named Giuliani his informal cybersecurity adviser on January 12, 2017. The status of this informal role for Giuliani is unclear because, in November 2018, Trump created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), headed by Christopher Krebs as director and Matthew Travis as deputy. In the weeks following his appointment, Giuliani was forced to consult an Apple Store Genius Bar when he "was locked out of his iPhone because he had forgotten the passcode and entered the wrong one at least 10 times", belying his putative expertise in the field.
In January 2017, Giuliani said he advised President Trump in matters relating to Executive Order 13769, which barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days. The order also suspended the admission of all refugees for 120 days.
Giuliani has drawn scrutiny over his ties to foreign nations, regarding not registering per the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Personal lawyer
In mid April 2018, Giuliani joined Trump's legal team, which dealt with the special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Giuliani said his goal was to negotiate a swift end to the investigation.
In early May, Giuliani made public that Trump had reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen $130,000 that Cohen had paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels for her agreement not to talk about her alleged affair with Trump. Cohen had earlier insisted he used his own money to pay Daniels, and he implied that he had not been reimbursed. Trump had previously said he knew nothing about the matter. Within a week, Giuliani said some of his own statements regarding this matter were "more rumor than anything else".
Later in May 2018, Giuliani, who was asked on whether the promotion of the Spygate conspiracy theory is meant to discredit the special counsel investigation, said the investigators "are giving us the material to do it. Of course, we have to do it in defending the president... it is for public opinion" on whether to "impeach or not impeach" Trump. In June 2018, Giuliani claimed that a sitting president cannot be indicted: "I don't know how you can indict while he's in office. No matter what it is. If President Trump shot [then-FBI director] James Comey, he'd be impeached the next day. Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him."
In June 2018, Giuliani also said Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because "our recollection keeps changing". In early July, Giuliani characterized that Trump had previously asked Comey to "give him [then-national security adviser Michael Flynn] a break". In mid-August, Giuliani denied making this comment: "What I said was, that is what Comey is saying Trump said." On August 19 on Meet the Press, Giuliani argued that Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because Trump could be "trapped into perjury" just by telling "somebody's version of the truth. Not the truth." Giuliani's argument continued: "Truth isn't truth." Giuliani later clarified that he was "referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements".
In late July, Giuliani defended Trump by saying "collusion is not a crime" and that Trump had done nothing wrong because he "didn't hack" or "pay for the hacking". He later elaborated that his comments were a "very, very familiar lawyer's argument" to "attack the legitimacy of the special counsel investigation". He also described and denied several supposed allegations that have never been publicly raised, regarding two earlier meetings among Trump campaign officials to set up the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with Russian citizens. In late August, Giuliani said the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower "meeting was originally for the purpose of getting information about Hillary Clinton".
Additionally in late July, Giuliani attacked Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as an "incredible liar", two months after calling Cohen an "honest, honorable lawyer". In mid-August, Giuliani defended Trump by saying: "The president's an honest man."
It was reported in early September that Giuliani said the White House could and likely would prevent the special counsel investigation from making public certain information in its final report which would be covered by executive privilege. Also according to Giuliani, Trump's personal legal team is already preparing a "counter-report" to refute the potential special counsel investigation's report.
Giuliani privately urged Trump in 2017 to extradite Fethullah Gülen.
In late 2019, Giuliani represented Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, meeting with the Justice Department to ask not to bring charges against him.
In an interview with Olivia Nuzzi in New York magazine, Giuliani, who is a Roman Catholic of Italian descent, said, "Don't tell me I'm anti-Semitic if I oppose George Soros... I'm more of a Jew than Soros is." George Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew who survived The Holocaust. The Anti-Defamation League replied, "Mr. Giuliani should apologize and retract his comments immediately unless he seeks to dog whistle to hardcore anti-Semites and white supremacists who believe this garbage."
In the last days of the Trump administration, when White House aides were soliciting fees to lobby for presidential pardons, Giuliani said that while he'd heard that large fees were being offered, he did not work on clemency cases, saying "I have enough money. I'm not starving."
As of February 16, 2021, Giuliani was reportedly not actively involved in any of Trump's pending legal cases.
Attempts to get Ukraine to carry out investigations
Since at least May 2019, Giuliani has been urging Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the oil company Burisma, whose board of directors once included Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, and to check for irregularities in Ukraine's investigation of Paul Manafort. He said such investigations would benefit his client's defense, and that his efforts had Trump's full support. Toward this end, Giuliani met with Ukrainian officials throughout 2019. In July 2019, Buzzfeed News reported that two Soviet-born Americans, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were liaisons between Giuliani and Ukrainian government officials in this effort. Parnas and Fruman, prolific Republican donors, have neither registered as foreign agents in the United States, nor been evaluated and approved by the State Department. Giuliani responded, "This (report) is a pathetic effort to cover up what are enormous allegations of criminality by the Biden family." Yet by September 2019, there had been no clear evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
As of October 1, 2019, Giuliani hired former Watergate prosecutor Jon Sale to represent him in the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment investigation. The committee also issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents related to the Ukraine scandal. The New York Times reported on October 11, 2019, that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which Giuliani had once led, was investigating him for violating lobbying laws related to his activities in Ukraine. The following month, Bloomberg News reported that the investigation could extend to bribery of foreign officials or conspiracy, and The Wall Street Journal reported Giuliani was being investigated for a possible profit motive in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. Giuliani has denied having any interest in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. In late November, the Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors had just issued subpoenas to multiple associates of Giuliani to potentially investigate certain individuals, apparently including Giuliani, on numerous potential charges, including money laundering, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements to the federal government, and mail/wire fraud.
Parnas and Fruman were arrested for campaign finance violations while attempting to board a one-way flight to Frankfurt from Washington Dulles International Airport on October 9, 2019. Giuliani was paid $500,000 to consult for Lev Parnas's company named "Fraud Guarantee". Republican donor and Trump supporter Long Island attorney Charles Gucciardo paid Giuliani on behalf of Fraud Guarantee in two $250,000 payments, in September and October 2018. Fruman eventually pled guilty in September 2021 to having solicited a contribution by a foreign national.
In May 2019, Giuliani described Ukraine's chief prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko as a "much more honest guy" than his predecessor, Viktor Shokin. After Lutsenko was removed from office, he said in September 2019 that he found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, and that he had met Giuliani about ten times. Giuliani then reversed his stance, saying that Shokin is the one people "should have spoken to", while Lutsenko acted "corruptly" and "is exactly the prosecutor that Joe Biden put in in order to tank the case".
In September 2019, as reports surfaced that a whistleblower was alleging high-level misconduct related to Ukraine, Giuliani went on CNN to discuss the story. When asked if he had tried to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden, he initially replied "No, actually I didn't," but thirty seconds later said, "Of course I did." In a later tweet he seemed to confirm reports that Trump had withheld military assistance funds scheduled for Ukraine unless they carried out the investigation. He said, "The reality is that the president of the United States, whoever he is, has every right to tell the president of another country you better straighten out the corruption in your country if you want me to give you a lot of money. If you're so damn corrupt that you can't investigate allegationsour money is going to get squandered."
Tom Bossert, a former Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump administration, described Giuliani's theory that Ukraine was involved in 2016 U.S. election interference as "debunked"; Giuliani responded that Bossert "doesn't know what the hell he's talking about".
On September 30, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents concerning the Ukraine scandal to Committee members by October 15, 2019. On October 2, 2019, Steve Linick, the State Department's inspector general, delivered a 40-page packet of apparent disinformation regarding former vice president Joe Biden and former Ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, to Capitol Hill. Linick told congressional aides his office questioned Ulrich Brechbuhl, Pompeo's advisor about the origins of the packet. Brechbuhl noted the packet came to him from Pompeo, who said it "came over", and Brechbuhl reportedly presumed it was from the White House. Later that day, Giuliani acknowledged he passed the packet to Pompeo regarding the Ukraine and attacks on Yovanovich. In a November 2019 interview he confirmed that he had "needed Yovanovitch out of the way" because she was going to make his investigations difficult. "They (the State Department) told me they would investigate it," Giuliani added. Giuliani persuaded Trump to remove Yovanovich from office in spring 2019. By April 2021, the U.S attorney's office in Manhattan was investigating the role of Giuliani and his associates in Yovanovitch's removal.
U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that Trump delegated American foreign policy on Ukraine to Giuliani. The late 2019 impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump centered around Giuliani's actions involving Ukraine. In the compiled testimony and in the December reports of the House Intelligence Committee, Giuliani's name was mentioned more than any but Trump's. Some experts suggested that Giuliani may have violated the Logan Act.
On November 22, 2019, Giuliani sent a letter to Senator Lindsey Graham, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, informing him of at least three witnesses from Ukraine who Giuliani claimed had direct oral, documentary, and recorded evidence of Democratic criminal conspiracy with Ukrainians to prevent Trump's election and, after his election, to remove him from office via contrived charges. Giuliani's letter also claims that the witnesses had evidence of the Biden family's involvement in bribery, money laundering, Hobbs Act extortion, and other possible crimes. The letter sought Graham's help obtaining U.S. visas for the witnesses to testify. The next month, Graham invited Giuliani to share his findings with the Judiciary Committee, and soon advised him "to share what he got from Ukraine with the [intelligence community] to make sure it's not Russia propaganda".
Dmytry Firtash is a Ukrainian oligarch who is prominent in the natural gas sector. In 2017, the Justice Department characterized him as being an "upper echelon (associate) of Russian organized crime". Since his 2014 arrest in Vienna, Austria at the request of American authorities, he has been living there on $155 million bail while fighting extradition to the United States on bribery and racketeering charges, and has been seeking to have the charges dropped. Firtash's attorneys obtained a September 2019 statement from Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general who was forced out under pressure from multiple countries and non-governmental organizations, as conveyed to Ukraine by Joe Biden. Shokin falsely asserted in the statement that Biden actually had him fired because he refused to stop his investigation into Burisma. Giuliani, who asserts he has "nothing to do with" and has "never met or talked to" Firtash, promoted the statement in television appearances as purported evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens. Giuliani told CNN he met with a Firtash attorney for two hours in New York City at the time he was seeking information about the Bidens.
Firtash is represented by Trump and Giuliani associates Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, having hired them on Parnas's recommendation in July 2019. The New York Times reported in November 2019 that Giuliani had directed Parnas to approach Firtash with the recommendation, with the proposition that Firtash could help provide damaging information on Biden, which Parna's attorney described was "part of any potential resolution to [Firtash's] extradition matter". Shokin's statement notes that it was prepared "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash ('DF'), for use in legal proceedings in Austria". Giuliani presented the Shokin statement during American television appearances. Bloomberg News reported on October 18 that during the summer of 2019 Firtash associates began attempting to dig up dirt on the Bidens in an effort to solicit Giuliani's assistance with Firtash's legal matters. Bloomberg News also reported that its sources told them Giuliani's high-profile publicity of the Shokin statement had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political quid pro quo. diGenova has said he has known U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr for thirty years, as they both worked in the Reagan Justice Department. The Washington Post reported on October 22 that after they began representing Firtash, Toensing and diGenova secured a rare face-to-face meeting with Barr to argue the Firtash charges should be dropped, but he declined to intervene.
On October 18, The New York Times reported that weeks earlier, before his associates Parnas and Fruman were indicted, Giuliani met with officials with the criminal and fraud divisions of the Justice Department regarding what Giuliani characterized as a "very, very sensitive" foreign bribery case involving a client of his. The Times did not name whom the case involved, but shortly after publication of the story Giuliani told a reporter it was not Firtash. Two days later, the Justice Department said its officials would not have met with Giuliani had they known his associates were under investigation by the SDNY.
On December 3, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee's report included phone records acquired via subpoenas, including numerous phone calls made by Giuliani between April and August 2019. Calls involved Giuliani in contact with Kurt Volker, Republican Representative and House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, Lev Parnas, numbers associated with the Office of Management and Budget and the White House switchboard, and an unidentified White House official whose phone number is referenced as "-1". Chairman Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee announced after the report's release that his committee was investigating whether "-1" referred to President Trump, citing grand jury evidence from the trial of convicted Trump-associate Roger Stone in which the phone number "-1" was shown to have referred to Trump. Writing for The Washington Post, analyst Philip Bump reasoned that Giuliani's calls with "-1" are 'likely' calls with Trump citing that Giuliani speaks longer with "-1" than any other person, "-1" always calls Giuliani, and generally after Giuliani calls the White House switchboard, and timing of some of President Trump's actions shortly after Giuliani's calls with "-1" ended.
In early December 2019, while the House Judiciary Committee began holding public hearings for the impeachment inquiry, Giuliani returned to Ukraine to interview former Ukrainian officials for a documentary series seeking to discredit the impeachment proceedings. U.S. officials told The Washington Post that Giuliani would have been considered a target of Russian intelligence efforts from early in Trump's presidency, and particularly after Giuliani turned his focus to Ukraine — a former Soviet republic under attack from Russia and with deep penetration by Russian intelligence services. Analysts say Trump's and Giuliani's habit of communicating over unencrypted lines makes it highly likely that foreign intelligence agencies could be listening in on the president's unsecured calls with Giuliani; and that foreign intelligence agencies often collect intelligence about a primary target through monitoring communications of other people who interact with that target.
In a December 2019 opinion piece, former FBI director, CIA director and federal judge William Webster wrote of "a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love". In addition to chastising President Trump and attorney general Bill Barr, Webster wrote he was "profoundly disappointed in another longtime, respected friend, Rudy Giuliani" because his "activities of late concerning Ukraine have, at a minimum, failed the smell test of propriety". Since 2005, Webster had served as the chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
NBC News reported in December 2020 that SDNY investigators, which were reported in late 2019 to be investigating Giuliani's activities, had discussed with Justice Department officials in Washington the possibility of acquiring Giuliani's emails, which might require headquarters approval due to protection by attorney–client privilege. The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY had requested a search warrant of Giuliani's electronic records in summer 2020, but were met with resistance from high-level political appointees in the Washington headquarters, ostensibly because the election was near, while career officials were supportive of the search warrant. The Justice Department generally avoids taking significant actions relating to political figures that might become public within sixty days of an election. Senior political appointees nevertheless opposed the effort after the election, noting Giuliani played a leading role in challenging the election results. The officials deferred the matter to the incoming Biden administration.
Federal investigators in Manhattan executed search warrants on the early morning of April 28, 2021 at Giuliani's office and Upper East Side apartment, seizing his electronic devices and searching the apartment. FBI agents also executed a search warrant that day on Toensing's Washington, D.C.-area home and confiscated her cellphone. In April 2021, Giuliani's attorney said investigators told him they had searched his client's iCloud account beginning in late 2019, later arguing to a judge that the search was illegal and so the subsequent raid on Giuliani's properties was "fruit of this poisoned tree," demanding to review documents justifying the iCloud search. In May 2021, the SDNY confirmed in a court filing that in late 2019 it obtained search warrants for Giuliani's iCloud account, and that of Toensing, as part of "an ongoing, multi-year grand jury investigation into conduct involving Giuliani, Toensing, and others," and argued that attorneys for Giuliani and Toensing were not entitled to review the underlying documents of the warrants prior to any charges. Giuiliani and Toensing asserted their attorney-client privilege with clients may have been violated by the iCloud searches, which investigators disputed, saying they employed a "filter team" to prevent them from seeing information potentially protected by attorney-client privilege. Federal judge J. Paul Oetken days later ruled in favor of investigators regarding the warrant documents and granted their request for a special master to ensure attorney-client privilege was maintained. The special master released more than 3,000 of Giuliani's communications to prosecutors in January 2022, agreeing to withhold forty messages for which Giuliani had asserted "privilege and/or highly personal" status and rejecting 37 such assertions.
The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY was scrutinizing Giuliani's association with Firtash in efforts to discredit the Bidens, and efforts to lobby the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs. Time reported in May 2021 it had spoken with three unidentified witnesses who said they were questioned by investigators, two of whom said they had worked with Giuliani while cooperating with investigators; one witness said investigators were particularly interested in Giuliani's association with Firtash.
United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 found that Ukrainian politician Andrii Derkach was among proxies of Russian intelligence who promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about Biden "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration". Giuliani met with Derkach in December 2019.
In April 2021, Forensic News reported that the SDNY investigation into Giuliani had expanded to include a criminal probe of Derkach and Andrii Artemenko. The New York Times confirmed weeks later that Derkach was the subject of a criminal investigation into foreign interference in the 2020 United States elections. "Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have been investigating whether several Ukrainian officials helped orchestrate a wide-ranging plan to meddle in the 2020 presidential campaign, including using Rudolph W. Giuliani to spread their misleading claims about President Biden and tilt the election in Donald J. Trump's favor," the Times reported.
On June 8, 2021, CNN uncovered exclusive audio of a 2019 phone call from Giuliani to Ukraine, stating that "Rudy Giuliani relentlessly pressured and coaxed the Ukrainian government in 2019 to investigate baseless conspiracies about then-candidate Joe Biden."
2020 election lawsuits
In November 2020, after Joe Biden was named president-elect, Trump placed Giuliani in charge of lawsuits related to alleged voter irregularities in the 2020 United States presidential election. Trump designated Giuliani to lead a legal team to challenge the election results. This team—a self-described "elite strike force" that included Sidney Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing and Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis—appeared at a November 19 press conference in which they made numerous false and unsubstantiated assertions revolving around an international Communist conspiracy, rigged voting machines, and polling place fraud.
Giuliani repeatedly publicly denounced the use of provisional ballots (in which the poll worker does not see the voter's name on the rolls, so the voter swears an affidavit oath that they are registered to vote), arguing that the practice enables fraud, although Giuliani himself had cast this type of ballot on October 31, 2020, in Manhattan.
By January 8, 2021, Trump and his team had lost 63 lawsuits. A month later, Giuliani was no longer representing Trump in any pending cases, according to a Trump adviser. While Trump continued to fundraise, purportedly for his election-related legal fights, as of the end of July 2021 he had not given any of this money to Giuliani. In October 2021, in another context, Trump remarked: "I do pay my lawyers when they do a good job."
In December 2021, two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye” Moss, sued Giuliani for defamation.
Pennsylvania lawsuit
One early lawsuit sought to invalidate up to 700,000 mail-in ballots and stop Pennsylvania from certifying its election results. Giuliani claimed to have signed affidavits attesting to voter fraud and election official misconduct in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Despite not having argued a case in any courtroom for over three decades, Giuliani applied for special permission to represent the Trump presidential campaign in the federal court of Pennsylvania. (In his application, he misrepresented his status with the District of Columbia Bar, claiming that he was a member in good standing, whereas D.C. had suspended him for nonpayment of fees.) In his first day in court on the case, which was November 17, 2020, Giuliani struggled with rudimentary legal processes and was accused by lawyers for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State of making legal arguments that were "disgraceful in an American courtroom". Judge Matthew Brann questioned how Giuliani could justify "asking this court to invalidate some 6.8 million votes thereby disenfranchising every single voter in the commonwealth."
His federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania was dismissed with prejudice on November 21, 2020, with the judge citing "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations" which were "unsupported by evidence". Giuliani and Jenna Ellis reacted by stating that the ruling "helps" the Trump campaign "get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court". They also pointed out that the judge, Matthew W. Brann, was "Obama-appointed", though Brann is also a Republican and a former member of the right-leaning Federalist Society.
The Trump campaign appealed the lawsuit to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel on November 27 rejected the Trump campaign's attempt to undo Pennsylvania's vote certification, because the Trump campaign's "claims have no merit". The panel also ruled that the District Court was correct in preventing the Trump campaign from conducting a second amendment of its complaint. An amendment would be pointless, ruled the judges, because the Trump campaign was not bringing facts before the court, and not even alleging fraud. Judge Stephanos Bibas highlighted that Giuliani himself told the district court that the Trump campaign "doesn't plead fraud", and that this "is not a fraud case". The panel concluded that neither "specific allegations" nor "proof" was provided in this case, and that the Trump campaign "cannot win this lawsuit".
Giuliani and Ellis reacted to the appeals court ruling by condemning the "activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania". Of the three Appeal Court judges, Stephanos Bibas, who delivered the opinion, was appointed by Trump himself, while judges D. Brooks Smith and Michael Chagares were appointed by Republican president George W. Bush.
Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits
As part of Giuliani's allegations that voting machines had been rigged, he made several false assertions about two rival companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. These false claims included that Smartmatic owned Dominion; that Dominion voting machines used Smartmatic software; that Dominion voting machines sent vote data to Smartmatic at foreign locations; that Dominion was founded by the former socialist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez; and that Dominion is a "radical-left" company with connections to antifa.
Both companies sued Giuliani and Fox News. Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Giuliani on January 25, 2021, seeking $1.3billion in damages, and separately sued Fox News for $1.6 billion. On February 4, 2021, Smartmatic also filed a lawsuit that accused Giuliani, Fox News, some hosts at Fox News, and Sidney Powell of engaging in a "disinformation campaign" against the company, and asked for $2.7billion in damages.
On September 10, 2021, Fox News told Giuliani that neither he nor his son Andrew would be allowed on their network for nearly three months.
Attack on the Capitol
On January 6, 2021, Giuliani spoke at a "Save America March" rally on the Ellipse that was attended by Trump supporters protesting the election results. He repeated conspiracy theories that voting machines used in the election were "crooked" and called for "trial by combat". Trump supporters subsequently stormed the U.S. Capitol in a riot that resulted in the deaths of five people, including a police officer, and temporarily disrupted the counting of the Electoral College vote.
Giuliani had reportedly been calling Republican lawmakers to urge them to delay the electoral vote count in order to ultimately throw the election to Trump. Giuliani attempted to contact Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Trump ally, around 7:00p.m. on January 6, after the Capitol storming, to ask him to "try to just slow it down" by objecting to multiple states and "raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrowideally until the end of tomorrow". However, Giuliani mistakenly left the message on the voicemail of another senator, who leaked the recording to The Dispatch. Rick Perlstein, a noted historian of the American conservative political movement, termed Giuliani's attempts to slow certification in the wake of the riot as treasonous. "Sedition. Open and shut. He talked about the time that was being opened up. He was welcoming, and using, the violence. This needs to be investigated," Perlstein tweeted on January 11, 2021.
Giuliani faced criticism for his appearance at the rally and the Capitol riot that followed it. Former Congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called for the arrest of Giuliani, President Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. Manhattan College president Brennan O'Donnell stated in a January7 open letter to the college community, "one of the loudest voices fueling the anger, hatred, and violence that spilled out yesterday is a graduate of our College, Rudolph Giuliani. His conduct as a leader of the campaign to de-legitimize the election and disenfranchise millions of votershas been and continues to be a repudiation of the deepest values of his alma mater."
On January 11, the New York State Bar Association, an advocacy group for the legal profession in New York state, announced that it was launching an investigation into whether Giuliani should be removed from its membership rolls, noting both Giuliani's comments to the Trump supporter rally at the Ellipse on January 6, and that it "has received hundreds of complaints in recent months about Mr. Giuliani and his baseless efforts on behalf of President Trump to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 presidential election and, after the votes were cast, to overturn its legitimate results". Removal from the group's membership rolls would not directly disbar Giuliani from practicing law in New York. New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman and lawyers' group Lawyers Defending American Democracy, also filed a complaints against Giuliani with the Attorney Grievance Committee of the First Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court, which has the authority to discipline and disbar licensed New York lawyers.
Also on January 11, 2021, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said that he is looking at whether to charge Giuliani, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Representative Mo Brooks, with inciting the violent attack.
On January 29, Giuliani falsely claimed that The Lincoln Project played a role in the organization of the Capitol riot. In response, Steve Schmidt announced that the group would be taking legal action against Giuliani for defamation.
On March 5, 2021, Representative Eric Swalwell filed a civil lawsuit against Giuliani and three others (Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Representative Mo Brooks), seeking damages for their alleged role in inciting the Capitol riot.
Giuliani was subpoenaed in January 2022 to testify before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Suspension of law license
On June 24, 2021, a New York appellate court suspended Giuliani's law license. The panel of five justices found that there was "uncontroverted" evidence that Giuliani made "demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public" and that "These false statements were made to improperly bolster (Giuliani's) narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client." The court concluded that Giuliani's conduct "immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law". His license was also suspended in Washington D.C. on July 7, 2021.
Giuliani Partners
After leaving the New York City mayor's office, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners LLC, in 2002, a firm that has been categorized by multiple media outlets as a lobbying entity capitalizing on Giuliani's name recognition, and which has been the subject of allegations surrounding staff hired by Giuliani and due to the firm's chosen client base. Over five years, Giuliani Partners earned more than $100million.
In June 2007, he stepped down as CEO and Chairman of Giuliani Partners, although this action was not made public until December 4, 2007; he maintained his equity interest in the firm. Giuliani subsequently returned to active participation in the firm following the election. In late 2009, Giuliani announced that they had a security consulting contract with Rio de Janeiro, Brazil regarding the 2016 Summer Olympics. He faced criticism in 2012 for advising people once allied with Slobodan Milošević who had lauded Serbian war criminals.
Bracewell & Giuliani
In 2005, Giuliani joined the law firm of Bracewell & Patterson LLP (renamed Bracewell & Giuliani LLP) as a name partner and basis for the expanding firm's new New York office. When he joined the Texas-based firm he brought Marc Mukasey, the son of Attorney General Michael Mukasey, into the firm.
Despite a busy schedule, Giuliani was highly active in the day-to-day business of the law firm, which was a high-profile supplier of legal and lobbying services to the oil, gas, and energy industries. Its aggressive defense of pollution-causing coal-fired power plants threatened to cause political risk for Giuliani, but association with the firm helped Giuliani achieve fund-raising success in Texas. In 2006, Giuliani acted as the lead counsel and lead spokesmen for Bracewell & Giuliani client Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, during their negotiations with federal prosecutors over charges that the pharmaceutical company misled the public about OxyContin's addictive properties. The agreement reached resulted in Purdue Pharma and some of its executives paying $634.5million in fines.
Bracewell & Giuliani represented corporate clients before many U.S. government departments and agencies. Some clients have worked with corporations and foreign governments.
Giuliani left the firm in January 2016, by "amicable agreement", and the firm was rebranded as Bracewell LLP.
Greenberg Traurig
In January 2016, Giuliani moved to the law firm Greenberg Traurig, where he served as the global chairman for Greenberg's cybersecurity and crisis management group, as well as a senior advisor to the firm's executive chairman. In April 2018, he took an unpaid leave of absence when he joined Trump's legal defense team. He resigned from the firm on May 9, 2018.
Lobbying in Romania
In August 2018, Giuliani was retained by Freeh Group International Solutions, a global consulting firm run by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, which paid him a fee to lobby Romanian president Klaus Iohannis to change Romania's anti-corruption policy and reduce the role of the National Anticorruption Directorate. Giuliani argued that the anti-corruption efforts had gone too far.
Podcast
In January 2020, Giuliani launched a podcast, Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
Personal life
Marriages and relationships
Giuliani married Regina Peruggi, whom he had known since childhood, on October 26, 1968. The marriage was in trouble by the mid-1970s and they agreed to a trial separation in 1975. Peruggi did not accompany him to Washington when he accepted the job in the Attorney General's Office. Giuliani met local television personality Donna Hanover sometime in 1982, and they began dating when she was working in Miami. Giuliani filed for legal separation from Peruggi on August 12, 1982. The Giuliani-Peruggi marriage legally ended in two ways: a civil divorce was issued by the end of 1982, while a Roman Catholic church annulment of the marriage was granted at the end of 1983, reportedly because Giuliani had discovered that he and Peruggi were second cousins. Alan Placa, Giuliani's best man, later became a priest and helped secure the annulment. Giuliani and Peruggi had no children.
Giuliani married Hanover in a Catholic ceremony at St. Monica's Church in Manhattan on April 15, 1984. They had two children, Andrew and Caroline Rose, who is a filmmaker in the LGBTQ+ community and has described herself as "multiverses apart" from her father.
Giuliani was still married to Hanover in May 1999 when he met Judith Nathan, a sales manager for a pharmaceutical company, at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar. By 1996, Donna Hanover had reverted to her professional name and virtually stopped appearing in public with her husband amid rumors of marital problems. Nathan and Giuliani formed an ongoing relationship. In summer 1999, Giuliani charged the costs for his NYPD security detail to obscure city agencies in order to keep his relationship with Nathan from public scrutiny. The police department began providing Nathan with city-provided chauffeur services in early 2000.
By March 2000, Giuliani had stopped wearing his wedding ring. The appearances that he and Nathan made at functions and events became publicly visible, although they were not mentioned in the press. The Daily News and the New York Post both broke news of Giuliani's relationship with Nathan in early May 2000. Giuliani first publicly acknowledged her on May 3, 2000, when he said Judith was his "very good friend".
On May 10, 2000, Giuliani held a press conference to announce that he intended to separate from Hanover. Giuliani had not informed Hanover about his plans before the press conference. This was an omission for which Giuliani was widely criticized. Giuliani then went on to praise Nathan as a "very, very fine woman" and said about Hanover that "over the course of some period of time in many ways, we've grown to live independent and separate lives." Hours later Hanover said, "I had hoped that we could keep this marriage together. For several years, it was difficult to participate in Rudy's public life because of his relationship with one staff member."
Giuliani moved out of Gracie Mansion by August 2001 and into an apartment with a couple he was friends with. Giuliani filed for divorce from Hanover in October 2000, and a public battle broke out between their representatives. Nathan was barred by court order from entering Gracie Mansion or meeting his children before the divorce was final.
In May 2001, Giuliani's attorney revealed that Giuliani was impotent due to prostate cancer treatments and had not had sex with Nathan for the preceding year. "You don't get through treatment for cancer and radiation all by yourself," Giuliani said. "You need people to help you and care for you and support you. And I'm very fortunate I had a lot of people who did that, but nobody did more to help me than Judith Nathan." In a court case, Giuliani argued that he planned to introduce Nathan to his children on Father's Day 2001 and that Hanover had prevented this visit. Giuliani and Hanover finally settled their divorce case in July 2002 after his mayoralty had ended, with Giuliani paying Hanover a $6.8million settlement and granting her custody of their children. Giuliani married Nathan on May 24, 2003, and gained a stepdaughter, Whitney. It was also Nathan's third marriage after two divorces.
By March 2007, The New York Times and the Daily News reported that Giuliani had become estranged from both his son Andrew and his daughter Caroline. In 2014, he said his relationship with his children was better than ever, and was spotted eating and playing golf with Andrew.
Nathan filed for divorce from Giuliani on April 4, 2018, after 15 years of marriage. According to an interview with New York magazine, "For a variety of reasons that I know as a spouse and a nurse... he has become a different man." The divorce was settled on December 10, 2019.
In October 2020, following myriad joint public appearances, Giuliani confirmed that he is in a relationship with Maria Ryan, a nurse practitioner and hospital administrator whom his ex-wife Nathan has alleged to have been his mistress for an indeterminate period during their marriage. As of 2018, Ryan was married to United States Marine Corps veteran Robert Ryan, with Giuliani characterizing the couple as platonic friends in response to contemporaneous press inquiries.
Prostate cancer
In April 1981, Giuliani's father died, at age 73, of prostate cancer, at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center. 19 years later, in April 2000, Giuliani, then aged 55, was diagnosed with prostate cancer following a prostate biopsy, after an elevated screening PSA. Giuliani chose a combination prostate cancer treatment consisting of four months of neoadjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy, then low dose-rate prostate brachytherapy with permanent implantation of ninety TheraSeed radioactive palladium-103 seeds in his prostate in September 2000, followed two months later by five weeks of fifteen-minute, five-days-a-week external beam radiotherapy at Mount Sinai Medical Center, with five months of adjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy.
COVID-19
On December 6, 2020, Trump announced that Giuliani had contracted COVID-19. Giuliani was admitted to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital the same day. He was discharged from the hospital on December 9.
It was unclear when he received the positive test. In the days leading up to the announcement, Giuliani had been to multiple indoor hearings without wearing a mask, and requested that others remove their masks. The Arizona Legislature closed for one week starting on December 7, 2020, as 15 current and future members had met with Giuliani. He had also met with Republican legislators in Michigan and Georgia, potentially exposing them.
Religious beliefs
Giuliani has declined to comment publicly on his religious practice and beliefs, although he identifies religion as an important part of his life. When asked if he is a practicing Catholic, Giuliani answered, "My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not-so-good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests."
Television appearances
Giuliani was reportedly revealed to be the first unmasking on the seventh season of The Masked Singer, which caused judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke to storm off the set.
Awards and honors
In 1998, Giuliani received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York".
House of Savoy: Knight Grand Cross (motu proprio) of the Order of Merit of Savoy (December 2001)
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2001
In 2002, the Episcopal Diocese of New York gave Giuliani the Fiorello LaGuardia Public Service Award for Valor and Leadership in the Time of Global Crisis.
Also in 2002, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan awarded Giuliani the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award.
In 2002, he received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually byJefferson Awards.
In 2003, Giuliani received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award
In 2004, construction began on the Rudolph W. Giuliani Trauma Center at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York.
In 2005, Giuliani received honorary degrees from Loyola College in Maryland and Middlebury College. In 2007, Giuliani received an honorary Doctorate in Public Administration from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. In 2021, Middlebury announced that it was revoking the degree given to Giuliani.
In 2006, Rudy and Judith Giuliani were honored by the American Heart Association at its annual Heart of the Hamptons benefit in Water Mill, New York.
In 2007, Giuliani was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), receiving the NIAF Special Achievement Award for Public Service.
In 2007, Giuliani was awarded the Margaret Thatcher Medal of Freedom by the Atlantic Bridge.
In the 2009 graduation ceremony for Drexel University's Earle Mack School of Law, Giuliani was the keynote speaker and recipient of an honorary degree. In 2021, Drexel announced that it was rescinding the degree.
Giuliani was the Robert C. Vance Distinguished Lecturer at Central Connecticut State University in 2013.
Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa, University of Rhode Island, 2003 (revoked January 2022)
Media references
In 1993, Giuliani made a cameo appearance as himself in the Seinfeld episode "The Non-Fat Yogurt", which is a fictionalized account of the 1993 mayoral election. Giuliani's scenes were filmed the morning after his real world election.
In 2003, Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story was released starring actor James Woods as Giuliani.
In 2018, Giuliani was portrayed multiple times on Saturday Night Live by Kate McKinnon. McKinnon continued portraying him in 2019.
In 2020, Giuliani made a cameo appearance on a Netflix true crime limited series' Fear City: New York vs The Mafia, talking about his role in leading the 1980s federal prosecution of the Five Families.
In 2020, Giuliani made an unwitting appearance in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. In the mockumentary film, Giuliani agrees to an interview with Borat's "daughter", Tutar (played by actress Maria Bakalova), who is disguised as a reporter. When invited to Tutar's hotel room, Giuliani proceeds to lie on her bed and reach inside his trousers; they are immediately interrupted by Borat, who says: "She 15. She too old for you." Giuliani later disregarded the accusation, calling it a "complete fabrication" and saying he was rather "tucking in [his] shirt after taking off the recording equipment". In 2021, Giuliani won two Razzie awards for his part in the film – for Worst Supporting Actor and, with his pants zipper for Worst Screen Combo.
See also
Disputes surrounding the 2020 United States presidential election results
Electoral history of Rudy Giuliani
Political positions of Rudy Giuliani
Public image of Rudy Giuliani
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Timeline of New York City, 1990s–2000s
References
Further reading
Barrett, Wayne, (2000). Rudy!: An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani. Basic Books; (Reprint by Diane Publishing Co.).
Brodeur, Christopher X. (2002). Perverted Little Creep: Mayor Giuliani vs Mayor Brodeur. ExtremeNY books, .
Dinkins, David N.; Knobler, Peter (2013). A Mayor's Life: Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic. PublicAffairs,
Gonzalez, Juan, (2002). Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse. New Press, .
Koch, Edward I. (1999). Giuliani: Nasty Man. Barricade Books. .
Mandery, Evan (1999). The Campaign: Rudy Giuliani, Ruth Messinger, Al Sharpton, and the Race to Be Mayor of New York City. Westview Press, .
Newfield, Jack, (2003). The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania. Thunder's Mouth Press, .
Paterson, David "Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity."Skyhorse Publishing. New York, New York, 2020.
Polner, Robert, (2005). America's Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani's New York. Soft Skull Press, .
Polner, Robert, (2007). America's Mayor, America's President? The Strange Career of Rudy Giuliani. [Preface by Jimmy Breslin] Soft Skull Press, .
External links
La Guardia and Wagner Archives/The Giuliani Collection
TPM infographic: Tracking Rudy Giuliani's Foreign Dealings
Suspension of Giuliani's New York State law license — Attorney Grievance Committee for the Supreme Court of the State of New York Appellate Division
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Living people
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Candidates in the 2008 United States presidential election
Writers from Brooklyn | false | [
"The PayPal 14 are a group of defendants allegedly connected with the hacktivist group Anonymous, thirteen of whom pleaded guilty in a San Jose court in California, United States in December 2013, to charges of conspiring to disrupt access to the PayPal payment service. The attempted four-day disruption of PayPal's operations was allegedly in response to PayPal's refusal to process donations to Wau Holland Stiftung's PayPal account set up to collect funds for WikiLeaks, and was part of a wider Anonymous campaign, Operation Payback.\n\nCourt proceedings\n\nThe defendants were charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in July 2011 for the attempted denial of service attacks, which occurred in December 2010. On December 5, 2013, ten of the defendants pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of damaging a protected computer and one felony count of conspiracy, and three others each pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor. The 14th defendant had their case handled separately.\n\nNew York-based attorney Stanley Cohen, who represented one of the defendants, claimed that the 13 committed acts of civil disobedience in political dissent, adding that he thinks that the acts were free speech protected by the First Amendment. In an interview for SKP News Cohen compared the digital 'sit-in' to protests organized by the civil rights movement. Cohen further noted that the guilty pleas were for misdemeanors resulting in probation, instead of having the defendants face possible felony convictions and jail sentences. A fine of $86,000 is being equally distributed among the 13 activists, each owing $6,615. The fine must be paid by December 2014.\n\nLeniency request\nIt is unclear how many people actually took part in the attacks. Pierre Omidyar, founder of the online market eBay, asked federal prosecutors to show leniency, stating that \"[i]n those cases, I believe justice requires leniency. In my view, they should be facing misdemeanor charges and the possibility of a fine, rather than felony charges and jail time.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n ThePayPal14.com – The Official PayPal 14 homepage (Archived)\n\nLiving people\nQuantified groups of defendants\nTrials in the United States\nAnonymous (hacker group)\nInternet-based activism\nYear of birth missing (living people)",
"Einstein v 357 LLC is a United States New York Supreme Court landmark decision which addresses a party's discovery obligations and the safeguarding of evidence. In particular, this decision addresses the issue of the intentional destruction of digital evidence when litigation has commenced or is reasonably anticipated. In short, this decision eradicates\nthe excuse of ignorance in terms of how electronically stored information is saved, deleted, and retrieved.\n\nBackground\nThe plaintiffs in this lawsuit, Harold Einstein and Jennifer Boyd brought an action against the defendants, 357 LLC and The Corcoran Group (a real estate business established by Barbara Corcoran), Adam Pacelli (\"Pacelli\"), Christina Coats (\"Coats\"), Anne Marie Gatz (\"Gatz\"), Daniel Alter Architect, PPL, Daniel Alter, Kutnicki-Bernsetein Architects, PLLC, Daniel Berstein, Andrew Katz, Peter Miceli, and Peter Miceli Plumbing. The action is based on claims against the Defendants for fraudulent inducement, fraudulent concealment, negligent misrepresentation, and violations of New York's Consumer Protection Act, which arose from correspondence and statements, which included emails, sent by brokers and forwarded to the Plaintiffs by the Defendants.\n\nThe claims were in connection with the alleged defective design construction, development and deceptive marketing of a condominium unit in Brooklyn (\"Condominium\"). The Plaintiffs are the buyers of the $1.3 million three-bedroom Park Slope Condominium which floods when it rains.\n\nMissing emails\nDiscovery of emails\nA number of applications and hearings took place following complaints by the Plaintiffs that the Corcoran Defendants had failed to comply with discovery obligations. The Plaintiffs took the view that the Corcoran Defendants' failure to disclose relevant emails, or attachments associated with emails which were disclosed, is evidence of \"selective editing of discovery responses and/or spoliation of evidence\".\nIn particular, motion was made by the Plaintiffs on October 15, 2008 to strike the pleadings of the Corcoran Group, Pacelli, Coats and Gatz (\"Corcoran Defendants\") or, alternatively, to compel the Corcoran Defendants to comply with its discovery obligations. The alternative request sought to compel the Defendants to produce, amongst\nother things, an image of the Corcoran Defendants' computer hard drives and emails for forensic data recovery.\n\nThe Plaintiffs eventually obtained an order directing each of the Corcoran Defendants to produce their respective hard drives to an independent vendor for inspection and deleted file recovery and for a keyword search of terms be conducted for extraction and production. The Corcoran Defendants eventually produced two hard drives (\"Hard Drives\") which they say are an exact replica of the central server in connection with the persons in question as all Corcoran e-mails are forwarded to a central server.\n\nForensic examination of hard drives\nA third-party computer forensics expert (\"Expert\") subsequently performed a forensic search and analysis of the data on the Hard Drives and found, among other things, that the Hard Drives contain no current .pst or .ost files for Pacelli or Coats. Files for Gatz disclosed a large number of emails, but none were relevant. Further, it was determined by the Expert that certain relevant emails identified by the Plaintiffs to be searched for were not found on the Hard Drives and that there was no proof of deletion found.\n\nFindings on Evidence\nThe Corcoran Group initially attempted to insist that no emails relating to the subject matter of the litigation was omitted by an explanation that all emails provided were either from a central server which contained all relevant emails or from Hard Drives which were exact duplicates of the hard drives of the office computers used by the relevant agents of Corcoran Group who worked on the sale in relation to the Condominium.\n\nHowever, by the Corcoran Defendants' subsequent evidence and testimony of Terence Thomas (\"Thomas\"), a director of Information Technology at the Corcoran Group, numerous incidents of material non-disclosure and numerous failures in relation to the Corcoran Defendants discharging their discovery obligations was found by the Court. The evidence showed that Thomas had failed to disclose an email deletion policy of the Corcoran Group (\"Deletion Policy\") until after numerous orders of the Court and late in the proceedings. The Deletion Policy required emails to be regularly deleted by users to make room for more emails as a result of the fact that email mailboxes of Corcoran's brokers are allocated a limited amount of megabytes. It is a part of the Deletion Policy that users must manually delete emails at their discretion, but whatever records users have are to be retained so that they may be presented.\n\nAfter considering the evidence, the Court found that (1) the Corcoran Group failed to implement any change in its email Deletion Policy upon commencement of litigation; (2) the Corcoran Defendants continued to delete emails in accordance with their ordinary practices even after the commencement of litigation because nobody, including Counsel for the Corcoran Defendants implemented any change to the Deletion Policy; (3) the Corcoran Defendants failed to submit evidence of correspondence among each other despite clear evidence that there should be; (4) the emails produced by the Corcoran Defendants were selective in nature; and (5) Counsel for the Corcoran Defendants made numerous materially false statements to the Plaintiffs and the Court, including statements which indicate that the Corcoran Defendants have, in good faith, complied with discovery obligations.\n\nRuling\nThe Court reasoned that while deletion of emails in the ordinary course of business in not improper, parties must take additional steps to preserve potentially relevant emails once litigation has commenced or is reasonably anticipated. From the evidence which was adduced before the Court, it took the view that the Corcoran Defendants had failed to implement a litigation hold and that they should be sanctioned for such failure.\n\nThe Court took the view that the Corcoran Defendants' \"failure to suspend the deletion policy or even investigate the basic ways in which emails were stored and deleted constitutes a serious discovery default on the part of the Corcoran Defendants and their counsel rising to the level of gross negligence or willfulness\".\n\nThe Court drew the adverse inference that the emails deleted were unfavourable to the Corcoran Defendants and that at least some of the deleted emails were relevant to the litigation and favourable to the Plaintiffs. Having found that the Plaintiffs have established that the Corcoran Defendants should be sanctioned for their failure to implement a litigation hold. The Court also awarded attorneys' fees and costs in favour of the Plaintiffs.\n\nExternal links \nSupreme Court of New York website\nLaw.com - \"Corcoran Group Sanctioned for Failure to Preserve E-Mail for Discovery\"\ntherealdeal.com- \"State Supreme Court rules Corcoran \"negligent\" with e-mails in Bklyn condo sale\"\nnydailynews.com - \"E-mail shows couple's suit vs. Corcoran Group holds water, judge says\"\n\nReferences\n\n2009 in United States case law\nNew York Supreme Court cases\nUnited States discovery case law\nUnited States state evidence case law\n2009 in New York (state)"
] |
[
"Rudy Giuliani",
"Appointees as defendants",
"How many appointees acted as defendants?",
"In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding,",
"Did he appoint anyone else?",
"In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury",
"how many defendants were there?",
"Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign."
] | C_7a9b28f537444b1fa4b7ec7d83b31da1_1 | What was he on trial for? | 4 | What was Richard Roberts on trial for? | Rudy Giuliani | Several of Giuliani's appointees to head City agencies became defendants in criminal proceedings. In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding, to head the New York City Housing Development Corporation, although Harding had neither a college degree nor relevant experience. In 2005, Harding pleaded guilty to defrauding the Housing Development Corporation and to possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Russell Harding committed suicide in 2012. In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury after lying to a grand jury about a car that Harding bought for him with City funds. Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign. Giuliani appointed him as the Commissioner of the Department of Correction and then as the Police Commissioner. Giuliani was also the godfather to Kerik's two youngest children. After Giuliani left office, Kerik was subject to state and federal investigations resulting in his pleading guilty in 2006, in a Bronx Supreme Court, to two unrelated ethics violations. Kerik was ordered to pay $221,000 in fines. Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009, in a New York district court, to eight federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements, and on February 18, 2010, he was sentenced to four years in federal prison. Giuliani was not implicated in any of the proceedings. CANNOTANSWER | Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009, in a New York district court, to eight federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements, | Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and disbarred attorney who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 1983 and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989.
Giuliani led the 1980s federal prosecution of New York City mafia bosses as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. After a failed campaign for Mayor of New York City in the 1989 election, he succeeded in 1993, and was reelected in 1997, campaigning on a "tough on crime" platform. He led New York's controversial "civic cleanup" as its mayor from 1994 to 2001. Mayor Giuliani appointed an outsider, William Bratton, as New York City's new police commissioner. Reforming the police department's administration and policing practices, they applied the broken windows theory, which cites social disorder, like disrepair and vandalism, for attracting loitering addicts, panhandlers, and prostitutes, followed by serious and violent criminals. In particular, Giuliani focused on removing panhandlers and sex clubs from Times Square, promoting a "family values" vibe and a return to the area's earlier focus on business, theater, and the arts. As crime rates fell steeply, well ahead of the national average pace, Giuliani was widely credited, though later critics cite other contributing factors. In 2000, he ran against First Lady Hillary Clinton for a US Senate seat from New York, but left the race once diagnosed with prostate cancer. For his mayoral leadership after the September11 attacks in 2001, he was called "America's mayor". He was named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2001, and was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
In 2002, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners, and acquired, but later sold, an investment banking firm, Giuliani Capital Advisors. In 2005, he joined a law firm, renamed Bracewell & Giuliani. Vying for the Republican Party's 2008 presidential nomination, Giuliani was an early frontrunner, yet did poorly in the primary election, withdrew, and endorsed the party's subsequent nominee, John McCain. Declining to run for New York governor in 2010 and for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, Giuliani focused on the activities of his business firms. In addition, he has often been engaged for public speaking, political commentary, and Republican campaign support.
Giuliani joined President Donald Trump's personal legal team in April 2018. His activities as Trump's attorney have drawn renewed media scrutiny, including allegations that he engaged in corruption and profiteering. In late 2019, Giuliani was reportedly under federal investigation for violating lobbying laws, and possibly several other charges, as a central figure in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which resulted in Trump's first impeachment. Following the 2020 presidential election, he represented Trump in many lawsuits filed in attempts to overturn the election results, making false and debunked allegations about rigged voting machines, polling place fraud, and an international communist conspiracy. As a consequence, his license to practice law was suspended in New York State in June 2021 and in the District of Columbia in July 2021.
Early life
Giuliani was born in the East Flatbush section, then an Italian-American enclave, in New York City's borough of Brooklyn, the only child of working-class parents Helen (née D'Avanzo; 1909–2002) and Harold Angelo Giuliani (1908–1981), both children of Italian immigrants. Giuliani is of Tuscan descent on his father's side, as his paternal grandparents (Rodolfo and Evangelina Giuliani) were born in Montecatini Terme, Tuscany, Italy. He was raised a Roman Catholic. Harold Giuliani, a plumber and a bartender, had trouble holding a job, was convicted of felony assault and robbery, and served prison time in Sing Sing. Once released, he worked as an enforcer for his brother-in-law Leo D'Avanzo, who operated an organized crime-affiliated loan sharking and gambling ring at a restaurant in Brooklyn. The couple lived in East Flatbush until Harold died of prostate cancer in 1981, whereupon Helen moved to Manhattan's Upper East Side.
When Giuliani was seven years old in 1951, his family moved from Brooklyn to Garden City South, where he attended the local Catholic school, St. Anne's. Later, he commuted back to Brooklyn to attend Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, graduating in 1961.
Giuliani attended Manhattan College in Riverdale, Bronx, where he majored in political science with a minor in philosophy and considered becoming a priest.
Giuliani was elected president of his class in his sophomore year, but was not re-elected in his junior year. He joined the Phi Rho Pi college forensic fraternity and honor society. He graduated in 1965. Giuliani decided to forgo the priesthood and instead attended the New York University School of Law in Manhattan, where he made the NYU Law Review and graduated cum laude with a Juris Doctor degree in 1968.
Giuliani started his political life as a Democrat. He volunteered for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968. He also worked as a Democratic Party committeeman on Long Island in the mid-1960s and voted for George McGovern for president in 1972.
Legal career
Upon graduation from law school, Giuliani clerked for Judge Lloyd Francis MacMahon, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.
Giuliani did not serve in the military during the Vietnam War. His conscription was deferred while he was enrolled at Manhattan College and NYU Law. Upon graduation from the latter in 1968, he was classified 1-A (available for military service), but in 1969 he was reclassified 2-A (essential civilian) as Judge MacMahon's law clerk. In 1970, Giuliani was reclassified 1-A but received a high 308 draft lottery number and was not called up for service.
Giuliani switched his party registration from Democratic to Independent in 1975. This occurred during a period of time in which he was recruited for a position in Washington, D.C. with the Ford administration: Giuliani served as the Associate Deputy Attorney General and chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Harold "Ace" Tyler.
His first high-profile prosecution was of Democratic U.S. Representative Bertram L. Podell (NY-13), who was convicted of corruption. Podell pleaded guilty to conspiracy and conflict of interest for accepting more than $41,000 in campaign contributions and legal fees from a Florida airline to obtain federal rights for a Bahama route. Podell, who maintained a legal practice while serving in Congress, said the payments were legitimate legal fees. The Washington Post later reported: "The trial catapulted future New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani to front-page status when, as assistant U.S. attorney, he relentlessly cross-examined an initially calm Rep. Podell. The congressman reportedly grew more flustered and eventually decided to plead guilty."
From 1977 to 1981, during the Carter administration, Giuliani practiced law at the Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler law firm, as chief of staff to his former boss, Ace Tyler. In later years, Tyler became "disillusioned" by what Tyler described as Giuliani's time as US Attorney, criticizing several of his prosecutions as "overkill".
On December 8, 1980, one month after the election of Ronald Reagan brought Republicans back to power in Washington, he switched his party affiliation from Independent to Republican. Giuliani later said the switches were because he found Democratic policies "naïve", and that "by the time I moved to Washington, the Republicans had come to make more sense to me." Others suggested that the switches were made in order to get positions in the Justice Department. Giuliani's mother maintained in 1988 that he "only became a Republican after he began to get all these jobs from them. He's definitely not a conservative Republican. He thinks he is, but he isn't. He still feels very sorry for the poor."
In 1981, Giuliani was named Associate Attorney General in the Reagan administration, the third-highest position in the Department of Justice. As Associate Attorney General, Giuliani supervised the U.S. Attorney Offices' federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the United States Marshals Service. In a well-publicized 1982 case, Giuliani testified in defense of the federal government's "detention posture" regarding the internment of more than 2,000 Haitian asylum seekers who had entered the country illegally. The U.S. government disputed the assertion that most of the detainees had fled their country due to political persecution, alleging instead that they were "economic migrants". In defense of the government's position, Giuliani testified that "political repression, at least in general, does not exist" under President of Haiti Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime.
In 1983, Giuliani was appointed to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which was technically a demotion but was sought by Giuliani because of his desire to personally litigate cases and because the SDNY is considered the highest profile United States Attorney's Office in the country, and as such, is often used by those who have held the position as a springboard for running for public office. It was in this position that he first gained national prominence by prosecuting numerous high-profile cases, resulting in the convictions of Wall Street figures Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. He also focused on prosecuting drug dealers, organized crime, and corruption in government. He amassed a record of 4,152 convictions and 25 reversals. As a federal prosecutor, Giuliani was credited with bringing the perp walk, parading of suspects in front of the previously alerted media, into common use as a prosecutorial tool. After Giuliani "patented the perp walk", the tool was used by increasing numbers of prosecutors nationwide.
Giuliani's critics claimed that he arranged for people to be arrested, then dropped charges for lack of evidence on high-profile cases rather than going to trial. In a few cases, his arrests of alleged white-collar criminals at their workplaces with charges later dropped or lessened, sparked controversy, and damaged the reputations of the alleged "perps". He claimed veteran stock trader Richard Wigton, of Kidder, Peabody & Co., was guilty of insider trading; in February 1987, he had officers handcuff Wigton and march him through the company's trading floor, with Wigton in tears. Giuliani had his agents arrest Tim Tabor, a young arbitrageur and former colleague of Wigton, so late that he had to stay overnight in jail before posting bond.
Within three months, charges were dropped against both Wigton and Tabor; Giuliani said, "We're not going to go to trial. We're just the tip of the iceberg," but no further charges were forthcoming and the investigation did not end until Giuliani's successor was in place. Giuliani's high-profile raid of the Princeton/Newport firm ended with the defendants having their cases overturned on appeal on the grounds that what they had been convicted of were not crimes.
Mafia Commission trial
In the Mafia Commission Trial, which ran from February 25, 1985, through November 19, 1986, Giuliani indicted eleven organized crime figures, including the heads of New York City's so-called "Five Families", under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) on charges including extortion, labor racketeering, and murder for hire. Time magazine called this "Case of Cases" possibly "the most significant assault on the infrastructure of organized crime since the high command of the Chicago Mafia was swept away in 1943", and quoted Giuliani's stated intention: "Our approach is to wipe out the five families." Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano evaded conviction when he and his underboss, Thomas Bilotti, were murdered on the streets of Midtown Manhattan on December 16, 1985. However, three heads of the Five Families were sentenced to 100 years in prison on January 13, 1987. Genovese and Colombo leaders, Tony Salerno and Carmine Persico received additional sentences in separate trials, with 70-year and 39-year sentences to run consecutively. He was assisted by three Assistant United States Attorneys: Michael Chertoff, the eventual second United States Secretary of Homeland Security and co-author of the Patriot Act; John Savarese, now a partner at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz; and Gil Childers, a later deputy chief of the criminal division for the Southern District of New York and now managing director in the legal department at Goldman Sachs.
According to an FBI memo revealed in 2007, leaders of the Five Families voted in late 1986 on whether to issue a contract for Giuliani's death. Heads of the Lucchese, Bonanno, and Genovese families rejected the idea, though Colombo and Gambino leaders, Carmine Persico and John Gotti, encouraged assassination. In 2014, it was revealed by a former Sicilian Mafia member and informant, Rosario Naimo, that Salvatore Riina, a notorious Sicilian Mafia leader, had ordered a murder contract on Giuliani during the mid-1980s. Riina allegedly was suspicious of Giuliani's efforts prosecuting the American Mafia and was worried that he might have spoken with Italian anti-mafia prosecutors and politicians, including Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who were both murdered in 1992 in separate car bombings. According to Giuliani, the Sicilian Mafia offered $800,000 for his death during his first year as mayor of New York in 1994.
Boesky, Milken trials
Ivan Boesky, a Wall Street arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of about $200million by betting on corporate takeovers, was originally investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for making investments based on tips received from corporate insiders, leading the way for the US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York to investigate as well. These stock and options acquisitions were sometimes brazen, with massive purchases occurring only a few days before a corporation announced a takeover. Although insider trading of this kind was illegal, laws prohibiting it were rarely enforced until Boesky was prosecuted. Boesky cooperated with the SEC and informed on several others, including junk bond trader Michael Milken. Per agreement with Giuliani, Boesky received a -year prison sentence along with a $100million fine. In 1989, Giuliani charged Milken under the RICO Act with 98 counts of racketeering and fraud. In a highly publicized case, Milken was indicted by a grand jury on these charges.
Mayoral campaigns
Giuliani was U.S. Attorney until January 1989, resigning as the Reagan administration ended. He garnered criticism until he left office for his handling of cases, and was accused of prosecuting cases to further his political ambitions. He joined the law firm White & Case in New York City as a partner. He remained with White & Case until May 1990, when he joined the law firm Anderson Kill Olick & Oshinsky, also in New York City.
1989
Giuliani first ran for New York City mayor in 1989, when he attempted to unseat three-term incumbent Ed Koch. He won the September 1989 Republican Party primary election against business magnate Ronald Lauder, in a campaign marked by claims that Giuliani was not a true Republican after an acrimonious debate between the two men. In the Democratic primary, Koch was upset by Manhattan Borough president David Dinkins.
In the general election, Giuliani ran as the fusion candidate of both the Republican and the Liberal parties. The Conservative Party, which had often co-lined the Republican party candidate, withheld support from Giuliani and ran Lauder instead. Conservative Party leaders were unhappy with Giuliani on ideological grounds. They cited the Liberal Party's endorsement statement that Giuliani "agreed with the Liberal Party's views on affirmative action, gay rights, gun control, school prayer and tuition tax credits".
During two televised debates, Giuliani framed himself as an agent of change, saying, "I'm the reformer," that "If we keep going merrily along, this city's going down," and that electing Dinkins would represent "more of the same, more of the rotten politics that have been dragging us down". Giuliani pointed out that Dinkins had not filed a tax return for many years and of several other ethical missteps, in particular a stock transfer to his son. Dinkins filed several years of returns and said the tax matter had been fully paid off. He denied other wrongdoing, saying "what we need is a mayor, not a prosecutor," and that Giuliani refused to say "the R-wordhe doesn't like to admit he's a Republican". Dinkins won the endorsements of three of the four daily New York newspapers, while Giuliani won approval from the New York Post.
In the end, Giuliani lost to Dinkins by a margin of 47,080 votes out of 1,899,845 votes cast, in the closest election in New York City's history. The closeness of the race was particularly noteworthy considering the small percentage of New York City residents who are registered Republicans and resulted in Giuliani being the presumptive nominee for a rematch with Dinkins at the next election.
1993
Four years after his defeat to Dinkins, Giuliani again ran for mayor. Once again, Giuliani also ran on the Liberal Party line but not the Conservative Party line, which ran activist George Marlin.
Although crime had begun to fall during the Dinkins administration, Giuliani's campaign capitalized on the perception that crime was uncontrolled in the city following events such as the Crown Heights riot and the Family Red Apple boycott. The year prior to the election, Giuliani was a key speaker at a Patrolmen's Benevolent Association rally opposing Dinkins, in which Giuliani blamed the police department's low morale on Dinkins' leadership. The rally quickly devolved into a riot, with nearly 4,000 off-duty police officers storming the City Hall and blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.
In his pitch to lower crime rates in the city, Giuliani promised to focus police resources toward shutting down petty crimes and nuisances as a way of restoring the quality of life:
Dinkins and Giuliani never debated during the campaign, because they were never able to agree on how to approach a debate. Dinkins was endorsed by The New York Times and Newsday, while Giuliani was endorsed by the New York Post and, in a key switch from 1989, the Daily News. Giuliani went to visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, seeking his blessing and endorsement.
On election day, Giuliani's campaign hired off-duty cops, firefighters, and corrections officers to monitor polling places in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and The Bronx for cases of voter fraud. Despite objections from the Dinkins campaign, who claimed that the effort would intimidate Democratic voters, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly assigned an additional 52 police captains and 3,500 officers to monitor the city's polling places.
Giuliani won by a margin of 53,367 votes. He became the first Republican elected Mayor of New York City since John Lindsay in 1965. Similar to the election four years prior, Giuliani performed particularly well in the white ethnic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Giuliani saw especially high returns in the borough of Staten Island, as a referendum to consider allowing the borough to secede from New York City was on the ballot.
1997
Giuliani's opponent in 1997 was Democratic Manhattan Borough president Ruth Messinger, who had beaten Al Sharpton in the September 9, 1997 Democratic primary. In the general election, Giuliani once again had the Liberal Party and not the Conservative Party listing. Giuliani ran an aggressive campaign, parlaying his image as a tough leader who had cleaned up the city. Giuliani's popularity was at its highest point to date, with a late October 1997 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showing him as having a 68 percent approval rating; 70 percent of New Yorkers were satisfied with life in the city and 64 percent said things were better in the city compared to four years previously.
Throughout the campaign he was well ahead in the polls and had a strong fund-raising advantage over Messinger. On her part, Messinger lost the support of several usually Democratic constituencies, including gay organizations and large labor unions. The local daily newspapersThe New York Times, Daily News, New York Post and Newsdayall endorsed Giuliani over Messinger.
In the end, Giuliani won 58% of the vote to Messinger's 41%, and became the first registered Republican to win a second term as mayor while on the Republican line since Fiorello H. La Guardia in 1941. Voter turnout was the lowest in twelve years, with 38% of registered voters casting ballots. The margin of victory included gains in his share of the African American vote (20% compared to 1993's 5%) and the Hispanic vote (43% from 37%) while maintaining his base of white ethnic, Catholic and Jewish voters from 1993.
Mayoralty
Giuliani served as mayor of New York City from 1994 through 2001.
Law enforcement
In Giuliani's first term as mayor, the New York City Police Departmentat the instigation of Commissioner Bill Brattonadopted an aggressive enforcement/deterrent strategy based on James Q. Wilson's "Broken Windows" approach. This involved crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as graffiti, turnstile jumping, cannabis possession, and aggressive panhandling by "squeegee men", on the theory that this would send a message that order would be maintained. The legal underpinning for removing the "squeegee men" from the streets was developed under Giuliani's predecessor, Mayor David Dinkins. Bratton, with Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple, also created and instituted CompStat, a computer-driven comparative statistical approach to mapping crime geographically and in terms of emerging criminal patterns, as well as charting officer performance by quantifying criminal apprehensions. Critics of the system assert that it creates an environment in which police officials are encouraged to underreport or otherwise manipulate crime data. An extensive study found a high correlation between crime rates reported by the police through CompStat and rates of crime available from other sources, suggesting there had been no manipulation. The CompStat initiative won the 1996 Innovations in Government Award from the Kennedy School of Government.
During Giuliani's administration, crime rates dropped in New York City. The extent to which Giuliani deserves the credit is disputed. Crime rates in New York City had started to drop in 1991 under previous mayor David Dinkins, three years before Giuliani took office. The rates of most crimes, including all categories of violent crime, made consecutive declines during the last 36 months of Dinkins's four-year term, ending a 30-year upward spiral. A small nationwide drop in crime preceded Giuliani's election, and some critics say he may have been the beneficiary of a trend already in progress. Additional contributing factors to the overall decline in New York City crime during the 1990s were the addition of 7,000 officers to the NYPD, lobbied for and hired by the Dinkins administration, and an overall improvement in the national economy. Changing demographics were a key factor contributing to crime rate reductions, which were similar across the country during this time. Because the crime index is based on that of the FBI, which is self-reported by police departments, some have alleged that crimes were shifted into categories the FBI does not collect.
Some studies conclude that the decline in New York City's crime rate in the 1990s and 2000s exceeds all national figures and therefore should be linked with a local dynamic that was not present as such anywhere else in the country: what University of California, Berkeley sociologist Frank Zimring calls "the most focused form of policing in history". In his book The Great American Crime Decline, Zimring argues that "up to half of New York's crime drop in the 1990s, and virtually 100 percent of its continuing crime decline since 2000, has resulted from policing."
Bratton was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1996. Giuliani reportedly forced Bratton out after two years, in what was seen as a battle of two large egos in which Giuliani was not tolerant of Bratton's celebrity. Bratton went on to become chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Giuliani's term also saw allegations of civil rights abuses and other police misconduct under other commissioners after Bratton's departure. There were police shootings of unarmed suspects, and the scandals surrounding the torture of Abner Louima and the killings of Amadou Diallo, Gidone Busch and Patrick Dorismond. Giuliani supported the New York City Police Department, for example by releasing what he called Dorismond's "extensive criminal record" to the public, including a sealed juvenile file.
City services
The Giuliani administration advocated the privatization of the city's public schools, which he called "dysfunctional", and advocated the reduction of state funding for them. He advocated for a voucher-based system to promote private schooling. Giuliani supported protection for illegal immigrants. He continued a policy of preventing city employees from contacting the Immigration and Naturalization Service about immigration violations, on the grounds that illegal aliens should be able to take actions such as sending their children to school or reporting crimes to the police without fear of deportation.
During his mayoralty, gay and lesbian New Yorkers received domestic partnership rights. Giuliani induced the city's Democratic-controlled New York City Council, which had avoided the issue for years, to pass legislation providing broad protection for same-sex partners. In 1998, he codified local law by granting all city employees equal benefits for their domestic partners.
2000 U.S. Senate campaign
Due to term limits, Giuliani was ineligible to run in 2001 for a third term as mayor. In November 1998, four-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement and Giuliani immediately indicated an interest in running in the 2000 election for the now-open seat. Due to his high profile and visibility Giuliani was supported by the state Republican Party. Giuliani's entrance led Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel and others to recruit then-First Lady Hillary Clinton to run for Moynihan's seat, hoping she might combat his star power.
An early January 1999 poll showed Giuliani trailing Clinton by ten points. In April 1999, Giuliani formed an exploratory committee in connection with the Senate run. By January 2000, polling for the race dramatically reversed, with Giuliani now pulling nine points ahead of Clinton, in part because his campaign was able to take advantage of several campaign stumbles by Clinton. Nevertheless, the Giuliani campaign was showing some structural weaknesses; so closely identified with New York City, he had somewhat limited appeal to normally Republican voters in Upstate New York. The New York Police Department's fatal shooting of Patrick Dorismond in March 2000 inflamed Giuliani's already strained relations with the city's minority communities, and Clinton seized on it as a major campaign issue. By April 2000, reports showed Clinton gaining upstate and generally outworking Giuliani, who said his duties as mayor prevented him from campaigning more. Clinton was now eight to ten points ahead of Giuliani in the polls.
Then followed four tumultuous weeks in which Giuliani learned he had prostate cancer and needed treatment; his extramarital relationship with Judith Nathan became public and the subject of a media frenzy; and he announced a separation from his wife Donna Hanover. After much indecision, on May 19, Giuliani announced his withdrawal from the Senate race.
September 11 terrorist attacks
Response
Giuliani received nationwide attention in the aftermath of the September11 attacks. He made frequent appearances on radio and television on September11 and afterwardsfor example, to indicate that tunnels would be closed as a precautionary measure, and that there was no reason to believe the dispersion of chemical or biological weaponry into the air was a factor in the attack. In his public statements, Giuliani said:
The 9/11 attacks occurred on the scheduled date of the mayoral primary to select the Democratic and Republican candidates to succeed Giuliani. The primary was immediately delayed two weeks to September 25. During this period, Giuliani sought an unprecedented three-month emergency extension of his term from January1 to April1 under the New York State Constitution (Article3 Section 25). He threatened to challenge the law imposing term limits on elected city officials and run for another full four-year term, if the primary candidates did not consent to the extension of his mayoralty. In the end leaders in the State Assembly and Senate indicated that they did not believe the extension was necessary. The election proceeded as scheduled, and the winning candidate, the Giuliani-endorsed Republican convert Michael Bloomberg, took office on January 1, 2002, per normal custom.
Giuliani claimed to have been at the Ground Zero site "as often, if not more, than most workers... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them." Some 9/11 workers have objected to those claims. While his appointment logs were unavailable for the six days immediately following the attacks, Giuliani logged 29 hours at the site over three months beginning September 17. This contrasted with recovery workers at the site who spent this much time at the site in two to three days.
When Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal suggested the attacks were an indication that the United States "should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause," Giuliani asserted, "There is no moral equivalent for this act. There is no justification for it... And one of the reasons I think this happened is because people were engaged in moral equivalency in not understanding the difference between liberal democracies like the United States, like Israel, and terrorist states and those who condone terrorism. So I think not only are those statements wrong, they're part of the problem." Giuliani subsequently rejected the prince's $10million donation to disaster relief in the aftermath of the attack.
Emergency command center location and communications problems
Giuliani has been widely criticized for his decision to locate the Office of Emergency Management headquarters on the 23rd floor inside the 7 World Trade Center building. Those opposing the decision perceived the office as a target for a terrorist attack in light of the previous terrorist attack against the World Trade Center in 1993. The office was unable to coordinate efforts between police and firefighters properly while evacuating its headquarters. Large tanks of diesel fuel were placed in 7World Trade to power the command center. In May 1997, Giuliani put responsibility for selecting the location on Jerome M. Hauer, who had served under Giuliani from 1996 to 2000 before being appointed by him as New York City's first Director of Emergency Management. Hauer has taken exception to that account in interviews and provided Fox News and New York Magazine with a memo demonstrating that he recommended a location in Brooklyn but was overruled by Giuliani. Television journalist Chris Wallace interviewed Giuliani on May 13, 2007, about his 1997 decision to locate the command center at the World Trade Center. Giuliani laughed during Wallace's questions and said that Hauer recommended the World Trade Center site and claimed that Hauer said the WTC site was the best location. Wallace presented Giuliani a photocopy of Hauer's directive letter. The letter urged Giuliani to locate the command center in Brooklyn, instead of lower Manhattan. The February 1996 memo read, "The [Brooklyn] building is secure and not as visible a target as buildings in Lower Manhattan."
In January 2008, an eight-page memo was revealed which detailed the New York City Police Department's opposition in 1998 to location of the city's emergency command center at the Trade Center site. The Giuliani administration overrode these concerns.
The 9/11 Commission Report noted that lack of preparedness could have led to the deaths of first responders at the scene of the attacks. The Commission noted that the radios in use by the fire department were the same radios which had been criticized for their ineffectiveness following the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. Family members of 9/11 victims have said these radios were a complaint of emergency services responders for years. The radios were not working when Fire Department chiefs ordered the 343 firefighters inside the towers to evacuate, and they remained in the towers as the towers collapsed. However, when Giuliani testified before the 9/11 Commission he said the firefighters ignored the evacuation order out of an effort to save lives. Giuliani testified to the commission, where some family members of responders who had died in the attacks appeared to protest his statements. A 1994 mayoral office study of the radios indicated that they were faulty. Replacement radios were purchased in a $33million no-bid contract with Motorola, and implemented in early 2001. However, the radios were recalled in March 2001 after a probationary firefighter's calls for help at a house fire could not be picked up by others at the scene, leaving firemen with the old analog radios from 1993. A book later published by Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, argued that the commission had not pursued a tough enough line of questioning with Giuliani.
An October 2001 study by the National Institute of Environmental Safety and Health said cleanup workers lacked adequate protective gear.
Public reaction
Giuliani gained international attention in the wake of the attacks and was widely hailed for his leadership role during the crisis. Polls taken just six weeks after the attack showed a 79 percent approval rating among New York City voters. This was a dramatic increase over the 36 percent rating he had received a year earlier, which was an average at the end of a two-term mayorship. Oprah Winfrey called him "America's Mayor" at a 9/11 memorial service held at Yankee Stadium on September 23, 2001. Other voices denied it was the mayor who had pulled the city together. "You didn't bring us together, our pain brought us together and our decency brought us together. We would have come together if Bozo was the mayor," said civil rights activist Al Sharpton, in a statement largely supported by Fernando Ferrer, one of three main candidates for the mayoralty at the end of 2001. "He was a power-hungry person," Sharpton also said.
Giuliani was praised by some for his close involvement with the rescue and recovery efforts, but others argue that "Giuliani has exaggerated the role he played after the terrorist attacks, casting himself as a hero for political gain." Giuliani has collected $11.4million from speaking fees in a single year (with increased demand after the attacks). Before September11, Giuliani's assets were estimated to be somewhat less than $2million, but his net worth could now be as high as 30 times that amount. He has made most of his money since leaving office.
Time Person of the Year
On December 24, 2001, Time magazine named Giuliani its Person of the Year for 2001. Time observed that, before 9/11, Giuliani's public image had been that of a rigid, self-righteous, ambitious politician. After 9/11, and perhaps owing also to his bout with prostate cancer, his public image became that of a man who could be counted on to unite a city in the midst of its greatest crisis. Historian Vincent J. Cannato concluded in September 2006:
Aftermath
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was given an honorary knighthood (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani initially downplayed the health effects arising from the September 11 attacks in the Financial District and lower Manhattan areas in the vicinity of the World Trade Center site. He moved quickly to reopen Wall Street, and it was reopened on September 17. In the first month after the attacks, he said "The air quality is safe and acceptable."
Giuliani took control away from agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, leaving the "largely unknown" city Department of Design and Construction in charge of recovery and cleanup. Documents indicate that the Giuliani administration never enforced federal requirements requiring the wearing of respirators. Concurrently, the administration threatened companies with dismissal if cleanup work slowed. In June 2007, Christie Todd Whitman, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), reportedly said the EPA had pushed for workers at the WTC site to wear respirators but she had been blocked by Giuliani. She said she believed the subsequent lung disease and deaths suffered by WTC responders were a result of these actions. However, former deputy mayor Joe Lhota, then with the Giuliani campaign, replied, "All workers at Ground Zero were instructed repeatedly to wear their respirators."
Giuliani asked the city's Congressional delegation to limit the city's liability for Ground Zero illnesses to a total of $350million. Two years after Giuliani finished his term, FEMA appropriated $1billion to a special insurance fund, called the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company, to protect the city against 9/11 lawsuits.
In February 2007, the International Association of Fire Fighters issued a letter asserting that Giuliani rushed to conclude the recovery effort once gold and silver had been recovered from World Trade Center vaults and thereby prevented the remains of many victims from being recovered: "Mayor Giuliani's actions meant that fire fighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills Landfill," it said, adding: "Hundreds remained entombed in Ground Zero when Giuliani gave up on them." Lawyers for the International Association of Fire Fighters seek to interview Giuliani under oath as part of a federal legal action alleging that New York City negligently dumped body parts and other human remains in the Fresh Kills Landfill.
Post-mayoralty
Politics
Before 2008 election
Since leaving office as mayor, Giuliani has remained politically active by campaigning for Republican candidates for political offices at all levels. When George Pataki became Governor in 1995, this represented the first time the positions of both Mayor and Governor were held simultaneously by Republicans since John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. Giuliani and Pataki were instrumental in bringing the 2004 Republican National Convention to New York City. He was a speaker at the convention, and endorsed President George W. Bush for re-election by recalling that immediately after the World Trade Center towers fell,
Similarly, in June 2006, Giuliani started a website called Solutions America to help elect Republican candidates across the nation.
After campaigning on Bush's behalf in the U.S. presidential election of 2004, he was reportedly the top choice for Secretary of Homeland Security after Tom Ridge's resignation. When suggestions were made that Giuliani's confirmation hearings would be marred by details of his past affairs and scandals, he turned down the offer and instead recommended his friend and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. After the formal announcement of Kerik's nomination, information about Kerik's pastmost notably, that he had ties to organized crime, had failed to properly report gifts he had received, had been sued for sexual harassment and had employed an undocumented alien as a domestic servantbecame known, and Kerik withdrew his nomination.
On March 15, 2006, Congress formed the Iraq Study Group (ISG). This bipartisan ten-person panel, of which Giuliani was one of the members, was charged with assessing the Iraq War and making recommendations. They would eventually unanimously conclude that contrary to Bush administration assertions, "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" and called for "changes in the primary mission" that would allow "the United States to begin to move its forces out of Iraq".
On May 24, 2006, after missing all the group's meetings, including a briefing from General David Petraeus, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, Giuliani resigned from the panel, citing "previous time commitments". Giuliani's fundraising schedule had kept him from participating in the panel, a schedule which raised $11.4million in speaking fees over fourteen months, and that Giuliani had been forced to resign after being given "an ultimatum to either show up for meetings or leave the group" by group leader James Baker. Giuliani subsequently said he had started thinking about running for president, and being on the panel might give it a political spin.
Giuliani was described by Newsweek in January 2007 as "one of the most consistent cheerleaders for the president's handling of the war in Iraq" and as of June 2007, he remained one of the few candidates for president to unequivocally support both the basis for the invasion and the execution of the war.
Giuliani spoke in support of the removal of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK, also PMOI, MKO) from the United States State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The group was on the State Department list from 1997 until September 2012. They were placed on the list for killing six Americans in Iran during the 1970s and attempting to attack the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992. Giuliani, along with other former government officials and politicians Ed Rendell, R. James Woolsey, Porter Goss, Louis Freeh, Michael Mukasey, James L. Jones, Tom Ridge, and Howard Dean, were criticized for their involvement with the group. Some were subpoenaed during an inquiry about who was paying the prominent individuals' speaking fees. Giuliani and others wrote an article for the conservative publication National Review stating their position that the group should not be classified as a terrorist organization. They supported their position by pointing out that the United Kingdom and the European Union had already removed the group from their terrorism lists. They further assert that only the United States and Iran still listed it as a terrorist group. However, Canada did not delist the group until December 2012.
2008 presidential campaign
In November 2006, Giuliani announced the formation of an exploratory committee toward a run for the presidency in 2008. In February 2007, he filed a "statement of candidacy" and confirmed on the television program Larry King Live that he was indeed running.
Early polls showed Giuliani with one of the highest levels of name recognition ever recorded along with high levels of support among the Republican candidates. Throughout most of 2007, he was the leader in most nationwide opinion polling among Republicans. Senator John McCain, who ranked a close second behind the New York Mayor, had faded, and most polls showed Giuliani to have more support than any of the other declared Republican candidates, with only former Senator Fred Thompson and former Governor Mitt Romney showing greater support in some per-state Republican polls. On November 7, 2007, Giuliani's campaign received an endorsement from evangelist, Christian Broadcasting Network founder, and past presidential candidate Pat Robertson. This was viewed by political observers as a possibly key development in the race, as it gave credence that evangelicals and other social conservatives could support Giuliani despite some of his positions on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.
Giuliani's campaign hit a difficult stretch during the last two months of 2007, when Bernard Kerik, whom Giuliani had recommended for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security, was indicted on 16 counts of tax fraud and other federal charges. The media reported that when Giuliani was the mayor of New York, he billed several tens of thousands of dollars of mayoral security expenses to obscure city agencies. Those expenses were incurred while he visited Judith Nathan, with whom he was having an extramarital affair (later analysis showed the billing to likely be unrelated to hiding Nathan). Several stories were published in the press regarding clients of Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani who were in opposition to goals of American foreign policy. Giuliani's national poll numbers began steadily slipping and his unusual strategy of focusing more on later, multi-primary big states rather than the smaller, first-voting states was seen at risk.
Despite his strategy, Giuliani competed to a substantial extent in the January 8, 2008, New Hampshire primary but finished a distant fourth with 9percent of the vote. Similar poor results continued in other early contests, when Giuliani's staff went without pay in order to focus all efforts on the crucial late January Florida Republican primary. The shift of the electorate's focus from national security to the state of the economy also hurt Giuliani, as did the resurgence of McCain's similarly themed campaign. On January 29, 2008, Giuliani finished a distant third in the Florida result with 15percent of the vote, trailing McCain and Romney. Facing declining polls and lost leads in the upcoming large Super Tuesday states, including that of his home New York, Giuliani withdrew from the race on January 30, endorsing McCain.
Giuliani's campaign ended up $3.6million in arrears, and in June 2008 Giuliani sought to retire the debt by proposing to appear at Republican fundraisers during the 2008 general election, and have part of the proceeds go towards his campaign. During the 2008 Republican National Convention, Giuliani gave a prime-time speech that praised McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, while criticizing Democratic nominee Barack Obama. He cited Palin's executive experience as a mayor and governor and belittled Obama's lack of same, and his remarks were met with wild applause from the delegates. Giuliani continued to be one of McCain's most active surrogates during the remainder of McCain's eventually unsuccessful campaign.
After 2008 election
Following the end of his presidential campaign, Giuliani's "high appearance fees dropped like a stone". He returned to work at both Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani. His consultancy work included advising Keiko Fujimori with her presidential campaign during the 2011 Peruvian general election. Giuliani also explored hosting a syndicated radio show, and was reported to be in talks with Westwood One about replacing Bill O'Reilly before that position went to Fred Thompson (another unsuccessful 2008 GOP presidential primary candidate). During the March 2009 AIG bonus payments controversy, Giuliani called for U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to step down and said the Obama administration lacked executive competence in dealing with the ongoing financial crisis.
Giuliani said his political career was not necessarily over, and did not rule out a 2010 New York gubernatorial or 2012 presidential bid. A November 2008 Siena College poll indicated that although Governor David Patersonpromoted to the office via the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal a year beforewas popular among New Yorkers, he would have just a slight lead over Giuliani in a hypothetical matchup. By February 2009, after the prolonged Senate appointment process, a Siena College poll indicated that Paterson was losing popularity among New Yorkers, and showed Giuliani with a fifteen-point lead in the hypothetical contest. In January 2009, Giuliani said he would not decide on a gubernatorial run for another six to eight months, adding that he thought it would not be fair to the governor to start campaigning early while the governor tries to focus on his job. Giuliani worked to retire his presidential campaign debt, but by the end of March 2009 it was still $2.4million in arrears, the largest such remaining amount for any of the 2008 contenders. In April 2009, Giuliani strongly opposed Paterson's announced push for same-sex marriage in New York and said it would likely cause a backlash that could put Republicans in statewide office in 2010. By late August 2009, there were still conflicting reports about whether Giuliani was likely to run.
On December 23, 2009, Giuliani announced that he would not seek any office in 2010, saying "The main reason has to do with my two enterprises: Bracewell & Giuliani and Giuliani Partners. I'm very busy in both." The decisions signaled a possible end to Giuliani's political career. During the 2010 midterm elections, Giuliani endorsed and campaigned for Bob Ehrlich and Marco Rubio.
On October 11, 2011, Giuliani announced that he was not running for president. According to Kevin Law, the Director of the Long Island Association, Giuliani believed that "As a moderate, he thought it was a pretty significant challenge. He said it's tough to be a moderate and succeed in GOP primaries," Giuliani said "If it's too late for (New Jersey Governor) Chris Christie, it's too late for me."
At a Republican fund-raising event in February 2015, Giuliani said, "I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president Obama loves America," and "He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country." In response to criticism of the remarks, Giuliani said, "Some people thought it was racistI thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother... This isn't racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism." White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said he agreed with Giuliani "that it was a horrible thing to say", but he would leave it up to the people who heard Giuliani directly to assess whether the remarks were appropriate for the event. Although he received some support for his controversial comments, Giuliani said he also received several death threats within 48 hours.
Relationship with Donald Trump
Presidential campaign supporter
Giuliani supported Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He gave a prime time speech during the first night of the 2016 Republican National Convention. Earlier in the day, Giuliani and former 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson appeared at an event for the pro-Trump Great America PAC. Giuliani also appeared in a Great America PAC ad entitled "Leadership". Giuliani's and Jeff Sessions's appearances were staples at Trump campaign rallies.
During the campaign, Giuliani praised Trump for his worldwide accomplishments and helping fellow New Yorkers in their time of need. He defended Trump against allegations of racism, sexual assault, and not paying any federal income taxes for as long as two decades.
In August 2016, Giuliani, while campaigning for Trump, claimed that in the "eight years before Obama" became president, "we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States". It was noted that 9/11 happened during George W. Bush's first term. Politifact brought up four more counter-examples (the 2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting, the 2002 D.C. sniper attacks, the 2006 Seattle Jewish Federation shooting and the 2006 UNC SUV attack) to Giuliani's claim. Giuliani later said he was using "abbreviated language".
Giuliani was believed to be a likely pick for Secretary of State in the Trump administration. However, on December 9, 2016, Trump announced that Giuliani had removed his name from consideration for any Cabinet post.
Advisor to the president
The president-elect named Giuliani his informal cybersecurity adviser on January 12, 2017. The status of this informal role for Giuliani is unclear because, in November 2018, Trump created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), headed by Christopher Krebs as director and Matthew Travis as deputy. In the weeks following his appointment, Giuliani was forced to consult an Apple Store Genius Bar when he "was locked out of his iPhone because he had forgotten the passcode and entered the wrong one at least 10 times", belying his putative expertise in the field.
In January 2017, Giuliani said he advised President Trump in matters relating to Executive Order 13769, which barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days. The order also suspended the admission of all refugees for 120 days.
Giuliani has drawn scrutiny over his ties to foreign nations, regarding not registering per the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Personal lawyer
In mid April 2018, Giuliani joined Trump's legal team, which dealt with the special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Giuliani said his goal was to negotiate a swift end to the investigation.
In early May, Giuliani made public that Trump had reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen $130,000 that Cohen had paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels for her agreement not to talk about her alleged affair with Trump. Cohen had earlier insisted he used his own money to pay Daniels, and he implied that he had not been reimbursed. Trump had previously said he knew nothing about the matter. Within a week, Giuliani said some of his own statements regarding this matter were "more rumor than anything else".
Later in May 2018, Giuliani, who was asked on whether the promotion of the Spygate conspiracy theory is meant to discredit the special counsel investigation, said the investigators "are giving us the material to do it. Of course, we have to do it in defending the president... it is for public opinion" on whether to "impeach or not impeach" Trump. In June 2018, Giuliani claimed that a sitting president cannot be indicted: "I don't know how you can indict while he's in office. No matter what it is. If President Trump shot [then-FBI director] James Comey, he'd be impeached the next day. Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him."
In June 2018, Giuliani also said Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because "our recollection keeps changing". In early July, Giuliani characterized that Trump had previously asked Comey to "give him [then-national security adviser Michael Flynn] a break". In mid-August, Giuliani denied making this comment: "What I said was, that is what Comey is saying Trump said." On August 19 on Meet the Press, Giuliani argued that Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because Trump could be "trapped into perjury" just by telling "somebody's version of the truth. Not the truth." Giuliani's argument continued: "Truth isn't truth." Giuliani later clarified that he was "referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements".
In late July, Giuliani defended Trump by saying "collusion is not a crime" and that Trump had done nothing wrong because he "didn't hack" or "pay for the hacking". He later elaborated that his comments were a "very, very familiar lawyer's argument" to "attack the legitimacy of the special counsel investigation". He also described and denied several supposed allegations that have never been publicly raised, regarding two earlier meetings among Trump campaign officials to set up the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with Russian citizens. In late August, Giuliani said the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower "meeting was originally for the purpose of getting information about Hillary Clinton".
Additionally in late July, Giuliani attacked Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as an "incredible liar", two months after calling Cohen an "honest, honorable lawyer". In mid-August, Giuliani defended Trump by saying: "The president's an honest man."
It was reported in early September that Giuliani said the White House could and likely would prevent the special counsel investigation from making public certain information in its final report which would be covered by executive privilege. Also according to Giuliani, Trump's personal legal team is already preparing a "counter-report" to refute the potential special counsel investigation's report.
Giuliani privately urged Trump in 2017 to extradite Fethullah Gülen.
In late 2019, Giuliani represented Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, meeting with the Justice Department to ask not to bring charges against him.
In an interview with Olivia Nuzzi in New York magazine, Giuliani, who is a Roman Catholic of Italian descent, said, "Don't tell me I'm anti-Semitic if I oppose George Soros... I'm more of a Jew than Soros is." George Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew who survived The Holocaust. The Anti-Defamation League replied, "Mr. Giuliani should apologize and retract his comments immediately unless he seeks to dog whistle to hardcore anti-Semites and white supremacists who believe this garbage."
In the last days of the Trump administration, when White House aides were soliciting fees to lobby for presidential pardons, Giuliani said that while he'd heard that large fees were being offered, he did not work on clemency cases, saying "I have enough money. I'm not starving."
As of February 16, 2021, Giuliani was reportedly not actively involved in any of Trump's pending legal cases.
Attempts to get Ukraine to carry out investigations
Since at least May 2019, Giuliani has been urging Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the oil company Burisma, whose board of directors once included Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, and to check for irregularities in Ukraine's investigation of Paul Manafort. He said such investigations would benefit his client's defense, and that his efforts had Trump's full support. Toward this end, Giuliani met with Ukrainian officials throughout 2019. In July 2019, Buzzfeed News reported that two Soviet-born Americans, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were liaisons between Giuliani and Ukrainian government officials in this effort. Parnas and Fruman, prolific Republican donors, have neither registered as foreign agents in the United States, nor been evaluated and approved by the State Department. Giuliani responded, "This (report) is a pathetic effort to cover up what are enormous allegations of criminality by the Biden family." Yet by September 2019, there had been no clear evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
As of October 1, 2019, Giuliani hired former Watergate prosecutor Jon Sale to represent him in the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment investigation. The committee also issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents related to the Ukraine scandal. The New York Times reported on October 11, 2019, that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which Giuliani had once led, was investigating him for violating lobbying laws related to his activities in Ukraine. The following month, Bloomberg News reported that the investigation could extend to bribery of foreign officials or conspiracy, and The Wall Street Journal reported Giuliani was being investigated for a possible profit motive in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. Giuliani has denied having any interest in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. In late November, the Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors had just issued subpoenas to multiple associates of Giuliani to potentially investigate certain individuals, apparently including Giuliani, on numerous potential charges, including money laundering, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements to the federal government, and mail/wire fraud.
Parnas and Fruman were arrested for campaign finance violations while attempting to board a one-way flight to Frankfurt from Washington Dulles International Airport on October 9, 2019. Giuliani was paid $500,000 to consult for Lev Parnas's company named "Fraud Guarantee". Republican donor and Trump supporter Long Island attorney Charles Gucciardo paid Giuliani on behalf of Fraud Guarantee in two $250,000 payments, in September and October 2018. Fruman eventually pled guilty in September 2021 to having solicited a contribution by a foreign national.
In May 2019, Giuliani described Ukraine's chief prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko as a "much more honest guy" than his predecessor, Viktor Shokin. After Lutsenko was removed from office, he said in September 2019 that he found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, and that he had met Giuliani about ten times. Giuliani then reversed his stance, saying that Shokin is the one people "should have spoken to", while Lutsenko acted "corruptly" and "is exactly the prosecutor that Joe Biden put in in order to tank the case".
In September 2019, as reports surfaced that a whistleblower was alleging high-level misconduct related to Ukraine, Giuliani went on CNN to discuss the story. When asked if he had tried to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden, he initially replied "No, actually I didn't," but thirty seconds later said, "Of course I did." In a later tweet he seemed to confirm reports that Trump had withheld military assistance funds scheduled for Ukraine unless they carried out the investigation. He said, "The reality is that the president of the United States, whoever he is, has every right to tell the president of another country you better straighten out the corruption in your country if you want me to give you a lot of money. If you're so damn corrupt that you can't investigate allegationsour money is going to get squandered."
Tom Bossert, a former Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump administration, described Giuliani's theory that Ukraine was involved in 2016 U.S. election interference as "debunked"; Giuliani responded that Bossert "doesn't know what the hell he's talking about".
On September 30, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents concerning the Ukraine scandal to Committee members by October 15, 2019. On October 2, 2019, Steve Linick, the State Department's inspector general, delivered a 40-page packet of apparent disinformation regarding former vice president Joe Biden and former Ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, to Capitol Hill. Linick told congressional aides his office questioned Ulrich Brechbuhl, Pompeo's advisor about the origins of the packet. Brechbuhl noted the packet came to him from Pompeo, who said it "came over", and Brechbuhl reportedly presumed it was from the White House. Later that day, Giuliani acknowledged he passed the packet to Pompeo regarding the Ukraine and attacks on Yovanovich. In a November 2019 interview he confirmed that he had "needed Yovanovitch out of the way" because she was going to make his investigations difficult. "They (the State Department) told me they would investigate it," Giuliani added. Giuliani persuaded Trump to remove Yovanovich from office in spring 2019. By April 2021, the U.S attorney's office in Manhattan was investigating the role of Giuliani and his associates in Yovanovitch's removal.
U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that Trump delegated American foreign policy on Ukraine to Giuliani. The late 2019 impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump centered around Giuliani's actions involving Ukraine. In the compiled testimony and in the December reports of the House Intelligence Committee, Giuliani's name was mentioned more than any but Trump's. Some experts suggested that Giuliani may have violated the Logan Act.
On November 22, 2019, Giuliani sent a letter to Senator Lindsey Graham, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, informing him of at least three witnesses from Ukraine who Giuliani claimed had direct oral, documentary, and recorded evidence of Democratic criminal conspiracy with Ukrainians to prevent Trump's election and, after his election, to remove him from office via contrived charges. Giuliani's letter also claims that the witnesses had evidence of the Biden family's involvement in bribery, money laundering, Hobbs Act extortion, and other possible crimes. The letter sought Graham's help obtaining U.S. visas for the witnesses to testify. The next month, Graham invited Giuliani to share his findings with the Judiciary Committee, and soon advised him "to share what he got from Ukraine with the [intelligence community] to make sure it's not Russia propaganda".
Dmytry Firtash is a Ukrainian oligarch who is prominent in the natural gas sector. In 2017, the Justice Department characterized him as being an "upper echelon (associate) of Russian organized crime". Since his 2014 arrest in Vienna, Austria at the request of American authorities, he has been living there on $155 million bail while fighting extradition to the United States on bribery and racketeering charges, and has been seeking to have the charges dropped. Firtash's attorneys obtained a September 2019 statement from Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general who was forced out under pressure from multiple countries and non-governmental organizations, as conveyed to Ukraine by Joe Biden. Shokin falsely asserted in the statement that Biden actually had him fired because he refused to stop his investigation into Burisma. Giuliani, who asserts he has "nothing to do with" and has "never met or talked to" Firtash, promoted the statement in television appearances as purported evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens. Giuliani told CNN he met with a Firtash attorney for two hours in New York City at the time he was seeking information about the Bidens.
Firtash is represented by Trump and Giuliani associates Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, having hired them on Parnas's recommendation in July 2019. The New York Times reported in November 2019 that Giuliani had directed Parnas to approach Firtash with the recommendation, with the proposition that Firtash could help provide damaging information on Biden, which Parna's attorney described was "part of any potential resolution to [Firtash's] extradition matter". Shokin's statement notes that it was prepared "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash ('DF'), for use in legal proceedings in Austria". Giuliani presented the Shokin statement during American television appearances. Bloomberg News reported on October 18 that during the summer of 2019 Firtash associates began attempting to dig up dirt on the Bidens in an effort to solicit Giuliani's assistance with Firtash's legal matters. Bloomberg News also reported that its sources told them Giuliani's high-profile publicity of the Shokin statement had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political quid pro quo. diGenova has said he has known U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr for thirty years, as they both worked in the Reagan Justice Department. The Washington Post reported on October 22 that after they began representing Firtash, Toensing and diGenova secured a rare face-to-face meeting with Barr to argue the Firtash charges should be dropped, but he declined to intervene.
On October 18, The New York Times reported that weeks earlier, before his associates Parnas and Fruman were indicted, Giuliani met with officials with the criminal and fraud divisions of the Justice Department regarding what Giuliani characterized as a "very, very sensitive" foreign bribery case involving a client of his. The Times did not name whom the case involved, but shortly after publication of the story Giuliani told a reporter it was not Firtash. Two days later, the Justice Department said its officials would not have met with Giuliani had they known his associates were under investigation by the SDNY.
On December 3, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee's report included phone records acquired via subpoenas, including numerous phone calls made by Giuliani between April and August 2019. Calls involved Giuliani in contact with Kurt Volker, Republican Representative and House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, Lev Parnas, numbers associated with the Office of Management and Budget and the White House switchboard, and an unidentified White House official whose phone number is referenced as "-1". Chairman Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee announced after the report's release that his committee was investigating whether "-1" referred to President Trump, citing grand jury evidence from the trial of convicted Trump-associate Roger Stone in which the phone number "-1" was shown to have referred to Trump. Writing for The Washington Post, analyst Philip Bump reasoned that Giuliani's calls with "-1" are 'likely' calls with Trump citing that Giuliani speaks longer with "-1" than any other person, "-1" always calls Giuliani, and generally after Giuliani calls the White House switchboard, and timing of some of President Trump's actions shortly after Giuliani's calls with "-1" ended.
In early December 2019, while the House Judiciary Committee began holding public hearings for the impeachment inquiry, Giuliani returned to Ukraine to interview former Ukrainian officials for a documentary series seeking to discredit the impeachment proceedings. U.S. officials told The Washington Post that Giuliani would have been considered a target of Russian intelligence efforts from early in Trump's presidency, and particularly after Giuliani turned his focus to Ukraine — a former Soviet republic under attack from Russia and with deep penetration by Russian intelligence services. Analysts say Trump's and Giuliani's habit of communicating over unencrypted lines makes it highly likely that foreign intelligence agencies could be listening in on the president's unsecured calls with Giuliani; and that foreign intelligence agencies often collect intelligence about a primary target through monitoring communications of other people who interact with that target.
In a December 2019 opinion piece, former FBI director, CIA director and federal judge William Webster wrote of "a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love". In addition to chastising President Trump and attorney general Bill Barr, Webster wrote he was "profoundly disappointed in another longtime, respected friend, Rudy Giuliani" because his "activities of late concerning Ukraine have, at a minimum, failed the smell test of propriety". Since 2005, Webster had served as the chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
NBC News reported in December 2020 that SDNY investigators, which were reported in late 2019 to be investigating Giuliani's activities, had discussed with Justice Department officials in Washington the possibility of acquiring Giuliani's emails, which might require headquarters approval due to protection by attorney–client privilege. The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY had requested a search warrant of Giuliani's electronic records in summer 2020, but were met with resistance from high-level political appointees in the Washington headquarters, ostensibly because the election was near, while career officials were supportive of the search warrant. The Justice Department generally avoids taking significant actions relating to political figures that might become public within sixty days of an election. Senior political appointees nevertheless opposed the effort after the election, noting Giuliani played a leading role in challenging the election results. The officials deferred the matter to the incoming Biden administration.
Federal investigators in Manhattan executed search warrants on the early morning of April 28, 2021 at Giuliani's office and Upper East Side apartment, seizing his electronic devices and searching the apartment. FBI agents also executed a search warrant that day on Toensing's Washington, D.C.-area home and confiscated her cellphone. In April 2021, Giuliani's attorney said investigators told him they had searched his client's iCloud account beginning in late 2019, later arguing to a judge that the search was illegal and so the subsequent raid on Giuliani's properties was "fruit of this poisoned tree," demanding to review documents justifying the iCloud search. In May 2021, the SDNY confirmed in a court filing that in late 2019 it obtained search warrants for Giuliani's iCloud account, and that of Toensing, as part of "an ongoing, multi-year grand jury investigation into conduct involving Giuliani, Toensing, and others," and argued that attorneys for Giuliani and Toensing were not entitled to review the underlying documents of the warrants prior to any charges. Giuiliani and Toensing asserted their attorney-client privilege with clients may have been violated by the iCloud searches, which investigators disputed, saying they employed a "filter team" to prevent them from seeing information potentially protected by attorney-client privilege. Federal judge J. Paul Oetken days later ruled in favor of investigators regarding the warrant documents and granted their request for a special master to ensure attorney-client privilege was maintained. The special master released more than 3,000 of Giuliani's communications to prosecutors in January 2022, agreeing to withhold forty messages for which Giuliani had asserted "privilege and/or highly personal" status and rejecting 37 such assertions.
The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY was scrutinizing Giuliani's association with Firtash in efforts to discredit the Bidens, and efforts to lobby the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs. Time reported in May 2021 it had spoken with three unidentified witnesses who said they were questioned by investigators, two of whom said they had worked with Giuliani while cooperating with investigators; one witness said investigators were particularly interested in Giuliani's association with Firtash.
United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 found that Ukrainian politician Andrii Derkach was among proxies of Russian intelligence who promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about Biden "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration". Giuliani met with Derkach in December 2019.
In April 2021, Forensic News reported that the SDNY investigation into Giuliani had expanded to include a criminal probe of Derkach and Andrii Artemenko. The New York Times confirmed weeks later that Derkach was the subject of a criminal investigation into foreign interference in the 2020 United States elections. "Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have been investigating whether several Ukrainian officials helped orchestrate a wide-ranging plan to meddle in the 2020 presidential campaign, including using Rudolph W. Giuliani to spread their misleading claims about President Biden and tilt the election in Donald J. Trump's favor," the Times reported.
On June 8, 2021, CNN uncovered exclusive audio of a 2019 phone call from Giuliani to Ukraine, stating that "Rudy Giuliani relentlessly pressured and coaxed the Ukrainian government in 2019 to investigate baseless conspiracies about then-candidate Joe Biden."
2020 election lawsuits
In November 2020, after Joe Biden was named president-elect, Trump placed Giuliani in charge of lawsuits related to alleged voter irregularities in the 2020 United States presidential election. Trump designated Giuliani to lead a legal team to challenge the election results. This team—a self-described "elite strike force" that included Sidney Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing and Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis—appeared at a November 19 press conference in which they made numerous false and unsubstantiated assertions revolving around an international Communist conspiracy, rigged voting machines, and polling place fraud.
Giuliani repeatedly publicly denounced the use of provisional ballots (in which the poll worker does not see the voter's name on the rolls, so the voter swears an affidavit oath that they are registered to vote), arguing that the practice enables fraud, although Giuliani himself had cast this type of ballot on October 31, 2020, in Manhattan.
By January 8, 2021, Trump and his team had lost 63 lawsuits. A month later, Giuliani was no longer representing Trump in any pending cases, according to a Trump adviser. While Trump continued to fundraise, purportedly for his election-related legal fights, as of the end of July 2021 he had not given any of this money to Giuliani. In October 2021, in another context, Trump remarked: "I do pay my lawyers when they do a good job."
In December 2021, two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye” Moss, sued Giuliani for defamation.
Pennsylvania lawsuit
One early lawsuit sought to invalidate up to 700,000 mail-in ballots and stop Pennsylvania from certifying its election results. Giuliani claimed to have signed affidavits attesting to voter fraud and election official misconduct in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Despite not having argued a case in any courtroom for over three decades, Giuliani applied for special permission to represent the Trump presidential campaign in the federal court of Pennsylvania. (In his application, he misrepresented his status with the District of Columbia Bar, claiming that he was a member in good standing, whereas D.C. had suspended him for nonpayment of fees.) In his first day in court on the case, which was November 17, 2020, Giuliani struggled with rudimentary legal processes and was accused by lawyers for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State of making legal arguments that were "disgraceful in an American courtroom". Judge Matthew Brann questioned how Giuliani could justify "asking this court to invalidate some 6.8 million votes thereby disenfranchising every single voter in the commonwealth."
His federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania was dismissed with prejudice on November 21, 2020, with the judge citing "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations" which were "unsupported by evidence". Giuliani and Jenna Ellis reacted by stating that the ruling "helps" the Trump campaign "get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court". They also pointed out that the judge, Matthew W. Brann, was "Obama-appointed", though Brann is also a Republican and a former member of the right-leaning Federalist Society.
The Trump campaign appealed the lawsuit to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel on November 27 rejected the Trump campaign's attempt to undo Pennsylvania's vote certification, because the Trump campaign's "claims have no merit". The panel also ruled that the District Court was correct in preventing the Trump campaign from conducting a second amendment of its complaint. An amendment would be pointless, ruled the judges, because the Trump campaign was not bringing facts before the court, and not even alleging fraud. Judge Stephanos Bibas highlighted that Giuliani himself told the district court that the Trump campaign "doesn't plead fraud", and that this "is not a fraud case". The panel concluded that neither "specific allegations" nor "proof" was provided in this case, and that the Trump campaign "cannot win this lawsuit".
Giuliani and Ellis reacted to the appeals court ruling by condemning the "activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania". Of the three Appeal Court judges, Stephanos Bibas, who delivered the opinion, was appointed by Trump himself, while judges D. Brooks Smith and Michael Chagares were appointed by Republican president George W. Bush.
Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits
As part of Giuliani's allegations that voting machines had been rigged, he made several false assertions about two rival companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. These false claims included that Smartmatic owned Dominion; that Dominion voting machines used Smartmatic software; that Dominion voting machines sent vote data to Smartmatic at foreign locations; that Dominion was founded by the former socialist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez; and that Dominion is a "radical-left" company with connections to antifa.
Both companies sued Giuliani and Fox News. Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Giuliani on January 25, 2021, seeking $1.3billion in damages, and separately sued Fox News for $1.6 billion. On February 4, 2021, Smartmatic also filed a lawsuit that accused Giuliani, Fox News, some hosts at Fox News, and Sidney Powell of engaging in a "disinformation campaign" against the company, and asked for $2.7billion in damages.
On September 10, 2021, Fox News told Giuliani that neither he nor his son Andrew would be allowed on their network for nearly three months.
Attack on the Capitol
On January 6, 2021, Giuliani spoke at a "Save America March" rally on the Ellipse that was attended by Trump supporters protesting the election results. He repeated conspiracy theories that voting machines used in the election were "crooked" and called for "trial by combat". Trump supporters subsequently stormed the U.S. Capitol in a riot that resulted in the deaths of five people, including a police officer, and temporarily disrupted the counting of the Electoral College vote.
Giuliani had reportedly been calling Republican lawmakers to urge them to delay the electoral vote count in order to ultimately throw the election to Trump. Giuliani attempted to contact Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Trump ally, around 7:00p.m. on January 6, after the Capitol storming, to ask him to "try to just slow it down" by objecting to multiple states and "raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrowideally until the end of tomorrow". However, Giuliani mistakenly left the message on the voicemail of another senator, who leaked the recording to The Dispatch. Rick Perlstein, a noted historian of the American conservative political movement, termed Giuliani's attempts to slow certification in the wake of the riot as treasonous. "Sedition. Open and shut. He talked about the time that was being opened up. He was welcoming, and using, the violence. This needs to be investigated," Perlstein tweeted on January 11, 2021.
Giuliani faced criticism for his appearance at the rally and the Capitol riot that followed it. Former Congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called for the arrest of Giuliani, President Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. Manhattan College president Brennan O'Donnell stated in a January7 open letter to the college community, "one of the loudest voices fueling the anger, hatred, and violence that spilled out yesterday is a graduate of our College, Rudolph Giuliani. His conduct as a leader of the campaign to de-legitimize the election and disenfranchise millions of votershas been and continues to be a repudiation of the deepest values of his alma mater."
On January 11, the New York State Bar Association, an advocacy group for the legal profession in New York state, announced that it was launching an investigation into whether Giuliani should be removed from its membership rolls, noting both Giuliani's comments to the Trump supporter rally at the Ellipse on January 6, and that it "has received hundreds of complaints in recent months about Mr. Giuliani and his baseless efforts on behalf of President Trump to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 presidential election and, after the votes were cast, to overturn its legitimate results". Removal from the group's membership rolls would not directly disbar Giuliani from practicing law in New York. New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman and lawyers' group Lawyers Defending American Democracy, also filed a complaints against Giuliani with the Attorney Grievance Committee of the First Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court, which has the authority to discipline and disbar licensed New York lawyers.
Also on January 11, 2021, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said that he is looking at whether to charge Giuliani, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Representative Mo Brooks, with inciting the violent attack.
On January 29, Giuliani falsely claimed that The Lincoln Project played a role in the organization of the Capitol riot. In response, Steve Schmidt announced that the group would be taking legal action against Giuliani for defamation.
On March 5, 2021, Representative Eric Swalwell filed a civil lawsuit against Giuliani and three others (Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Representative Mo Brooks), seeking damages for their alleged role in inciting the Capitol riot.
Giuliani was subpoenaed in January 2022 to testify before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Suspension of law license
On June 24, 2021, a New York appellate court suspended Giuliani's law license. The panel of five justices found that there was "uncontroverted" evidence that Giuliani made "demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public" and that "These false statements were made to improperly bolster (Giuliani's) narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client." The court concluded that Giuliani's conduct "immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law". His license was also suspended in Washington D.C. on July 7, 2021.
Giuliani Partners
After leaving the New York City mayor's office, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners LLC, in 2002, a firm that has been categorized by multiple media outlets as a lobbying entity capitalizing on Giuliani's name recognition, and which has been the subject of allegations surrounding staff hired by Giuliani and due to the firm's chosen client base. Over five years, Giuliani Partners earned more than $100million.
In June 2007, he stepped down as CEO and Chairman of Giuliani Partners, although this action was not made public until December 4, 2007; he maintained his equity interest in the firm. Giuliani subsequently returned to active participation in the firm following the election. In late 2009, Giuliani announced that they had a security consulting contract with Rio de Janeiro, Brazil regarding the 2016 Summer Olympics. He faced criticism in 2012 for advising people once allied with Slobodan Milošević who had lauded Serbian war criminals.
Bracewell & Giuliani
In 2005, Giuliani joined the law firm of Bracewell & Patterson LLP (renamed Bracewell & Giuliani LLP) as a name partner and basis for the expanding firm's new New York office. When he joined the Texas-based firm he brought Marc Mukasey, the son of Attorney General Michael Mukasey, into the firm.
Despite a busy schedule, Giuliani was highly active in the day-to-day business of the law firm, which was a high-profile supplier of legal and lobbying services to the oil, gas, and energy industries. Its aggressive defense of pollution-causing coal-fired power plants threatened to cause political risk for Giuliani, but association with the firm helped Giuliani achieve fund-raising success in Texas. In 2006, Giuliani acted as the lead counsel and lead spokesmen for Bracewell & Giuliani client Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, during their negotiations with federal prosecutors over charges that the pharmaceutical company misled the public about OxyContin's addictive properties. The agreement reached resulted in Purdue Pharma and some of its executives paying $634.5million in fines.
Bracewell & Giuliani represented corporate clients before many U.S. government departments and agencies. Some clients have worked with corporations and foreign governments.
Giuliani left the firm in January 2016, by "amicable agreement", and the firm was rebranded as Bracewell LLP.
Greenberg Traurig
In January 2016, Giuliani moved to the law firm Greenberg Traurig, where he served as the global chairman for Greenberg's cybersecurity and crisis management group, as well as a senior advisor to the firm's executive chairman. In April 2018, he took an unpaid leave of absence when he joined Trump's legal defense team. He resigned from the firm on May 9, 2018.
Lobbying in Romania
In August 2018, Giuliani was retained by Freeh Group International Solutions, a global consulting firm run by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, which paid him a fee to lobby Romanian president Klaus Iohannis to change Romania's anti-corruption policy and reduce the role of the National Anticorruption Directorate. Giuliani argued that the anti-corruption efforts had gone too far.
Podcast
In January 2020, Giuliani launched a podcast, Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
Personal life
Marriages and relationships
Giuliani married Regina Peruggi, whom he had known since childhood, on October 26, 1968. The marriage was in trouble by the mid-1970s and they agreed to a trial separation in 1975. Peruggi did not accompany him to Washington when he accepted the job in the Attorney General's Office. Giuliani met local television personality Donna Hanover sometime in 1982, and they began dating when she was working in Miami. Giuliani filed for legal separation from Peruggi on August 12, 1982. The Giuliani-Peruggi marriage legally ended in two ways: a civil divorce was issued by the end of 1982, while a Roman Catholic church annulment of the marriage was granted at the end of 1983, reportedly because Giuliani had discovered that he and Peruggi were second cousins. Alan Placa, Giuliani's best man, later became a priest and helped secure the annulment. Giuliani and Peruggi had no children.
Giuliani married Hanover in a Catholic ceremony at St. Monica's Church in Manhattan on April 15, 1984. They had two children, Andrew and Caroline Rose, who is a filmmaker in the LGBTQ+ community and has described herself as "multiverses apart" from her father.
Giuliani was still married to Hanover in May 1999 when he met Judith Nathan, a sales manager for a pharmaceutical company, at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar. By 1996, Donna Hanover had reverted to her professional name and virtually stopped appearing in public with her husband amid rumors of marital problems. Nathan and Giuliani formed an ongoing relationship. In summer 1999, Giuliani charged the costs for his NYPD security detail to obscure city agencies in order to keep his relationship with Nathan from public scrutiny. The police department began providing Nathan with city-provided chauffeur services in early 2000.
By March 2000, Giuliani had stopped wearing his wedding ring. The appearances that he and Nathan made at functions and events became publicly visible, although they were not mentioned in the press. The Daily News and the New York Post both broke news of Giuliani's relationship with Nathan in early May 2000. Giuliani first publicly acknowledged her on May 3, 2000, when he said Judith was his "very good friend".
On May 10, 2000, Giuliani held a press conference to announce that he intended to separate from Hanover. Giuliani had not informed Hanover about his plans before the press conference. This was an omission for which Giuliani was widely criticized. Giuliani then went on to praise Nathan as a "very, very fine woman" and said about Hanover that "over the course of some period of time in many ways, we've grown to live independent and separate lives." Hours later Hanover said, "I had hoped that we could keep this marriage together. For several years, it was difficult to participate in Rudy's public life because of his relationship with one staff member."
Giuliani moved out of Gracie Mansion by August 2001 and into an apartment with a couple he was friends with. Giuliani filed for divorce from Hanover in October 2000, and a public battle broke out between their representatives. Nathan was barred by court order from entering Gracie Mansion or meeting his children before the divorce was final.
In May 2001, Giuliani's attorney revealed that Giuliani was impotent due to prostate cancer treatments and had not had sex with Nathan for the preceding year. "You don't get through treatment for cancer and radiation all by yourself," Giuliani said. "You need people to help you and care for you and support you. And I'm very fortunate I had a lot of people who did that, but nobody did more to help me than Judith Nathan." In a court case, Giuliani argued that he planned to introduce Nathan to his children on Father's Day 2001 and that Hanover had prevented this visit. Giuliani and Hanover finally settled their divorce case in July 2002 after his mayoralty had ended, with Giuliani paying Hanover a $6.8million settlement and granting her custody of their children. Giuliani married Nathan on May 24, 2003, and gained a stepdaughter, Whitney. It was also Nathan's third marriage after two divorces.
By March 2007, The New York Times and the Daily News reported that Giuliani had become estranged from both his son Andrew and his daughter Caroline. In 2014, he said his relationship with his children was better than ever, and was spotted eating and playing golf with Andrew.
Nathan filed for divorce from Giuliani on April 4, 2018, after 15 years of marriage. According to an interview with New York magazine, "For a variety of reasons that I know as a spouse and a nurse... he has become a different man." The divorce was settled on December 10, 2019.
In October 2020, following myriad joint public appearances, Giuliani confirmed that he is in a relationship with Maria Ryan, a nurse practitioner and hospital administrator whom his ex-wife Nathan has alleged to have been his mistress for an indeterminate period during their marriage. As of 2018, Ryan was married to United States Marine Corps veteran Robert Ryan, with Giuliani characterizing the couple as platonic friends in response to contemporaneous press inquiries.
Prostate cancer
In April 1981, Giuliani's father died, at age 73, of prostate cancer, at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center. 19 years later, in April 2000, Giuliani, then aged 55, was diagnosed with prostate cancer following a prostate biopsy, after an elevated screening PSA. Giuliani chose a combination prostate cancer treatment consisting of four months of neoadjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy, then low dose-rate prostate brachytherapy with permanent implantation of ninety TheraSeed radioactive palladium-103 seeds in his prostate in September 2000, followed two months later by five weeks of fifteen-minute, five-days-a-week external beam radiotherapy at Mount Sinai Medical Center, with five months of adjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy.
COVID-19
On December 6, 2020, Trump announced that Giuliani had contracted COVID-19. Giuliani was admitted to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital the same day. He was discharged from the hospital on December 9.
It was unclear when he received the positive test. In the days leading up to the announcement, Giuliani had been to multiple indoor hearings without wearing a mask, and requested that others remove their masks. The Arizona Legislature closed for one week starting on December 7, 2020, as 15 current and future members had met with Giuliani. He had also met with Republican legislators in Michigan and Georgia, potentially exposing them.
Religious beliefs
Giuliani has declined to comment publicly on his religious practice and beliefs, although he identifies religion as an important part of his life. When asked if he is a practicing Catholic, Giuliani answered, "My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not-so-good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests."
Television appearances
Giuliani was reportedly revealed to be the first unmasking on the seventh season of The Masked Singer, which caused judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke to storm off the set.
Awards and honors
In 1998, Giuliani received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York".
House of Savoy: Knight Grand Cross (motu proprio) of the Order of Merit of Savoy (December 2001)
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2001
In 2002, the Episcopal Diocese of New York gave Giuliani the Fiorello LaGuardia Public Service Award for Valor and Leadership in the Time of Global Crisis.
Also in 2002, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan awarded Giuliani the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award.
In 2002, he received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually byJefferson Awards.
In 2003, Giuliani received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award
In 2004, construction began on the Rudolph W. Giuliani Trauma Center at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York.
In 2005, Giuliani received honorary degrees from Loyola College in Maryland and Middlebury College. In 2007, Giuliani received an honorary Doctorate in Public Administration from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. In 2021, Middlebury announced that it was revoking the degree given to Giuliani.
In 2006, Rudy and Judith Giuliani were honored by the American Heart Association at its annual Heart of the Hamptons benefit in Water Mill, New York.
In 2007, Giuliani was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), receiving the NIAF Special Achievement Award for Public Service.
In 2007, Giuliani was awarded the Margaret Thatcher Medal of Freedom by the Atlantic Bridge.
In the 2009 graduation ceremony for Drexel University's Earle Mack School of Law, Giuliani was the keynote speaker and recipient of an honorary degree. In 2021, Drexel announced that it was rescinding the degree.
Giuliani was the Robert C. Vance Distinguished Lecturer at Central Connecticut State University in 2013.
Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa, University of Rhode Island, 2003 (revoked January 2022)
Media references
In 1993, Giuliani made a cameo appearance as himself in the Seinfeld episode "The Non-Fat Yogurt", which is a fictionalized account of the 1993 mayoral election. Giuliani's scenes were filmed the morning after his real world election.
In 2003, Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story was released starring actor James Woods as Giuliani.
In 2018, Giuliani was portrayed multiple times on Saturday Night Live by Kate McKinnon. McKinnon continued portraying him in 2019.
In 2020, Giuliani made a cameo appearance on a Netflix true crime limited series' Fear City: New York vs The Mafia, talking about his role in leading the 1980s federal prosecution of the Five Families.
In 2020, Giuliani made an unwitting appearance in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. In the mockumentary film, Giuliani agrees to an interview with Borat's "daughter", Tutar (played by actress Maria Bakalova), who is disguised as a reporter. When invited to Tutar's hotel room, Giuliani proceeds to lie on her bed and reach inside his trousers; they are immediately interrupted by Borat, who says: "She 15. She too old for you." Giuliani later disregarded the accusation, calling it a "complete fabrication" and saying he was rather "tucking in [his] shirt after taking off the recording equipment". In 2021, Giuliani won two Razzie awards for his part in the film – for Worst Supporting Actor and, with his pants zipper for Worst Screen Combo.
See also
Disputes surrounding the 2020 United States presidential election results
Electoral history of Rudy Giuliani
Political positions of Rudy Giuliani
Public image of Rudy Giuliani
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Timeline of New York City, 1990s–2000s
References
Further reading
Barrett, Wayne, (2000). Rudy!: An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani. Basic Books; (Reprint by Diane Publishing Co.).
Brodeur, Christopher X. (2002). Perverted Little Creep: Mayor Giuliani vs Mayor Brodeur. ExtremeNY books, .
Dinkins, David N.; Knobler, Peter (2013). A Mayor's Life: Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic. PublicAffairs,
Gonzalez, Juan, (2002). Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse. New Press, .
Koch, Edward I. (1999). Giuliani: Nasty Man. Barricade Books. .
Mandery, Evan (1999). The Campaign: Rudy Giuliani, Ruth Messinger, Al Sharpton, and the Race to Be Mayor of New York City. Westview Press, .
Newfield, Jack, (2003). The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania. Thunder's Mouth Press, .
Paterson, David "Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity."Skyhorse Publishing. New York, New York, 2020.
Polner, Robert, (2005). America's Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani's New York. Soft Skull Press, .
Polner, Robert, (2007). America's Mayor, America's President? The Strange Career of Rudy Giuliani. [Preface by Jimmy Breslin] Soft Skull Press, .
External links
La Guardia and Wagner Archives/The Giuliani Collection
TPM infographic: Tracking Rudy Giuliani's Foreign Dealings
Suspension of Giuliani's New York State law license — Attorney Grievance Committee for the Supreme Court of the State of New York Appellate Division
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Knights of the Order of Merit of Savoy
Living people
Manhattan College alumni
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Writers from Brooklyn | false | [
"Irene Haschke (born 16 February 1921) was a German SS camp guard within the Nazi concentration camp system during World War II, notably, at the Bergen-Belsen camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. She was born in Friedeberg, Neumark in what is now Poland.\n\nConcentration camp service and post-war trial\nHaschke worked in a textile factory until 16 August 1944, when she was recruited by the Schutzstaffel, more commonly known as the SS, and sent to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp for five weeks for training as a guard, or Aufseherin.\n\nShe was transferred to the Mährisch-Weißwasser camp, at Bílá Voda in the Sudetenland, for three weeks as SS Aufseherin. Later she returned to the textile factory for a time but was removed on 15 February 1945 and sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, arriving on 28 February 1945.\n\nShe was captured by the British Army on 15 April 1945 and ordered to bury the dead. On 17 September 1945 she was brought to trial by the British in the Bergen-Belsen trial, where the Court accused Josef Kramer and another 44 people, who worked in Auschwitz and Belsen, of war crimes. This trial was held at 30 Lindenstraße (Lime Street), in Lunenburg. On 17 November 1945 she was convicted and sentenced to 10 years for her participation in these crimes and was released on 21 December 1951, having only served five years.\n\nReferences\n\n1921 births\nPossibly living people\nFemale guards in Nazi concentration camps\nBergen-Belsen concentration camp personnel\nBelsen trial",
"William Purves (4 July 1888 – 18 September 1964) was a Scotland international rugby union player.\n\nRugby Union career\n\nAmateur career\n\nHe played for Cambridge University.\n\nHe played for London Scottish.\n\nProvincial career\n\nHe played for Anglo-Scots district against Provinces District on 26 December 1908, while still with Cambridge University.\n\nHe played for Whites Trial against Blues Trial on 6 January 1912.\n\nHe played for Blues Trial against Whites Trial on 18 January 1913.\n\nInternational career\n\nHe was capped six times for between 1912 and 1913.\n\nFamily\n\nHe was the brother of Alex Purves who was also capped for Scotland.\n\nReferences\n\nSources\n\n Bath, Richard (ed.) The Scotland Rugby Miscellany (Vision Sports Publishing Ltd, 2007 )\n\n1888 births\n1964 deaths\nScottish rugby union players\nScotland international rugby union players\nLondon Scottish F.C. players\nWhites Trial players\nBlues Trial players\nRugby union players from London\nScottish Exiles (rugby union) players\nCambridge University R.U.F.C. players"
] |
[
"Rudy Giuliani",
"Appointees as defendants",
"How many appointees acted as defendants?",
"In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding,",
"Did he appoint anyone else?",
"In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury",
"how many defendants were there?",
"Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign.",
"What was he on trial for?",
"Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009, in a New York district court, to eight federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements,"
] | C_7a9b28f537444b1fa4b7ec7d83b31da1_1 | What was Russell Harding on the stand for? | 5 | What was Russell Harding on the stand for? | Rudy Giuliani | Several of Giuliani's appointees to head City agencies became defendants in criminal proceedings. In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding, to head the New York City Housing Development Corporation, although Harding had neither a college degree nor relevant experience. In 2005, Harding pleaded guilty to defrauding the Housing Development Corporation and to possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Russell Harding committed suicide in 2012. In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury after lying to a grand jury about a car that Harding bought for him with City funds. Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign. Giuliani appointed him as the Commissioner of the Department of Correction and then as the Police Commissioner. Giuliani was also the godfather to Kerik's two youngest children. After Giuliani left office, Kerik was subject to state and federal investigations resulting in his pleading guilty in 2006, in a Bronx Supreme Court, to two unrelated ethics violations. Kerik was ordered to pay $221,000 in fines. Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009, in a New York district court, to eight federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements, and on February 18, 2010, he was sentenced to four years in federal prison. Giuliani was not implicated in any of the proceedings. CANNOTANSWER | In 2005, Harding pleaded guilty to defrauding the Housing Development Corporation and to possession of child pornography. | Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and disbarred attorney who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 1983 and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989.
Giuliani led the 1980s federal prosecution of New York City mafia bosses as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. After a failed campaign for Mayor of New York City in the 1989 election, he succeeded in 1993, and was reelected in 1997, campaigning on a "tough on crime" platform. He led New York's controversial "civic cleanup" as its mayor from 1994 to 2001. Mayor Giuliani appointed an outsider, William Bratton, as New York City's new police commissioner. Reforming the police department's administration and policing practices, they applied the broken windows theory, which cites social disorder, like disrepair and vandalism, for attracting loitering addicts, panhandlers, and prostitutes, followed by serious and violent criminals. In particular, Giuliani focused on removing panhandlers and sex clubs from Times Square, promoting a "family values" vibe and a return to the area's earlier focus on business, theater, and the arts. As crime rates fell steeply, well ahead of the national average pace, Giuliani was widely credited, though later critics cite other contributing factors. In 2000, he ran against First Lady Hillary Clinton for a US Senate seat from New York, but left the race once diagnosed with prostate cancer. For his mayoral leadership after the September11 attacks in 2001, he was called "America's mayor". He was named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2001, and was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
In 2002, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners, and acquired, but later sold, an investment banking firm, Giuliani Capital Advisors. In 2005, he joined a law firm, renamed Bracewell & Giuliani. Vying for the Republican Party's 2008 presidential nomination, Giuliani was an early frontrunner, yet did poorly in the primary election, withdrew, and endorsed the party's subsequent nominee, John McCain. Declining to run for New York governor in 2010 and for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, Giuliani focused on the activities of his business firms. In addition, he has often been engaged for public speaking, political commentary, and Republican campaign support.
Giuliani joined President Donald Trump's personal legal team in April 2018. His activities as Trump's attorney have drawn renewed media scrutiny, including allegations that he engaged in corruption and profiteering. In late 2019, Giuliani was reportedly under federal investigation for violating lobbying laws, and possibly several other charges, as a central figure in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which resulted in Trump's first impeachment. Following the 2020 presidential election, he represented Trump in many lawsuits filed in attempts to overturn the election results, making false and debunked allegations about rigged voting machines, polling place fraud, and an international communist conspiracy. As a consequence, his license to practice law was suspended in New York State in June 2021 and in the District of Columbia in July 2021.
Early life
Giuliani was born in the East Flatbush section, then an Italian-American enclave, in New York City's borough of Brooklyn, the only child of working-class parents Helen (née D'Avanzo; 1909–2002) and Harold Angelo Giuliani (1908–1981), both children of Italian immigrants. Giuliani is of Tuscan descent on his father's side, as his paternal grandparents (Rodolfo and Evangelina Giuliani) were born in Montecatini Terme, Tuscany, Italy. He was raised a Roman Catholic. Harold Giuliani, a plumber and a bartender, had trouble holding a job, was convicted of felony assault and robbery, and served prison time in Sing Sing. Once released, he worked as an enforcer for his brother-in-law Leo D'Avanzo, who operated an organized crime-affiliated loan sharking and gambling ring at a restaurant in Brooklyn. The couple lived in East Flatbush until Harold died of prostate cancer in 1981, whereupon Helen moved to Manhattan's Upper East Side.
When Giuliani was seven years old in 1951, his family moved from Brooklyn to Garden City South, where he attended the local Catholic school, St. Anne's. Later, he commuted back to Brooklyn to attend Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, graduating in 1961.
Giuliani attended Manhattan College in Riverdale, Bronx, where he majored in political science with a minor in philosophy and considered becoming a priest.
Giuliani was elected president of his class in his sophomore year, but was not re-elected in his junior year. He joined the Phi Rho Pi college forensic fraternity and honor society. He graduated in 1965. Giuliani decided to forgo the priesthood and instead attended the New York University School of Law in Manhattan, where he made the NYU Law Review and graduated cum laude with a Juris Doctor degree in 1968.
Giuliani started his political life as a Democrat. He volunteered for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968. He also worked as a Democratic Party committeeman on Long Island in the mid-1960s and voted for George McGovern for president in 1972.
Legal career
Upon graduation from law school, Giuliani clerked for Judge Lloyd Francis MacMahon, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.
Giuliani did not serve in the military during the Vietnam War. His conscription was deferred while he was enrolled at Manhattan College and NYU Law. Upon graduation from the latter in 1968, he was classified 1-A (available for military service), but in 1969 he was reclassified 2-A (essential civilian) as Judge MacMahon's law clerk. In 1970, Giuliani was reclassified 1-A but received a high 308 draft lottery number and was not called up for service.
Giuliani switched his party registration from Democratic to Independent in 1975. This occurred during a period of time in which he was recruited for a position in Washington, D.C. with the Ford administration: Giuliani served as the Associate Deputy Attorney General and chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Harold "Ace" Tyler.
His first high-profile prosecution was of Democratic U.S. Representative Bertram L. Podell (NY-13), who was convicted of corruption. Podell pleaded guilty to conspiracy and conflict of interest for accepting more than $41,000 in campaign contributions and legal fees from a Florida airline to obtain federal rights for a Bahama route. Podell, who maintained a legal practice while serving in Congress, said the payments were legitimate legal fees. The Washington Post later reported: "The trial catapulted future New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani to front-page status when, as assistant U.S. attorney, he relentlessly cross-examined an initially calm Rep. Podell. The congressman reportedly grew more flustered and eventually decided to plead guilty."
From 1977 to 1981, during the Carter administration, Giuliani practiced law at the Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler law firm, as chief of staff to his former boss, Ace Tyler. In later years, Tyler became "disillusioned" by what Tyler described as Giuliani's time as US Attorney, criticizing several of his prosecutions as "overkill".
On December 8, 1980, one month after the election of Ronald Reagan brought Republicans back to power in Washington, he switched his party affiliation from Independent to Republican. Giuliani later said the switches were because he found Democratic policies "naïve", and that "by the time I moved to Washington, the Republicans had come to make more sense to me." Others suggested that the switches were made in order to get positions in the Justice Department. Giuliani's mother maintained in 1988 that he "only became a Republican after he began to get all these jobs from them. He's definitely not a conservative Republican. He thinks he is, but he isn't. He still feels very sorry for the poor."
In 1981, Giuliani was named Associate Attorney General in the Reagan administration, the third-highest position in the Department of Justice. As Associate Attorney General, Giuliani supervised the U.S. Attorney Offices' federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the United States Marshals Service. In a well-publicized 1982 case, Giuliani testified in defense of the federal government's "detention posture" regarding the internment of more than 2,000 Haitian asylum seekers who had entered the country illegally. The U.S. government disputed the assertion that most of the detainees had fled their country due to political persecution, alleging instead that they were "economic migrants". In defense of the government's position, Giuliani testified that "political repression, at least in general, does not exist" under President of Haiti Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime.
In 1983, Giuliani was appointed to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which was technically a demotion but was sought by Giuliani because of his desire to personally litigate cases and because the SDNY is considered the highest profile United States Attorney's Office in the country, and as such, is often used by those who have held the position as a springboard for running for public office. It was in this position that he first gained national prominence by prosecuting numerous high-profile cases, resulting in the convictions of Wall Street figures Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. He also focused on prosecuting drug dealers, organized crime, and corruption in government. He amassed a record of 4,152 convictions and 25 reversals. As a federal prosecutor, Giuliani was credited with bringing the perp walk, parading of suspects in front of the previously alerted media, into common use as a prosecutorial tool. After Giuliani "patented the perp walk", the tool was used by increasing numbers of prosecutors nationwide.
Giuliani's critics claimed that he arranged for people to be arrested, then dropped charges for lack of evidence on high-profile cases rather than going to trial. In a few cases, his arrests of alleged white-collar criminals at their workplaces with charges later dropped or lessened, sparked controversy, and damaged the reputations of the alleged "perps". He claimed veteran stock trader Richard Wigton, of Kidder, Peabody & Co., was guilty of insider trading; in February 1987, he had officers handcuff Wigton and march him through the company's trading floor, with Wigton in tears. Giuliani had his agents arrest Tim Tabor, a young arbitrageur and former colleague of Wigton, so late that he had to stay overnight in jail before posting bond.
Within three months, charges were dropped against both Wigton and Tabor; Giuliani said, "We're not going to go to trial. We're just the tip of the iceberg," but no further charges were forthcoming and the investigation did not end until Giuliani's successor was in place. Giuliani's high-profile raid of the Princeton/Newport firm ended with the defendants having their cases overturned on appeal on the grounds that what they had been convicted of were not crimes.
Mafia Commission trial
In the Mafia Commission Trial, which ran from February 25, 1985, through November 19, 1986, Giuliani indicted eleven organized crime figures, including the heads of New York City's so-called "Five Families", under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) on charges including extortion, labor racketeering, and murder for hire. Time magazine called this "Case of Cases" possibly "the most significant assault on the infrastructure of organized crime since the high command of the Chicago Mafia was swept away in 1943", and quoted Giuliani's stated intention: "Our approach is to wipe out the five families." Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano evaded conviction when he and his underboss, Thomas Bilotti, were murdered on the streets of Midtown Manhattan on December 16, 1985. However, three heads of the Five Families were sentenced to 100 years in prison on January 13, 1987. Genovese and Colombo leaders, Tony Salerno and Carmine Persico received additional sentences in separate trials, with 70-year and 39-year sentences to run consecutively. He was assisted by three Assistant United States Attorneys: Michael Chertoff, the eventual second United States Secretary of Homeland Security and co-author of the Patriot Act; John Savarese, now a partner at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz; and Gil Childers, a later deputy chief of the criminal division for the Southern District of New York and now managing director in the legal department at Goldman Sachs.
According to an FBI memo revealed in 2007, leaders of the Five Families voted in late 1986 on whether to issue a contract for Giuliani's death. Heads of the Lucchese, Bonanno, and Genovese families rejected the idea, though Colombo and Gambino leaders, Carmine Persico and John Gotti, encouraged assassination. In 2014, it was revealed by a former Sicilian Mafia member and informant, Rosario Naimo, that Salvatore Riina, a notorious Sicilian Mafia leader, had ordered a murder contract on Giuliani during the mid-1980s. Riina allegedly was suspicious of Giuliani's efforts prosecuting the American Mafia and was worried that he might have spoken with Italian anti-mafia prosecutors and politicians, including Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who were both murdered in 1992 in separate car bombings. According to Giuliani, the Sicilian Mafia offered $800,000 for his death during his first year as mayor of New York in 1994.
Boesky, Milken trials
Ivan Boesky, a Wall Street arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of about $200million by betting on corporate takeovers, was originally investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for making investments based on tips received from corporate insiders, leading the way for the US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York to investigate as well. These stock and options acquisitions were sometimes brazen, with massive purchases occurring only a few days before a corporation announced a takeover. Although insider trading of this kind was illegal, laws prohibiting it were rarely enforced until Boesky was prosecuted. Boesky cooperated with the SEC and informed on several others, including junk bond trader Michael Milken. Per agreement with Giuliani, Boesky received a -year prison sentence along with a $100million fine. In 1989, Giuliani charged Milken under the RICO Act with 98 counts of racketeering and fraud. In a highly publicized case, Milken was indicted by a grand jury on these charges.
Mayoral campaigns
Giuliani was U.S. Attorney until January 1989, resigning as the Reagan administration ended. He garnered criticism until he left office for his handling of cases, and was accused of prosecuting cases to further his political ambitions. He joined the law firm White & Case in New York City as a partner. He remained with White & Case until May 1990, when he joined the law firm Anderson Kill Olick & Oshinsky, also in New York City.
1989
Giuliani first ran for New York City mayor in 1989, when he attempted to unseat three-term incumbent Ed Koch. He won the September 1989 Republican Party primary election against business magnate Ronald Lauder, in a campaign marked by claims that Giuliani was not a true Republican after an acrimonious debate between the two men. In the Democratic primary, Koch was upset by Manhattan Borough president David Dinkins.
In the general election, Giuliani ran as the fusion candidate of both the Republican and the Liberal parties. The Conservative Party, which had often co-lined the Republican party candidate, withheld support from Giuliani and ran Lauder instead. Conservative Party leaders were unhappy with Giuliani on ideological grounds. They cited the Liberal Party's endorsement statement that Giuliani "agreed with the Liberal Party's views on affirmative action, gay rights, gun control, school prayer and tuition tax credits".
During two televised debates, Giuliani framed himself as an agent of change, saying, "I'm the reformer," that "If we keep going merrily along, this city's going down," and that electing Dinkins would represent "more of the same, more of the rotten politics that have been dragging us down". Giuliani pointed out that Dinkins had not filed a tax return for many years and of several other ethical missteps, in particular a stock transfer to his son. Dinkins filed several years of returns and said the tax matter had been fully paid off. He denied other wrongdoing, saying "what we need is a mayor, not a prosecutor," and that Giuliani refused to say "the R-wordhe doesn't like to admit he's a Republican". Dinkins won the endorsements of three of the four daily New York newspapers, while Giuliani won approval from the New York Post.
In the end, Giuliani lost to Dinkins by a margin of 47,080 votes out of 1,899,845 votes cast, in the closest election in New York City's history. The closeness of the race was particularly noteworthy considering the small percentage of New York City residents who are registered Republicans and resulted in Giuliani being the presumptive nominee for a rematch with Dinkins at the next election.
1993
Four years after his defeat to Dinkins, Giuliani again ran for mayor. Once again, Giuliani also ran on the Liberal Party line but not the Conservative Party line, which ran activist George Marlin.
Although crime had begun to fall during the Dinkins administration, Giuliani's campaign capitalized on the perception that crime was uncontrolled in the city following events such as the Crown Heights riot and the Family Red Apple boycott. The year prior to the election, Giuliani was a key speaker at a Patrolmen's Benevolent Association rally opposing Dinkins, in which Giuliani blamed the police department's low morale on Dinkins' leadership. The rally quickly devolved into a riot, with nearly 4,000 off-duty police officers storming the City Hall and blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.
In his pitch to lower crime rates in the city, Giuliani promised to focus police resources toward shutting down petty crimes and nuisances as a way of restoring the quality of life:
Dinkins and Giuliani never debated during the campaign, because they were never able to agree on how to approach a debate. Dinkins was endorsed by The New York Times and Newsday, while Giuliani was endorsed by the New York Post and, in a key switch from 1989, the Daily News. Giuliani went to visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, seeking his blessing and endorsement.
On election day, Giuliani's campaign hired off-duty cops, firefighters, and corrections officers to monitor polling places in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and The Bronx for cases of voter fraud. Despite objections from the Dinkins campaign, who claimed that the effort would intimidate Democratic voters, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly assigned an additional 52 police captains and 3,500 officers to monitor the city's polling places.
Giuliani won by a margin of 53,367 votes. He became the first Republican elected Mayor of New York City since John Lindsay in 1965. Similar to the election four years prior, Giuliani performed particularly well in the white ethnic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Giuliani saw especially high returns in the borough of Staten Island, as a referendum to consider allowing the borough to secede from New York City was on the ballot.
1997
Giuliani's opponent in 1997 was Democratic Manhattan Borough president Ruth Messinger, who had beaten Al Sharpton in the September 9, 1997 Democratic primary. In the general election, Giuliani once again had the Liberal Party and not the Conservative Party listing. Giuliani ran an aggressive campaign, parlaying his image as a tough leader who had cleaned up the city. Giuliani's popularity was at its highest point to date, with a late October 1997 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showing him as having a 68 percent approval rating; 70 percent of New Yorkers were satisfied with life in the city and 64 percent said things were better in the city compared to four years previously.
Throughout the campaign he was well ahead in the polls and had a strong fund-raising advantage over Messinger. On her part, Messinger lost the support of several usually Democratic constituencies, including gay organizations and large labor unions. The local daily newspapersThe New York Times, Daily News, New York Post and Newsdayall endorsed Giuliani over Messinger.
In the end, Giuliani won 58% of the vote to Messinger's 41%, and became the first registered Republican to win a second term as mayor while on the Republican line since Fiorello H. La Guardia in 1941. Voter turnout was the lowest in twelve years, with 38% of registered voters casting ballots. The margin of victory included gains in his share of the African American vote (20% compared to 1993's 5%) and the Hispanic vote (43% from 37%) while maintaining his base of white ethnic, Catholic and Jewish voters from 1993.
Mayoralty
Giuliani served as mayor of New York City from 1994 through 2001.
Law enforcement
In Giuliani's first term as mayor, the New York City Police Departmentat the instigation of Commissioner Bill Brattonadopted an aggressive enforcement/deterrent strategy based on James Q. Wilson's "Broken Windows" approach. This involved crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as graffiti, turnstile jumping, cannabis possession, and aggressive panhandling by "squeegee men", on the theory that this would send a message that order would be maintained. The legal underpinning for removing the "squeegee men" from the streets was developed under Giuliani's predecessor, Mayor David Dinkins. Bratton, with Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple, also created and instituted CompStat, a computer-driven comparative statistical approach to mapping crime geographically and in terms of emerging criminal patterns, as well as charting officer performance by quantifying criminal apprehensions. Critics of the system assert that it creates an environment in which police officials are encouraged to underreport or otherwise manipulate crime data. An extensive study found a high correlation between crime rates reported by the police through CompStat and rates of crime available from other sources, suggesting there had been no manipulation. The CompStat initiative won the 1996 Innovations in Government Award from the Kennedy School of Government.
During Giuliani's administration, crime rates dropped in New York City. The extent to which Giuliani deserves the credit is disputed. Crime rates in New York City had started to drop in 1991 under previous mayor David Dinkins, three years before Giuliani took office. The rates of most crimes, including all categories of violent crime, made consecutive declines during the last 36 months of Dinkins's four-year term, ending a 30-year upward spiral. A small nationwide drop in crime preceded Giuliani's election, and some critics say he may have been the beneficiary of a trend already in progress. Additional contributing factors to the overall decline in New York City crime during the 1990s were the addition of 7,000 officers to the NYPD, lobbied for and hired by the Dinkins administration, and an overall improvement in the national economy. Changing demographics were a key factor contributing to crime rate reductions, which were similar across the country during this time. Because the crime index is based on that of the FBI, which is self-reported by police departments, some have alleged that crimes were shifted into categories the FBI does not collect.
Some studies conclude that the decline in New York City's crime rate in the 1990s and 2000s exceeds all national figures and therefore should be linked with a local dynamic that was not present as such anywhere else in the country: what University of California, Berkeley sociologist Frank Zimring calls "the most focused form of policing in history". In his book The Great American Crime Decline, Zimring argues that "up to half of New York's crime drop in the 1990s, and virtually 100 percent of its continuing crime decline since 2000, has resulted from policing."
Bratton was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1996. Giuliani reportedly forced Bratton out after two years, in what was seen as a battle of two large egos in which Giuliani was not tolerant of Bratton's celebrity. Bratton went on to become chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Giuliani's term also saw allegations of civil rights abuses and other police misconduct under other commissioners after Bratton's departure. There were police shootings of unarmed suspects, and the scandals surrounding the torture of Abner Louima and the killings of Amadou Diallo, Gidone Busch and Patrick Dorismond. Giuliani supported the New York City Police Department, for example by releasing what he called Dorismond's "extensive criminal record" to the public, including a sealed juvenile file.
City services
The Giuliani administration advocated the privatization of the city's public schools, which he called "dysfunctional", and advocated the reduction of state funding for them. He advocated for a voucher-based system to promote private schooling. Giuliani supported protection for illegal immigrants. He continued a policy of preventing city employees from contacting the Immigration and Naturalization Service about immigration violations, on the grounds that illegal aliens should be able to take actions such as sending their children to school or reporting crimes to the police without fear of deportation.
During his mayoralty, gay and lesbian New Yorkers received domestic partnership rights. Giuliani induced the city's Democratic-controlled New York City Council, which had avoided the issue for years, to pass legislation providing broad protection for same-sex partners. In 1998, he codified local law by granting all city employees equal benefits for their domestic partners.
2000 U.S. Senate campaign
Due to term limits, Giuliani was ineligible to run in 2001 for a third term as mayor. In November 1998, four-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement and Giuliani immediately indicated an interest in running in the 2000 election for the now-open seat. Due to his high profile and visibility Giuliani was supported by the state Republican Party. Giuliani's entrance led Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel and others to recruit then-First Lady Hillary Clinton to run for Moynihan's seat, hoping she might combat his star power.
An early January 1999 poll showed Giuliani trailing Clinton by ten points. In April 1999, Giuliani formed an exploratory committee in connection with the Senate run. By January 2000, polling for the race dramatically reversed, with Giuliani now pulling nine points ahead of Clinton, in part because his campaign was able to take advantage of several campaign stumbles by Clinton. Nevertheless, the Giuliani campaign was showing some structural weaknesses; so closely identified with New York City, he had somewhat limited appeal to normally Republican voters in Upstate New York. The New York Police Department's fatal shooting of Patrick Dorismond in March 2000 inflamed Giuliani's already strained relations with the city's minority communities, and Clinton seized on it as a major campaign issue. By April 2000, reports showed Clinton gaining upstate and generally outworking Giuliani, who said his duties as mayor prevented him from campaigning more. Clinton was now eight to ten points ahead of Giuliani in the polls.
Then followed four tumultuous weeks in which Giuliani learned he had prostate cancer and needed treatment; his extramarital relationship with Judith Nathan became public and the subject of a media frenzy; and he announced a separation from his wife Donna Hanover. After much indecision, on May 19, Giuliani announced his withdrawal from the Senate race.
September 11 terrorist attacks
Response
Giuliani received nationwide attention in the aftermath of the September11 attacks. He made frequent appearances on radio and television on September11 and afterwardsfor example, to indicate that tunnels would be closed as a precautionary measure, and that there was no reason to believe the dispersion of chemical or biological weaponry into the air was a factor in the attack. In his public statements, Giuliani said:
The 9/11 attacks occurred on the scheduled date of the mayoral primary to select the Democratic and Republican candidates to succeed Giuliani. The primary was immediately delayed two weeks to September 25. During this period, Giuliani sought an unprecedented three-month emergency extension of his term from January1 to April1 under the New York State Constitution (Article3 Section 25). He threatened to challenge the law imposing term limits on elected city officials and run for another full four-year term, if the primary candidates did not consent to the extension of his mayoralty. In the end leaders in the State Assembly and Senate indicated that they did not believe the extension was necessary. The election proceeded as scheduled, and the winning candidate, the Giuliani-endorsed Republican convert Michael Bloomberg, took office on January 1, 2002, per normal custom.
Giuliani claimed to have been at the Ground Zero site "as often, if not more, than most workers... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them." Some 9/11 workers have objected to those claims. While his appointment logs were unavailable for the six days immediately following the attacks, Giuliani logged 29 hours at the site over three months beginning September 17. This contrasted with recovery workers at the site who spent this much time at the site in two to three days.
When Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal suggested the attacks were an indication that the United States "should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause," Giuliani asserted, "There is no moral equivalent for this act. There is no justification for it... And one of the reasons I think this happened is because people were engaged in moral equivalency in not understanding the difference between liberal democracies like the United States, like Israel, and terrorist states and those who condone terrorism. So I think not only are those statements wrong, they're part of the problem." Giuliani subsequently rejected the prince's $10million donation to disaster relief in the aftermath of the attack.
Emergency command center location and communications problems
Giuliani has been widely criticized for his decision to locate the Office of Emergency Management headquarters on the 23rd floor inside the 7 World Trade Center building. Those opposing the decision perceived the office as a target for a terrorist attack in light of the previous terrorist attack against the World Trade Center in 1993. The office was unable to coordinate efforts between police and firefighters properly while evacuating its headquarters. Large tanks of diesel fuel were placed in 7World Trade to power the command center. In May 1997, Giuliani put responsibility for selecting the location on Jerome M. Hauer, who had served under Giuliani from 1996 to 2000 before being appointed by him as New York City's first Director of Emergency Management. Hauer has taken exception to that account in interviews and provided Fox News and New York Magazine with a memo demonstrating that he recommended a location in Brooklyn but was overruled by Giuliani. Television journalist Chris Wallace interviewed Giuliani on May 13, 2007, about his 1997 decision to locate the command center at the World Trade Center. Giuliani laughed during Wallace's questions and said that Hauer recommended the World Trade Center site and claimed that Hauer said the WTC site was the best location. Wallace presented Giuliani a photocopy of Hauer's directive letter. The letter urged Giuliani to locate the command center in Brooklyn, instead of lower Manhattan. The February 1996 memo read, "The [Brooklyn] building is secure and not as visible a target as buildings in Lower Manhattan."
In January 2008, an eight-page memo was revealed which detailed the New York City Police Department's opposition in 1998 to location of the city's emergency command center at the Trade Center site. The Giuliani administration overrode these concerns.
The 9/11 Commission Report noted that lack of preparedness could have led to the deaths of first responders at the scene of the attacks. The Commission noted that the radios in use by the fire department were the same radios which had been criticized for their ineffectiveness following the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. Family members of 9/11 victims have said these radios were a complaint of emergency services responders for years. The radios were not working when Fire Department chiefs ordered the 343 firefighters inside the towers to evacuate, and they remained in the towers as the towers collapsed. However, when Giuliani testified before the 9/11 Commission he said the firefighters ignored the evacuation order out of an effort to save lives. Giuliani testified to the commission, where some family members of responders who had died in the attacks appeared to protest his statements. A 1994 mayoral office study of the radios indicated that they were faulty. Replacement radios were purchased in a $33million no-bid contract with Motorola, and implemented in early 2001. However, the radios were recalled in March 2001 after a probationary firefighter's calls for help at a house fire could not be picked up by others at the scene, leaving firemen with the old analog radios from 1993. A book later published by Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, argued that the commission had not pursued a tough enough line of questioning with Giuliani.
An October 2001 study by the National Institute of Environmental Safety and Health said cleanup workers lacked adequate protective gear.
Public reaction
Giuliani gained international attention in the wake of the attacks and was widely hailed for his leadership role during the crisis. Polls taken just six weeks after the attack showed a 79 percent approval rating among New York City voters. This was a dramatic increase over the 36 percent rating he had received a year earlier, which was an average at the end of a two-term mayorship. Oprah Winfrey called him "America's Mayor" at a 9/11 memorial service held at Yankee Stadium on September 23, 2001. Other voices denied it was the mayor who had pulled the city together. "You didn't bring us together, our pain brought us together and our decency brought us together. We would have come together if Bozo was the mayor," said civil rights activist Al Sharpton, in a statement largely supported by Fernando Ferrer, one of three main candidates for the mayoralty at the end of 2001. "He was a power-hungry person," Sharpton also said.
Giuliani was praised by some for his close involvement with the rescue and recovery efforts, but others argue that "Giuliani has exaggerated the role he played after the terrorist attacks, casting himself as a hero for political gain." Giuliani has collected $11.4million from speaking fees in a single year (with increased demand after the attacks). Before September11, Giuliani's assets were estimated to be somewhat less than $2million, but his net worth could now be as high as 30 times that amount. He has made most of his money since leaving office.
Time Person of the Year
On December 24, 2001, Time magazine named Giuliani its Person of the Year for 2001. Time observed that, before 9/11, Giuliani's public image had been that of a rigid, self-righteous, ambitious politician. After 9/11, and perhaps owing also to his bout with prostate cancer, his public image became that of a man who could be counted on to unite a city in the midst of its greatest crisis. Historian Vincent J. Cannato concluded in September 2006:
Aftermath
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was given an honorary knighthood (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani initially downplayed the health effects arising from the September 11 attacks in the Financial District and lower Manhattan areas in the vicinity of the World Trade Center site. He moved quickly to reopen Wall Street, and it was reopened on September 17. In the first month after the attacks, he said "The air quality is safe and acceptable."
Giuliani took control away from agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, leaving the "largely unknown" city Department of Design and Construction in charge of recovery and cleanup. Documents indicate that the Giuliani administration never enforced federal requirements requiring the wearing of respirators. Concurrently, the administration threatened companies with dismissal if cleanup work slowed. In June 2007, Christie Todd Whitman, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), reportedly said the EPA had pushed for workers at the WTC site to wear respirators but she had been blocked by Giuliani. She said she believed the subsequent lung disease and deaths suffered by WTC responders were a result of these actions. However, former deputy mayor Joe Lhota, then with the Giuliani campaign, replied, "All workers at Ground Zero were instructed repeatedly to wear their respirators."
Giuliani asked the city's Congressional delegation to limit the city's liability for Ground Zero illnesses to a total of $350million. Two years after Giuliani finished his term, FEMA appropriated $1billion to a special insurance fund, called the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company, to protect the city against 9/11 lawsuits.
In February 2007, the International Association of Fire Fighters issued a letter asserting that Giuliani rushed to conclude the recovery effort once gold and silver had been recovered from World Trade Center vaults and thereby prevented the remains of many victims from being recovered: "Mayor Giuliani's actions meant that fire fighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills Landfill," it said, adding: "Hundreds remained entombed in Ground Zero when Giuliani gave up on them." Lawyers for the International Association of Fire Fighters seek to interview Giuliani under oath as part of a federal legal action alleging that New York City negligently dumped body parts and other human remains in the Fresh Kills Landfill.
Post-mayoralty
Politics
Before 2008 election
Since leaving office as mayor, Giuliani has remained politically active by campaigning for Republican candidates for political offices at all levels. When George Pataki became Governor in 1995, this represented the first time the positions of both Mayor and Governor were held simultaneously by Republicans since John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. Giuliani and Pataki were instrumental in bringing the 2004 Republican National Convention to New York City. He was a speaker at the convention, and endorsed President George W. Bush for re-election by recalling that immediately after the World Trade Center towers fell,
Similarly, in June 2006, Giuliani started a website called Solutions America to help elect Republican candidates across the nation.
After campaigning on Bush's behalf in the U.S. presidential election of 2004, he was reportedly the top choice for Secretary of Homeland Security after Tom Ridge's resignation. When suggestions were made that Giuliani's confirmation hearings would be marred by details of his past affairs and scandals, he turned down the offer and instead recommended his friend and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. After the formal announcement of Kerik's nomination, information about Kerik's pastmost notably, that he had ties to organized crime, had failed to properly report gifts he had received, had been sued for sexual harassment and had employed an undocumented alien as a domestic servantbecame known, and Kerik withdrew his nomination.
On March 15, 2006, Congress formed the Iraq Study Group (ISG). This bipartisan ten-person panel, of which Giuliani was one of the members, was charged with assessing the Iraq War and making recommendations. They would eventually unanimously conclude that contrary to Bush administration assertions, "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" and called for "changes in the primary mission" that would allow "the United States to begin to move its forces out of Iraq".
On May 24, 2006, after missing all the group's meetings, including a briefing from General David Petraeus, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, Giuliani resigned from the panel, citing "previous time commitments". Giuliani's fundraising schedule had kept him from participating in the panel, a schedule which raised $11.4million in speaking fees over fourteen months, and that Giuliani had been forced to resign after being given "an ultimatum to either show up for meetings or leave the group" by group leader James Baker. Giuliani subsequently said he had started thinking about running for president, and being on the panel might give it a political spin.
Giuliani was described by Newsweek in January 2007 as "one of the most consistent cheerleaders for the president's handling of the war in Iraq" and as of June 2007, he remained one of the few candidates for president to unequivocally support both the basis for the invasion and the execution of the war.
Giuliani spoke in support of the removal of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK, also PMOI, MKO) from the United States State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The group was on the State Department list from 1997 until September 2012. They were placed on the list for killing six Americans in Iran during the 1970s and attempting to attack the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992. Giuliani, along with other former government officials and politicians Ed Rendell, R. James Woolsey, Porter Goss, Louis Freeh, Michael Mukasey, James L. Jones, Tom Ridge, and Howard Dean, were criticized for their involvement with the group. Some were subpoenaed during an inquiry about who was paying the prominent individuals' speaking fees. Giuliani and others wrote an article for the conservative publication National Review stating their position that the group should not be classified as a terrorist organization. They supported their position by pointing out that the United Kingdom and the European Union had already removed the group from their terrorism lists. They further assert that only the United States and Iran still listed it as a terrorist group. However, Canada did not delist the group until December 2012.
2008 presidential campaign
In November 2006, Giuliani announced the formation of an exploratory committee toward a run for the presidency in 2008. In February 2007, he filed a "statement of candidacy" and confirmed on the television program Larry King Live that he was indeed running.
Early polls showed Giuliani with one of the highest levels of name recognition ever recorded along with high levels of support among the Republican candidates. Throughout most of 2007, he was the leader in most nationwide opinion polling among Republicans. Senator John McCain, who ranked a close second behind the New York Mayor, had faded, and most polls showed Giuliani to have more support than any of the other declared Republican candidates, with only former Senator Fred Thompson and former Governor Mitt Romney showing greater support in some per-state Republican polls. On November 7, 2007, Giuliani's campaign received an endorsement from evangelist, Christian Broadcasting Network founder, and past presidential candidate Pat Robertson. This was viewed by political observers as a possibly key development in the race, as it gave credence that evangelicals and other social conservatives could support Giuliani despite some of his positions on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.
Giuliani's campaign hit a difficult stretch during the last two months of 2007, when Bernard Kerik, whom Giuliani had recommended for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security, was indicted on 16 counts of tax fraud and other federal charges. The media reported that when Giuliani was the mayor of New York, he billed several tens of thousands of dollars of mayoral security expenses to obscure city agencies. Those expenses were incurred while he visited Judith Nathan, with whom he was having an extramarital affair (later analysis showed the billing to likely be unrelated to hiding Nathan). Several stories were published in the press regarding clients of Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani who were in opposition to goals of American foreign policy. Giuliani's national poll numbers began steadily slipping and his unusual strategy of focusing more on later, multi-primary big states rather than the smaller, first-voting states was seen at risk.
Despite his strategy, Giuliani competed to a substantial extent in the January 8, 2008, New Hampshire primary but finished a distant fourth with 9percent of the vote. Similar poor results continued in other early contests, when Giuliani's staff went without pay in order to focus all efforts on the crucial late January Florida Republican primary. The shift of the electorate's focus from national security to the state of the economy also hurt Giuliani, as did the resurgence of McCain's similarly themed campaign. On January 29, 2008, Giuliani finished a distant third in the Florida result with 15percent of the vote, trailing McCain and Romney. Facing declining polls and lost leads in the upcoming large Super Tuesday states, including that of his home New York, Giuliani withdrew from the race on January 30, endorsing McCain.
Giuliani's campaign ended up $3.6million in arrears, and in June 2008 Giuliani sought to retire the debt by proposing to appear at Republican fundraisers during the 2008 general election, and have part of the proceeds go towards his campaign. During the 2008 Republican National Convention, Giuliani gave a prime-time speech that praised McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, while criticizing Democratic nominee Barack Obama. He cited Palin's executive experience as a mayor and governor and belittled Obama's lack of same, and his remarks were met with wild applause from the delegates. Giuliani continued to be one of McCain's most active surrogates during the remainder of McCain's eventually unsuccessful campaign.
After 2008 election
Following the end of his presidential campaign, Giuliani's "high appearance fees dropped like a stone". He returned to work at both Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani. His consultancy work included advising Keiko Fujimori with her presidential campaign during the 2011 Peruvian general election. Giuliani also explored hosting a syndicated radio show, and was reported to be in talks with Westwood One about replacing Bill O'Reilly before that position went to Fred Thompson (another unsuccessful 2008 GOP presidential primary candidate). During the March 2009 AIG bonus payments controversy, Giuliani called for U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to step down and said the Obama administration lacked executive competence in dealing with the ongoing financial crisis.
Giuliani said his political career was not necessarily over, and did not rule out a 2010 New York gubernatorial or 2012 presidential bid. A November 2008 Siena College poll indicated that although Governor David Patersonpromoted to the office via the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal a year beforewas popular among New Yorkers, he would have just a slight lead over Giuliani in a hypothetical matchup. By February 2009, after the prolonged Senate appointment process, a Siena College poll indicated that Paterson was losing popularity among New Yorkers, and showed Giuliani with a fifteen-point lead in the hypothetical contest. In January 2009, Giuliani said he would not decide on a gubernatorial run for another six to eight months, adding that he thought it would not be fair to the governor to start campaigning early while the governor tries to focus on his job. Giuliani worked to retire his presidential campaign debt, but by the end of March 2009 it was still $2.4million in arrears, the largest such remaining amount for any of the 2008 contenders. In April 2009, Giuliani strongly opposed Paterson's announced push for same-sex marriage in New York and said it would likely cause a backlash that could put Republicans in statewide office in 2010. By late August 2009, there were still conflicting reports about whether Giuliani was likely to run.
On December 23, 2009, Giuliani announced that he would not seek any office in 2010, saying "The main reason has to do with my two enterprises: Bracewell & Giuliani and Giuliani Partners. I'm very busy in both." The decisions signaled a possible end to Giuliani's political career. During the 2010 midterm elections, Giuliani endorsed and campaigned for Bob Ehrlich and Marco Rubio.
On October 11, 2011, Giuliani announced that he was not running for president. According to Kevin Law, the Director of the Long Island Association, Giuliani believed that "As a moderate, he thought it was a pretty significant challenge. He said it's tough to be a moderate and succeed in GOP primaries," Giuliani said "If it's too late for (New Jersey Governor) Chris Christie, it's too late for me."
At a Republican fund-raising event in February 2015, Giuliani said, "I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president Obama loves America," and "He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country." In response to criticism of the remarks, Giuliani said, "Some people thought it was racistI thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother... This isn't racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism." White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said he agreed with Giuliani "that it was a horrible thing to say", but he would leave it up to the people who heard Giuliani directly to assess whether the remarks were appropriate for the event. Although he received some support for his controversial comments, Giuliani said he also received several death threats within 48 hours.
Relationship with Donald Trump
Presidential campaign supporter
Giuliani supported Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He gave a prime time speech during the first night of the 2016 Republican National Convention. Earlier in the day, Giuliani and former 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson appeared at an event for the pro-Trump Great America PAC. Giuliani also appeared in a Great America PAC ad entitled "Leadership". Giuliani's and Jeff Sessions's appearances were staples at Trump campaign rallies.
During the campaign, Giuliani praised Trump for his worldwide accomplishments and helping fellow New Yorkers in their time of need. He defended Trump against allegations of racism, sexual assault, and not paying any federal income taxes for as long as two decades.
In August 2016, Giuliani, while campaigning for Trump, claimed that in the "eight years before Obama" became president, "we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States". It was noted that 9/11 happened during George W. Bush's first term. Politifact brought up four more counter-examples (the 2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting, the 2002 D.C. sniper attacks, the 2006 Seattle Jewish Federation shooting and the 2006 UNC SUV attack) to Giuliani's claim. Giuliani later said he was using "abbreviated language".
Giuliani was believed to be a likely pick for Secretary of State in the Trump administration. However, on December 9, 2016, Trump announced that Giuliani had removed his name from consideration for any Cabinet post.
Advisor to the president
The president-elect named Giuliani his informal cybersecurity adviser on January 12, 2017. The status of this informal role for Giuliani is unclear because, in November 2018, Trump created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), headed by Christopher Krebs as director and Matthew Travis as deputy. In the weeks following his appointment, Giuliani was forced to consult an Apple Store Genius Bar when he "was locked out of his iPhone because he had forgotten the passcode and entered the wrong one at least 10 times", belying his putative expertise in the field.
In January 2017, Giuliani said he advised President Trump in matters relating to Executive Order 13769, which barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days. The order also suspended the admission of all refugees for 120 days.
Giuliani has drawn scrutiny over his ties to foreign nations, regarding not registering per the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Personal lawyer
In mid April 2018, Giuliani joined Trump's legal team, which dealt with the special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Giuliani said his goal was to negotiate a swift end to the investigation.
In early May, Giuliani made public that Trump had reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen $130,000 that Cohen had paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels for her agreement not to talk about her alleged affair with Trump. Cohen had earlier insisted he used his own money to pay Daniels, and he implied that he had not been reimbursed. Trump had previously said he knew nothing about the matter. Within a week, Giuliani said some of his own statements regarding this matter were "more rumor than anything else".
Later in May 2018, Giuliani, who was asked on whether the promotion of the Spygate conspiracy theory is meant to discredit the special counsel investigation, said the investigators "are giving us the material to do it. Of course, we have to do it in defending the president... it is for public opinion" on whether to "impeach or not impeach" Trump. In June 2018, Giuliani claimed that a sitting president cannot be indicted: "I don't know how you can indict while he's in office. No matter what it is. If President Trump shot [then-FBI director] James Comey, he'd be impeached the next day. Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him."
In June 2018, Giuliani also said Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because "our recollection keeps changing". In early July, Giuliani characterized that Trump had previously asked Comey to "give him [then-national security adviser Michael Flynn] a break". In mid-August, Giuliani denied making this comment: "What I said was, that is what Comey is saying Trump said." On August 19 on Meet the Press, Giuliani argued that Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because Trump could be "trapped into perjury" just by telling "somebody's version of the truth. Not the truth." Giuliani's argument continued: "Truth isn't truth." Giuliani later clarified that he was "referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements".
In late July, Giuliani defended Trump by saying "collusion is not a crime" and that Trump had done nothing wrong because he "didn't hack" or "pay for the hacking". He later elaborated that his comments were a "very, very familiar lawyer's argument" to "attack the legitimacy of the special counsel investigation". He also described and denied several supposed allegations that have never been publicly raised, regarding two earlier meetings among Trump campaign officials to set up the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with Russian citizens. In late August, Giuliani said the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower "meeting was originally for the purpose of getting information about Hillary Clinton".
Additionally in late July, Giuliani attacked Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as an "incredible liar", two months after calling Cohen an "honest, honorable lawyer". In mid-August, Giuliani defended Trump by saying: "The president's an honest man."
It was reported in early September that Giuliani said the White House could and likely would prevent the special counsel investigation from making public certain information in its final report which would be covered by executive privilege. Also according to Giuliani, Trump's personal legal team is already preparing a "counter-report" to refute the potential special counsel investigation's report.
Giuliani privately urged Trump in 2017 to extradite Fethullah Gülen.
In late 2019, Giuliani represented Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, meeting with the Justice Department to ask not to bring charges against him.
In an interview with Olivia Nuzzi in New York magazine, Giuliani, who is a Roman Catholic of Italian descent, said, "Don't tell me I'm anti-Semitic if I oppose George Soros... I'm more of a Jew than Soros is." George Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew who survived The Holocaust. The Anti-Defamation League replied, "Mr. Giuliani should apologize and retract his comments immediately unless he seeks to dog whistle to hardcore anti-Semites and white supremacists who believe this garbage."
In the last days of the Trump administration, when White House aides were soliciting fees to lobby for presidential pardons, Giuliani said that while he'd heard that large fees were being offered, he did not work on clemency cases, saying "I have enough money. I'm not starving."
As of February 16, 2021, Giuliani was reportedly not actively involved in any of Trump's pending legal cases.
Attempts to get Ukraine to carry out investigations
Since at least May 2019, Giuliani has been urging Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the oil company Burisma, whose board of directors once included Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, and to check for irregularities in Ukraine's investigation of Paul Manafort. He said such investigations would benefit his client's defense, and that his efforts had Trump's full support. Toward this end, Giuliani met with Ukrainian officials throughout 2019. In July 2019, Buzzfeed News reported that two Soviet-born Americans, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were liaisons between Giuliani and Ukrainian government officials in this effort. Parnas and Fruman, prolific Republican donors, have neither registered as foreign agents in the United States, nor been evaluated and approved by the State Department. Giuliani responded, "This (report) is a pathetic effort to cover up what are enormous allegations of criminality by the Biden family." Yet by September 2019, there had been no clear evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
As of October 1, 2019, Giuliani hired former Watergate prosecutor Jon Sale to represent him in the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment investigation. The committee also issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents related to the Ukraine scandal. The New York Times reported on October 11, 2019, that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which Giuliani had once led, was investigating him for violating lobbying laws related to his activities in Ukraine. The following month, Bloomberg News reported that the investigation could extend to bribery of foreign officials or conspiracy, and The Wall Street Journal reported Giuliani was being investigated for a possible profit motive in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. Giuliani has denied having any interest in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. In late November, the Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors had just issued subpoenas to multiple associates of Giuliani to potentially investigate certain individuals, apparently including Giuliani, on numerous potential charges, including money laundering, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements to the federal government, and mail/wire fraud.
Parnas and Fruman were arrested for campaign finance violations while attempting to board a one-way flight to Frankfurt from Washington Dulles International Airport on October 9, 2019. Giuliani was paid $500,000 to consult for Lev Parnas's company named "Fraud Guarantee". Republican donor and Trump supporter Long Island attorney Charles Gucciardo paid Giuliani on behalf of Fraud Guarantee in two $250,000 payments, in September and October 2018. Fruman eventually pled guilty in September 2021 to having solicited a contribution by a foreign national.
In May 2019, Giuliani described Ukraine's chief prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko as a "much more honest guy" than his predecessor, Viktor Shokin. After Lutsenko was removed from office, he said in September 2019 that he found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, and that he had met Giuliani about ten times. Giuliani then reversed his stance, saying that Shokin is the one people "should have spoken to", while Lutsenko acted "corruptly" and "is exactly the prosecutor that Joe Biden put in in order to tank the case".
In September 2019, as reports surfaced that a whistleblower was alleging high-level misconduct related to Ukraine, Giuliani went on CNN to discuss the story. When asked if he had tried to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden, he initially replied "No, actually I didn't," but thirty seconds later said, "Of course I did." In a later tweet he seemed to confirm reports that Trump had withheld military assistance funds scheduled for Ukraine unless they carried out the investigation. He said, "The reality is that the president of the United States, whoever he is, has every right to tell the president of another country you better straighten out the corruption in your country if you want me to give you a lot of money. If you're so damn corrupt that you can't investigate allegationsour money is going to get squandered."
Tom Bossert, a former Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump administration, described Giuliani's theory that Ukraine was involved in 2016 U.S. election interference as "debunked"; Giuliani responded that Bossert "doesn't know what the hell he's talking about".
On September 30, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents concerning the Ukraine scandal to Committee members by October 15, 2019. On October 2, 2019, Steve Linick, the State Department's inspector general, delivered a 40-page packet of apparent disinformation regarding former vice president Joe Biden and former Ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, to Capitol Hill. Linick told congressional aides his office questioned Ulrich Brechbuhl, Pompeo's advisor about the origins of the packet. Brechbuhl noted the packet came to him from Pompeo, who said it "came over", and Brechbuhl reportedly presumed it was from the White House. Later that day, Giuliani acknowledged he passed the packet to Pompeo regarding the Ukraine and attacks on Yovanovich. In a November 2019 interview he confirmed that he had "needed Yovanovitch out of the way" because she was going to make his investigations difficult. "They (the State Department) told me they would investigate it," Giuliani added. Giuliani persuaded Trump to remove Yovanovich from office in spring 2019. By April 2021, the U.S attorney's office in Manhattan was investigating the role of Giuliani and his associates in Yovanovitch's removal.
U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that Trump delegated American foreign policy on Ukraine to Giuliani. The late 2019 impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump centered around Giuliani's actions involving Ukraine. In the compiled testimony and in the December reports of the House Intelligence Committee, Giuliani's name was mentioned more than any but Trump's. Some experts suggested that Giuliani may have violated the Logan Act.
On November 22, 2019, Giuliani sent a letter to Senator Lindsey Graham, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, informing him of at least three witnesses from Ukraine who Giuliani claimed had direct oral, documentary, and recorded evidence of Democratic criminal conspiracy with Ukrainians to prevent Trump's election and, after his election, to remove him from office via contrived charges. Giuliani's letter also claims that the witnesses had evidence of the Biden family's involvement in bribery, money laundering, Hobbs Act extortion, and other possible crimes. The letter sought Graham's help obtaining U.S. visas for the witnesses to testify. The next month, Graham invited Giuliani to share his findings with the Judiciary Committee, and soon advised him "to share what he got from Ukraine with the [intelligence community] to make sure it's not Russia propaganda".
Dmytry Firtash is a Ukrainian oligarch who is prominent in the natural gas sector. In 2017, the Justice Department characterized him as being an "upper echelon (associate) of Russian organized crime". Since his 2014 arrest in Vienna, Austria at the request of American authorities, he has been living there on $155 million bail while fighting extradition to the United States on bribery and racketeering charges, and has been seeking to have the charges dropped. Firtash's attorneys obtained a September 2019 statement from Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general who was forced out under pressure from multiple countries and non-governmental organizations, as conveyed to Ukraine by Joe Biden. Shokin falsely asserted in the statement that Biden actually had him fired because he refused to stop his investigation into Burisma. Giuliani, who asserts he has "nothing to do with" and has "never met or talked to" Firtash, promoted the statement in television appearances as purported evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens. Giuliani told CNN he met with a Firtash attorney for two hours in New York City at the time he was seeking information about the Bidens.
Firtash is represented by Trump and Giuliani associates Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, having hired them on Parnas's recommendation in July 2019. The New York Times reported in November 2019 that Giuliani had directed Parnas to approach Firtash with the recommendation, with the proposition that Firtash could help provide damaging information on Biden, which Parna's attorney described was "part of any potential resolution to [Firtash's] extradition matter". Shokin's statement notes that it was prepared "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash ('DF'), for use in legal proceedings in Austria". Giuliani presented the Shokin statement during American television appearances. Bloomberg News reported on October 18 that during the summer of 2019 Firtash associates began attempting to dig up dirt on the Bidens in an effort to solicit Giuliani's assistance with Firtash's legal matters. Bloomberg News also reported that its sources told them Giuliani's high-profile publicity of the Shokin statement had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political quid pro quo. diGenova has said he has known U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr for thirty years, as they both worked in the Reagan Justice Department. The Washington Post reported on October 22 that after they began representing Firtash, Toensing and diGenova secured a rare face-to-face meeting with Barr to argue the Firtash charges should be dropped, but he declined to intervene.
On October 18, The New York Times reported that weeks earlier, before his associates Parnas and Fruman were indicted, Giuliani met with officials with the criminal and fraud divisions of the Justice Department regarding what Giuliani characterized as a "very, very sensitive" foreign bribery case involving a client of his. The Times did not name whom the case involved, but shortly after publication of the story Giuliani told a reporter it was not Firtash. Two days later, the Justice Department said its officials would not have met with Giuliani had they known his associates were under investigation by the SDNY.
On December 3, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee's report included phone records acquired via subpoenas, including numerous phone calls made by Giuliani between April and August 2019. Calls involved Giuliani in contact with Kurt Volker, Republican Representative and House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, Lev Parnas, numbers associated with the Office of Management and Budget and the White House switchboard, and an unidentified White House official whose phone number is referenced as "-1". Chairman Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee announced after the report's release that his committee was investigating whether "-1" referred to President Trump, citing grand jury evidence from the trial of convicted Trump-associate Roger Stone in which the phone number "-1" was shown to have referred to Trump. Writing for The Washington Post, analyst Philip Bump reasoned that Giuliani's calls with "-1" are 'likely' calls with Trump citing that Giuliani speaks longer with "-1" than any other person, "-1" always calls Giuliani, and generally after Giuliani calls the White House switchboard, and timing of some of President Trump's actions shortly after Giuliani's calls with "-1" ended.
In early December 2019, while the House Judiciary Committee began holding public hearings for the impeachment inquiry, Giuliani returned to Ukraine to interview former Ukrainian officials for a documentary series seeking to discredit the impeachment proceedings. U.S. officials told The Washington Post that Giuliani would have been considered a target of Russian intelligence efforts from early in Trump's presidency, and particularly after Giuliani turned his focus to Ukraine — a former Soviet republic under attack from Russia and with deep penetration by Russian intelligence services. Analysts say Trump's and Giuliani's habit of communicating over unencrypted lines makes it highly likely that foreign intelligence agencies could be listening in on the president's unsecured calls with Giuliani; and that foreign intelligence agencies often collect intelligence about a primary target through monitoring communications of other people who interact with that target.
In a December 2019 opinion piece, former FBI director, CIA director and federal judge William Webster wrote of "a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love". In addition to chastising President Trump and attorney general Bill Barr, Webster wrote he was "profoundly disappointed in another longtime, respected friend, Rudy Giuliani" because his "activities of late concerning Ukraine have, at a minimum, failed the smell test of propriety". Since 2005, Webster had served as the chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
NBC News reported in December 2020 that SDNY investigators, which were reported in late 2019 to be investigating Giuliani's activities, had discussed with Justice Department officials in Washington the possibility of acquiring Giuliani's emails, which might require headquarters approval due to protection by attorney–client privilege. The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY had requested a search warrant of Giuliani's electronic records in summer 2020, but were met with resistance from high-level political appointees in the Washington headquarters, ostensibly because the election was near, while career officials were supportive of the search warrant. The Justice Department generally avoids taking significant actions relating to political figures that might become public within sixty days of an election. Senior political appointees nevertheless opposed the effort after the election, noting Giuliani played a leading role in challenging the election results. The officials deferred the matter to the incoming Biden administration.
Federal investigators in Manhattan executed search warrants on the early morning of April 28, 2021 at Giuliani's office and Upper East Side apartment, seizing his electronic devices and searching the apartment. FBI agents also executed a search warrant that day on Toensing's Washington, D.C.-area home and confiscated her cellphone. In April 2021, Giuliani's attorney said investigators told him they had searched his client's iCloud account beginning in late 2019, later arguing to a judge that the search was illegal and so the subsequent raid on Giuliani's properties was "fruit of this poisoned tree," demanding to review documents justifying the iCloud search. In May 2021, the SDNY confirmed in a court filing that in late 2019 it obtained search warrants for Giuliani's iCloud account, and that of Toensing, as part of "an ongoing, multi-year grand jury investigation into conduct involving Giuliani, Toensing, and others," and argued that attorneys for Giuliani and Toensing were not entitled to review the underlying documents of the warrants prior to any charges. Giuiliani and Toensing asserted their attorney-client privilege with clients may have been violated by the iCloud searches, which investigators disputed, saying they employed a "filter team" to prevent them from seeing information potentially protected by attorney-client privilege. Federal judge J. Paul Oetken days later ruled in favor of investigators regarding the warrant documents and granted their request for a special master to ensure attorney-client privilege was maintained. The special master released more than 3,000 of Giuliani's communications to prosecutors in January 2022, agreeing to withhold forty messages for which Giuliani had asserted "privilege and/or highly personal" status and rejecting 37 such assertions.
The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY was scrutinizing Giuliani's association with Firtash in efforts to discredit the Bidens, and efforts to lobby the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs. Time reported in May 2021 it had spoken with three unidentified witnesses who said they were questioned by investigators, two of whom said they had worked with Giuliani while cooperating with investigators; one witness said investigators were particularly interested in Giuliani's association with Firtash.
United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 found that Ukrainian politician Andrii Derkach was among proxies of Russian intelligence who promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about Biden "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration". Giuliani met with Derkach in December 2019.
In April 2021, Forensic News reported that the SDNY investigation into Giuliani had expanded to include a criminal probe of Derkach and Andrii Artemenko. The New York Times confirmed weeks later that Derkach was the subject of a criminal investigation into foreign interference in the 2020 United States elections. "Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have been investigating whether several Ukrainian officials helped orchestrate a wide-ranging plan to meddle in the 2020 presidential campaign, including using Rudolph W. Giuliani to spread their misleading claims about President Biden and tilt the election in Donald J. Trump's favor," the Times reported.
On June 8, 2021, CNN uncovered exclusive audio of a 2019 phone call from Giuliani to Ukraine, stating that "Rudy Giuliani relentlessly pressured and coaxed the Ukrainian government in 2019 to investigate baseless conspiracies about then-candidate Joe Biden."
2020 election lawsuits
In November 2020, after Joe Biden was named president-elect, Trump placed Giuliani in charge of lawsuits related to alleged voter irregularities in the 2020 United States presidential election. Trump designated Giuliani to lead a legal team to challenge the election results. This team—a self-described "elite strike force" that included Sidney Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing and Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis—appeared at a November 19 press conference in which they made numerous false and unsubstantiated assertions revolving around an international Communist conspiracy, rigged voting machines, and polling place fraud.
Giuliani repeatedly publicly denounced the use of provisional ballots (in which the poll worker does not see the voter's name on the rolls, so the voter swears an affidavit oath that they are registered to vote), arguing that the practice enables fraud, although Giuliani himself had cast this type of ballot on October 31, 2020, in Manhattan.
By January 8, 2021, Trump and his team had lost 63 lawsuits. A month later, Giuliani was no longer representing Trump in any pending cases, according to a Trump adviser. While Trump continued to fundraise, purportedly for his election-related legal fights, as of the end of July 2021 he had not given any of this money to Giuliani. In October 2021, in another context, Trump remarked: "I do pay my lawyers when they do a good job."
In December 2021, two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye” Moss, sued Giuliani for defamation.
Pennsylvania lawsuit
One early lawsuit sought to invalidate up to 700,000 mail-in ballots and stop Pennsylvania from certifying its election results. Giuliani claimed to have signed affidavits attesting to voter fraud and election official misconduct in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Despite not having argued a case in any courtroom for over three decades, Giuliani applied for special permission to represent the Trump presidential campaign in the federal court of Pennsylvania. (In his application, he misrepresented his status with the District of Columbia Bar, claiming that he was a member in good standing, whereas D.C. had suspended him for nonpayment of fees.) In his first day in court on the case, which was November 17, 2020, Giuliani struggled with rudimentary legal processes and was accused by lawyers for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State of making legal arguments that were "disgraceful in an American courtroom". Judge Matthew Brann questioned how Giuliani could justify "asking this court to invalidate some 6.8 million votes thereby disenfranchising every single voter in the commonwealth."
His federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania was dismissed with prejudice on November 21, 2020, with the judge citing "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations" which were "unsupported by evidence". Giuliani and Jenna Ellis reacted by stating that the ruling "helps" the Trump campaign "get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court". They also pointed out that the judge, Matthew W. Brann, was "Obama-appointed", though Brann is also a Republican and a former member of the right-leaning Federalist Society.
The Trump campaign appealed the lawsuit to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel on November 27 rejected the Trump campaign's attempt to undo Pennsylvania's vote certification, because the Trump campaign's "claims have no merit". The panel also ruled that the District Court was correct in preventing the Trump campaign from conducting a second amendment of its complaint. An amendment would be pointless, ruled the judges, because the Trump campaign was not bringing facts before the court, and not even alleging fraud. Judge Stephanos Bibas highlighted that Giuliani himself told the district court that the Trump campaign "doesn't plead fraud", and that this "is not a fraud case". The panel concluded that neither "specific allegations" nor "proof" was provided in this case, and that the Trump campaign "cannot win this lawsuit".
Giuliani and Ellis reacted to the appeals court ruling by condemning the "activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania". Of the three Appeal Court judges, Stephanos Bibas, who delivered the opinion, was appointed by Trump himself, while judges D. Brooks Smith and Michael Chagares were appointed by Republican president George W. Bush.
Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits
As part of Giuliani's allegations that voting machines had been rigged, he made several false assertions about two rival companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. These false claims included that Smartmatic owned Dominion; that Dominion voting machines used Smartmatic software; that Dominion voting machines sent vote data to Smartmatic at foreign locations; that Dominion was founded by the former socialist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez; and that Dominion is a "radical-left" company with connections to antifa.
Both companies sued Giuliani and Fox News. Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Giuliani on January 25, 2021, seeking $1.3billion in damages, and separately sued Fox News for $1.6 billion. On February 4, 2021, Smartmatic also filed a lawsuit that accused Giuliani, Fox News, some hosts at Fox News, and Sidney Powell of engaging in a "disinformation campaign" against the company, and asked for $2.7billion in damages.
On September 10, 2021, Fox News told Giuliani that neither he nor his son Andrew would be allowed on their network for nearly three months.
Attack on the Capitol
On January 6, 2021, Giuliani spoke at a "Save America March" rally on the Ellipse that was attended by Trump supporters protesting the election results. He repeated conspiracy theories that voting machines used in the election were "crooked" and called for "trial by combat". Trump supporters subsequently stormed the U.S. Capitol in a riot that resulted in the deaths of five people, including a police officer, and temporarily disrupted the counting of the Electoral College vote.
Giuliani had reportedly been calling Republican lawmakers to urge them to delay the electoral vote count in order to ultimately throw the election to Trump. Giuliani attempted to contact Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Trump ally, around 7:00p.m. on January 6, after the Capitol storming, to ask him to "try to just slow it down" by objecting to multiple states and "raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrowideally until the end of tomorrow". However, Giuliani mistakenly left the message on the voicemail of another senator, who leaked the recording to The Dispatch. Rick Perlstein, a noted historian of the American conservative political movement, termed Giuliani's attempts to slow certification in the wake of the riot as treasonous. "Sedition. Open and shut. He talked about the time that was being opened up. He was welcoming, and using, the violence. This needs to be investigated," Perlstein tweeted on January 11, 2021.
Giuliani faced criticism for his appearance at the rally and the Capitol riot that followed it. Former Congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called for the arrest of Giuliani, President Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. Manhattan College president Brennan O'Donnell stated in a January7 open letter to the college community, "one of the loudest voices fueling the anger, hatred, and violence that spilled out yesterday is a graduate of our College, Rudolph Giuliani. His conduct as a leader of the campaign to de-legitimize the election and disenfranchise millions of votershas been and continues to be a repudiation of the deepest values of his alma mater."
On January 11, the New York State Bar Association, an advocacy group for the legal profession in New York state, announced that it was launching an investigation into whether Giuliani should be removed from its membership rolls, noting both Giuliani's comments to the Trump supporter rally at the Ellipse on January 6, and that it "has received hundreds of complaints in recent months about Mr. Giuliani and his baseless efforts on behalf of President Trump to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 presidential election and, after the votes were cast, to overturn its legitimate results". Removal from the group's membership rolls would not directly disbar Giuliani from practicing law in New York. New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman and lawyers' group Lawyers Defending American Democracy, also filed a complaints against Giuliani with the Attorney Grievance Committee of the First Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court, which has the authority to discipline and disbar licensed New York lawyers.
Also on January 11, 2021, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said that he is looking at whether to charge Giuliani, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Representative Mo Brooks, with inciting the violent attack.
On January 29, Giuliani falsely claimed that The Lincoln Project played a role in the organization of the Capitol riot. In response, Steve Schmidt announced that the group would be taking legal action against Giuliani for defamation.
On March 5, 2021, Representative Eric Swalwell filed a civil lawsuit against Giuliani and three others (Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Representative Mo Brooks), seeking damages for their alleged role in inciting the Capitol riot.
Giuliani was subpoenaed in January 2022 to testify before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Suspension of law license
On June 24, 2021, a New York appellate court suspended Giuliani's law license. The panel of five justices found that there was "uncontroverted" evidence that Giuliani made "demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public" and that "These false statements were made to improperly bolster (Giuliani's) narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client." The court concluded that Giuliani's conduct "immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law". His license was also suspended in Washington D.C. on July 7, 2021.
Giuliani Partners
After leaving the New York City mayor's office, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners LLC, in 2002, a firm that has been categorized by multiple media outlets as a lobbying entity capitalizing on Giuliani's name recognition, and which has been the subject of allegations surrounding staff hired by Giuliani and due to the firm's chosen client base. Over five years, Giuliani Partners earned more than $100million.
In June 2007, he stepped down as CEO and Chairman of Giuliani Partners, although this action was not made public until December 4, 2007; he maintained his equity interest in the firm. Giuliani subsequently returned to active participation in the firm following the election. In late 2009, Giuliani announced that they had a security consulting contract with Rio de Janeiro, Brazil regarding the 2016 Summer Olympics. He faced criticism in 2012 for advising people once allied with Slobodan Milošević who had lauded Serbian war criminals.
Bracewell & Giuliani
In 2005, Giuliani joined the law firm of Bracewell & Patterson LLP (renamed Bracewell & Giuliani LLP) as a name partner and basis for the expanding firm's new New York office. When he joined the Texas-based firm he brought Marc Mukasey, the son of Attorney General Michael Mukasey, into the firm.
Despite a busy schedule, Giuliani was highly active in the day-to-day business of the law firm, which was a high-profile supplier of legal and lobbying services to the oil, gas, and energy industries. Its aggressive defense of pollution-causing coal-fired power plants threatened to cause political risk for Giuliani, but association with the firm helped Giuliani achieve fund-raising success in Texas. In 2006, Giuliani acted as the lead counsel and lead spokesmen for Bracewell & Giuliani client Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, during their negotiations with federal prosecutors over charges that the pharmaceutical company misled the public about OxyContin's addictive properties. The agreement reached resulted in Purdue Pharma and some of its executives paying $634.5million in fines.
Bracewell & Giuliani represented corporate clients before many U.S. government departments and agencies. Some clients have worked with corporations and foreign governments.
Giuliani left the firm in January 2016, by "amicable agreement", and the firm was rebranded as Bracewell LLP.
Greenberg Traurig
In January 2016, Giuliani moved to the law firm Greenberg Traurig, where he served as the global chairman for Greenberg's cybersecurity and crisis management group, as well as a senior advisor to the firm's executive chairman. In April 2018, he took an unpaid leave of absence when he joined Trump's legal defense team. He resigned from the firm on May 9, 2018.
Lobbying in Romania
In August 2018, Giuliani was retained by Freeh Group International Solutions, a global consulting firm run by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, which paid him a fee to lobby Romanian president Klaus Iohannis to change Romania's anti-corruption policy and reduce the role of the National Anticorruption Directorate. Giuliani argued that the anti-corruption efforts had gone too far.
Podcast
In January 2020, Giuliani launched a podcast, Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
Personal life
Marriages and relationships
Giuliani married Regina Peruggi, whom he had known since childhood, on October 26, 1968. The marriage was in trouble by the mid-1970s and they agreed to a trial separation in 1975. Peruggi did not accompany him to Washington when he accepted the job in the Attorney General's Office. Giuliani met local television personality Donna Hanover sometime in 1982, and they began dating when she was working in Miami. Giuliani filed for legal separation from Peruggi on August 12, 1982. The Giuliani-Peruggi marriage legally ended in two ways: a civil divorce was issued by the end of 1982, while a Roman Catholic church annulment of the marriage was granted at the end of 1983, reportedly because Giuliani had discovered that he and Peruggi were second cousins. Alan Placa, Giuliani's best man, later became a priest and helped secure the annulment. Giuliani and Peruggi had no children.
Giuliani married Hanover in a Catholic ceremony at St. Monica's Church in Manhattan on April 15, 1984. They had two children, Andrew and Caroline Rose, who is a filmmaker in the LGBTQ+ community and has described herself as "multiverses apart" from her father.
Giuliani was still married to Hanover in May 1999 when he met Judith Nathan, a sales manager for a pharmaceutical company, at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar. By 1996, Donna Hanover had reverted to her professional name and virtually stopped appearing in public with her husband amid rumors of marital problems. Nathan and Giuliani formed an ongoing relationship. In summer 1999, Giuliani charged the costs for his NYPD security detail to obscure city agencies in order to keep his relationship with Nathan from public scrutiny. The police department began providing Nathan with city-provided chauffeur services in early 2000.
By March 2000, Giuliani had stopped wearing his wedding ring. The appearances that he and Nathan made at functions and events became publicly visible, although they were not mentioned in the press. The Daily News and the New York Post both broke news of Giuliani's relationship with Nathan in early May 2000. Giuliani first publicly acknowledged her on May 3, 2000, when he said Judith was his "very good friend".
On May 10, 2000, Giuliani held a press conference to announce that he intended to separate from Hanover. Giuliani had not informed Hanover about his plans before the press conference. This was an omission for which Giuliani was widely criticized. Giuliani then went on to praise Nathan as a "very, very fine woman" and said about Hanover that "over the course of some period of time in many ways, we've grown to live independent and separate lives." Hours later Hanover said, "I had hoped that we could keep this marriage together. For several years, it was difficult to participate in Rudy's public life because of his relationship with one staff member."
Giuliani moved out of Gracie Mansion by August 2001 and into an apartment with a couple he was friends with. Giuliani filed for divorce from Hanover in October 2000, and a public battle broke out between their representatives. Nathan was barred by court order from entering Gracie Mansion or meeting his children before the divorce was final.
In May 2001, Giuliani's attorney revealed that Giuliani was impotent due to prostate cancer treatments and had not had sex with Nathan for the preceding year. "You don't get through treatment for cancer and radiation all by yourself," Giuliani said. "You need people to help you and care for you and support you. And I'm very fortunate I had a lot of people who did that, but nobody did more to help me than Judith Nathan." In a court case, Giuliani argued that he planned to introduce Nathan to his children on Father's Day 2001 and that Hanover had prevented this visit. Giuliani and Hanover finally settled their divorce case in July 2002 after his mayoralty had ended, with Giuliani paying Hanover a $6.8million settlement and granting her custody of their children. Giuliani married Nathan on May 24, 2003, and gained a stepdaughter, Whitney. It was also Nathan's third marriage after two divorces.
By March 2007, The New York Times and the Daily News reported that Giuliani had become estranged from both his son Andrew and his daughter Caroline. In 2014, he said his relationship with his children was better than ever, and was spotted eating and playing golf with Andrew.
Nathan filed for divorce from Giuliani on April 4, 2018, after 15 years of marriage. According to an interview with New York magazine, "For a variety of reasons that I know as a spouse and a nurse... he has become a different man." The divorce was settled on December 10, 2019.
In October 2020, following myriad joint public appearances, Giuliani confirmed that he is in a relationship with Maria Ryan, a nurse practitioner and hospital administrator whom his ex-wife Nathan has alleged to have been his mistress for an indeterminate period during their marriage. As of 2018, Ryan was married to United States Marine Corps veteran Robert Ryan, with Giuliani characterizing the couple as platonic friends in response to contemporaneous press inquiries.
Prostate cancer
In April 1981, Giuliani's father died, at age 73, of prostate cancer, at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center. 19 years later, in April 2000, Giuliani, then aged 55, was diagnosed with prostate cancer following a prostate biopsy, after an elevated screening PSA. Giuliani chose a combination prostate cancer treatment consisting of four months of neoadjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy, then low dose-rate prostate brachytherapy with permanent implantation of ninety TheraSeed radioactive palladium-103 seeds in his prostate in September 2000, followed two months later by five weeks of fifteen-minute, five-days-a-week external beam radiotherapy at Mount Sinai Medical Center, with five months of adjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy.
COVID-19
On December 6, 2020, Trump announced that Giuliani had contracted COVID-19. Giuliani was admitted to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital the same day. He was discharged from the hospital on December 9.
It was unclear when he received the positive test. In the days leading up to the announcement, Giuliani had been to multiple indoor hearings without wearing a mask, and requested that others remove their masks. The Arizona Legislature closed for one week starting on December 7, 2020, as 15 current and future members had met with Giuliani. He had also met with Republican legislators in Michigan and Georgia, potentially exposing them.
Religious beliefs
Giuliani has declined to comment publicly on his religious practice and beliefs, although he identifies religion as an important part of his life. When asked if he is a practicing Catholic, Giuliani answered, "My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not-so-good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests."
Television appearances
Giuliani was reportedly revealed to be the first unmasking on the seventh season of The Masked Singer, which caused judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke to storm off the set.
Awards and honors
In 1998, Giuliani received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York".
House of Savoy: Knight Grand Cross (motu proprio) of the Order of Merit of Savoy (December 2001)
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2001
In 2002, the Episcopal Diocese of New York gave Giuliani the Fiorello LaGuardia Public Service Award for Valor and Leadership in the Time of Global Crisis.
Also in 2002, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan awarded Giuliani the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award.
In 2002, he received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually byJefferson Awards.
In 2003, Giuliani received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award
In 2004, construction began on the Rudolph W. Giuliani Trauma Center at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York.
In 2005, Giuliani received honorary degrees from Loyola College in Maryland and Middlebury College. In 2007, Giuliani received an honorary Doctorate in Public Administration from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. In 2021, Middlebury announced that it was revoking the degree given to Giuliani.
In 2006, Rudy and Judith Giuliani were honored by the American Heart Association at its annual Heart of the Hamptons benefit in Water Mill, New York.
In 2007, Giuliani was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), receiving the NIAF Special Achievement Award for Public Service.
In 2007, Giuliani was awarded the Margaret Thatcher Medal of Freedom by the Atlantic Bridge.
In the 2009 graduation ceremony for Drexel University's Earle Mack School of Law, Giuliani was the keynote speaker and recipient of an honorary degree. In 2021, Drexel announced that it was rescinding the degree.
Giuliani was the Robert C. Vance Distinguished Lecturer at Central Connecticut State University in 2013.
Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa, University of Rhode Island, 2003 (revoked January 2022)
Media references
In 1993, Giuliani made a cameo appearance as himself in the Seinfeld episode "The Non-Fat Yogurt", which is a fictionalized account of the 1993 mayoral election. Giuliani's scenes were filmed the morning after his real world election.
In 2003, Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story was released starring actor James Woods as Giuliani.
In 2018, Giuliani was portrayed multiple times on Saturday Night Live by Kate McKinnon. McKinnon continued portraying him in 2019.
In 2020, Giuliani made a cameo appearance on a Netflix true crime limited series' Fear City: New York vs The Mafia, talking about his role in leading the 1980s federal prosecution of the Five Families.
In 2020, Giuliani made an unwitting appearance in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. In the mockumentary film, Giuliani agrees to an interview with Borat's "daughter", Tutar (played by actress Maria Bakalova), who is disguised as a reporter. When invited to Tutar's hotel room, Giuliani proceeds to lie on her bed and reach inside his trousers; they are immediately interrupted by Borat, who says: "She 15. She too old for you." Giuliani later disregarded the accusation, calling it a "complete fabrication" and saying he was rather "tucking in [his] shirt after taking off the recording equipment". In 2021, Giuliani won two Razzie awards for his part in the film – for Worst Supporting Actor and, with his pants zipper for Worst Screen Combo.
See also
Disputes surrounding the 2020 United States presidential election results
Electoral history of Rudy Giuliani
Political positions of Rudy Giuliani
Public image of Rudy Giuliani
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Timeline of New York City, 1990s–2000s
References
Further reading
Barrett, Wayne, (2000). Rudy!: An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani. Basic Books; (Reprint by Diane Publishing Co.).
Brodeur, Christopher X. (2002). Perverted Little Creep: Mayor Giuliani vs Mayor Brodeur. ExtremeNY books, .
Dinkins, David N.; Knobler, Peter (2013). A Mayor's Life: Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic. PublicAffairs,
Gonzalez, Juan, (2002). Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse. New Press, .
Koch, Edward I. (1999). Giuliani: Nasty Man. Barricade Books. .
Mandery, Evan (1999). The Campaign: Rudy Giuliani, Ruth Messinger, Al Sharpton, and the Race to Be Mayor of New York City. Westview Press, .
Newfield, Jack, (2003). The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania. Thunder's Mouth Press, .
Paterson, David "Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity."Skyhorse Publishing. New York, New York, 2020.
Polner, Robert, (2005). America's Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani's New York. Soft Skull Press, .
Polner, Robert, (2007). America's Mayor, America's President? The Strange Career of Rudy Giuliani. [Preface by Jimmy Breslin] Soft Skull Press, .
External links
La Guardia and Wagner Archives/The Giuliani Collection
TPM infographic: Tracking Rudy Giuliani's Foreign Dealings
Suspension of Giuliani's New York State law license — Attorney Grievance Committee for the Supreme Court of the State of New York Appellate Division
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Donald Trump litigation
Golden Raspberry Award winners
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Knights of the Order of Merit of Savoy
Living people
Manhattan College alumni
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Trump–Ukraine scandal
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United States Attorneys for the Southern District of New York
Candidates in the 2008 United States presidential election
Writers from Brooklyn | false | [
"Brent Harding (born March 3, 1967) is an American musician who is the current bass player for the California punk group Social Distortion, which he joined in early 2005.\n\nBiography\nHarding joined Social Distortion in January 2005, replacing temporary bass player, Matt Freeman, who is best known for working as the bass player of Rancid. His first recording with the band was re-recordings of their older material and \"Far Behind\", which appear on their 2007 Greatest Hits album. He also appeared on the band's seventh studio album Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes, which was released in January 2011. This would be the band's first proper studio album with Harding.\n\nPrior to joining Social Distortion, Harding was the bass player for Social Distortion frontman Mike Ness during his Cheating at Solitaire tour and recorded with Ness on his second solo offering Under the Influences. His previous bands include Deke Dickerson And The Ecco-Fonics, The Eugene Edwards Band, The Lucky Stars, The Sleepwalkers and The What-Me Worry? Jug Band. He also plays stand up bass for an insurgent bluegrass band called [http://www.whiskeychimpband.com Whiskey Chimp in his home town of Ventura, CA. He appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien while playing bass with Mike Ness Band.\n\nSummer of 2007 saw the birth of Harding's newest project, The Steeplejacks. Along with Harding, the band consists of Jonny Wickersham (Social Distortion, U.S. Bombs and Youth Brigade) on guitar, Sam Bolle (Fear, Dick Dale, Agent Orange) on stand up bass, Toby Emery (Raging Arb and the Redheads, Jackass) on mandolin and guitar and Bill Flores (The Rincon Ramblers, Louie Ortega) on pedal steel, fiddle and accordion. Harding plays guitar and drums with the Steeplejacks.\n\nSelected discography\n\nSocial Distortion\n Greatest Hits (2007)\n Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes (2011)\n\nMike Ness\n Under the Influences (1999)\n\nBig Bad Voodoo Daddy\n Everything You Want For Christmas (2004)\n\nDeke Dickerson and the Eccofonics\n Rhythm, Rhyme & Truth (2000)\n My Name is Deke (2004)\n More Million Sellers (1999)\n Mister Entertainment (2003)\n \"Number One Hit Record\" (1998)\n\nRod McKuen\n Beatsville (2002)\n\nAmy Ferris\n Anything (2004)\n\nWhiskey Chimp\n Naranja (2004)\n Ventura (2006)\n\nReferences\n\nLiving people\n1967 births\nAmerican punk rock bass guitarists\nAmerican male bass guitarists\nSocial Distortion members\nAmerican bass guitarists\nAmerican double-bassists\nMale double-bassists\nAmerican male guitarists\nSlap bassists (double bass)\n20th-century American guitarists\n21st-century double-bassists",
"\"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"
] |
[
"Rudy Giuliani",
"Appointees as defendants",
"How many appointees acted as defendants?",
"In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding,",
"Did he appoint anyone else?",
"In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury",
"how many defendants were there?",
"Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign.",
"What was he on trial for?",
"Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009, in a New York district court, to eight federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements,",
"What was Russell Harding on the stand for?",
"In 2005, Harding pleaded guilty to defrauding the Housing Development Corporation and to possession of child pornography."
] | C_7a9b28f537444b1fa4b7ec7d83b31da1_1 | Were there other defendants? | 6 | Besides Russell Harding, were there other defendants? | Rudy Giuliani | Several of Giuliani's appointees to head City agencies became defendants in criminal proceedings. In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding, to head the New York City Housing Development Corporation, although Harding had neither a college degree nor relevant experience. In 2005, Harding pleaded guilty to defrauding the Housing Development Corporation and to possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Russell Harding committed suicide in 2012. In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury after lying to a grand jury about a car that Harding bought for him with City funds. Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign. Giuliani appointed him as the Commissioner of the Department of Correction and then as the Police Commissioner. Giuliani was also the godfather to Kerik's two youngest children. After Giuliani left office, Kerik was subject to state and federal investigations resulting in his pleading guilty in 2006, in a Bronx Supreme Court, to two unrelated ethics violations. Kerik was ordered to pay $221,000 in fines. Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009, in a New York district court, to eight federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements, and on February 18, 2010, he was sentenced to four years in federal prison. Giuliani was not implicated in any of the proceedings. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and disbarred attorney who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 1983 and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989.
Giuliani led the 1980s federal prosecution of New York City mafia bosses as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. After a failed campaign for Mayor of New York City in the 1989 election, he succeeded in 1993, and was reelected in 1997, campaigning on a "tough on crime" platform. He led New York's controversial "civic cleanup" as its mayor from 1994 to 2001. Mayor Giuliani appointed an outsider, William Bratton, as New York City's new police commissioner. Reforming the police department's administration and policing practices, they applied the broken windows theory, which cites social disorder, like disrepair and vandalism, for attracting loitering addicts, panhandlers, and prostitutes, followed by serious and violent criminals. In particular, Giuliani focused on removing panhandlers and sex clubs from Times Square, promoting a "family values" vibe and a return to the area's earlier focus on business, theater, and the arts. As crime rates fell steeply, well ahead of the national average pace, Giuliani was widely credited, though later critics cite other contributing factors. In 2000, he ran against First Lady Hillary Clinton for a US Senate seat from New York, but left the race once diagnosed with prostate cancer. For his mayoral leadership after the September11 attacks in 2001, he was called "America's mayor". He was named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2001, and was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
In 2002, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners, and acquired, but later sold, an investment banking firm, Giuliani Capital Advisors. In 2005, he joined a law firm, renamed Bracewell & Giuliani. Vying for the Republican Party's 2008 presidential nomination, Giuliani was an early frontrunner, yet did poorly in the primary election, withdrew, and endorsed the party's subsequent nominee, John McCain. Declining to run for New York governor in 2010 and for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, Giuliani focused on the activities of his business firms. In addition, he has often been engaged for public speaking, political commentary, and Republican campaign support.
Giuliani joined President Donald Trump's personal legal team in April 2018. His activities as Trump's attorney have drawn renewed media scrutiny, including allegations that he engaged in corruption and profiteering. In late 2019, Giuliani was reportedly under federal investigation for violating lobbying laws, and possibly several other charges, as a central figure in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which resulted in Trump's first impeachment. Following the 2020 presidential election, he represented Trump in many lawsuits filed in attempts to overturn the election results, making false and debunked allegations about rigged voting machines, polling place fraud, and an international communist conspiracy. As a consequence, his license to practice law was suspended in New York State in June 2021 and in the District of Columbia in July 2021.
Early life
Giuliani was born in the East Flatbush section, then an Italian-American enclave, in New York City's borough of Brooklyn, the only child of working-class parents Helen (née D'Avanzo; 1909–2002) and Harold Angelo Giuliani (1908–1981), both children of Italian immigrants. Giuliani is of Tuscan descent on his father's side, as his paternal grandparents (Rodolfo and Evangelina Giuliani) were born in Montecatini Terme, Tuscany, Italy. He was raised a Roman Catholic. Harold Giuliani, a plumber and a bartender, had trouble holding a job, was convicted of felony assault and robbery, and served prison time in Sing Sing. Once released, he worked as an enforcer for his brother-in-law Leo D'Avanzo, who operated an organized crime-affiliated loan sharking and gambling ring at a restaurant in Brooklyn. The couple lived in East Flatbush until Harold died of prostate cancer in 1981, whereupon Helen moved to Manhattan's Upper East Side.
When Giuliani was seven years old in 1951, his family moved from Brooklyn to Garden City South, where he attended the local Catholic school, St. Anne's. Later, he commuted back to Brooklyn to attend Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, graduating in 1961.
Giuliani attended Manhattan College in Riverdale, Bronx, where he majored in political science with a minor in philosophy and considered becoming a priest.
Giuliani was elected president of his class in his sophomore year, but was not re-elected in his junior year. He joined the Phi Rho Pi college forensic fraternity and honor society. He graduated in 1965. Giuliani decided to forgo the priesthood and instead attended the New York University School of Law in Manhattan, where he made the NYU Law Review and graduated cum laude with a Juris Doctor degree in 1968.
Giuliani started his political life as a Democrat. He volunteered for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968. He also worked as a Democratic Party committeeman on Long Island in the mid-1960s and voted for George McGovern for president in 1972.
Legal career
Upon graduation from law school, Giuliani clerked for Judge Lloyd Francis MacMahon, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.
Giuliani did not serve in the military during the Vietnam War. His conscription was deferred while he was enrolled at Manhattan College and NYU Law. Upon graduation from the latter in 1968, he was classified 1-A (available for military service), but in 1969 he was reclassified 2-A (essential civilian) as Judge MacMahon's law clerk. In 1970, Giuliani was reclassified 1-A but received a high 308 draft lottery number and was not called up for service.
Giuliani switched his party registration from Democratic to Independent in 1975. This occurred during a period of time in which he was recruited for a position in Washington, D.C. with the Ford administration: Giuliani served as the Associate Deputy Attorney General and chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Harold "Ace" Tyler.
His first high-profile prosecution was of Democratic U.S. Representative Bertram L. Podell (NY-13), who was convicted of corruption. Podell pleaded guilty to conspiracy and conflict of interest for accepting more than $41,000 in campaign contributions and legal fees from a Florida airline to obtain federal rights for a Bahama route. Podell, who maintained a legal practice while serving in Congress, said the payments were legitimate legal fees. The Washington Post later reported: "The trial catapulted future New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani to front-page status when, as assistant U.S. attorney, he relentlessly cross-examined an initially calm Rep. Podell. The congressman reportedly grew more flustered and eventually decided to plead guilty."
From 1977 to 1981, during the Carter administration, Giuliani practiced law at the Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler law firm, as chief of staff to his former boss, Ace Tyler. In later years, Tyler became "disillusioned" by what Tyler described as Giuliani's time as US Attorney, criticizing several of his prosecutions as "overkill".
On December 8, 1980, one month after the election of Ronald Reagan brought Republicans back to power in Washington, he switched his party affiliation from Independent to Republican. Giuliani later said the switches were because he found Democratic policies "naïve", and that "by the time I moved to Washington, the Republicans had come to make more sense to me." Others suggested that the switches were made in order to get positions in the Justice Department. Giuliani's mother maintained in 1988 that he "only became a Republican after he began to get all these jobs from them. He's definitely not a conservative Republican. He thinks he is, but he isn't. He still feels very sorry for the poor."
In 1981, Giuliani was named Associate Attorney General in the Reagan administration, the third-highest position in the Department of Justice. As Associate Attorney General, Giuliani supervised the U.S. Attorney Offices' federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the United States Marshals Service. In a well-publicized 1982 case, Giuliani testified in defense of the federal government's "detention posture" regarding the internment of more than 2,000 Haitian asylum seekers who had entered the country illegally. The U.S. government disputed the assertion that most of the detainees had fled their country due to political persecution, alleging instead that they were "economic migrants". In defense of the government's position, Giuliani testified that "political repression, at least in general, does not exist" under President of Haiti Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime.
In 1983, Giuliani was appointed to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which was technically a demotion but was sought by Giuliani because of his desire to personally litigate cases and because the SDNY is considered the highest profile United States Attorney's Office in the country, and as such, is often used by those who have held the position as a springboard for running for public office. It was in this position that he first gained national prominence by prosecuting numerous high-profile cases, resulting in the convictions of Wall Street figures Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. He also focused on prosecuting drug dealers, organized crime, and corruption in government. He amassed a record of 4,152 convictions and 25 reversals. As a federal prosecutor, Giuliani was credited with bringing the perp walk, parading of suspects in front of the previously alerted media, into common use as a prosecutorial tool. After Giuliani "patented the perp walk", the tool was used by increasing numbers of prosecutors nationwide.
Giuliani's critics claimed that he arranged for people to be arrested, then dropped charges for lack of evidence on high-profile cases rather than going to trial. In a few cases, his arrests of alleged white-collar criminals at their workplaces with charges later dropped or lessened, sparked controversy, and damaged the reputations of the alleged "perps". He claimed veteran stock trader Richard Wigton, of Kidder, Peabody & Co., was guilty of insider trading; in February 1987, he had officers handcuff Wigton and march him through the company's trading floor, with Wigton in tears. Giuliani had his agents arrest Tim Tabor, a young arbitrageur and former colleague of Wigton, so late that he had to stay overnight in jail before posting bond.
Within three months, charges were dropped against both Wigton and Tabor; Giuliani said, "We're not going to go to trial. We're just the tip of the iceberg," but no further charges were forthcoming and the investigation did not end until Giuliani's successor was in place. Giuliani's high-profile raid of the Princeton/Newport firm ended with the defendants having their cases overturned on appeal on the grounds that what they had been convicted of were not crimes.
Mafia Commission trial
In the Mafia Commission Trial, which ran from February 25, 1985, through November 19, 1986, Giuliani indicted eleven organized crime figures, including the heads of New York City's so-called "Five Families", under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) on charges including extortion, labor racketeering, and murder for hire. Time magazine called this "Case of Cases" possibly "the most significant assault on the infrastructure of organized crime since the high command of the Chicago Mafia was swept away in 1943", and quoted Giuliani's stated intention: "Our approach is to wipe out the five families." Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano evaded conviction when he and his underboss, Thomas Bilotti, were murdered on the streets of Midtown Manhattan on December 16, 1985. However, three heads of the Five Families were sentenced to 100 years in prison on January 13, 1987. Genovese and Colombo leaders, Tony Salerno and Carmine Persico received additional sentences in separate trials, with 70-year and 39-year sentences to run consecutively. He was assisted by three Assistant United States Attorneys: Michael Chertoff, the eventual second United States Secretary of Homeland Security and co-author of the Patriot Act; John Savarese, now a partner at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz; and Gil Childers, a later deputy chief of the criminal division for the Southern District of New York and now managing director in the legal department at Goldman Sachs.
According to an FBI memo revealed in 2007, leaders of the Five Families voted in late 1986 on whether to issue a contract for Giuliani's death. Heads of the Lucchese, Bonanno, and Genovese families rejected the idea, though Colombo and Gambino leaders, Carmine Persico and John Gotti, encouraged assassination. In 2014, it was revealed by a former Sicilian Mafia member and informant, Rosario Naimo, that Salvatore Riina, a notorious Sicilian Mafia leader, had ordered a murder contract on Giuliani during the mid-1980s. Riina allegedly was suspicious of Giuliani's efforts prosecuting the American Mafia and was worried that he might have spoken with Italian anti-mafia prosecutors and politicians, including Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who were both murdered in 1992 in separate car bombings. According to Giuliani, the Sicilian Mafia offered $800,000 for his death during his first year as mayor of New York in 1994.
Boesky, Milken trials
Ivan Boesky, a Wall Street arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of about $200million by betting on corporate takeovers, was originally investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for making investments based on tips received from corporate insiders, leading the way for the US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York to investigate as well. These stock and options acquisitions were sometimes brazen, with massive purchases occurring only a few days before a corporation announced a takeover. Although insider trading of this kind was illegal, laws prohibiting it were rarely enforced until Boesky was prosecuted. Boesky cooperated with the SEC and informed on several others, including junk bond trader Michael Milken. Per agreement with Giuliani, Boesky received a -year prison sentence along with a $100million fine. In 1989, Giuliani charged Milken under the RICO Act with 98 counts of racketeering and fraud. In a highly publicized case, Milken was indicted by a grand jury on these charges.
Mayoral campaigns
Giuliani was U.S. Attorney until January 1989, resigning as the Reagan administration ended. He garnered criticism until he left office for his handling of cases, and was accused of prosecuting cases to further his political ambitions. He joined the law firm White & Case in New York City as a partner. He remained with White & Case until May 1990, when he joined the law firm Anderson Kill Olick & Oshinsky, also in New York City.
1989
Giuliani first ran for New York City mayor in 1989, when he attempted to unseat three-term incumbent Ed Koch. He won the September 1989 Republican Party primary election against business magnate Ronald Lauder, in a campaign marked by claims that Giuliani was not a true Republican after an acrimonious debate between the two men. In the Democratic primary, Koch was upset by Manhattan Borough president David Dinkins.
In the general election, Giuliani ran as the fusion candidate of both the Republican and the Liberal parties. The Conservative Party, which had often co-lined the Republican party candidate, withheld support from Giuliani and ran Lauder instead. Conservative Party leaders were unhappy with Giuliani on ideological grounds. They cited the Liberal Party's endorsement statement that Giuliani "agreed with the Liberal Party's views on affirmative action, gay rights, gun control, school prayer and tuition tax credits".
During two televised debates, Giuliani framed himself as an agent of change, saying, "I'm the reformer," that "If we keep going merrily along, this city's going down," and that electing Dinkins would represent "more of the same, more of the rotten politics that have been dragging us down". Giuliani pointed out that Dinkins had not filed a tax return for many years and of several other ethical missteps, in particular a stock transfer to his son. Dinkins filed several years of returns and said the tax matter had been fully paid off. He denied other wrongdoing, saying "what we need is a mayor, not a prosecutor," and that Giuliani refused to say "the R-wordhe doesn't like to admit he's a Republican". Dinkins won the endorsements of three of the four daily New York newspapers, while Giuliani won approval from the New York Post.
In the end, Giuliani lost to Dinkins by a margin of 47,080 votes out of 1,899,845 votes cast, in the closest election in New York City's history. The closeness of the race was particularly noteworthy considering the small percentage of New York City residents who are registered Republicans and resulted in Giuliani being the presumptive nominee for a rematch with Dinkins at the next election.
1993
Four years after his defeat to Dinkins, Giuliani again ran for mayor. Once again, Giuliani also ran on the Liberal Party line but not the Conservative Party line, which ran activist George Marlin.
Although crime had begun to fall during the Dinkins administration, Giuliani's campaign capitalized on the perception that crime was uncontrolled in the city following events such as the Crown Heights riot and the Family Red Apple boycott. The year prior to the election, Giuliani was a key speaker at a Patrolmen's Benevolent Association rally opposing Dinkins, in which Giuliani blamed the police department's low morale on Dinkins' leadership. The rally quickly devolved into a riot, with nearly 4,000 off-duty police officers storming the City Hall and blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.
In his pitch to lower crime rates in the city, Giuliani promised to focus police resources toward shutting down petty crimes and nuisances as a way of restoring the quality of life:
Dinkins and Giuliani never debated during the campaign, because they were never able to agree on how to approach a debate. Dinkins was endorsed by The New York Times and Newsday, while Giuliani was endorsed by the New York Post and, in a key switch from 1989, the Daily News. Giuliani went to visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, seeking his blessing and endorsement.
On election day, Giuliani's campaign hired off-duty cops, firefighters, and corrections officers to monitor polling places in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and The Bronx for cases of voter fraud. Despite objections from the Dinkins campaign, who claimed that the effort would intimidate Democratic voters, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly assigned an additional 52 police captains and 3,500 officers to monitor the city's polling places.
Giuliani won by a margin of 53,367 votes. He became the first Republican elected Mayor of New York City since John Lindsay in 1965. Similar to the election four years prior, Giuliani performed particularly well in the white ethnic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Giuliani saw especially high returns in the borough of Staten Island, as a referendum to consider allowing the borough to secede from New York City was on the ballot.
1997
Giuliani's opponent in 1997 was Democratic Manhattan Borough president Ruth Messinger, who had beaten Al Sharpton in the September 9, 1997 Democratic primary. In the general election, Giuliani once again had the Liberal Party and not the Conservative Party listing. Giuliani ran an aggressive campaign, parlaying his image as a tough leader who had cleaned up the city. Giuliani's popularity was at its highest point to date, with a late October 1997 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showing him as having a 68 percent approval rating; 70 percent of New Yorkers were satisfied with life in the city and 64 percent said things were better in the city compared to four years previously.
Throughout the campaign he was well ahead in the polls and had a strong fund-raising advantage over Messinger. On her part, Messinger lost the support of several usually Democratic constituencies, including gay organizations and large labor unions. The local daily newspapersThe New York Times, Daily News, New York Post and Newsdayall endorsed Giuliani over Messinger.
In the end, Giuliani won 58% of the vote to Messinger's 41%, and became the first registered Republican to win a second term as mayor while on the Republican line since Fiorello H. La Guardia in 1941. Voter turnout was the lowest in twelve years, with 38% of registered voters casting ballots. The margin of victory included gains in his share of the African American vote (20% compared to 1993's 5%) and the Hispanic vote (43% from 37%) while maintaining his base of white ethnic, Catholic and Jewish voters from 1993.
Mayoralty
Giuliani served as mayor of New York City from 1994 through 2001.
Law enforcement
In Giuliani's first term as mayor, the New York City Police Departmentat the instigation of Commissioner Bill Brattonadopted an aggressive enforcement/deterrent strategy based on James Q. Wilson's "Broken Windows" approach. This involved crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as graffiti, turnstile jumping, cannabis possession, and aggressive panhandling by "squeegee men", on the theory that this would send a message that order would be maintained. The legal underpinning for removing the "squeegee men" from the streets was developed under Giuliani's predecessor, Mayor David Dinkins. Bratton, with Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple, also created and instituted CompStat, a computer-driven comparative statistical approach to mapping crime geographically and in terms of emerging criminal patterns, as well as charting officer performance by quantifying criminal apprehensions. Critics of the system assert that it creates an environment in which police officials are encouraged to underreport or otherwise manipulate crime data. An extensive study found a high correlation between crime rates reported by the police through CompStat and rates of crime available from other sources, suggesting there had been no manipulation. The CompStat initiative won the 1996 Innovations in Government Award from the Kennedy School of Government.
During Giuliani's administration, crime rates dropped in New York City. The extent to which Giuliani deserves the credit is disputed. Crime rates in New York City had started to drop in 1991 under previous mayor David Dinkins, three years before Giuliani took office. The rates of most crimes, including all categories of violent crime, made consecutive declines during the last 36 months of Dinkins's four-year term, ending a 30-year upward spiral. A small nationwide drop in crime preceded Giuliani's election, and some critics say he may have been the beneficiary of a trend already in progress. Additional contributing factors to the overall decline in New York City crime during the 1990s were the addition of 7,000 officers to the NYPD, lobbied for and hired by the Dinkins administration, and an overall improvement in the national economy. Changing demographics were a key factor contributing to crime rate reductions, which were similar across the country during this time. Because the crime index is based on that of the FBI, which is self-reported by police departments, some have alleged that crimes were shifted into categories the FBI does not collect.
Some studies conclude that the decline in New York City's crime rate in the 1990s and 2000s exceeds all national figures and therefore should be linked with a local dynamic that was not present as such anywhere else in the country: what University of California, Berkeley sociologist Frank Zimring calls "the most focused form of policing in history". In his book The Great American Crime Decline, Zimring argues that "up to half of New York's crime drop in the 1990s, and virtually 100 percent of its continuing crime decline since 2000, has resulted from policing."
Bratton was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1996. Giuliani reportedly forced Bratton out after two years, in what was seen as a battle of two large egos in which Giuliani was not tolerant of Bratton's celebrity. Bratton went on to become chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Giuliani's term also saw allegations of civil rights abuses and other police misconduct under other commissioners after Bratton's departure. There were police shootings of unarmed suspects, and the scandals surrounding the torture of Abner Louima and the killings of Amadou Diallo, Gidone Busch and Patrick Dorismond. Giuliani supported the New York City Police Department, for example by releasing what he called Dorismond's "extensive criminal record" to the public, including a sealed juvenile file.
City services
The Giuliani administration advocated the privatization of the city's public schools, which he called "dysfunctional", and advocated the reduction of state funding for them. He advocated for a voucher-based system to promote private schooling. Giuliani supported protection for illegal immigrants. He continued a policy of preventing city employees from contacting the Immigration and Naturalization Service about immigration violations, on the grounds that illegal aliens should be able to take actions such as sending their children to school or reporting crimes to the police without fear of deportation.
During his mayoralty, gay and lesbian New Yorkers received domestic partnership rights. Giuliani induced the city's Democratic-controlled New York City Council, which had avoided the issue for years, to pass legislation providing broad protection for same-sex partners. In 1998, he codified local law by granting all city employees equal benefits for their domestic partners.
2000 U.S. Senate campaign
Due to term limits, Giuliani was ineligible to run in 2001 for a third term as mayor. In November 1998, four-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement and Giuliani immediately indicated an interest in running in the 2000 election for the now-open seat. Due to his high profile and visibility Giuliani was supported by the state Republican Party. Giuliani's entrance led Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel and others to recruit then-First Lady Hillary Clinton to run for Moynihan's seat, hoping she might combat his star power.
An early January 1999 poll showed Giuliani trailing Clinton by ten points. In April 1999, Giuliani formed an exploratory committee in connection with the Senate run. By January 2000, polling for the race dramatically reversed, with Giuliani now pulling nine points ahead of Clinton, in part because his campaign was able to take advantage of several campaign stumbles by Clinton. Nevertheless, the Giuliani campaign was showing some structural weaknesses; so closely identified with New York City, he had somewhat limited appeal to normally Republican voters in Upstate New York. The New York Police Department's fatal shooting of Patrick Dorismond in March 2000 inflamed Giuliani's already strained relations with the city's minority communities, and Clinton seized on it as a major campaign issue. By April 2000, reports showed Clinton gaining upstate and generally outworking Giuliani, who said his duties as mayor prevented him from campaigning more. Clinton was now eight to ten points ahead of Giuliani in the polls.
Then followed four tumultuous weeks in which Giuliani learned he had prostate cancer and needed treatment; his extramarital relationship with Judith Nathan became public and the subject of a media frenzy; and he announced a separation from his wife Donna Hanover. After much indecision, on May 19, Giuliani announced his withdrawal from the Senate race.
September 11 terrorist attacks
Response
Giuliani received nationwide attention in the aftermath of the September11 attacks. He made frequent appearances on radio and television on September11 and afterwardsfor example, to indicate that tunnels would be closed as a precautionary measure, and that there was no reason to believe the dispersion of chemical or biological weaponry into the air was a factor in the attack. In his public statements, Giuliani said:
The 9/11 attacks occurred on the scheduled date of the mayoral primary to select the Democratic and Republican candidates to succeed Giuliani. The primary was immediately delayed two weeks to September 25. During this period, Giuliani sought an unprecedented three-month emergency extension of his term from January1 to April1 under the New York State Constitution (Article3 Section 25). He threatened to challenge the law imposing term limits on elected city officials and run for another full four-year term, if the primary candidates did not consent to the extension of his mayoralty. In the end leaders in the State Assembly and Senate indicated that they did not believe the extension was necessary. The election proceeded as scheduled, and the winning candidate, the Giuliani-endorsed Republican convert Michael Bloomberg, took office on January 1, 2002, per normal custom.
Giuliani claimed to have been at the Ground Zero site "as often, if not more, than most workers... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them." Some 9/11 workers have objected to those claims. While his appointment logs were unavailable for the six days immediately following the attacks, Giuliani logged 29 hours at the site over three months beginning September 17. This contrasted with recovery workers at the site who spent this much time at the site in two to three days.
When Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal suggested the attacks were an indication that the United States "should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause," Giuliani asserted, "There is no moral equivalent for this act. There is no justification for it... And one of the reasons I think this happened is because people were engaged in moral equivalency in not understanding the difference between liberal democracies like the United States, like Israel, and terrorist states and those who condone terrorism. So I think not only are those statements wrong, they're part of the problem." Giuliani subsequently rejected the prince's $10million donation to disaster relief in the aftermath of the attack.
Emergency command center location and communications problems
Giuliani has been widely criticized for his decision to locate the Office of Emergency Management headquarters on the 23rd floor inside the 7 World Trade Center building. Those opposing the decision perceived the office as a target for a terrorist attack in light of the previous terrorist attack against the World Trade Center in 1993. The office was unable to coordinate efforts between police and firefighters properly while evacuating its headquarters. Large tanks of diesel fuel were placed in 7World Trade to power the command center. In May 1997, Giuliani put responsibility for selecting the location on Jerome M. Hauer, who had served under Giuliani from 1996 to 2000 before being appointed by him as New York City's first Director of Emergency Management. Hauer has taken exception to that account in interviews and provided Fox News and New York Magazine with a memo demonstrating that he recommended a location in Brooklyn but was overruled by Giuliani. Television journalist Chris Wallace interviewed Giuliani on May 13, 2007, about his 1997 decision to locate the command center at the World Trade Center. Giuliani laughed during Wallace's questions and said that Hauer recommended the World Trade Center site and claimed that Hauer said the WTC site was the best location. Wallace presented Giuliani a photocopy of Hauer's directive letter. The letter urged Giuliani to locate the command center in Brooklyn, instead of lower Manhattan. The February 1996 memo read, "The [Brooklyn] building is secure and not as visible a target as buildings in Lower Manhattan."
In January 2008, an eight-page memo was revealed which detailed the New York City Police Department's opposition in 1998 to location of the city's emergency command center at the Trade Center site. The Giuliani administration overrode these concerns.
The 9/11 Commission Report noted that lack of preparedness could have led to the deaths of first responders at the scene of the attacks. The Commission noted that the radios in use by the fire department were the same radios which had been criticized for their ineffectiveness following the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. Family members of 9/11 victims have said these radios were a complaint of emergency services responders for years. The radios were not working when Fire Department chiefs ordered the 343 firefighters inside the towers to evacuate, and they remained in the towers as the towers collapsed. However, when Giuliani testified before the 9/11 Commission he said the firefighters ignored the evacuation order out of an effort to save lives. Giuliani testified to the commission, where some family members of responders who had died in the attacks appeared to protest his statements. A 1994 mayoral office study of the radios indicated that they were faulty. Replacement radios were purchased in a $33million no-bid contract with Motorola, and implemented in early 2001. However, the radios were recalled in March 2001 after a probationary firefighter's calls for help at a house fire could not be picked up by others at the scene, leaving firemen with the old analog radios from 1993. A book later published by Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, argued that the commission had not pursued a tough enough line of questioning with Giuliani.
An October 2001 study by the National Institute of Environmental Safety and Health said cleanup workers lacked adequate protective gear.
Public reaction
Giuliani gained international attention in the wake of the attacks and was widely hailed for his leadership role during the crisis. Polls taken just six weeks after the attack showed a 79 percent approval rating among New York City voters. This was a dramatic increase over the 36 percent rating he had received a year earlier, which was an average at the end of a two-term mayorship. Oprah Winfrey called him "America's Mayor" at a 9/11 memorial service held at Yankee Stadium on September 23, 2001. Other voices denied it was the mayor who had pulled the city together. "You didn't bring us together, our pain brought us together and our decency brought us together. We would have come together if Bozo was the mayor," said civil rights activist Al Sharpton, in a statement largely supported by Fernando Ferrer, one of three main candidates for the mayoralty at the end of 2001. "He was a power-hungry person," Sharpton also said.
Giuliani was praised by some for his close involvement with the rescue and recovery efforts, but others argue that "Giuliani has exaggerated the role he played after the terrorist attacks, casting himself as a hero for political gain." Giuliani has collected $11.4million from speaking fees in a single year (with increased demand after the attacks). Before September11, Giuliani's assets were estimated to be somewhat less than $2million, but his net worth could now be as high as 30 times that amount. He has made most of his money since leaving office.
Time Person of the Year
On December 24, 2001, Time magazine named Giuliani its Person of the Year for 2001. Time observed that, before 9/11, Giuliani's public image had been that of a rigid, self-righteous, ambitious politician. After 9/11, and perhaps owing also to his bout with prostate cancer, his public image became that of a man who could be counted on to unite a city in the midst of its greatest crisis. Historian Vincent J. Cannato concluded in September 2006:
Aftermath
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was given an honorary knighthood (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani initially downplayed the health effects arising from the September 11 attacks in the Financial District and lower Manhattan areas in the vicinity of the World Trade Center site. He moved quickly to reopen Wall Street, and it was reopened on September 17. In the first month after the attacks, he said "The air quality is safe and acceptable."
Giuliani took control away from agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, leaving the "largely unknown" city Department of Design and Construction in charge of recovery and cleanup. Documents indicate that the Giuliani administration never enforced federal requirements requiring the wearing of respirators. Concurrently, the administration threatened companies with dismissal if cleanup work slowed. In June 2007, Christie Todd Whitman, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), reportedly said the EPA had pushed for workers at the WTC site to wear respirators but she had been blocked by Giuliani. She said she believed the subsequent lung disease and deaths suffered by WTC responders were a result of these actions. However, former deputy mayor Joe Lhota, then with the Giuliani campaign, replied, "All workers at Ground Zero were instructed repeatedly to wear their respirators."
Giuliani asked the city's Congressional delegation to limit the city's liability for Ground Zero illnesses to a total of $350million. Two years after Giuliani finished his term, FEMA appropriated $1billion to a special insurance fund, called the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company, to protect the city against 9/11 lawsuits.
In February 2007, the International Association of Fire Fighters issued a letter asserting that Giuliani rushed to conclude the recovery effort once gold and silver had been recovered from World Trade Center vaults and thereby prevented the remains of many victims from being recovered: "Mayor Giuliani's actions meant that fire fighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills Landfill," it said, adding: "Hundreds remained entombed in Ground Zero when Giuliani gave up on them." Lawyers for the International Association of Fire Fighters seek to interview Giuliani under oath as part of a federal legal action alleging that New York City negligently dumped body parts and other human remains in the Fresh Kills Landfill.
Post-mayoralty
Politics
Before 2008 election
Since leaving office as mayor, Giuliani has remained politically active by campaigning for Republican candidates for political offices at all levels. When George Pataki became Governor in 1995, this represented the first time the positions of both Mayor and Governor were held simultaneously by Republicans since John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. Giuliani and Pataki were instrumental in bringing the 2004 Republican National Convention to New York City. He was a speaker at the convention, and endorsed President George W. Bush for re-election by recalling that immediately after the World Trade Center towers fell,
Similarly, in June 2006, Giuliani started a website called Solutions America to help elect Republican candidates across the nation.
After campaigning on Bush's behalf in the U.S. presidential election of 2004, he was reportedly the top choice for Secretary of Homeland Security after Tom Ridge's resignation. When suggestions were made that Giuliani's confirmation hearings would be marred by details of his past affairs and scandals, he turned down the offer and instead recommended his friend and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. After the formal announcement of Kerik's nomination, information about Kerik's pastmost notably, that he had ties to organized crime, had failed to properly report gifts he had received, had been sued for sexual harassment and had employed an undocumented alien as a domestic servantbecame known, and Kerik withdrew his nomination.
On March 15, 2006, Congress formed the Iraq Study Group (ISG). This bipartisan ten-person panel, of which Giuliani was one of the members, was charged with assessing the Iraq War and making recommendations. They would eventually unanimously conclude that contrary to Bush administration assertions, "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" and called for "changes in the primary mission" that would allow "the United States to begin to move its forces out of Iraq".
On May 24, 2006, after missing all the group's meetings, including a briefing from General David Petraeus, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, Giuliani resigned from the panel, citing "previous time commitments". Giuliani's fundraising schedule had kept him from participating in the panel, a schedule which raised $11.4million in speaking fees over fourteen months, and that Giuliani had been forced to resign after being given "an ultimatum to either show up for meetings or leave the group" by group leader James Baker. Giuliani subsequently said he had started thinking about running for president, and being on the panel might give it a political spin.
Giuliani was described by Newsweek in January 2007 as "one of the most consistent cheerleaders for the president's handling of the war in Iraq" and as of June 2007, he remained one of the few candidates for president to unequivocally support both the basis for the invasion and the execution of the war.
Giuliani spoke in support of the removal of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK, also PMOI, MKO) from the United States State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The group was on the State Department list from 1997 until September 2012. They were placed on the list for killing six Americans in Iran during the 1970s and attempting to attack the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992. Giuliani, along with other former government officials and politicians Ed Rendell, R. James Woolsey, Porter Goss, Louis Freeh, Michael Mukasey, James L. Jones, Tom Ridge, and Howard Dean, were criticized for their involvement with the group. Some were subpoenaed during an inquiry about who was paying the prominent individuals' speaking fees. Giuliani and others wrote an article for the conservative publication National Review stating their position that the group should not be classified as a terrorist organization. They supported their position by pointing out that the United Kingdom and the European Union had already removed the group from their terrorism lists. They further assert that only the United States and Iran still listed it as a terrorist group. However, Canada did not delist the group until December 2012.
2008 presidential campaign
In November 2006, Giuliani announced the formation of an exploratory committee toward a run for the presidency in 2008. In February 2007, he filed a "statement of candidacy" and confirmed on the television program Larry King Live that he was indeed running.
Early polls showed Giuliani with one of the highest levels of name recognition ever recorded along with high levels of support among the Republican candidates. Throughout most of 2007, he was the leader in most nationwide opinion polling among Republicans. Senator John McCain, who ranked a close second behind the New York Mayor, had faded, and most polls showed Giuliani to have more support than any of the other declared Republican candidates, with only former Senator Fred Thompson and former Governor Mitt Romney showing greater support in some per-state Republican polls. On November 7, 2007, Giuliani's campaign received an endorsement from evangelist, Christian Broadcasting Network founder, and past presidential candidate Pat Robertson. This was viewed by political observers as a possibly key development in the race, as it gave credence that evangelicals and other social conservatives could support Giuliani despite some of his positions on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.
Giuliani's campaign hit a difficult stretch during the last two months of 2007, when Bernard Kerik, whom Giuliani had recommended for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security, was indicted on 16 counts of tax fraud and other federal charges. The media reported that when Giuliani was the mayor of New York, he billed several tens of thousands of dollars of mayoral security expenses to obscure city agencies. Those expenses were incurred while he visited Judith Nathan, with whom he was having an extramarital affair (later analysis showed the billing to likely be unrelated to hiding Nathan). Several stories were published in the press regarding clients of Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani who were in opposition to goals of American foreign policy. Giuliani's national poll numbers began steadily slipping and his unusual strategy of focusing more on later, multi-primary big states rather than the smaller, first-voting states was seen at risk.
Despite his strategy, Giuliani competed to a substantial extent in the January 8, 2008, New Hampshire primary but finished a distant fourth with 9percent of the vote. Similar poor results continued in other early contests, when Giuliani's staff went without pay in order to focus all efforts on the crucial late January Florida Republican primary. The shift of the electorate's focus from national security to the state of the economy also hurt Giuliani, as did the resurgence of McCain's similarly themed campaign. On January 29, 2008, Giuliani finished a distant third in the Florida result with 15percent of the vote, trailing McCain and Romney. Facing declining polls and lost leads in the upcoming large Super Tuesday states, including that of his home New York, Giuliani withdrew from the race on January 30, endorsing McCain.
Giuliani's campaign ended up $3.6million in arrears, and in June 2008 Giuliani sought to retire the debt by proposing to appear at Republican fundraisers during the 2008 general election, and have part of the proceeds go towards his campaign. During the 2008 Republican National Convention, Giuliani gave a prime-time speech that praised McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, while criticizing Democratic nominee Barack Obama. He cited Palin's executive experience as a mayor and governor and belittled Obama's lack of same, and his remarks were met with wild applause from the delegates. Giuliani continued to be one of McCain's most active surrogates during the remainder of McCain's eventually unsuccessful campaign.
After 2008 election
Following the end of his presidential campaign, Giuliani's "high appearance fees dropped like a stone". He returned to work at both Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani. His consultancy work included advising Keiko Fujimori with her presidential campaign during the 2011 Peruvian general election. Giuliani also explored hosting a syndicated radio show, and was reported to be in talks with Westwood One about replacing Bill O'Reilly before that position went to Fred Thompson (another unsuccessful 2008 GOP presidential primary candidate). During the March 2009 AIG bonus payments controversy, Giuliani called for U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to step down and said the Obama administration lacked executive competence in dealing with the ongoing financial crisis.
Giuliani said his political career was not necessarily over, and did not rule out a 2010 New York gubernatorial or 2012 presidential bid. A November 2008 Siena College poll indicated that although Governor David Patersonpromoted to the office via the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal a year beforewas popular among New Yorkers, he would have just a slight lead over Giuliani in a hypothetical matchup. By February 2009, after the prolonged Senate appointment process, a Siena College poll indicated that Paterson was losing popularity among New Yorkers, and showed Giuliani with a fifteen-point lead in the hypothetical contest. In January 2009, Giuliani said he would not decide on a gubernatorial run for another six to eight months, adding that he thought it would not be fair to the governor to start campaigning early while the governor tries to focus on his job. Giuliani worked to retire his presidential campaign debt, but by the end of March 2009 it was still $2.4million in arrears, the largest such remaining amount for any of the 2008 contenders. In April 2009, Giuliani strongly opposed Paterson's announced push for same-sex marriage in New York and said it would likely cause a backlash that could put Republicans in statewide office in 2010. By late August 2009, there were still conflicting reports about whether Giuliani was likely to run.
On December 23, 2009, Giuliani announced that he would not seek any office in 2010, saying "The main reason has to do with my two enterprises: Bracewell & Giuliani and Giuliani Partners. I'm very busy in both." The decisions signaled a possible end to Giuliani's political career. During the 2010 midterm elections, Giuliani endorsed and campaigned for Bob Ehrlich and Marco Rubio.
On October 11, 2011, Giuliani announced that he was not running for president. According to Kevin Law, the Director of the Long Island Association, Giuliani believed that "As a moderate, he thought it was a pretty significant challenge. He said it's tough to be a moderate and succeed in GOP primaries," Giuliani said "If it's too late for (New Jersey Governor) Chris Christie, it's too late for me."
At a Republican fund-raising event in February 2015, Giuliani said, "I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president Obama loves America," and "He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country." In response to criticism of the remarks, Giuliani said, "Some people thought it was racistI thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother... This isn't racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism." White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said he agreed with Giuliani "that it was a horrible thing to say", but he would leave it up to the people who heard Giuliani directly to assess whether the remarks were appropriate for the event. Although he received some support for his controversial comments, Giuliani said he also received several death threats within 48 hours.
Relationship with Donald Trump
Presidential campaign supporter
Giuliani supported Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He gave a prime time speech during the first night of the 2016 Republican National Convention. Earlier in the day, Giuliani and former 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson appeared at an event for the pro-Trump Great America PAC. Giuliani also appeared in a Great America PAC ad entitled "Leadership". Giuliani's and Jeff Sessions's appearances were staples at Trump campaign rallies.
During the campaign, Giuliani praised Trump for his worldwide accomplishments and helping fellow New Yorkers in their time of need. He defended Trump against allegations of racism, sexual assault, and not paying any federal income taxes for as long as two decades.
In August 2016, Giuliani, while campaigning for Trump, claimed that in the "eight years before Obama" became president, "we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States". It was noted that 9/11 happened during George W. Bush's first term. Politifact brought up four more counter-examples (the 2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting, the 2002 D.C. sniper attacks, the 2006 Seattle Jewish Federation shooting and the 2006 UNC SUV attack) to Giuliani's claim. Giuliani later said he was using "abbreviated language".
Giuliani was believed to be a likely pick for Secretary of State in the Trump administration. However, on December 9, 2016, Trump announced that Giuliani had removed his name from consideration for any Cabinet post.
Advisor to the president
The president-elect named Giuliani his informal cybersecurity adviser on January 12, 2017. The status of this informal role for Giuliani is unclear because, in November 2018, Trump created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), headed by Christopher Krebs as director and Matthew Travis as deputy. In the weeks following his appointment, Giuliani was forced to consult an Apple Store Genius Bar when he "was locked out of his iPhone because he had forgotten the passcode and entered the wrong one at least 10 times", belying his putative expertise in the field.
In January 2017, Giuliani said he advised President Trump in matters relating to Executive Order 13769, which barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days. The order also suspended the admission of all refugees for 120 days.
Giuliani has drawn scrutiny over his ties to foreign nations, regarding not registering per the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Personal lawyer
In mid April 2018, Giuliani joined Trump's legal team, which dealt with the special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Giuliani said his goal was to negotiate a swift end to the investigation.
In early May, Giuliani made public that Trump had reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen $130,000 that Cohen had paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels for her agreement not to talk about her alleged affair with Trump. Cohen had earlier insisted he used his own money to pay Daniels, and he implied that he had not been reimbursed. Trump had previously said he knew nothing about the matter. Within a week, Giuliani said some of his own statements regarding this matter were "more rumor than anything else".
Later in May 2018, Giuliani, who was asked on whether the promotion of the Spygate conspiracy theory is meant to discredit the special counsel investigation, said the investigators "are giving us the material to do it. Of course, we have to do it in defending the president... it is for public opinion" on whether to "impeach or not impeach" Trump. In June 2018, Giuliani claimed that a sitting president cannot be indicted: "I don't know how you can indict while he's in office. No matter what it is. If President Trump shot [then-FBI director] James Comey, he'd be impeached the next day. Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him."
In June 2018, Giuliani also said Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because "our recollection keeps changing". In early July, Giuliani characterized that Trump had previously asked Comey to "give him [then-national security adviser Michael Flynn] a break". In mid-August, Giuliani denied making this comment: "What I said was, that is what Comey is saying Trump said." On August 19 on Meet the Press, Giuliani argued that Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because Trump could be "trapped into perjury" just by telling "somebody's version of the truth. Not the truth." Giuliani's argument continued: "Truth isn't truth." Giuliani later clarified that he was "referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements".
In late July, Giuliani defended Trump by saying "collusion is not a crime" and that Trump had done nothing wrong because he "didn't hack" or "pay for the hacking". He later elaborated that his comments were a "very, very familiar lawyer's argument" to "attack the legitimacy of the special counsel investigation". He also described and denied several supposed allegations that have never been publicly raised, regarding two earlier meetings among Trump campaign officials to set up the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with Russian citizens. In late August, Giuliani said the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower "meeting was originally for the purpose of getting information about Hillary Clinton".
Additionally in late July, Giuliani attacked Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as an "incredible liar", two months after calling Cohen an "honest, honorable lawyer". In mid-August, Giuliani defended Trump by saying: "The president's an honest man."
It was reported in early September that Giuliani said the White House could and likely would prevent the special counsel investigation from making public certain information in its final report which would be covered by executive privilege. Also according to Giuliani, Trump's personal legal team is already preparing a "counter-report" to refute the potential special counsel investigation's report.
Giuliani privately urged Trump in 2017 to extradite Fethullah Gülen.
In late 2019, Giuliani represented Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, meeting with the Justice Department to ask not to bring charges against him.
In an interview with Olivia Nuzzi in New York magazine, Giuliani, who is a Roman Catholic of Italian descent, said, "Don't tell me I'm anti-Semitic if I oppose George Soros... I'm more of a Jew than Soros is." George Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew who survived The Holocaust. The Anti-Defamation League replied, "Mr. Giuliani should apologize and retract his comments immediately unless he seeks to dog whistle to hardcore anti-Semites and white supremacists who believe this garbage."
In the last days of the Trump administration, when White House aides were soliciting fees to lobby for presidential pardons, Giuliani said that while he'd heard that large fees were being offered, he did not work on clemency cases, saying "I have enough money. I'm not starving."
As of February 16, 2021, Giuliani was reportedly not actively involved in any of Trump's pending legal cases.
Attempts to get Ukraine to carry out investigations
Since at least May 2019, Giuliani has been urging Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the oil company Burisma, whose board of directors once included Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, and to check for irregularities in Ukraine's investigation of Paul Manafort. He said such investigations would benefit his client's defense, and that his efforts had Trump's full support. Toward this end, Giuliani met with Ukrainian officials throughout 2019. In July 2019, Buzzfeed News reported that two Soviet-born Americans, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were liaisons between Giuliani and Ukrainian government officials in this effort. Parnas and Fruman, prolific Republican donors, have neither registered as foreign agents in the United States, nor been evaluated and approved by the State Department. Giuliani responded, "This (report) is a pathetic effort to cover up what are enormous allegations of criminality by the Biden family." Yet by September 2019, there had been no clear evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
As of October 1, 2019, Giuliani hired former Watergate prosecutor Jon Sale to represent him in the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment investigation. The committee also issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents related to the Ukraine scandal. The New York Times reported on October 11, 2019, that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which Giuliani had once led, was investigating him for violating lobbying laws related to his activities in Ukraine. The following month, Bloomberg News reported that the investigation could extend to bribery of foreign officials or conspiracy, and The Wall Street Journal reported Giuliani was being investigated for a possible profit motive in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. Giuliani has denied having any interest in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. In late November, the Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors had just issued subpoenas to multiple associates of Giuliani to potentially investigate certain individuals, apparently including Giuliani, on numerous potential charges, including money laundering, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements to the federal government, and mail/wire fraud.
Parnas and Fruman were arrested for campaign finance violations while attempting to board a one-way flight to Frankfurt from Washington Dulles International Airport on October 9, 2019. Giuliani was paid $500,000 to consult for Lev Parnas's company named "Fraud Guarantee". Republican donor and Trump supporter Long Island attorney Charles Gucciardo paid Giuliani on behalf of Fraud Guarantee in two $250,000 payments, in September and October 2018. Fruman eventually pled guilty in September 2021 to having solicited a contribution by a foreign national.
In May 2019, Giuliani described Ukraine's chief prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko as a "much more honest guy" than his predecessor, Viktor Shokin. After Lutsenko was removed from office, he said in September 2019 that he found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, and that he had met Giuliani about ten times. Giuliani then reversed his stance, saying that Shokin is the one people "should have spoken to", while Lutsenko acted "corruptly" and "is exactly the prosecutor that Joe Biden put in in order to tank the case".
In September 2019, as reports surfaced that a whistleblower was alleging high-level misconduct related to Ukraine, Giuliani went on CNN to discuss the story. When asked if he had tried to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden, he initially replied "No, actually I didn't," but thirty seconds later said, "Of course I did." In a later tweet he seemed to confirm reports that Trump had withheld military assistance funds scheduled for Ukraine unless they carried out the investigation. He said, "The reality is that the president of the United States, whoever he is, has every right to tell the president of another country you better straighten out the corruption in your country if you want me to give you a lot of money. If you're so damn corrupt that you can't investigate allegationsour money is going to get squandered."
Tom Bossert, a former Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump administration, described Giuliani's theory that Ukraine was involved in 2016 U.S. election interference as "debunked"; Giuliani responded that Bossert "doesn't know what the hell he's talking about".
On September 30, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents concerning the Ukraine scandal to Committee members by October 15, 2019. On October 2, 2019, Steve Linick, the State Department's inspector general, delivered a 40-page packet of apparent disinformation regarding former vice president Joe Biden and former Ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, to Capitol Hill. Linick told congressional aides his office questioned Ulrich Brechbuhl, Pompeo's advisor about the origins of the packet. Brechbuhl noted the packet came to him from Pompeo, who said it "came over", and Brechbuhl reportedly presumed it was from the White House. Later that day, Giuliani acknowledged he passed the packet to Pompeo regarding the Ukraine and attacks on Yovanovich. In a November 2019 interview he confirmed that he had "needed Yovanovitch out of the way" because she was going to make his investigations difficult. "They (the State Department) told me they would investigate it," Giuliani added. Giuliani persuaded Trump to remove Yovanovich from office in spring 2019. By April 2021, the U.S attorney's office in Manhattan was investigating the role of Giuliani and his associates in Yovanovitch's removal.
U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that Trump delegated American foreign policy on Ukraine to Giuliani. The late 2019 impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump centered around Giuliani's actions involving Ukraine. In the compiled testimony and in the December reports of the House Intelligence Committee, Giuliani's name was mentioned more than any but Trump's. Some experts suggested that Giuliani may have violated the Logan Act.
On November 22, 2019, Giuliani sent a letter to Senator Lindsey Graham, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, informing him of at least three witnesses from Ukraine who Giuliani claimed had direct oral, documentary, and recorded evidence of Democratic criminal conspiracy with Ukrainians to prevent Trump's election and, after his election, to remove him from office via contrived charges. Giuliani's letter also claims that the witnesses had evidence of the Biden family's involvement in bribery, money laundering, Hobbs Act extortion, and other possible crimes. The letter sought Graham's help obtaining U.S. visas for the witnesses to testify. The next month, Graham invited Giuliani to share his findings with the Judiciary Committee, and soon advised him "to share what he got from Ukraine with the [intelligence community] to make sure it's not Russia propaganda".
Dmytry Firtash is a Ukrainian oligarch who is prominent in the natural gas sector. In 2017, the Justice Department characterized him as being an "upper echelon (associate) of Russian organized crime". Since his 2014 arrest in Vienna, Austria at the request of American authorities, he has been living there on $155 million bail while fighting extradition to the United States on bribery and racketeering charges, and has been seeking to have the charges dropped. Firtash's attorneys obtained a September 2019 statement from Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general who was forced out under pressure from multiple countries and non-governmental organizations, as conveyed to Ukraine by Joe Biden. Shokin falsely asserted in the statement that Biden actually had him fired because he refused to stop his investigation into Burisma. Giuliani, who asserts he has "nothing to do with" and has "never met or talked to" Firtash, promoted the statement in television appearances as purported evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens. Giuliani told CNN he met with a Firtash attorney for two hours in New York City at the time he was seeking information about the Bidens.
Firtash is represented by Trump and Giuliani associates Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, having hired them on Parnas's recommendation in July 2019. The New York Times reported in November 2019 that Giuliani had directed Parnas to approach Firtash with the recommendation, with the proposition that Firtash could help provide damaging information on Biden, which Parna's attorney described was "part of any potential resolution to [Firtash's] extradition matter". Shokin's statement notes that it was prepared "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash ('DF'), for use in legal proceedings in Austria". Giuliani presented the Shokin statement during American television appearances. Bloomberg News reported on October 18 that during the summer of 2019 Firtash associates began attempting to dig up dirt on the Bidens in an effort to solicit Giuliani's assistance with Firtash's legal matters. Bloomberg News also reported that its sources told them Giuliani's high-profile publicity of the Shokin statement had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political quid pro quo. diGenova has said he has known U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr for thirty years, as they both worked in the Reagan Justice Department. The Washington Post reported on October 22 that after they began representing Firtash, Toensing and diGenova secured a rare face-to-face meeting with Barr to argue the Firtash charges should be dropped, but he declined to intervene.
On October 18, The New York Times reported that weeks earlier, before his associates Parnas and Fruman were indicted, Giuliani met with officials with the criminal and fraud divisions of the Justice Department regarding what Giuliani characterized as a "very, very sensitive" foreign bribery case involving a client of his. The Times did not name whom the case involved, but shortly after publication of the story Giuliani told a reporter it was not Firtash. Two days later, the Justice Department said its officials would not have met with Giuliani had they known his associates were under investigation by the SDNY.
On December 3, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee's report included phone records acquired via subpoenas, including numerous phone calls made by Giuliani between April and August 2019. Calls involved Giuliani in contact with Kurt Volker, Republican Representative and House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, Lev Parnas, numbers associated with the Office of Management and Budget and the White House switchboard, and an unidentified White House official whose phone number is referenced as "-1". Chairman Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee announced after the report's release that his committee was investigating whether "-1" referred to President Trump, citing grand jury evidence from the trial of convicted Trump-associate Roger Stone in which the phone number "-1" was shown to have referred to Trump. Writing for The Washington Post, analyst Philip Bump reasoned that Giuliani's calls with "-1" are 'likely' calls with Trump citing that Giuliani speaks longer with "-1" than any other person, "-1" always calls Giuliani, and generally after Giuliani calls the White House switchboard, and timing of some of President Trump's actions shortly after Giuliani's calls with "-1" ended.
In early December 2019, while the House Judiciary Committee began holding public hearings for the impeachment inquiry, Giuliani returned to Ukraine to interview former Ukrainian officials for a documentary series seeking to discredit the impeachment proceedings. U.S. officials told The Washington Post that Giuliani would have been considered a target of Russian intelligence efforts from early in Trump's presidency, and particularly after Giuliani turned his focus to Ukraine — a former Soviet republic under attack from Russia and with deep penetration by Russian intelligence services. Analysts say Trump's and Giuliani's habit of communicating over unencrypted lines makes it highly likely that foreign intelligence agencies could be listening in on the president's unsecured calls with Giuliani; and that foreign intelligence agencies often collect intelligence about a primary target through monitoring communications of other people who interact with that target.
In a December 2019 opinion piece, former FBI director, CIA director and federal judge William Webster wrote of "a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love". In addition to chastising President Trump and attorney general Bill Barr, Webster wrote he was "profoundly disappointed in another longtime, respected friend, Rudy Giuliani" because his "activities of late concerning Ukraine have, at a minimum, failed the smell test of propriety". Since 2005, Webster had served as the chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
NBC News reported in December 2020 that SDNY investigators, which were reported in late 2019 to be investigating Giuliani's activities, had discussed with Justice Department officials in Washington the possibility of acquiring Giuliani's emails, which might require headquarters approval due to protection by attorney–client privilege. The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY had requested a search warrant of Giuliani's electronic records in summer 2020, but were met with resistance from high-level political appointees in the Washington headquarters, ostensibly because the election was near, while career officials were supportive of the search warrant. The Justice Department generally avoids taking significant actions relating to political figures that might become public within sixty days of an election. Senior political appointees nevertheless opposed the effort after the election, noting Giuliani played a leading role in challenging the election results. The officials deferred the matter to the incoming Biden administration.
Federal investigators in Manhattan executed search warrants on the early morning of April 28, 2021 at Giuliani's office and Upper East Side apartment, seizing his electronic devices and searching the apartment. FBI agents also executed a search warrant that day on Toensing's Washington, D.C.-area home and confiscated her cellphone. In April 2021, Giuliani's attorney said investigators told him they had searched his client's iCloud account beginning in late 2019, later arguing to a judge that the search was illegal and so the subsequent raid on Giuliani's properties was "fruit of this poisoned tree," demanding to review documents justifying the iCloud search. In May 2021, the SDNY confirmed in a court filing that in late 2019 it obtained search warrants for Giuliani's iCloud account, and that of Toensing, as part of "an ongoing, multi-year grand jury investigation into conduct involving Giuliani, Toensing, and others," and argued that attorneys for Giuliani and Toensing were not entitled to review the underlying documents of the warrants prior to any charges. Giuiliani and Toensing asserted their attorney-client privilege with clients may have been violated by the iCloud searches, which investigators disputed, saying they employed a "filter team" to prevent them from seeing information potentially protected by attorney-client privilege. Federal judge J. Paul Oetken days later ruled in favor of investigators regarding the warrant documents and granted their request for a special master to ensure attorney-client privilege was maintained. The special master released more than 3,000 of Giuliani's communications to prosecutors in January 2022, agreeing to withhold forty messages for which Giuliani had asserted "privilege and/or highly personal" status and rejecting 37 such assertions.
The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY was scrutinizing Giuliani's association with Firtash in efforts to discredit the Bidens, and efforts to lobby the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs. Time reported in May 2021 it had spoken with three unidentified witnesses who said they were questioned by investigators, two of whom said they had worked with Giuliani while cooperating with investigators; one witness said investigators were particularly interested in Giuliani's association with Firtash.
United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 found that Ukrainian politician Andrii Derkach was among proxies of Russian intelligence who promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about Biden "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration". Giuliani met with Derkach in December 2019.
In April 2021, Forensic News reported that the SDNY investigation into Giuliani had expanded to include a criminal probe of Derkach and Andrii Artemenko. The New York Times confirmed weeks later that Derkach was the subject of a criminal investigation into foreign interference in the 2020 United States elections. "Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have been investigating whether several Ukrainian officials helped orchestrate a wide-ranging plan to meddle in the 2020 presidential campaign, including using Rudolph W. Giuliani to spread their misleading claims about President Biden and tilt the election in Donald J. Trump's favor," the Times reported.
On June 8, 2021, CNN uncovered exclusive audio of a 2019 phone call from Giuliani to Ukraine, stating that "Rudy Giuliani relentlessly pressured and coaxed the Ukrainian government in 2019 to investigate baseless conspiracies about then-candidate Joe Biden."
2020 election lawsuits
In November 2020, after Joe Biden was named president-elect, Trump placed Giuliani in charge of lawsuits related to alleged voter irregularities in the 2020 United States presidential election. Trump designated Giuliani to lead a legal team to challenge the election results. This team—a self-described "elite strike force" that included Sidney Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing and Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis—appeared at a November 19 press conference in which they made numerous false and unsubstantiated assertions revolving around an international Communist conspiracy, rigged voting machines, and polling place fraud.
Giuliani repeatedly publicly denounced the use of provisional ballots (in which the poll worker does not see the voter's name on the rolls, so the voter swears an affidavit oath that they are registered to vote), arguing that the practice enables fraud, although Giuliani himself had cast this type of ballot on October 31, 2020, in Manhattan.
By January 8, 2021, Trump and his team had lost 63 lawsuits. A month later, Giuliani was no longer representing Trump in any pending cases, according to a Trump adviser. While Trump continued to fundraise, purportedly for his election-related legal fights, as of the end of July 2021 he had not given any of this money to Giuliani. In October 2021, in another context, Trump remarked: "I do pay my lawyers when they do a good job."
In December 2021, two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye” Moss, sued Giuliani for defamation.
Pennsylvania lawsuit
One early lawsuit sought to invalidate up to 700,000 mail-in ballots and stop Pennsylvania from certifying its election results. Giuliani claimed to have signed affidavits attesting to voter fraud and election official misconduct in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Despite not having argued a case in any courtroom for over three decades, Giuliani applied for special permission to represent the Trump presidential campaign in the federal court of Pennsylvania. (In his application, he misrepresented his status with the District of Columbia Bar, claiming that he was a member in good standing, whereas D.C. had suspended him for nonpayment of fees.) In his first day in court on the case, which was November 17, 2020, Giuliani struggled with rudimentary legal processes and was accused by lawyers for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State of making legal arguments that were "disgraceful in an American courtroom". Judge Matthew Brann questioned how Giuliani could justify "asking this court to invalidate some 6.8 million votes thereby disenfranchising every single voter in the commonwealth."
His federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania was dismissed with prejudice on November 21, 2020, with the judge citing "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations" which were "unsupported by evidence". Giuliani and Jenna Ellis reacted by stating that the ruling "helps" the Trump campaign "get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court". They also pointed out that the judge, Matthew W. Brann, was "Obama-appointed", though Brann is also a Republican and a former member of the right-leaning Federalist Society.
The Trump campaign appealed the lawsuit to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel on November 27 rejected the Trump campaign's attempt to undo Pennsylvania's vote certification, because the Trump campaign's "claims have no merit". The panel also ruled that the District Court was correct in preventing the Trump campaign from conducting a second amendment of its complaint. An amendment would be pointless, ruled the judges, because the Trump campaign was not bringing facts before the court, and not even alleging fraud. Judge Stephanos Bibas highlighted that Giuliani himself told the district court that the Trump campaign "doesn't plead fraud", and that this "is not a fraud case". The panel concluded that neither "specific allegations" nor "proof" was provided in this case, and that the Trump campaign "cannot win this lawsuit".
Giuliani and Ellis reacted to the appeals court ruling by condemning the "activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania". Of the three Appeal Court judges, Stephanos Bibas, who delivered the opinion, was appointed by Trump himself, while judges D. Brooks Smith and Michael Chagares were appointed by Republican president George W. Bush.
Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits
As part of Giuliani's allegations that voting machines had been rigged, he made several false assertions about two rival companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. These false claims included that Smartmatic owned Dominion; that Dominion voting machines used Smartmatic software; that Dominion voting machines sent vote data to Smartmatic at foreign locations; that Dominion was founded by the former socialist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez; and that Dominion is a "radical-left" company with connections to antifa.
Both companies sued Giuliani and Fox News. Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Giuliani on January 25, 2021, seeking $1.3billion in damages, and separately sued Fox News for $1.6 billion. On February 4, 2021, Smartmatic also filed a lawsuit that accused Giuliani, Fox News, some hosts at Fox News, and Sidney Powell of engaging in a "disinformation campaign" against the company, and asked for $2.7billion in damages.
On September 10, 2021, Fox News told Giuliani that neither he nor his son Andrew would be allowed on their network for nearly three months.
Attack on the Capitol
On January 6, 2021, Giuliani spoke at a "Save America March" rally on the Ellipse that was attended by Trump supporters protesting the election results. He repeated conspiracy theories that voting machines used in the election were "crooked" and called for "trial by combat". Trump supporters subsequently stormed the U.S. Capitol in a riot that resulted in the deaths of five people, including a police officer, and temporarily disrupted the counting of the Electoral College vote.
Giuliani had reportedly been calling Republican lawmakers to urge them to delay the electoral vote count in order to ultimately throw the election to Trump. Giuliani attempted to contact Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Trump ally, around 7:00p.m. on January 6, after the Capitol storming, to ask him to "try to just slow it down" by objecting to multiple states and "raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrowideally until the end of tomorrow". However, Giuliani mistakenly left the message on the voicemail of another senator, who leaked the recording to The Dispatch. Rick Perlstein, a noted historian of the American conservative political movement, termed Giuliani's attempts to slow certification in the wake of the riot as treasonous. "Sedition. Open and shut. He talked about the time that was being opened up. He was welcoming, and using, the violence. This needs to be investigated," Perlstein tweeted on January 11, 2021.
Giuliani faced criticism for his appearance at the rally and the Capitol riot that followed it. Former Congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called for the arrest of Giuliani, President Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. Manhattan College president Brennan O'Donnell stated in a January7 open letter to the college community, "one of the loudest voices fueling the anger, hatred, and violence that spilled out yesterday is a graduate of our College, Rudolph Giuliani. His conduct as a leader of the campaign to de-legitimize the election and disenfranchise millions of votershas been and continues to be a repudiation of the deepest values of his alma mater."
On January 11, the New York State Bar Association, an advocacy group for the legal profession in New York state, announced that it was launching an investigation into whether Giuliani should be removed from its membership rolls, noting both Giuliani's comments to the Trump supporter rally at the Ellipse on January 6, and that it "has received hundreds of complaints in recent months about Mr. Giuliani and his baseless efforts on behalf of President Trump to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 presidential election and, after the votes were cast, to overturn its legitimate results". Removal from the group's membership rolls would not directly disbar Giuliani from practicing law in New York. New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman and lawyers' group Lawyers Defending American Democracy, also filed a complaints against Giuliani with the Attorney Grievance Committee of the First Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court, which has the authority to discipline and disbar licensed New York lawyers.
Also on January 11, 2021, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said that he is looking at whether to charge Giuliani, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Representative Mo Brooks, with inciting the violent attack.
On January 29, Giuliani falsely claimed that The Lincoln Project played a role in the organization of the Capitol riot. In response, Steve Schmidt announced that the group would be taking legal action against Giuliani for defamation.
On March 5, 2021, Representative Eric Swalwell filed a civil lawsuit against Giuliani and three others (Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Representative Mo Brooks), seeking damages for their alleged role in inciting the Capitol riot.
Giuliani was subpoenaed in January 2022 to testify before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Suspension of law license
On June 24, 2021, a New York appellate court suspended Giuliani's law license. The panel of five justices found that there was "uncontroverted" evidence that Giuliani made "demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public" and that "These false statements were made to improperly bolster (Giuliani's) narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client." The court concluded that Giuliani's conduct "immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law". His license was also suspended in Washington D.C. on July 7, 2021.
Giuliani Partners
After leaving the New York City mayor's office, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners LLC, in 2002, a firm that has been categorized by multiple media outlets as a lobbying entity capitalizing on Giuliani's name recognition, and which has been the subject of allegations surrounding staff hired by Giuliani and due to the firm's chosen client base. Over five years, Giuliani Partners earned more than $100million.
In June 2007, he stepped down as CEO and Chairman of Giuliani Partners, although this action was not made public until December 4, 2007; he maintained his equity interest in the firm. Giuliani subsequently returned to active participation in the firm following the election. In late 2009, Giuliani announced that they had a security consulting contract with Rio de Janeiro, Brazil regarding the 2016 Summer Olympics. He faced criticism in 2012 for advising people once allied with Slobodan Milošević who had lauded Serbian war criminals.
Bracewell & Giuliani
In 2005, Giuliani joined the law firm of Bracewell & Patterson LLP (renamed Bracewell & Giuliani LLP) as a name partner and basis for the expanding firm's new New York office. When he joined the Texas-based firm he brought Marc Mukasey, the son of Attorney General Michael Mukasey, into the firm.
Despite a busy schedule, Giuliani was highly active in the day-to-day business of the law firm, which was a high-profile supplier of legal and lobbying services to the oil, gas, and energy industries. Its aggressive defense of pollution-causing coal-fired power plants threatened to cause political risk for Giuliani, but association with the firm helped Giuliani achieve fund-raising success in Texas. In 2006, Giuliani acted as the lead counsel and lead spokesmen for Bracewell & Giuliani client Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, during their negotiations with federal prosecutors over charges that the pharmaceutical company misled the public about OxyContin's addictive properties. The agreement reached resulted in Purdue Pharma and some of its executives paying $634.5million in fines.
Bracewell & Giuliani represented corporate clients before many U.S. government departments and agencies. Some clients have worked with corporations and foreign governments.
Giuliani left the firm in January 2016, by "amicable agreement", and the firm was rebranded as Bracewell LLP.
Greenberg Traurig
In January 2016, Giuliani moved to the law firm Greenberg Traurig, where he served as the global chairman for Greenberg's cybersecurity and crisis management group, as well as a senior advisor to the firm's executive chairman. In April 2018, he took an unpaid leave of absence when he joined Trump's legal defense team. He resigned from the firm on May 9, 2018.
Lobbying in Romania
In August 2018, Giuliani was retained by Freeh Group International Solutions, a global consulting firm run by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, which paid him a fee to lobby Romanian president Klaus Iohannis to change Romania's anti-corruption policy and reduce the role of the National Anticorruption Directorate. Giuliani argued that the anti-corruption efforts had gone too far.
Podcast
In January 2020, Giuliani launched a podcast, Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
Personal life
Marriages and relationships
Giuliani married Regina Peruggi, whom he had known since childhood, on October 26, 1968. The marriage was in trouble by the mid-1970s and they agreed to a trial separation in 1975. Peruggi did not accompany him to Washington when he accepted the job in the Attorney General's Office. Giuliani met local television personality Donna Hanover sometime in 1982, and they began dating when she was working in Miami. Giuliani filed for legal separation from Peruggi on August 12, 1982. The Giuliani-Peruggi marriage legally ended in two ways: a civil divorce was issued by the end of 1982, while a Roman Catholic church annulment of the marriage was granted at the end of 1983, reportedly because Giuliani had discovered that he and Peruggi were second cousins. Alan Placa, Giuliani's best man, later became a priest and helped secure the annulment. Giuliani and Peruggi had no children.
Giuliani married Hanover in a Catholic ceremony at St. Monica's Church in Manhattan on April 15, 1984. They had two children, Andrew and Caroline Rose, who is a filmmaker in the LGBTQ+ community and has described herself as "multiverses apart" from her father.
Giuliani was still married to Hanover in May 1999 when he met Judith Nathan, a sales manager for a pharmaceutical company, at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar. By 1996, Donna Hanover had reverted to her professional name and virtually stopped appearing in public with her husband amid rumors of marital problems. Nathan and Giuliani formed an ongoing relationship. In summer 1999, Giuliani charged the costs for his NYPD security detail to obscure city agencies in order to keep his relationship with Nathan from public scrutiny. The police department began providing Nathan with city-provided chauffeur services in early 2000.
By March 2000, Giuliani had stopped wearing his wedding ring. The appearances that he and Nathan made at functions and events became publicly visible, although they were not mentioned in the press. The Daily News and the New York Post both broke news of Giuliani's relationship with Nathan in early May 2000. Giuliani first publicly acknowledged her on May 3, 2000, when he said Judith was his "very good friend".
On May 10, 2000, Giuliani held a press conference to announce that he intended to separate from Hanover. Giuliani had not informed Hanover about his plans before the press conference. This was an omission for which Giuliani was widely criticized. Giuliani then went on to praise Nathan as a "very, very fine woman" and said about Hanover that "over the course of some period of time in many ways, we've grown to live independent and separate lives." Hours later Hanover said, "I had hoped that we could keep this marriage together. For several years, it was difficult to participate in Rudy's public life because of his relationship with one staff member."
Giuliani moved out of Gracie Mansion by August 2001 and into an apartment with a couple he was friends with. Giuliani filed for divorce from Hanover in October 2000, and a public battle broke out between their representatives. Nathan was barred by court order from entering Gracie Mansion or meeting his children before the divorce was final.
In May 2001, Giuliani's attorney revealed that Giuliani was impotent due to prostate cancer treatments and had not had sex with Nathan for the preceding year. "You don't get through treatment for cancer and radiation all by yourself," Giuliani said. "You need people to help you and care for you and support you. And I'm very fortunate I had a lot of people who did that, but nobody did more to help me than Judith Nathan." In a court case, Giuliani argued that he planned to introduce Nathan to his children on Father's Day 2001 and that Hanover had prevented this visit. Giuliani and Hanover finally settled their divorce case in July 2002 after his mayoralty had ended, with Giuliani paying Hanover a $6.8million settlement and granting her custody of their children. Giuliani married Nathan on May 24, 2003, and gained a stepdaughter, Whitney. It was also Nathan's third marriage after two divorces.
By March 2007, The New York Times and the Daily News reported that Giuliani had become estranged from both his son Andrew and his daughter Caroline. In 2014, he said his relationship with his children was better than ever, and was spotted eating and playing golf with Andrew.
Nathan filed for divorce from Giuliani on April 4, 2018, after 15 years of marriage. According to an interview with New York magazine, "For a variety of reasons that I know as a spouse and a nurse... he has become a different man." The divorce was settled on December 10, 2019.
In October 2020, following myriad joint public appearances, Giuliani confirmed that he is in a relationship with Maria Ryan, a nurse practitioner and hospital administrator whom his ex-wife Nathan has alleged to have been his mistress for an indeterminate period during their marriage. As of 2018, Ryan was married to United States Marine Corps veteran Robert Ryan, with Giuliani characterizing the couple as platonic friends in response to contemporaneous press inquiries.
Prostate cancer
In April 1981, Giuliani's father died, at age 73, of prostate cancer, at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center. 19 years later, in April 2000, Giuliani, then aged 55, was diagnosed with prostate cancer following a prostate biopsy, after an elevated screening PSA. Giuliani chose a combination prostate cancer treatment consisting of four months of neoadjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy, then low dose-rate prostate brachytherapy with permanent implantation of ninety TheraSeed radioactive palladium-103 seeds in his prostate in September 2000, followed two months later by five weeks of fifteen-minute, five-days-a-week external beam radiotherapy at Mount Sinai Medical Center, with five months of adjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy.
COVID-19
On December 6, 2020, Trump announced that Giuliani had contracted COVID-19. Giuliani was admitted to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital the same day. He was discharged from the hospital on December 9.
It was unclear when he received the positive test. In the days leading up to the announcement, Giuliani had been to multiple indoor hearings without wearing a mask, and requested that others remove their masks. The Arizona Legislature closed for one week starting on December 7, 2020, as 15 current and future members had met with Giuliani. He had also met with Republican legislators in Michigan and Georgia, potentially exposing them.
Religious beliefs
Giuliani has declined to comment publicly on his religious practice and beliefs, although he identifies religion as an important part of his life. When asked if he is a practicing Catholic, Giuliani answered, "My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not-so-good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests."
Television appearances
Giuliani was reportedly revealed to be the first unmasking on the seventh season of The Masked Singer, which caused judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke to storm off the set.
Awards and honors
In 1998, Giuliani received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York".
House of Savoy: Knight Grand Cross (motu proprio) of the Order of Merit of Savoy (December 2001)
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2001
In 2002, the Episcopal Diocese of New York gave Giuliani the Fiorello LaGuardia Public Service Award for Valor and Leadership in the Time of Global Crisis.
Also in 2002, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan awarded Giuliani the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award.
In 2002, he received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually byJefferson Awards.
In 2003, Giuliani received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award
In 2004, construction began on the Rudolph W. Giuliani Trauma Center at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York.
In 2005, Giuliani received honorary degrees from Loyola College in Maryland and Middlebury College. In 2007, Giuliani received an honorary Doctorate in Public Administration from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. In 2021, Middlebury announced that it was revoking the degree given to Giuliani.
In 2006, Rudy and Judith Giuliani were honored by the American Heart Association at its annual Heart of the Hamptons benefit in Water Mill, New York.
In 2007, Giuliani was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), receiving the NIAF Special Achievement Award for Public Service.
In 2007, Giuliani was awarded the Margaret Thatcher Medal of Freedom by the Atlantic Bridge.
In the 2009 graduation ceremony for Drexel University's Earle Mack School of Law, Giuliani was the keynote speaker and recipient of an honorary degree. In 2021, Drexel announced that it was rescinding the degree.
Giuliani was the Robert C. Vance Distinguished Lecturer at Central Connecticut State University in 2013.
Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa, University of Rhode Island, 2003 (revoked January 2022)
Media references
In 1993, Giuliani made a cameo appearance as himself in the Seinfeld episode "The Non-Fat Yogurt", which is a fictionalized account of the 1993 mayoral election. Giuliani's scenes were filmed the morning after his real world election.
In 2003, Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story was released starring actor James Woods as Giuliani.
In 2018, Giuliani was portrayed multiple times on Saturday Night Live by Kate McKinnon. McKinnon continued portraying him in 2019.
In 2020, Giuliani made a cameo appearance on a Netflix true crime limited series' Fear City: New York vs The Mafia, talking about his role in leading the 1980s federal prosecution of the Five Families.
In 2020, Giuliani made an unwitting appearance in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. In the mockumentary film, Giuliani agrees to an interview with Borat's "daughter", Tutar (played by actress Maria Bakalova), who is disguised as a reporter. When invited to Tutar's hotel room, Giuliani proceeds to lie on her bed and reach inside his trousers; they are immediately interrupted by Borat, who says: "She 15. She too old for you." Giuliani later disregarded the accusation, calling it a "complete fabrication" and saying he was rather "tucking in [his] shirt after taking off the recording equipment". In 2021, Giuliani won two Razzie awards for his part in the film – for Worst Supporting Actor and, with his pants zipper for Worst Screen Combo.
See also
Disputes surrounding the 2020 United States presidential election results
Electoral history of Rudy Giuliani
Political positions of Rudy Giuliani
Public image of Rudy Giuliani
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Timeline of New York City, 1990s–2000s
References
Further reading
Barrett, Wayne, (2000). Rudy!: An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani. Basic Books; (Reprint by Diane Publishing Co.).
Brodeur, Christopher X. (2002). Perverted Little Creep: Mayor Giuliani vs Mayor Brodeur. ExtremeNY books, .
Dinkins, David N.; Knobler, Peter (2013). A Mayor's Life: Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic. PublicAffairs,
Gonzalez, Juan, (2002). Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse. New Press, .
Koch, Edward I. (1999). Giuliani: Nasty Man. Barricade Books. .
Mandery, Evan (1999). The Campaign: Rudy Giuliani, Ruth Messinger, Al Sharpton, and the Race to Be Mayor of New York City. Westview Press, .
Newfield, Jack, (2003). The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania. Thunder's Mouth Press, .
Paterson, David "Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity."Skyhorse Publishing. New York, New York, 2020.
Polner, Robert, (2005). America's Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani's New York. Soft Skull Press, .
Polner, Robert, (2007). America's Mayor, America's President? The Strange Career of Rudy Giuliani. [Preface by Jimmy Breslin] Soft Skull Press, .
External links
La Guardia and Wagner Archives/The Giuliani Collection
TPM infographic: Tracking Rudy Giuliani's Foreign Dealings
Suspension of Giuliani's New York State law license — Attorney Grievance Committee for the Supreme Court of the State of New York Appellate Division
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Writers from Brooklyn | false | [
"Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. Does 1–1,495, Civil Action No. 11-1741 (JDB/JMF), was a United States District Court for the District of Columbia case in which the court held that anonymous users of the peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent could not remain anonymous after charges of copyright infringement were brought against them. The court ultimately dismissed the case, but the identities of defendants were publicly exposed.\n\nBackground \n\nHard Drive Productions, Inc., is an adult film studio with a history of suing anonymous \"John Doe\" defendants for copyright infringement.\nOn September 27, 2011, Hard Drive Productions sued 1,495 anonymous defendants for copyright infringement in Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. Does 1–1,495.\nHard Drive Productions claimed that the defendants had used BitTorrent to illegally download and distribute its movie \"Amateur Alleur—MaeLynn.\"\n\nA prominent feature of this case the defendants' right to anonymous speech.\nHard Drive Productions knew the IP addresses assigned to each defendant by their Internet service provider (ISP), however the plaintiff had no information about the true identities of these individuals. Hard Drive Productions moved to compel the ISPs by subpoena to disclose the true identities of the defendants. The court granted the motion, which would force the ISPs to disclose the defendants' identities.\nThe defendants moved to quash this subpoena.\nFor administrative reasons, some of the defendants submitted their name and address with their motions to quash.\nThese were filed under seal to protect their identities from the public.\n\nSubsequently, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an organization that advocates internet users' anonymity and other rights in the digital world, sent an amicus curiae and requested an emergency stay—a motion that would halt action so that the order could be reconsidered. The EFF mainly argued that the order did not consider the defendants' First Amendment right to anonymous speech. The court eventually denied the EFF's motion for emergency stay and reconsideration and ordered unsealing of all sealed motions to quash.\nThus, the identities of the defendants were disclosed to the public.\n\nOpinion of the Court\n\nOn Hard Drive Productions's motion to compel\nOn August 13, 2012, the court held that the defendants could not proceed anonymously. The court noted that there was no privilege recognized by law that would protect the identity of the Does from being disclosed to the plaintiff for the purposes sought, and that without the ability to obtain the Does' identities, the copyright holders would have been left without a means of identifying the individuals who violated its rights.\n\nThe plaintiff was seeking subscriber information for particular IP addresses, and the use of that information had already been restricted by the court: \"Any information disclosed to Hard Drive in response to the Rule 45 subpoenas may be used by Hard Drive solely for the purpose of protecting its rights as set forth in the Complaint, and Hard Drive may not publicly disclose the names of the defendants.\"\n\nThe defendants filed motions to quash the subpoena, but they were denied for multiple reasons.\nFirst, because the defendants moved anonymously, their motions could not officially become part of the Court file.\nAccording to Rule 5.1 of the court's local rules, \"The first filing by or on behalf of a party shall have in the caption the name and full residence address of the party.\"\nSecond, since the subpoena was for the defendants' ISPs and not the defendants themselves, the defendants had no standing to quash the subpoena.\nThird, the court argued that, at the time, the movants were not yet considered as defendants.\n\nOn the EFF's stay motion\nThe court released a memorandum regarding the EFF's amicus curiae and denied its stay motion on September 26, 2012.\n\nIn this opinion, court applied the 5-part balancing test adopted in Sony Music Entertainment, Inc. v. Does 1–40, 326 F. Supp. 2d 556 (S.D.N.Y. 2004) and found that all five factors supported the disclosure of the defendants' identities:\n\n Plaintiff's concrete showing of a prima facie claim of copyright infringement—Hard Drive Productions made a concrete showing of a prima facie claim of copyright infringement.\n Specificity of the plaintiff's discovery request—Hard Drive Productions's discovery request was sufficiently specific to gain only the information needed to identify the defendants and nothing more.\n Absence of alternative means to gain the information plaintiff seeks—subpoenaing the ISPs appeared to be the only way for the plaintiff to obtain the defendants' identities because only the ISPs have records of the IP addresses assigned to users on the date and at the time of each allegedly infringing act.\n Plaintiff's need for the information to advance its claim—without the defendants' identifying information, the plaintiff could not name or serve process on the defendants and hence cannot advance its claims of copyright infringement.\n Defendants' expectation of privacy—defendants had little expectation of privacy in the subscriber information that they had already given to their ISPs.\n\nBecause all of the five Sony factors supported disclosure of the defendants' identities, the court found that the plaintiff's need for the defendants' identities in pursuit its claims outweighed the defendants' First Amendment interest in anonymity.\n\nSubsequent developments \nOn December 21, 2012 the case was dismissed in its entirety without prejudice, but the plaintiff could still file a new lawsuit in other jurisdictions until the statute of limitation has expired.\n\nEric Goldman criticized the court for allowing copyright plaintiffs to unmask the identities of the defendants too easily. As a result of the disclosure, the defendants lost their essential due process rights. In practice, once the plaintiff knew the identities of defendants, it could take advantage of substantial extrajudicial remedies such as public humiliation in porn copyright cases. Goldman claimed that this ruling unfairly favored the plaintiff over the anonymous defendants.\n\nAfter the case was dismissed, Hard Drive Productions was involved in another lawsuit related to this case. On February 16, 2013, Nathan Abshire, one of the defendants in Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. Does 1–1,495, filed a new lawsuit (MND 13-cv-00380) against Hard Drive Productions. Abshire alleged that after the disclosing of the Does' identities in September 2012, Hard Drive Productions, Inc. began harassing Nathan over the phone and continued to propose various unacceptable settlement proposals. The complaint primarily requested that the court issue an order declaring that Abshire not be liable for copyright infringement, that Hard Drive Productions's purported copyright on its work was unenforceable or invalid. It also requested that Abshire be awarded costs, disbursements, and expenses, including reasonable attorney fees.\n\nSee also \nMcIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission\nApple v. Does\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n \n\n2012 in United States case law\nInternet privacy case law\nUnited States file sharing case law",
"Microsoft Corp. v. Harmony Comps. & Elecs., Inc., 846 F. Supp. 208 (E.D.N.Y. 1994), was an Eastern New York District Court decision regarding copyright infringement and breach of license agreement. Microsoft Corp. (referred to as \"Microsoft\" below) filed the lawsuit against Harmony Comps. & Elecs., Inc. (referred to as \"Harmony\" below) and its president, Stanley Furst (together referred to as the \"defendants\" below), seeking declaratory and injunctive relief and treble damages. The defendants did not contest the plaintiff's claim that Harmony sold Microsoft's products without any licenses or authorization, or that they sold Microsoft's products stand-alone, which violated Microsoft's license agreement. Instead, the defendants argued that their action was protected by the first-sale doctrine 17 U.S.C §109(a) (1977). After reviewing the facts, the court found that the defendants' action constituted copyright infringement, and that the first-sale doctrine did not apply since the defendants failed to prove that the Microsoft products they sold were lawfully acquired. The court also ruled that the defendants breached Microsoft's software license agreement by selling the products stand-alone.\n\nBackground\nThe defendants sold Microsoft's copyrighted products, including Microsoft MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows software programs, without license or authorization. Furthermore, they sold such products either stand-alone or loaded on computer hard disks. They continued their activity despite of Microsoft's notification letters of illegality on April 19, June 16, July 14, and September 14, 1993. According to Robert Wanezek, Program Manager of Microsoft's Replication Group, and Lee Gates, Microsoft's Software Design Test Engineer, twenty-one pieces of counterfeit products were found on defendants' premises. Microsoft hired private investigators, who were then able to purchase various Microsoft products from the defendants. Other customers who bought Microsoft's products from the defendants called Microsoft's Piracy Hotline to question the legitimacy of Harmony's sales. \n\nThe defendants denied that any of their products sold were counterfeit. They argued that even if any of the Microsoft products were counterfeit, they purchased them in the good faith that such products were genuine. Furthermore, they argued that their selling of Microsoft products was protected by the first-sale doctrine and thus the copyright infringement claim did not hold.\n\nHolding\nWithout an evidentiary hearing, the court ruled that the copyright infringement was likely to hold in this case based on the facts that the defendants were never licensees of Microsoft's and therefore were unauthorized to distribute any of Microsoft's products. The court found it unnecessary to verify the genuineness of the Microsoft products sold by Harmony. Furthermore, the court cited ISC-Bunker Ramo Corp. v. Altech, Inc., 765 F. Supp. 1310, 1331 (N.D.Ill. 1990) (\"there is no such thing as a bona fide purchase for value in copyright law\") and ruled that Harmony's good faith argument did not hold. The fact that the defendants ignored Microsoft's four notification letters proved that they were not \"innocent infringers\".\n\nThe first-sale doctrine did not apply to this case, since the defendants failed to trace the \"chain of title\" and establish a proof of first sale. The court reasoned that \"in civil actions for copyright infringement, the defendant has the burden of proving that the particular pieces of the copyrighted work that he sold were lawfully made or acquired\" and that \"the fact that defendants bought their Microsoft Products from another party does not by itself establish a first sale\". \n\nAs to the fact that Microsoft's \"undercover investigator\" traced some of the products sold by Harmony to two of Microsoft's licensees, the defendants still violated Microsoft's license agreement, which required that licensees \"shall distribute Product(s) only with [licensee's] Customer System(s)\". (The \"Customer System\" here means a \"single user computer system\".) Harmony's selling the product stand-alone breached Microsoft's license agreement.\n\nSee also\n List of leading legal cases in copyright law\n First-sale doctrine\n Copyright infringement of software\n Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1994 in United States case law\nUnited States copyright case law\nUnited States district court cases\nMicrosoft litigation"
] |
[
"Rudy Giuliani",
"Appointees as defendants",
"How many appointees acted as defendants?",
"In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding,",
"Did he appoint anyone else?",
"In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury",
"how many defendants were there?",
"Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign.",
"What was he on trial for?",
"Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009, in a New York district court, to eight federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements,",
"What was Russell Harding on the stand for?",
"In 2005, Harding pleaded guilty to defrauding the Housing Development Corporation and to possession of child pornography.",
"Were there other defendants?",
"I don't know."
] | C_7a9b28f537444b1fa4b7ec7d83b31da1_1 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 7 | Besides Russell Harding and Richard Roberts, are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | Rudy Giuliani | Several of Giuliani's appointees to head City agencies became defendants in criminal proceedings. In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding, to head the New York City Housing Development Corporation, although Harding had neither a college degree nor relevant experience. In 2005, Harding pleaded guilty to defrauding the Housing Development Corporation and to possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Russell Harding committed suicide in 2012. In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury after lying to a grand jury about a car that Harding bought for him with City funds. Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign. Giuliani appointed him as the Commissioner of the Department of Correction and then as the Police Commissioner. Giuliani was also the godfather to Kerik's two youngest children. After Giuliani left office, Kerik was subject to state and federal investigations resulting in his pleading guilty in 2006, in a Bronx Supreme Court, to two unrelated ethics violations. Kerik was ordered to pay $221,000 in fines. Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009, in a New York district court, to eight federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements, and on February 18, 2010, he was sentenced to four years in federal prison. Giuliani was not implicated in any of the proceedings. CANNOTANSWER | After Giuliani left office, Kerik was subject to state and federal investigations resulting in his pleading guilty in 2006, | Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and disbarred attorney who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 1983 and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989.
Giuliani led the 1980s federal prosecution of New York City mafia bosses as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. After a failed campaign for Mayor of New York City in the 1989 election, he succeeded in 1993, and was reelected in 1997, campaigning on a "tough on crime" platform. He led New York's controversial "civic cleanup" as its mayor from 1994 to 2001. Mayor Giuliani appointed an outsider, William Bratton, as New York City's new police commissioner. Reforming the police department's administration and policing practices, they applied the broken windows theory, which cites social disorder, like disrepair and vandalism, for attracting loitering addicts, panhandlers, and prostitutes, followed by serious and violent criminals. In particular, Giuliani focused on removing panhandlers and sex clubs from Times Square, promoting a "family values" vibe and a return to the area's earlier focus on business, theater, and the arts. As crime rates fell steeply, well ahead of the national average pace, Giuliani was widely credited, though later critics cite other contributing factors. In 2000, he ran against First Lady Hillary Clinton for a US Senate seat from New York, but left the race once diagnosed with prostate cancer. For his mayoral leadership after the September11 attacks in 2001, he was called "America's mayor". He was named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2001, and was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
In 2002, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners, and acquired, but later sold, an investment banking firm, Giuliani Capital Advisors. In 2005, he joined a law firm, renamed Bracewell & Giuliani. Vying for the Republican Party's 2008 presidential nomination, Giuliani was an early frontrunner, yet did poorly in the primary election, withdrew, and endorsed the party's subsequent nominee, John McCain. Declining to run for New York governor in 2010 and for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, Giuliani focused on the activities of his business firms. In addition, he has often been engaged for public speaking, political commentary, and Republican campaign support.
Giuliani joined President Donald Trump's personal legal team in April 2018. His activities as Trump's attorney have drawn renewed media scrutiny, including allegations that he engaged in corruption and profiteering. In late 2019, Giuliani was reportedly under federal investigation for violating lobbying laws, and possibly several other charges, as a central figure in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which resulted in Trump's first impeachment. Following the 2020 presidential election, he represented Trump in many lawsuits filed in attempts to overturn the election results, making false and debunked allegations about rigged voting machines, polling place fraud, and an international communist conspiracy. As a consequence, his license to practice law was suspended in New York State in June 2021 and in the District of Columbia in July 2021.
Early life
Giuliani was born in the East Flatbush section, then an Italian-American enclave, in New York City's borough of Brooklyn, the only child of working-class parents Helen (née D'Avanzo; 1909–2002) and Harold Angelo Giuliani (1908–1981), both children of Italian immigrants. Giuliani is of Tuscan descent on his father's side, as his paternal grandparents (Rodolfo and Evangelina Giuliani) were born in Montecatini Terme, Tuscany, Italy. He was raised a Roman Catholic. Harold Giuliani, a plumber and a bartender, had trouble holding a job, was convicted of felony assault and robbery, and served prison time in Sing Sing. Once released, he worked as an enforcer for his brother-in-law Leo D'Avanzo, who operated an organized crime-affiliated loan sharking and gambling ring at a restaurant in Brooklyn. The couple lived in East Flatbush until Harold died of prostate cancer in 1981, whereupon Helen moved to Manhattan's Upper East Side.
When Giuliani was seven years old in 1951, his family moved from Brooklyn to Garden City South, where he attended the local Catholic school, St. Anne's. Later, he commuted back to Brooklyn to attend Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, graduating in 1961.
Giuliani attended Manhattan College in Riverdale, Bronx, where he majored in political science with a minor in philosophy and considered becoming a priest.
Giuliani was elected president of his class in his sophomore year, but was not re-elected in his junior year. He joined the Phi Rho Pi college forensic fraternity and honor society. He graduated in 1965. Giuliani decided to forgo the priesthood and instead attended the New York University School of Law in Manhattan, where he made the NYU Law Review and graduated cum laude with a Juris Doctor degree in 1968.
Giuliani started his political life as a Democrat. He volunteered for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968. He also worked as a Democratic Party committeeman on Long Island in the mid-1960s and voted for George McGovern for president in 1972.
Legal career
Upon graduation from law school, Giuliani clerked for Judge Lloyd Francis MacMahon, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.
Giuliani did not serve in the military during the Vietnam War. His conscription was deferred while he was enrolled at Manhattan College and NYU Law. Upon graduation from the latter in 1968, he was classified 1-A (available for military service), but in 1969 he was reclassified 2-A (essential civilian) as Judge MacMahon's law clerk. In 1970, Giuliani was reclassified 1-A but received a high 308 draft lottery number and was not called up for service.
Giuliani switched his party registration from Democratic to Independent in 1975. This occurred during a period of time in which he was recruited for a position in Washington, D.C. with the Ford administration: Giuliani served as the Associate Deputy Attorney General and chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Harold "Ace" Tyler.
His first high-profile prosecution was of Democratic U.S. Representative Bertram L. Podell (NY-13), who was convicted of corruption. Podell pleaded guilty to conspiracy and conflict of interest for accepting more than $41,000 in campaign contributions and legal fees from a Florida airline to obtain federal rights for a Bahama route. Podell, who maintained a legal practice while serving in Congress, said the payments were legitimate legal fees. The Washington Post later reported: "The trial catapulted future New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani to front-page status when, as assistant U.S. attorney, he relentlessly cross-examined an initially calm Rep. Podell. The congressman reportedly grew more flustered and eventually decided to plead guilty."
From 1977 to 1981, during the Carter administration, Giuliani practiced law at the Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler law firm, as chief of staff to his former boss, Ace Tyler. In later years, Tyler became "disillusioned" by what Tyler described as Giuliani's time as US Attorney, criticizing several of his prosecutions as "overkill".
On December 8, 1980, one month after the election of Ronald Reagan brought Republicans back to power in Washington, he switched his party affiliation from Independent to Republican. Giuliani later said the switches were because he found Democratic policies "naïve", and that "by the time I moved to Washington, the Republicans had come to make more sense to me." Others suggested that the switches were made in order to get positions in the Justice Department. Giuliani's mother maintained in 1988 that he "only became a Republican after he began to get all these jobs from them. He's definitely not a conservative Republican. He thinks he is, but he isn't. He still feels very sorry for the poor."
In 1981, Giuliani was named Associate Attorney General in the Reagan administration, the third-highest position in the Department of Justice. As Associate Attorney General, Giuliani supervised the U.S. Attorney Offices' federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the United States Marshals Service. In a well-publicized 1982 case, Giuliani testified in defense of the federal government's "detention posture" regarding the internment of more than 2,000 Haitian asylum seekers who had entered the country illegally. The U.S. government disputed the assertion that most of the detainees had fled their country due to political persecution, alleging instead that they were "economic migrants". In defense of the government's position, Giuliani testified that "political repression, at least in general, does not exist" under President of Haiti Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime.
In 1983, Giuliani was appointed to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which was technically a demotion but was sought by Giuliani because of his desire to personally litigate cases and because the SDNY is considered the highest profile United States Attorney's Office in the country, and as such, is often used by those who have held the position as a springboard for running for public office. It was in this position that he first gained national prominence by prosecuting numerous high-profile cases, resulting in the convictions of Wall Street figures Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. He also focused on prosecuting drug dealers, organized crime, and corruption in government. He amassed a record of 4,152 convictions and 25 reversals. As a federal prosecutor, Giuliani was credited with bringing the perp walk, parading of suspects in front of the previously alerted media, into common use as a prosecutorial tool. After Giuliani "patented the perp walk", the tool was used by increasing numbers of prosecutors nationwide.
Giuliani's critics claimed that he arranged for people to be arrested, then dropped charges for lack of evidence on high-profile cases rather than going to trial. In a few cases, his arrests of alleged white-collar criminals at their workplaces with charges later dropped or lessened, sparked controversy, and damaged the reputations of the alleged "perps". He claimed veteran stock trader Richard Wigton, of Kidder, Peabody & Co., was guilty of insider trading; in February 1987, he had officers handcuff Wigton and march him through the company's trading floor, with Wigton in tears. Giuliani had his agents arrest Tim Tabor, a young arbitrageur and former colleague of Wigton, so late that he had to stay overnight in jail before posting bond.
Within three months, charges were dropped against both Wigton and Tabor; Giuliani said, "We're not going to go to trial. We're just the tip of the iceberg," but no further charges were forthcoming and the investigation did not end until Giuliani's successor was in place. Giuliani's high-profile raid of the Princeton/Newport firm ended with the defendants having their cases overturned on appeal on the grounds that what they had been convicted of were not crimes.
Mafia Commission trial
In the Mafia Commission Trial, which ran from February 25, 1985, through November 19, 1986, Giuliani indicted eleven organized crime figures, including the heads of New York City's so-called "Five Families", under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) on charges including extortion, labor racketeering, and murder for hire. Time magazine called this "Case of Cases" possibly "the most significant assault on the infrastructure of organized crime since the high command of the Chicago Mafia was swept away in 1943", and quoted Giuliani's stated intention: "Our approach is to wipe out the five families." Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano evaded conviction when he and his underboss, Thomas Bilotti, were murdered on the streets of Midtown Manhattan on December 16, 1985. However, three heads of the Five Families were sentenced to 100 years in prison on January 13, 1987. Genovese and Colombo leaders, Tony Salerno and Carmine Persico received additional sentences in separate trials, with 70-year and 39-year sentences to run consecutively. He was assisted by three Assistant United States Attorneys: Michael Chertoff, the eventual second United States Secretary of Homeland Security and co-author of the Patriot Act; John Savarese, now a partner at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz; and Gil Childers, a later deputy chief of the criminal division for the Southern District of New York and now managing director in the legal department at Goldman Sachs.
According to an FBI memo revealed in 2007, leaders of the Five Families voted in late 1986 on whether to issue a contract for Giuliani's death. Heads of the Lucchese, Bonanno, and Genovese families rejected the idea, though Colombo and Gambino leaders, Carmine Persico and John Gotti, encouraged assassination. In 2014, it was revealed by a former Sicilian Mafia member and informant, Rosario Naimo, that Salvatore Riina, a notorious Sicilian Mafia leader, had ordered a murder contract on Giuliani during the mid-1980s. Riina allegedly was suspicious of Giuliani's efforts prosecuting the American Mafia and was worried that he might have spoken with Italian anti-mafia prosecutors and politicians, including Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who were both murdered in 1992 in separate car bombings. According to Giuliani, the Sicilian Mafia offered $800,000 for his death during his first year as mayor of New York in 1994.
Boesky, Milken trials
Ivan Boesky, a Wall Street arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of about $200million by betting on corporate takeovers, was originally investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for making investments based on tips received from corporate insiders, leading the way for the US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York to investigate as well. These stock and options acquisitions were sometimes brazen, with massive purchases occurring only a few days before a corporation announced a takeover. Although insider trading of this kind was illegal, laws prohibiting it were rarely enforced until Boesky was prosecuted. Boesky cooperated with the SEC and informed on several others, including junk bond trader Michael Milken. Per agreement with Giuliani, Boesky received a -year prison sentence along with a $100million fine. In 1989, Giuliani charged Milken under the RICO Act with 98 counts of racketeering and fraud. In a highly publicized case, Milken was indicted by a grand jury on these charges.
Mayoral campaigns
Giuliani was U.S. Attorney until January 1989, resigning as the Reagan administration ended. He garnered criticism until he left office for his handling of cases, and was accused of prosecuting cases to further his political ambitions. He joined the law firm White & Case in New York City as a partner. He remained with White & Case until May 1990, when he joined the law firm Anderson Kill Olick & Oshinsky, also in New York City.
1989
Giuliani first ran for New York City mayor in 1989, when he attempted to unseat three-term incumbent Ed Koch. He won the September 1989 Republican Party primary election against business magnate Ronald Lauder, in a campaign marked by claims that Giuliani was not a true Republican after an acrimonious debate between the two men. In the Democratic primary, Koch was upset by Manhattan Borough president David Dinkins.
In the general election, Giuliani ran as the fusion candidate of both the Republican and the Liberal parties. The Conservative Party, which had often co-lined the Republican party candidate, withheld support from Giuliani and ran Lauder instead. Conservative Party leaders were unhappy with Giuliani on ideological grounds. They cited the Liberal Party's endorsement statement that Giuliani "agreed with the Liberal Party's views on affirmative action, gay rights, gun control, school prayer and tuition tax credits".
During two televised debates, Giuliani framed himself as an agent of change, saying, "I'm the reformer," that "If we keep going merrily along, this city's going down," and that electing Dinkins would represent "more of the same, more of the rotten politics that have been dragging us down". Giuliani pointed out that Dinkins had not filed a tax return for many years and of several other ethical missteps, in particular a stock transfer to his son. Dinkins filed several years of returns and said the tax matter had been fully paid off. He denied other wrongdoing, saying "what we need is a mayor, not a prosecutor," and that Giuliani refused to say "the R-wordhe doesn't like to admit he's a Republican". Dinkins won the endorsements of three of the four daily New York newspapers, while Giuliani won approval from the New York Post.
In the end, Giuliani lost to Dinkins by a margin of 47,080 votes out of 1,899,845 votes cast, in the closest election in New York City's history. The closeness of the race was particularly noteworthy considering the small percentage of New York City residents who are registered Republicans and resulted in Giuliani being the presumptive nominee for a rematch with Dinkins at the next election.
1993
Four years after his defeat to Dinkins, Giuliani again ran for mayor. Once again, Giuliani also ran on the Liberal Party line but not the Conservative Party line, which ran activist George Marlin.
Although crime had begun to fall during the Dinkins administration, Giuliani's campaign capitalized on the perception that crime was uncontrolled in the city following events such as the Crown Heights riot and the Family Red Apple boycott. The year prior to the election, Giuliani was a key speaker at a Patrolmen's Benevolent Association rally opposing Dinkins, in which Giuliani blamed the police department's low morale on Dinkins' leadership. The rally quickly devolved into a riot, with nearly 4,000 off-duty police officers storming the City Hall and blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.
In his pitch to lower crime rates in the city, Giuliani promised to focus police resources toward shutting down petty crimes and nuisances as a way of restoring the quality of life:
Dinkins and Giuliani never debated during the campaign, because they were never able to agree on how to approach a debate. Dinkins was endorsed by The New York Times and Newsday, while Giuliani was endorsed by the New York Post and, in a key switch from 1989, the Daily News. Giuliani went to visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, seeking his blessing and endorsement.
On election day, Giuliani's campaign hired off-duty cops, firefighters, and corrections officers to monitor polling places in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and The Bronx for cases of voter fraud. Despite objections from the Dinkins campaign, who claimed that the effort would intimidate Democratic voters, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly assigned an additional 52 police captains and 3,500 officers to monitor the city's polling places.
Giuliani won by a margin of 53,367 votes. He became the first Republican elected Mayor of New York City since John Lindsay in 1965. Similar to the election four years prior, Giuliani performed particularly well in the white ethnic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Giuliani saw especially high returns in the borough of Staten Island, as a referendum to consider allowing the borough to secede from New York City was on the ballot.
1997
Giuliani's opponent in 1997 was Democratic Manhattan Borough president Ruth Messinger, who had beaten Al Sharpton in the September 9, 1997 Democratic primary. In the general election, Giuliani once again had the Liberal Party and not the Conservative Party listing. Giuliani ran an aggressive campaign, parlaying his image as a tough leader who had cleaned up the city. Giuliani's popularity was at its highest point to date, with a late October 1997 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showing him as having a 68 percent approval rating; 70 percent of New Yorkers were satisfied with life in the city and 64 percent said things were better in the city compared to four years previously.
Throughout the campaign he was well ahead in the polls and had a strong fund-raising advantage over Messinger. On her part, Messinger lost the support of several usually Democratic constituencies, including gay organizations and large labor unions. The local daily newspapersThe New York Times, Daily News, New York Post and Newsdayall endorsed Giuliani over Messinger.
In the end, Giuliani won 58% of the vote to Messinger's 41%, and became the first registered Republican to win a second term as mayor while on the Republican line since Fiorello H. La Guardia in 1941. Voter turnout was the lowest in twelve years, with 38% of registered voters casting ballots. The margin of victory included gains in his share of the African American vote (20% compared to 1993's 5%) and the Hispanic vote (43% from 37%) while maintaining his base of white ethnic, Catholic and Jewish voters from 1993.
Mayoralty
Giuliani served as mayor of New York City from 1994 through 2001.
Law enforcement
In Giuliani's first term as mayor, the New York City Police Departmentat the instigation of Commissioner Bill Brattonadopted an aggressive enforcement/deterrent strategy based on James Q. Wilson's "Broken Windows" approach. This involved crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as graffiti, turnstile jumping, cannabis possession, and aggressive panhandling by "squeegee men", on the theory that this would send a message that order would be maintained. The legal underpinning for removing the "squeegee men" from the streets was developed under Giuliani's predecessor, Mayor David Dinkins. Bratton, with Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple, also created and instituted CompStat, a computer-driven comparative statistical approach to mapping crime geographically and in terms of emerging criminal patterns, as well as charting officer performance by quantifying criminal apprehensions. Critics of the system assert that it creates an environment in which police officials are encouraged to underreport or otherwise manipulate crime data. An extensive study found a high correlation between crime rates reported by the police through CompStat and rates of crime available from other sources, suggesting there had been no manipulation. The CompStat initiative won the 1996 Innovations in Government Award from the Kennedy School of Government.
During Giuliani's administration, crime rates dropped in New York City. The extent to which Giuliani deserves the credit is disputed. Crime rates in New York City had started to drop in 1991 under previous mayor David Dinkins, three years before Giuliani took office. The rates of most crimes, including all categories of violent crime, made consecutive declines during the last 36 months of Dinkins's four-year term, ending a 30-year upward spiral. A small nationwide drop in crime preceded Giuliani's election, and some critics say he may have been the beneficiary of a trend already in progress. Additional contributing factors to the overall decline in New York City crime during the 1990s were the addition of 7,000 officers to the NYPD, lobbied for and hired by the Dinkins administration, and an overall improvement in the national economy. Changing demographics were a key factor contributing to crime rate reductions, which were similar across the country during this time. Because the crime index is based on that of the FBI, which is self-reported by police departments, some have alleged that crimes were shifted into categories the FBI does not collect.
Some studies conclude that the decline in New York City's crime rate in the 1990s and 2000s exceeds all national figures and therefore should be linked with a local dynamic that was not present as such anywhere else in the country: what University of California, Berkeley sociologist Frank Zimring calls "the most focused form of policing in history". In his book The Great American Crime Decline, Zimring argues that "up to half of New York's crime drop in the 1990s, and virtually 100 percent of its continuing crime decline since 2000, has resulted from policing."
Bratton was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1996. Giuliani reportedly forced Bratton out after two years, in what was seen as a battle of two large egos in which Giuliani was not tolerant of Bratton's celebrity. Bratton went on to become chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Giuliani's term also saw allegations of civil rights abuses and other police misconduct under other commissioners after Bratton's departure. There were police shootings of unarmed suspects, and the scandals surrounding the torture of Abner Louima and the killings of Amadou Diallo, Gidone Busch and Patrick Dorismond. Giuliani supported the New York City Police Department, for example by releasing what he called Dorismond's "extensive criminal record" to the public, including a sealed juvenile file.
City services
The Giuliani administration advocated the privatization of the city's public schools, which he called "dysfunctional", and advocated the reduction of state funding for them. He advocated for a voucher-based system to promote private schooling. Giuliani supported protection for illegal immigrants. He continued a policy of preventing city employees from contacting the Immigration and Naturalization Service about immigration violations, on the grounds that illegal aliens should be able to take actions such as sending their children to school or reporting crimes to the police without fear of deportation.
During his mayoralty, gay and lesbian New Yorkers received domestic partnership rights. Giuliani induced the city's Democratic-controlled New York City Council, which had avoided the issue for years, to pass legislation providing broad protection for same-sex partners. In 1998, he codified local law by granting all city employees equal benefits for their domestic partners.
2000 U.S. Senate campaign
Due to term limits, Giuliani was ineligible to run in 2001 for a third term as mayor. In November 1998, four-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement and Giuliani immediately indicated an interest in running in the 2000 election for the now-open seat. Due to his high profile and visibility Giuliani was supported by the state Republican Party. Giuliani's entrance led Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel and others to recruit then-First Lady Hillary Clinton to run for Moynihan's seat, hoping she might combat his star power.
An early January 1999 poll showed Giuliani trailing Clinton by ten points. In April 1999, Giuliani formed an exploratory committee in connection with the Senate run. By January 2000, polling for the race dramatically reversed, with Giuliani now pulling nine points ahead of Clinton, in part because his campaign was able to take advantage of several campaign stumbles by Clinton. Nevertheless, the Giuliani campaign was showing some structural weaknesses; so closely identified with New York City, he had somewhat limited appeal to normally Republican voters in Upstate New York. The New York Police Department's fatal shooting of Patrick Dorismond in March 2000 inflamed Giuliani's already strained relations with the city's minority communities, and Clinton seized on it as a major campaign issue. By April 2000, reports showed Clinton gaining upstate and generally outworking Giuliani, who said his duties as mayor prevented him from campaigning more. Clinton was now eight to ten points ahead of Giuliani in the polls.
Then followed four tumultuous weeks in which Giuliani learned he had prostate cancer and needed treatment; his extramarital relationship with Judith Nathan became public and the subject of a media frenzy; and he announced a separation from his wife Donna Hanover. After much indecision, on May 19, Giuliani announced his withdrawal from the Senate race.
September 11 terrorist attacks
Response
Giuliani received nationwide attention in the aftermath of the September11 attacks. He made frequent appearances on radio and television on September11 and afterwardsfor example, to indicate that tunnels would be closed as a precautionary measure, and that there was no reason to believe the dispersion of chemical or biological weaponry into the air was a factor in the attack. In his public statements, Giuliani said:
The 9/11 attacks occurred on the scheduled date of the mayoral primary to select the Democratic and Republican candidates to succeed Giuliani. The primary was immediately delayed two weeks to September 25. During this period, Giuliani sought an unprecedented three-month emergency extension of his term from January1 to April1 under the New York State Constitution (Article3 Section 25). He threatened to challenge the law imposing term limits on elected city officials and run for another full four-year term, if the primary candidates did not consent to the extension of his mayoralty. In the end leaders in the State Assembly and Senate indicated that they did not believe the extension was necessary. The election proceeded as scheduled, and the winning candidate, the Giuliani-endorsed Republican convert Michael Bloomberg, took office on January 1, 2002, per normal custom.
Giuliani claimed to have been at the Ground Zero site "as often, if not more, than most workers... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them." Some 9/11 workers have objected to those claims. While his appointment logs were unavailable for the six days immediately following the attacks, Giuliani logged 29 hours at the site over three months beginning September 17. This contrasted with recovery workers at the site who spent this much time at the site in two to three days.
When Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal suggested the attacks were an indication that the United States "should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause," Giuliani asserted, "There is no moral equivalent for this act. There is no justification for it... And one of the reasons I think this happened is because people were engaged in moral equivalency in not understanding the difference between liberal democracies like the United States, like Israel, and terrorist states and those who condone terrorism. So I think not only are those statements wrong, they're part of the problem." Giuliani subsequently rejected the prince's $10million donation to disaster relief in the aftermath of the attack.
Emergency command center location and communications problems
Giuliani has been widely criticized for his decision to locate the Office of Emergency Management headquarters on the 23rd floor inside the 7 World Trade Center building. Those opposing the decision perceived the office as a target for a terrorist attack in light of the previous terrorist attack against the World Trade Center in 1993. The office was unable to coordinate efforts between police and firefighters properly while evacuating its headquarters. Large tanks of diesel fuel were placed in 7World Trade to power the command center. In May 1997, Giuliani put responsibility for selecting the location on Jerome M. Hauer, who had served under Giuliani from 1996 to 2000 before being appointed by him as New York City's first Director of Emergency Management. Hauer has taken exception to that account in interviews and provided Fox News and New York Magazine with a memo demonstrating that he recommended a location in Brooklyn but was overruled by Giuliani. Television journalist Chris Wallace interviewed Giuliani on May 13, 2007, about his 1997 decision to locate the command center at the World Trade Center. Giuliani laughed during Wallace's questions and said that Hauer recommended the World Trade Center site and claimed that Hauer said the WTC site was the best location. Wallace presented Giuliani a photocopy of Hauer's directive letter. The letter urged Giuliani to locate the command center in Brooklyn, instead of lower Manhattan. The February 1996 memo read, "The [Brooklyn] building is secure and not as visible a target as buildings in Lower Manhattan."
In January 2008, an eight-page memo was revealed which detailed the New York City Police Department's opposition in 1998 to location of the city's emergency command center at the Trade Center site. The Giuliani administration overrode these concerns.
The 9/11 Commission Report noted that lack of preparedness could have led to the deaths of first responders at the scene of the attacks. The Commission noted that the radios in use by the fire department were the same radios which had been criticized for their ineffectiveness following the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. Family members of 9/11 victims have said these radios were a complaint of emergency services responders for years. The radios were not working when Fire Department chiefs ordered the 343 firefighters inside the towers to evacuate, and they remained in the towers as the towers collapsed. However, when Giuliani testified before the 9/11 Commission he said the firefighters ignored the evacuation order out of an effort to save lives. Giuliani testified to the commission, where some family members of responders who had died in the attacks appeared to protest his statements. A 1994 mayoral office study of the radios indicated that they were faulty. Replacement radios were purchased in a $33million no-bid contract with Motorola, and implemented in early 2001. However, the radios were recalled in March 2001 after a probationary firefighter's calls for help at a house fire could not be picked up by others at the scene, leaving firemen with the old analog radios from 1993. A book later published by Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, argued that the commission had not pursued a tough enough line of questioning with Giuliani.
An October 2001 study by the National Institute of Environmental Safety and Health said cleanup workers lacked adequate protective gear.
Public reaction
Giuliani gained international attention in the wake of the attacks and was widely hailed for his leadership role during the crisis. Polls taken just six weeks after the attack showed a 79 percent approval rating among New York City voters. This was a dramatic increase over the 36 percent rating he had received a year earlier, which was an average at the end of a two-term mayorship. Oprah Winfrey called him "America's Mayor" at a 9/11 memorial service held at Yankee Stadium on September 23, 2001. Other voices denied it was the mayor who had pulled the city together. "You didn't bring us together, our pain brought us together and our decency brought us together. We would have come together if Bozo was the mayor," said civil rights activist Al Sharpton, in a statement largely supported by Fernando Ferrer, one of three main candidates for the mayoralty at the end of 2001. "He was a power-hungry person," Sharpton also said.
Giuliani was praised by some for his close involvement with the rescue and recovery efforts, but others argue that "Giuliani has exaggerated the role he played after the terrorist attacks, casting himself as a hero for political gain." Giuliani has collected $11.4million from speaking fees in a single year (with increased demand after the attacks). Before September11, Giuliani's assets were estimated to be somewhat less than $2million, but his net worth could now be as high as 30 times that amount. He has made most of his money since leaving office.
Time Person of the Year
On December 24, 2001, Time magazine named Giuliani its Person of the Year for 2001. Time observed that, before 9/11, Giuliani's public image had been that of a rigid, self-righteous, ambitious politician. After 9/11, and perhaps owing also to his bout with prostate cancer, his public image became that of a man who could be counted on to unite a city in the midst of its greatest crisis. Historian Vincent J. Cannato concluded in September 2006:
Aftermath
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was given an honorary knighthood (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani initially downplayed the health effects arising from the September 11 attacks in the Financial District and lower Manhattan areas in the vicinity of the World Trade Center site. He moved quickly to reopen Wall Street, and it was reopened on September 17. In the first month after the attacks, he said "The air quality is safe and acceptable."
Giuliani took control away from agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, leaving the "largely unknown" city Department of Design and Construction in charge of recovery and cleanup. Documents indicate that the Giuliani administration never enforced federal requirements requiring the wearing of respirators. Concurrently, the administration threatened companies with dismissal if cleanup work slowed. In June 2007, Christie Todd Whitman, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), reportedly said the EPA had pushed for workers at the WTC site to wear respirators but she had been blocked by Giuliani. She said she believed the subsequent lung disease and deaths suffered by WTC responders were a result of these actions. However, former deputy mayor Joe Lhota, then with the Giuliani campaign, replied, "All workers at Ground Zero were instructed repeatedly to wear their respirators."
Giuliani asked the city's Congressional delegation to limit the city's liability for Ground Zero illnesses to a total of $350million. Two years after Giuliani finished his term, FEMA appropriated $1billion to a special insurance fund, called the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company, to protect the city against 9/11 lawsuits.
In February 2007, the International Association of Fire Fighters issued a letter asserting that Giuliani rushed to conclude the recovery effort once gold and silver had been recovered from World Trade Center vaults and thereby prevented the remains of many victims from being recovered: "Mayor Giuliani's actions meant that fire fighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills Landfill," it said, adding: "Hundreds remained entombed in Ground Zero when Giuliani gave up on them." Lawyers for the International Association of Fire Fighters seek to interview Giuliani under oath as part of a federal legal action alleging that New York City negligently dumped body parts and other human remains in the Fresh Kills Landfill.
Post-mayoralty
Politics
Before 2008 election
Since leaving office as mayor, Giuliani has remained politically active by campaigning for Republican candidates for political offices at all levels. When George Pataki became Governor in 1995, this represented the first time the positions of both Mayor and Governor were held simultaneously by Republicans since John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. Giuliani and Pataki were instrumental in bringing the 2004 Republican National Convention to New York City. He was a speaker at the convention, and endorsed President George W. Bush for re-election by recalling that immediately after the World Trade Center towers fell,
Similarly, in June 2006, Giuliani started a website called Solutions America to help elect Republican candidates across the nation.
After campaigning on Bush's behalf in the U.S. presidential election of 2004, he was reportedly the top choice for Secretary of Homeland Security after Tom Ridge's resignation. When suggestions were made that Giuliani's confirmation hearings would be marred by details of his past affairs and scandals, he turned down the offer and instead recommended his friend and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. After the formal announcement of Kerik's nomination, information about Kerik's pastmost notably, that he had ties to organized crime, had failed to properly report gifts he had received, had been sued for sexual harassment and had employed an undocumented alien as a domestic servantbecame known, and Kerik withdrew his nomination.
On March 15, 2006, Congress formed the Iraq Study Group (ISG). This bipartisan ten-person panel, of which Giuliani was one of the members, was charged with assessing the Iraq War and making recommendations. They would eventually unanimously conclude that contrary to Bush administration assertions, "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" and called for "changes in the primary mission" that would allow "the United States to begin to move its forces out of Iraq".
On May 24, 2006, after missing all the group's meetings, including a briefing from General David Petraeus, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, Giuliani resigned from the panel, citing "previous time commitments". Giuliani's fundraising schedule had kept him from participating in the panel, a schedule which raised $11.4million in speaking fees over fourteen months, and that Giuliani had been forced to resign after being given "an ultimatum to either show up for meetings or leave the group" by group leader James Baker. Giuliani subsequently said he had started thinking about running for president, and being on the panel might give it a political spin.
Giuliani was described by Newsweek in January 2007 as "one of the most consistent cheerleaders for the president's handling of the war in Iraq" and as of June 2007, he remained one of the few candidates for president to unequivocally support both the basis for the invasion and the execution of the war.
Giuliani spoke in support of the removal of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK, also PMOI, MKO) from the United States State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The group was on the State Department list from 1997 until September 2012. They were placed on the list for killing six Americans in Iran during the 1970s and attempting to attack the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992. Giuliani, along with other former government officials and politicians Ed Rendell, R. James Woolsey, Porter Goss, Louis Freeh, Michael Mukasey, James L. Jones, Tom Ridge, and Howard Dean, were criticized for their involvement with the group. Some were subpoenaed during an inquiry about who was paying the prominent individuals' speaking fees. Giuliani and others wrote an article for the conservative publication National Review stating their position that the group should not be classified as a terrorist organization. They supported their position by pointing out that the United Kingdom and the European Union had already removed the group from their terrorism lists. They further assert that only the United States and Iran still listed it as a terrorist group. However, Canada did not delist the group until December 2012.
2008 presidential campaign
In November 2006, Giuliani announced the formation of an exploratory committee toward a run for the presidency in 2008. In February 2007, he filed a "statement of candidacy" and confirmed on the television program Larry King Live that he was indeed running.
Early polls showed Giuliani with one of the highest levels of name recognition ever recorded along with high levels of support among the Republican candidates. Throughout most of 2007, he was the leader in most nationwide opinion polling among Republicans. Senator John McCain, who ranked a close second behind the New York Mayor, had faded, and most polls showed Giuliani to have more support than any of the other declared Republican candidates, with only former Senator Fred Thompson and former Governor Mitt Romney showing greater support in some per-state Republican polls. On November 7, 2007, Giuliani's campaign received an endorsement from evangelist, Christian Broadcasting Network founder, and past presidential candidate Pat Robertson. This was viewed by political observers as a possibly key development in the race, as it gave credence that evangelicals and other social conservatives could support Giuliani despite some of his positions on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.
Giuliani's campaign hit a difficult stretch during the last two months of 2007, when Bernard Kerik, whom Giuliani had recommended for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security, was indicted on 16 counts of tax fraud and other federal charges. The media reported that when Giuliani was the mayor of New York, he billed several tens of thousands of dollars of mayoral security expenses to obscure city agencies. Those expenses were incurred while he visited Judith Nathan, with whom he was having an extramarital affair (later analysis showed the billing to likely be unrelated to hiding Nathan). Several stories were published in the press regarding clients of Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani who were in opposition to goals of American foreign policy. Giuliani's national poll numbers began steadily slipping and his unusual strategy of focusing more on later, multi-primary big states rather than the smaller, first-voting states was seen at risk.
Despite his strategy, Giuliani competed to a substantial extent in the January 8, 2008, New Hampshire primary but finished a distant fourth with 9percent of the vote. Similar poor results continued in other early contests, when Giuliani's staff went without pay in order to focus all efforts on the crucial late January Florida Republican primary. The shift of the electorate's focus from national security to the state of the economy also hurt Giuliani, as did the resurgence of McCain's similarly themed campaign. On January 29, 2008, Giuliani finished a distant third in the Florida result with 15percent of the vote, trailing McCain and Romney. Facing declining polls and lost leads in the upcoming large Super Tuesday states, including that of his home New York, Giuliani withdrew from the race on January 30, endorsing McCain.
Giuliani's campaign ended up $3.6million in arrears, and in June 2008 Giuliani sought to retire the debt by proposing to appear at Republican fundraisers during the 2008 general election, and have part of the proceeds go towards his campaign. During the 2008 Republican National Convention, Giuliani gave a prime-time speech that praised McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, while criticizing Democratic nominee Barack Obama. He cited Palin's executive experience as a mayor and governor and belittled Obama's lack of same, and his remarks were met with wild applause from the delegates. Giuliani continued to be one of McCain's most active surrogates during the remainder of McCain's eventually unsuccessful campaign.
After 2008 election
Following the end of his presidential campaign, Giuliani's "high appearance fees dropped like a stone". He returned to work at both Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani. His consultancy work included advising Keiko Fujimori with her presidential campaign during the 2011 Peruvian general election. Giuliani also explored hosting a syndicated radio show, and was reported to be in talks with Westwood One about replacing Bill O'Reilly before that position went to Fred Thompson (another unsuccessful 2008 GOP presidential primary candidate). During the March 2009 AIG bonus payments controversy, Giuliani called for U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to step down and said the Obama administration lacked executive competence in dealing with the ongoing financial crisis.
Giuliani said his political career was not necessarily over, and did not rule out a 2010 New York gubernatorial or 2012 presidential bid. A November 2008 Siena College poll indicated that although Governor David Patersonpromoted to the office via the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal a year beforewas popular among New Yorkers, he would have just a slight lead over Giuliani in a hypothetical matchup. By February 2009, after the prolonged Senate appointment process, a Siena College poll indicated that Paterson was losing popularity among New Yorkers, and showed Giuliani with a fifteen-point lead in the hypothetical contest. In January 2009, Giuliani said he would not decide on a gubernatorial run for another six to eight months, adding that he thought it would not be fair to the governor to start campaigning early while the governor tries to focus on his job. Giuliani worked to retire his presidential campaign debt, but by the end of March 2009 it was still $2.4million in arrears, the largest such remaining amount for any of the 2008 contenders. In April 2009, Giuliani strongly opposed Paterson's announced push for same-sex marriage in New York and said it would likely cause a backlash that could put Republicans in statewide office in 2010. By late August 2009, there were still conflicting reports about whether Giuliani was likely to run.
On December 23, 2009, Giuliani announced that he would not seek any office in 2010, saying "The main reason has to do with my two enterprises: Bracewell & Giuliani and Giuliani Partners. I'm very busy in both." The decisions signaled a possible end to Giuliani's political career. During the 2010 midterm elections, Giuliani endorsed and campaigned for Bob Ehrlich and Marco Rubio.
On October 11, 2011, Giuliani announced that he was not running for president. According to Kevin Law, the Director of the Long Island Association, Giuliani believed that "As a moderate, he thought it was a pretty significant challenge. He said it's tough to be a moderate and succeed in GOP primaries," Giuliani said "If it's too late for (New Jersey Governor) Chris Christie, it's too late for me."
At a Republican fund-raising event in February 2015, Giuliani said, "I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president Obama loves America," and "He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country." In response to criticism of the remarks, Giuliani said, "Some people thought it was racistI thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother... This isn't racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism." White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said he agreed with Giuliani "that it was a horrible thing to say", but he would leave it up to the people who heard Giuliani directly to assess whether the remarks were appropriate for the event. Although he received some support for his controversial comments, Giuliani said he also received several death threats within 48 hours.
Relationship with Donald Trump
Presidential campaign supporter
Giuliani supported Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He gave a prime time speech during the first night of the 2016 Republican National Convention. Earlier in the day, Giuliani and former 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson appeared at an event for the pro-Trump Great America PAC. Giuliani also appeared in a Great America PAC ad entitled "Leadership". Giuliani's and Jeff Sessions's appearances were staples at Trump campaign rallies.
During the campaign, Giuliani praised Trump for his worldwide accomplishments and helping fellow New Yorkers in their time of need. He defended Trump against allegations of racism, sexual assault, and not paying any federal income taxes for as long as two decades.
In August 2016, Giuliani, while campaigning for Trump, claimed that in the "eight years before Obama" became president, "we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States". It was noted that 9/11 happened during George W. Bush's first term. Politifact brought up four more counter-examples (the 2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting, the 2002 D.C. sniper attacks, the 2006 Seattle Jewish Federation shooting and the 2006 UNC SUV attack) to Giuliani's claim. Giuliani later said he was using "abbreviated language".
Giuliani was believed to be a likely pick for Secretary of State in the Trump administration. However, on December 9, 2016, Trump announced that Giuliani had removed his name from consideration for any Cabinet post.
Advisor to the president
The president-elect named Giuliani his informal cybersecurity adviser on January 12, 2017. The status of this informal role for Giuliani is unclear because, in November 2018, Trump created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), headed by Christopher Krebs as director and Matthew Travis as deputy. In the weeks following his appointment, Giuliani was forced to consult an Apple Store Genius Bar when he "was locked out of his iPhone because he had forgotten the passcode and entered the wrong one at least 10 times", belying his putative expertise in the field.
In January 2017, Giuliani said he advised President Trump in matters relating to Executive Order 13769, which barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days. The order also suspended the admission of all refugees for 120 days.
Giuliani has drawn scrutiny over his ties to foreign nations, regarding not registering per the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Personal lawyer
In mid April 2018, Giuliani joined Trump's legal team, which dealt with the special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Giuliani said his goal was to negotiate a swift end to the investigation.
In early May, Giuliani made public that Trump had reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen $130,000 that Cohen had paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels for her agreement not to talk about her alleged affair with Trump. Cohen had earlier insisted he used his own money to pay Daniels, and he implied that he had not been reimbursed. Trump had previously said he knew nothing about the matter. Within a week, Giuliani said some of his own statements regarding this matter were "more rumor than anything else".
Later in May 2018, Giuliani, who was asked on whether the promotion of the Spygate conspiracy theory is meant to discredit the special counsel investigation, said the investigators "are giving us the material to do it. Of course, we have to do it in defending the president... it is for public opinion" on whether to "impeach or not impeach" Trump. In June 2018, Giuliani claimed that a sitting president cannot be indicted: "I don't know how you can indict while he's in office. No matter what it is. If President Trump shot [then-FBI director] James Comey, he'd be impeached the next day. Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him."
In June 2018, Giuliani also said Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because "our recollection keeps changing". In early July, Giuliani characterized that Trump had previously asked Comey to "give him [then-national security adviser Michael Flynn] a break". In mid-August, Giuliani denied making this comment: "What I said was, that is what Comey is saying Trump said." On August 19 on Meet the Press, Giuliani argued that Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because Trump could be "trapped into perjury" just by telling "somebody's version of the truth. Not the truth." Giuliani's argument continued: "Truth isn't truth." Giuliani later clarified that he was "referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements".
In late July, Giuliani defended Trump by saying "collusion is not a crime" and that Trump had done nothing wrong because he "didn't hack" or "pay for the hacking". He later elaborated that his comments were a "very, very familiar lawyer's argument" to "attack the legitimacy of the special counsel investigation". He also described and denied several supposed allegations that have never been publicly raised, regarding two earlier meetings among Trump campaign officials to set up the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with Russian citizens. In late August, Giuliani said the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower "meeting was originally for the purpose of getting information about Hillary Clinton".
Additionally in late July, Giuliani attacked Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as an "incredible liar", two months after calling Cohen an "honest, honorable lawyer". In mid-August, Giuliani defended Trump by saying: "The president's an honest man."
It was reported in early September that Giuliani said the White House could and likely would prevent the special counsel investigation from making public certain information in its final report which would be covered by executive privilege. Also according to Giuliani, Trump's personal legal team is already preparing a "counter-report" to refute the potential special counsel investigation's report.
Giuliani privately urged Trump in 2017 to extradite Fethullah Gülen.
In late 2019, Giuliani represented Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, meeting with the Justice Department to ask not to bring charges against him.
In an interview with Olivia Nuzzi in New York magazine, Giuliani, who is a Roman Catholic of Italian descent, said, "Don't tell me I'm anti-Semitic if I oppose George Soros... I'm more of a Jew than Soros is." George Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew who survived The Holocaust. The Anti-Defamation League replied, "Mr. Giuliani should apologize and retract his comments immediately unless he seeks to dog whistle to hardcore anti-Semites and white supremacists who believe this garbage."
In the last days of the Trump administration, when White House aides were soliciting fees to lobby for presidential pardons, Giuliani said that while he'd heard that large fees were being offered, he did not work on clemency cases, saying "I have enough money. I'm not starving."
As of February 16, 2021, Giuliani was reportedly not actively involved in any of Trump's pending legal cases.
Attempts to get Ukraine to carry out investigations
Since at least May 2019, Giuliani has been urging Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the oil company Burisma, whose board of directors once included Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, and to check for irregularities in Ukraine's investigation of Paul Manafort. He said such investigations would benefit his client's defense, and that his efforts had Trump's full support. Toward this end, Giuliani met with Ukrainian officials throughout 2019. In July 2019, Buzzfeed News reported that two Soviet-born Americans, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were liaisons between Giuliani and Ukrainian government officials in this effort. Parnas and Fruman, prolific Republican donors, have neither registered as foreign agents in the United States, nor been evaluated and approved by the State Department. Giuliani responded, "This (report) is a pathetic effort to cover up what are enormous allegations of criminality by the Biden family." Yet by September 2019, there had been no clear evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
As of October 1, 2019, Giuliani hired former Watergate prosecutor Jon Sale to represent him in the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment investigation. The committee also issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents related to the Ukraine scandal. The New York Times reported on October 11, 2019, that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which Giuliani had once led, was investigating him for violating lobbying laws related to his activities in Ukraine. The following month, Bloomberg News reported that the investigation could extend to bribery of foreign officials or conspiracy, and The Wall Street Journal reported Giuliani was being investigated for a possible profit motive in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. Giuliani has denied having any interest in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. In late November, the Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors had just issued subpoenas to multiple associates of Giuliani to potentially investigate certain individuals, apparently including Giuliani, on numerous potential charges, including money laundering, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements to the federal government, and mail/wire fraud.
Parnas and Fruman were arrested for campaign finance violations while attempting to board a one-way flight to Frankfurt from Washington Dulles International Airport on October 9, 2019. Giuliani was paid $500,000 to consult for Lev Parnas's company named "Fraud Guarantee". Republican donor and Trump supporter Long Island attorney Charles Gucciardo paid Giuliani on behalf of Fraud Guarantee in two $250,000 payments, in September and October 2018. Fruman eventually pled guilty in September 2021 to having solicited a contribution by a foreign national.
In May 2019, Giuliani described Ukraine's chief prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko as a "much more honest guy" than his predecessor, Viktor Shokin. After Lutsenko was removed from office, he said in September 2019 that he found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, and that he had met Giuliani about ten times. Giuliani then reversed his stance, saying that Shokin is the one people "should have spoken to", while Lutsenko acted "corruptly" and "is exactly the prosecutor that Joe Biden put in in order to tank the case".
In September 2019, as reports surfaced that a whistleblower was alleging high-level misconduct related to Ukraine, Giuliani went on CNN to discuss the story. When asked if he had tried to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden, he initially replied "No, actually I didn't," but thirty seconds later said, "Of course I did." In a later tweet he seemed to confirm reports that Trump had withheld military assistance funds scheduled for Ukraine unless they carried out the investigation. He said, "The reality is that the president of the United States, whoever he is, has every right to tell the president of another country you better straighten out the corruption in your country if you want me to give you a lot of money. If you're so damn corrupt that you can't investigate allegationsour money is going to get squandered."
Tom Bossert, a former Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump administration, described Giuliani's theory that Ukraine was involved in 2016 U.S. election interference as "debunked"; Giuliani responded that Bossert "doesn't know what the hell he's talking about".
On September 30, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents concerning the Ukraine scandal to Committee members by October 15, 2019. On October 2, 2019, Steve Linick, the State Department's inspector general, delivered a 40-page packet of apparent disinformation regarding former vice president Joe Biden and former Ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, to Capitol Hill. Linick told congressional aides his office questioned Ulrich Brechbuhl, Pompeo's advisor about the origins of the packet. Brechbuhl noted the packet came to him from Pompeo, who said it "came over", and Brechbuhl reportedly presumed it was from the White House. Later that day, Giuliani acknowledged he passed the packet to Pompeo regarding the Ukraine and attacks on Yovanovich. In a November 2019 interview he confirmed that he had "needed Yovanovitch out of the way" because she was going to make his investigations difficult. "They (the State Department) told me they would investigate it," Giuliani added. Giuliani persuaded Trump to remove Yovanovich from office in spring 2019. By April 2021, the U.S attorney's office in Manhattan was investigating the role of Giuliani and his associates in Yovanovitch's removal.
U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that Trump delegated American foreign policy on Ukraine to Giuliani. The late 2019 impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump centered around Giuliani's actions involving Ukraine. In the compiled testimony and in the December reports of the House Intelligence Committee, Giuliani's name was mentioned more than any but Trump's. Some experts suggested that Giuliani may have violated the Logan Act.
On November 22, 2019, Giuliani sent a letter to Senator Lindsey Graham, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, informing him of at least three witnesses from Ukraine who Giuliani claimed had direct oral, documentary, and recorded evidence of Democratic criminal conspiracy with Ukrainians to prevent Trump's election and, after his election, to remove him from office via contrived charges. Giuliani's letter also claims that the witnesses had evidence of the Biden family's involvement in bribery, money laundering, Hobbs Act extortion, and other possible crimes. The letter sought Graham's help obtaining U.S. visas for the witnesses to testify. The next month, Graham invited Giuliani to share his findings with the Judiciary Committee, and soon advised him "to share what he got from Ukraine with the [intelligence community] to make sure it's not Russia propaganda".
Dmytry Firtash is a Ukrainian oligarch who is prominent in the natural gas sector. In 2017, the Justice Department characterized him as being an "upper echelon (associate) of Russian organized crime". Since his 2014 arrest in Vienna, Austria at the request of American authorities, he has been living there on $155 million bail while fighting extradition to the United States on bribery and racketeering charges, and has been seeking to have the charges dropped. Firtash's attorneys obtained a September 2019 statement from Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general who was forced out under pressure from multiple countries and non-governmental organizations, as conveyed to Ukraine by Joe Biden. Shokin falsely asserted in the statement that Biden actually had him fired because he refused to stop his investigation into Burisma. Giuliani, who asserts he has "nothing to do with" and has "never met or talked to" Firtash, promoted the statement in television appearances as purported evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens. Giuliani told CNN he met with a Firtash attorney for two hours in New York City at the time he was seeking information about the Bidens.
Firtash is represented by Trump and Giuliani associates Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, having hired them on Parnas's recommendation in July 2019. The New York Times reported in November 2019 that Giuliani had directed Parnas to approach Firtash with the recommendation, with the proposition that Firtash could help provide damaging information on Biden, which Parna's attorney described was "part of any potential resolution to [Firtash's] extradition matter". Shokin's statement notes that it was prepared "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash ('DF'), for use in legal proceedings in Austria". Giuliani presented the Shokin statement during American television appearances. Bloomberg News reported on October 18 that during the summer of 2019 Firtash associates began attempting to dig up dirt on the Bidens in an effort to solicit Giuliani's assistance with Firtash's legal matters. Bloomberg News also reported that its sources told them Giuliani's high-profile publicity of the Shokin statement had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political quid pro quo. diGenova has said he has known U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr for thirty years, as they both worked in the Reagan Justice Department. The Washington Post reported on October 22 that after they began representing Firtash, Toensing and diGenova secured a rare face-to-face meeting with Barr to argue the Firtash charges should be dropped, but he declined to intervene.
On October 18, The New York Times reported that weeks earlier, before his associates Parnas and Fruman were indicted, Giuliani met with officials with the criminal and fraud divisions of the Justice Department regarding what Giuliani characterized as a "very, very sensitive" foreign bribery case involving a client of his. The Times did not name whom the case involved, but shortly after publication of the story Giuliani told a reporter it was not Firtash. Two days later, the Justice Department said its officials would not have met with Giuliani had they known his associates were under investigation by the SDNY.
On December 3, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee's report included phone records acquired via subpoenas, including numerous phone calls made by Giuliani between April and August 2019. Calls involved Giuliani in contact with Kurt Volker, Republican Representative and House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, Lev Parnas, numbers associated with the Office of Management and Budget and the White House switchboard, and an unidentified White House official whose phone number is referenced as "-1". Chairman Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee announced after the report's release that his committee was investigating whether "-1" referred to President Trump, citing grand jury evidence from the trial of convicted Trump-associate Roger Stone in which the phone number "-1" was shown to have referred to Trump. Writing for The Washington Post, analyst Philip Bump reasoned that Giuliani's calls with "-1" are 'likely' calls with Trump citing that Giuliani speaks longer with "-1" than any other person, "-1" always calls Giuliani, and generally after Giuliani calls the White House switchboard, and timing of some of President Trump's actions shortly after Giuliani's calls with "-1" ended.
In early December 2019, while the House Judiciary Committee began holding public hearings for the impeachment inquiry, Giuliani returned to Ukraine to interview former Ukrainian officials for a documentary series seeking to discredit the impeachment proceedings. U.S. officials told The Washington Post that Giuliani would have been considered a target of Russian intelligence efforts from early in Trump's presidency, and particularly after Giuliani turned his focus to Ukraine — a former Soviet republic under attack from Russia and with deep penetration by Russian intelligence services. Analysts say Trump's and Giuliani's habit of communicating over unencrypted lines makes it highly likely that foreign intelligence agencies could be listening in on the president's unsecured calls with Giuliani; and that foreign intelligence agencies often collect intelligence about a primary target through monitoring communications of other people who interact with that target.
In a December 2019 opinion piece, former FBI director, CIA director and federal judge William Webster wrote of "a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love". In addition to chastising President Trump and attorney general Bill Barr, Webster wrote he was "profoundly disappointed in another longtime, respected friend, Rudy Giuliani" because his "activities of late concerning Ukraine have, at a minimum, failed the smell test of propriety". Since 2005, Webster had served as the chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
NBC News reported in December 2020 that SDNY investigators, which were reported in late 2019 to be investigating Giuliani's activities, had discussed with Justice Department officials in Washington the possibility of acquiring Giuliani's emails, which might require headquarters approval due to protection by attorney–client privilege. The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY had requested a search warrant of Giuliani's electronic records in summer 2020, but were met with resistance from high-level political appointees in the Washington headquarters, ostensibly because the election was near, while career officials were supportive of the search warrant. The Justice Department generally avoids taking significant actions relating to political figures that might become public within sixty days of an election. Senior political appointees nevertheless opposed the effort after the election, noting Giuliani played a leading role in challenging the election results. The officials deferred the matter to the incoming Biden administration.
Federal investigators in Manhattan executed search warrants on the early morning of April 28, 2021 at Giuliani's office and Upper East Side apartment, seizing his electronic devices and searching the apartment. FBI agents also executed a search warrant that day on Toensing's Washington, D.C.-area home and confiscated her cellphone. In April 2021, Giuliani's attorney said investigators told him they had searched his client's iCloud account beginning in late 2019, later arguing to a judge that the search was illegal and so the subsequent raid on Giuliani's properties was "fruit of this poisoned tree," demanding to review documents justifying the iCloud search. In May 2021, the SDNY confirmed in a court filing that in late 2019 it obtained search warrants for Giuliani's iCloud account, and that of Toensing, as part of "an ongoing, multi-year grand jury investigation into conduct involving Giuliani, Toensing, and others," and argued that attorneys for Giuliani and Toensing were not entitled to review the underlying documents of the warrants prior to any charges. Giuiliani and Toensing asserted their attorney-client privilege with clients may have been violated by the iCloud searches, which investigators disputed, saying they employed a "filter team" to prevent them from seeing information potentially protected by attorney-client privilege. Federal judge J. Paul Oetken days later ruled in favor of investigators regarding the warrant documents and granted their request for a special master to ensure attorney-client privilege was maintained. The special master released more than 3,000 of Giuliani's communications to prosecutors in January 2022, agreeing to withhold forty messages for which Giuliani had asserted "privilege and/or highly personal" status and rejecting 37 such assertions.
The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY was scrutinizing Giuliani's association with Firtash in efforts to discredit the Bidens, and efforts to lobby the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs. Time reported in May 2021 it had spoken with three unidentified witnesses who said they were questioned by investigators, two of whom said they had worked with Giuliani while cooperating with investigators; one witness said investigators were particularly interested in Giuliani's association with Firtash.
United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 found that Ukrainian politician Andrii Derkach was among proxies of Russian intelligence who promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about Biden "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration". Giuliani met with Derkach in December 2019.
In April 2021, Forensic News reported that the SDNY investigation into Giuliani had expanded to include a criminal probe of Derkach and Andrii Artemenko. The New York Times confirmed weeks later that Derkach was the subject of a criminal investigation into foreign interference in the 2020 United States elections. "Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have been investigating whether several Ukrainian officials helped orchestrate a wide-ranging plan to meddle in the 2020 presidential campaign, including using Rudolph W. Giuliani to spread their misleading claims about President Biden and tilt the election in Donald J. Trump's favor," the Times reported.
On June 8, 2021, CNN uncovered exclusive audio of a 2019 phone call from Giuliani to Ukraine, stating that "Rudy Giuliani relentlessly pressured and coaxed the Ukrainian government in 2019 to investigate baseless conspiracies about then-candidate Joe Biden."
2020 election lawsuits
In November 2020, after Joe Biden was named president-elect, Trump placed Giuliani in charge of lawsuits related to alleged voter irregularities in the 2020 United States presidential election. Trump designated Giuliani to lead a legal team to challenge the election results. This team—a self-described "elite strike force" that included Sidney Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing and Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis—appeared at a November 19 press conference in which they made numerous false and unsubstantiated assertions revolving around an international Communist conspiracy, rigged voting machines, and polling place fraud.
Giuliani repeatedly publicly denounced the use of provisional ballots (in which the poll worker does not see the voter's name on the rolls, so the voter swears an affidavit oath that they are registered to vote), arguing that the practice enables fraud, although Giuliani himself had cast this type of ballot on October 31, 2020, in Manhattan.
By January 8, 2021, Trump and his team had lost 63 lawsuits. A month later, Giuliani was no longer representing Trump in any pending cases, according to a Trump adviser. While Trump continued to fundraise, purportedly for his election-related legal fights, as of the end of July 2021 he had not given any of this money to Giuliani. In October 2021, in another context, Trump remarked: "I do pay my lawyers when they do a good job."
In December 2021, two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye” Moss, sued Giuliani for defamation.
Pennsylvania lawsuit
One early lawsuit sought to invalidate up to 700,000 mail-in ballots and stop Pennsylvania from certifying its election results. Giuliani claimed to have signed affidavits attesting to voter fraud and election official misconduct in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Despite not having argued a case in any courtroom for over three decades, Giuliani applied for special permission to represent the Trump presidential campaign in the federal court of Pennsylvania. (In his application, he misrepresented his status with the District of Columbia Bar, claiming that he was a member in good standing, whereas D.C. had suspended him for nonpayment of fees.) In his first day in court on the case, which was November 17, 2020, Giuliani struggled with rudimentary legal processes and was accused by lawyers for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State of making legal arguments that were "disgraceful in an American courtroom". Judge Matthew Brann questioned how Giuliani could justify "asking this court to invalidate some 6.8 million votes thereby disenfranchising every single voter in the commonwealth."
His federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania was dismissed with prejudice on November 21, 2020, with the judge citing "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations" which were "unsupported by evidence". Giuliani and Jenna Ellis reacted by stating that the ruling "helps" the Trump campaign "get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court". They also pointed out that the judge, Matthew W. Brann, was "Obama-appointed", though Brann is also a Republican and a former member of the right-leaning Federalist Society.
The Trump campaign appealed the lawsuit to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel on November 27 rejected the Trump campaign's attempt to undo Pennsylvania's vote certification, because the Trump campaign's "claims have no merit". The panel also ruled that the District Court was correct in preventing the Trump campaign from conducting a second amendment of its complaint. An amendment would be pointless, ruled the judges, because the Trump campaign was not bringing facts before the court, and not even alleging fraud. Judge Stephanos Bibas highlighted that Giuliani himself told the district court that the Trump campaign "doesn't plead fraud", and that this "is not a fraud case". The panel concluded that neither "specific allegations" nor "proof" was provided in this case, and that the Trump campaign "cannot win this lawsuit".
Giuliani and Ellis reacted to the appeals court ruling by condemning the "activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania". Of the three Appeal Court judges, Stephanos Bibas, who delivered the opinion, was appointed by Trump himself, while judges D. Brooks Smith and Michael Chagares were appointed by Republican president George W. Bush.
Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits
As part of Giuliani's allegations that voting machines had been rigged, he made several false assertions about two rival companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. These false claims included that Smartmatic owned Dominion; that Dominion voting machines used Smartmatic software; that Dominion voting machines sent vote data to Smartmatic at foreign locations; that Dominion was founded by the former socialist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez; and that Dominion is a "radical-left" company with connections to antifa.
Both companies sued Giuliani and Fox News. Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Giuliani on January 25, 2021, seeking $1.3billion in damages, and separately sued Fox News for $1.6 billion. On February 4, 2021, Smartmatic also filed a lawsuit that accused Giuliani, Fox News, some hosts at Fox News, and Sidney Powell of engaging in a "disinformation campaign" against the company, and asked for $2.7billion in damages.
On September 10, 2021, Fox News told Giuliani that neither he nor his son Andrew would be allowed on their network for nearly three months.
Attack on the Capitol
On January 6, 2021, Giuliani spoke at a "Save America March" rally on the Ellipse that was attended by Trump supporters protesting the election results. He repeated conspiracy theories that voting machines used in the election were "crooked" and called for "trial by combat". Trump supporters subsequently stormed the U.S. Capitol in a riot that resulted in the deaths of five people, including a police officer, and temporarily disrupted the counting of the Electoral College vote.
Giuliani had reportedly been calling Republican lawmakers to urge them to delay the electoral vote count in order to ultimately throw the election to Trump. Giuliani attempted to contact Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Trump ally, around 7:00p.m. on January 6, after the Capitol storming, to ask him to "try to just slow it down" by objecting to multiple states and "raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrowideally until the end of tomorrow". However, Giuliani mistakenly left the message on the voicemail of another senator, who leaked the recording to The Dispatch. Rick Perlstein, a noted historian of the American conservative political movement, termed Giuliani's attempts to slow certification in the wake of the riot as treasonous. "Sedition. Open and shut. He talked about the time that was being opened up. He was welcoming, and using, the violence. This needs to be investigated," Perlstein tweeted on January 11, 2021.
Giuliani faced criticism for his appearance at the rally and the Capitol riot that followed it. Former Congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called for the arrest of Giuliani, President Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. Manhattan College president Brennan O'Donnell stated in a January7 open letter to the college community, "one of the loudest voices fueling the anger, hatred, and violence that spilled out yesterday is a graduate of our College, Rudolph Giuliani. His conduct as a leader of the campaign to de-legitimize the election and disenfranchise millions of votershas been and continues to be a repudiation of the deepest values of his alma mater."
On January 11, the New York State Bar Association, an advocacy group for the legal profession in New York state, announced that it was launching an investigation into whether Giuliani should be removed from its membership rolls, noting both Giuliani's comments to the Trump supporter rally at the Ellipse on January 6, and that it "has received hundreds of complaints in recent months about Mr. Giuliani and his baseless efforts on behalf of President Trump to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 presidential election and, after the votes were cast, to overturn its legitimate results". Removal from the group's membership rolls would not directly disbar Giuliani from practicing law in New York. New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman and lawyers' group Lawyers Defending American Democracy, also filed a complaints against Giuliani with the Attorney Grievance Committee of the First Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court, which has the authority to discipline and disbar licensed New York lawyers.
Also on January 11, 2021, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said that he is looking at whether to charge Giuliani, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Representative Mo Brooks, with inciting the violent attack.
On January 29, Giuliani falsely claimed that The Lincoln Project played a role in the organization of the Capitol riot. In response, Steve Schmidt announced that the group would be taking legal action against Giuliani for defamation.
On March 5, 2021, Representative Eric Swalwell filed a civil lawsuit against Giuliani and three others (Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Representative Mo Brooks), seeking damages for their alleged role in inciting the Capitol riot.
Giuliani was subpoenaed in January 2022 to testify before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Suspension of law license
On June 24, 2021, a New York appellate court suspended Giuliani's law license. The panel of five justices found that there was "uncontroverted" evidence that Giuliani made "demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public" and that "These false statements were made to improperly bolster (Giuliani's) narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client." The court concluded that Giuliani's conduct "immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law". His license was also suspended in Washington D.C. on July 7, 2021.
Giuliani Partners
After leaving the New York City mayor's office, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners LLC, in 2002, a firm that has been categorized by multiple media outlets as a lobbying entity capitalizing on Giuliani's name recognition, and which has been the subject of allegations surrounding staff hired by Giuliani and due to the firm's chosen client base. Over five years, Giuliani Partners earned more than $100million.
In June 2007, he stepped down as CEO and Chairman of Giuliani Partners, although this action was not made public until December 4, 2007; he maintained his equity interest in the firm. Giuliani subsequently returned to active participation in the firm following the election. In late 2009, Giuliani announced that they had a security consulting contract with Rio de Janeiro, Brazil regarding the 2016 Summer Olympics. He faced criticism in 2012 for advising people once allied with Slobodan Milošević who had lauded Serbian war criminals.
Bracewell & Giuliani
In 2005, Giuliani joined the law firm of Bracewell & Patterson LLP (renamed Bracewell & Giuliani LLP) as a name partner and basis for the expanding firm's new New York office. When he joined the Texas-based firm he brought Marc Mukasey, the son of Attorney General Michael Mukasey, into the firm.
Despite a busy schedule, Giuliani was highly active in the day-to-day business of the law firm, which was a high-profile supplier of legal and lobbying services to the oil, gas, and energy industries. Its aggressive defense of pollution-causing coal-fired power plants threatened to cause political risk for Giuliani, but association with the firm helped Giuliani achieve fund-raising success in Texas. In 2006, Giuliani acted as the lead counsel and lead spokesmen for Bracewell & Giuliani client Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, during their negotiations with federal prosecutors over charges that the pharmaceutical company misled the public about OxyContin's addictive properties. The agreement reached resulted in Purdue Pharma and some of its executives paying $634.5million in fines.
Bracewell & Giuliani represented corporate clients before many U.S. government departments and agencies. Some clients have worked with corporations and foreign governments.
Giuliani left the firm in January 2016, by "amicable agreement", and the firm was rebranded as Bracewell LLP.
Greenberg Traurig
In January 2016, Giuliani moved to the law firm Greenberg Traurig, where he served as the global chairman for Greenberg's cybersecurity and crisis management group, as well as a senior advisor to the firm's executive chairman. In April 2018, he took an unpaid leave of absence when he joined Trump's legal defense team. He resigned from the firm on May 9, 2018.
Lobbying in Romania
In August 2018, Giuliani was retained by Freeh Group International Solutions, a global consulting firm run by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, which paid him a fee to lobby Romanian president Klaus Iohannis to change Romania's anti-corruption policy and reduce the role of the National Anticorruption Directorate. Giuliani argued that the anti-corruption efforts had gone too far.
Podcast
In January 2020, Giuliani launched a podcast, Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
Personal life
Marriages and relationships
Giuliani married Regina Peruggi, whom he had known since childhood, on October 26, 1968. The marriage was in trouble by the mid-1970s and they agreed to a trial separation in 1975. Peruggi did not accompany him to Washington when he accepted the job in the Attorney General's Office. Giuliani met local television personality Donna Hanover sometime in 1982, and they began dating when she was working in Miami. Giuliani filed for legal separation from Peruggi on August 12, 1982. The Giuliani-Peruggi marriage legally ended in two ways: a civil divorce was issued by the end of 1982, while a Roman Catholic church annulment of the marriage was granted at the end of 1983, reportedly because Giuliani had discovered that he and Peruggi were second cousins. Alan Placa, Giuliani's best man, later became a priest and helped secure the annulment. Giuliani and Peruggi had no children.
Giuliani married Hanover in a Catholic ceremony at St. Monica's Church in Manhattan on April 15, 1984. They had two children, Andrew and Caroline Rose, who is a filmmaker in the LGBTQ+ community and has described herself as "multiverses apart" from her father.
Giuliani was still married to Hanover in May 1999 when he met Judith Nathan, a sales manager for a pharmaceutical company, at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar. By 1996, Donna Hanover had reverted to her professional name and virtually stopped appearing in public with her husband amid rumors of marital problems. Nathan and Giuliani formed an ongoing relationship. In summer 1999, Giuliani charged the costs for his NYPD security detail to obscure city agencies in order to keep his relationship with Nathan from public scrutiny. The police department began providing Nathan with city-provided chauffeur services in early 2000.
By March 2000, Giuliani had stopped wearing his wedding ring. The appearances that he and Nathan made at functions and events became publicly visible, although they were not mentioned in the press. The Daily News and the New York Post both broke news of Giuliani's relationship with Nathan in early May 2000. Giuliani first publicly acknowledged her on May 3, 2000, when he said Judith was his "very good friend".
On May 10, 2000, Giuliani held a press conference to announce that he intended to separate from Hanover. Giuliani had not informed Hanover about his plans before the press conference. This was an omission for which Giuliani was widely criticized. Giuliani then went on to praise Nathan as a "very, very fine woman" and said about Hanover that "over the course of some period of time in many ways, we've grown to live independent and separate lives." Hours later Hanover said, "I had hoped that we could keep this marriage together. For several years, it was difficult to participate in Rudy's public life because of his relationship with one staff member."
Giuliani moved out of Gracie Mansion by August 2001 and into an apartment with a couple he was friends with. Giuliani filed for divorce from Hanover in October 2000, and a public battle broke out between their representatives. Nathan was barred by court order from entering Gracie Mansion or meeting his children before the divorce was final.
In May 2001, Giuliani's attorney revealed that Giuliani was impotent due to prostate cancer treatments and had not had sex with Nathan for the preceding year. "You don't get through treatment for cancer and radiation all by yourself," Giuliani said. "You need people to help you and care for you and support you. And I'm very fortunate I had a lot of people who did that, but nobody did more to help me than Judith Nathan." In a court case, Giuliani argued that he planned to introduce Nathan to his children on Father's Day 2001 and that Hanover had prevented this visit. Giuliani and Hanover finally settled their divorce case in July 2002 after his mayoralty had ended, with Giuliani paying Hanover a $6.8million settlement and granting her custody of their children. Giuliani married Nathan on May 24, 2003, and gained a stepdaughter, Whitney. It was also Nathan's third marriage after two divorces.
By March 2007, The New York Times and the Daily News reported that Giuliani had become estranged from both his son Andrew and his daughter Caroline. In 2014, he said his relationship with his children was better than ever, and was spotted eating and playing golf with Andrew.
Nathan filed for divorce from Giuliani on April 4, 2018, after 15 years of marriage. According to an interview with New York magazine, "For a variety of reasons that I know as a spouse and a nurse... he has become a different man." The divorce was settled on December 10, 2019.
In October 2020, following myriad joint public appearances, Giuliani confirmed that he is in a relationship with Maria Ryan, a nurse practitioner and hospital administrator whom his ex-wife Nathan has alleged to have been his mistress for an indeterminate period during their marriage. As of 2018, Ryan was married to United States Marine Corps veteran Robert Ryan, with Giuliani characterizing the couple as platonic friends in response to contemporaneous press inquiries.
Prostate cancer
In April 1981, Giuliani's father died, at age 73, of prostate cancer, at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center. 19 years later, in April 2000, Giuliani, then aged 55, was diagnosed with prostate cancer following a prostate biopsy, after an elevated screening PSA. Giuliani chose a combination prostate cancer treatment consisting of four months of neoadjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy, then low dose-rate prostate brachytherapy with permanent implantation of ninety TheraSeed radioactive palladium-103 seeds in his prostate in September 2000, followed two months later by five weeks of fifteen-minute, five-days-a-week external beam radiotherapy at Mount Sinai Medical Center, with five months of adjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy.
COVID-19
On December 6, 2020, Trump announced that Giuliani had contracted COVID-19. Giuliani was admitted to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital the same day. He was discharged from the hospital on December 9.
It was unclear when he received the positive test. In the days leading up to the announcement, Giuliani had been to multiple indoor hearings without wearing a mask, and requested that others remove their masks. The Arizona Legislature closed for one week starting on December 7, 2020, as 15 current and future members had met with Giuliani. He had also met with Republican legislators in Michigan and Georgia, potentially exposing them.
Religious beliefs
Giuliani has declined to comment publicly on his religious practice and beliefs, although he identifies religion as an important part of his life. When asked if he is a practicing Catholic, Giuliani answered, "My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not-so-good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests."
Television appearances
Giuliani was reportedly revealed to be the first unmasking on the seventh season of The Masked Singer, which caused judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke to storm off the set.
Awards and honors
In 1998, Giuliani received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York".
House of Savoy: Knight Grand Cross (motu proprio) of the Order of Merit of Savoy (December 2001)
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2001
In 2002, the Episcopal Diocese of New York gave Giuliani the Fiorello LaGuardia Public Service Award for Valor and Leadership in the Time of Global Crisis.
Also in 2002, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan awarded Giuliani the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award.
In 2002, he received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually byJefferson Awards.
In 2003, Giuliani received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award
In 2004, construction began on the Rudolph W. Giuliani Trauma Center at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York.
In 2005, Giuliani received honorary degrees from Loyola College in Maryland and Middlebury College. In 2007, Giuliani received an honorary Doctorate in Public Administration from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. In 2021, Middlebury announced that it was revoking the degree given to Giuliani.
In 2006, Rudy and Judith Giuliani were honored by the American Heart Association at its annual Heart of the Hamptons benefit in Water Mill, New York.
In 2007, Giuliani was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), receiving the NIAF Special Achievement Award for Public Service.
In 2007, Giuliani was awarded the Margaret Thatcher Medal of Freedom by the Atlantic Bridge.
In the 2009 graduation ceremony for Drexel University's Earle Mack School of Law, Giuliani was the keynote speaker and recipient of an honorary degree. In 2021, Drexel announced that it was rescinding the degree.
Giuliani was the Robert C. Vance Distinguished Lecturer at Central Connecticut State University in 2013.
Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa, University of Rhode Island, 2003 (revoked January 2022)
Media references
In 1993, Giuliani made a cameo appearance as himself in the Seinfeld episode "The Non-Fat Yogurt", which is a fictionalized account of the 1993 mayoral election. Giuliani's scenes were filmed the morning after his real world election.
In 2003, Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story was released starring actor James Woods as Giuliani.
In 2018, Giuliani was portrayed multiple times on Saturday Night Live by Kate McKinnon. McKinnon continued portraying him in 2019.
In 2020, Giuliani made a cameo appearance on a Netflix true crime limited series' Fear City: New York vs The Mafia, talking about his role in leading the 1980s federal prosecution of the Five Families.
In 2020, Giuliani made an unwitting appearance in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. In the mockumentary film, Giuliani agrees to an interview with Borat's "daughter", Tutar (played by actress Maria Bakalova), who is disguised as a reporter. When invited to Tutar's hotel room, Giuliani proceeds to lie on her bed and reach inside his trousers; they are immediately interrupted by Borat, who says: "She 15. She too old for you." Giuliani later disregarded the accusation, calling it a "complete fabrication" and saying he was rather "tucking in [his] shirt after taking off the recording equipment". In 2021, Giuliani won two Razzie awards for his part in the film – for Worst Supporting Actor and, with his pants zipper for Worst Screen Combo.
See also
Disputes surrounding the 2020 United States presidential election results
Electoral history of Rudy Giuliani
Political positions of Rudy Giuliani
Public image of Rudy Giuliani
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Timeline of New York City, 1990s–2000s
References
Further reading
Barrett, Wayne, (2000). Rudy!: An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani. Basic Books; (Reprint by Diane Publishing Co.).
Brodeur, Christopher X. (2002). Perverted Little Creep: Mayor Giuliani vs Mayor Brodeur. ExtremeNY books, .
Dinkins, David N.; Knobler, Peter (2013). A Mayor's Life: Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic. PublicAffairs,
Gonzalez, Juan, (2002). Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse. New Press, .
Koch, Edward I. (1999). Giuliani: Nasty Man. Barricade Books. .
Mandery, Evan (1999). The Campaign: Rudy Giuliani, Ruth Messinger, Al Sharpton, and the Race to Be Mayor of New York City. Westview Press, .
Newfield, Jack, (2003). The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania. Thunder's Mouth Press, .
Paterson, David "Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity."Skyhorse Publishing. New York, New York, 2020.
Polner, Robert, (2005). America's Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani's New York. Soft Skull Press, .
Polner, Robert, (2007). America's Mayor, America's President? The Strange Career of Rudy Giuliani. [Preface by Jimmy Breslin] Soft Skull Press, .
External links
La Guardia and Wagner Archives/The Giuliani Collection
TPM infographic: Tracking Rudy Giuliani's Foreign Dealings
Suspension of Giuliani's New York State law license — Attorney Grievance Committee for the Supreme Court of the State of New York Appellate Division
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Knights of the Order of Merit of Savoy
Living people
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Writers from Brooklyn | 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"
] |
[
"Rudy Giuliani",
"Appointees as defendants",
"How many appointees acted as defendants?",
"In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding,",
"Did he appoint anyone else?",
"In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury",
"how many defendants were there?",
"Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign.",
"What was he on trial for?",
"Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009, in a New York district court, to eight federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements,",
"What was Russell Harding on the stand for?",
"In 2005, Harding pleaded guilty to defrauding the Housing Development Corporation and to possession of child pornography.",
"Were there other defendants?",
"I don't know.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"After Giuliani left office, Kerik was subject to state and federal investigations resulting in his pleading guilty in 2006,"
] | C_7a9b28f537444b1fa4b7ec7d83b31da1_1 | What did he plead guilty to? | 8 | What did Bernard Kerik plead guilty to? | Rudy Giuliani | Several of Giuliani's appointees to head City agencies became defendants in criminal proceedings. In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding, to head the New York City Housing Development Corporation, although Harding had neither a college degree nor relevant experience. In 2005, Harding pleaded guilty to defrauding the Housing Development Corporation and to possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Russell Harding committed suicide in 2012. In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury after lying to a grand jury about a car that Harding bought for him with City funds. Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign. Giuliani appointed him as the Commissioner of the Department of Correction and then as the Police Commissioner. Giuliani was also the godfather to Kerik's two youngest children. After Giuliani left office, Kerik was subject to state and federal investigations resulting in his pleading guilty in 2006, in a Bronx Supreme Court, to two unrelated ethics violations. Kerik was ordered to pay $221,000 in fines. Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009, in a New York district court, to eight federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements, and on February 18, 2010, he was sentenced to four years in federal prison. Giuliani was not implicated in any of the proceedings. CANNOTANSWER | to two unrelated ethics violations. | Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and disbarred attorney who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 1983 and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989.
Giuliani led the 1980s federal prosecution of New York City mafia bosses as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. After a failed campaign for Mayor of New York City in the 1989 election, he succeeded in 1993, and was reelected in 1997, campaigning on a "tough on crime" platform. He led New York's controversial "civic cleanup" as its mayor from 1994 to 2001. Mayor Giuliani appointed an outsider, William Bratton, as New York City's new police commissioner. Reforming the police department's administration and policing practices, they applied the broken windows theory, which cites social disorder, like disrepair and vandalism, for attracting loitering addicts, panhandlers, and prostitutes, followed by serious and violent criminals. In particular, Giuliani focused on removing panhandlers and sex clubs from Times Square, promoting a "family values" vibe and a return to the area's earlier focus on business, theater, and the arts. As crime rates fell steeply, well ahead of the national average pace, Giuliani was widely credited, though later critics cite other contributing factors. In 2000, he ran against First Lady Hillary Clinton for a US Senate seat from New York, but left the race once diagnosed with prostate cancer. For his mayoral leadership after the September11 attacks in 2001, he was called "America's mayor". He was named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2001, and was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
In 2002, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners, and acquired, but later sold, an investment banking firm, Giuliani Capital Advisors. In 2005, he joined a law firm, renamed Bracewell & Giuliani. Vying for the Republican Party's 2008 presidential nomination, Giuliani was an early frontrunner, yet did poorly in the primary election, withdrew, and endorsed the party's subsequent nominee, John McCain. Declining to run for New York governor in 2010 and for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, Giuliani focused on the activities of his business firms. In addition, he has often been engaged for public speaking, political commentary, and Republican campaign support.
Giuliani joined President Donald Trump's personal legal team in April 2018. His activities as Trump's attorney have drawn renewed media scrutiny, including allegations that he engaged in corruption and profiteering. In late 2019, Giuliani was reportedly under federal investigation for violating lobbying laws, and possibly several other charges, as a central figure in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which resulted in Trump's first impeachment. Following the 2020 presidential election, he represented Trump in many lawsuits filed in attempts to overturn the election results, making false and debunked allegations about rigged voting machines, polling place fraud, and an international communist conspiracy. As a consequence, his license to practice law was suspended in New York State in June 2021 and in the District of Columbia in July 2021.
Early life
Giuliani was born in the East Flatbush section, then an Italian-American enclave, in New York City's borough of Brooklyn, the only child of working-class parents Helen (née D'Avanzo; 1909–2002) and Harold Angelo Giuliani (1908–1981), both children of Italian immigrants. Giuliani is of Tuscan descent on his father's side, as his paternal grandparents (Rodolfo and Evangelina Giuliani) were born in Montecatini Terme, Tuscany, Italy. He was raised a Roman Catholic. Harold Giuliani, a plumber and a bartender, had trouble holding a job, was convicted of felony assault and robbery, and served prison time in Sing Sing. Once released, he worked as an enforcer for his brother-in-law Leo D'Avanzo, who operated an organized crime-affiliated loan sharking and gambling ring at a restaurant in Brooklyn. The couple lived in East Flatbush until Harold died of prostate cancer in 1981, whereupon Helen moved to Manhattan's Upper East Side.
When Giuliani was seven years old in 1951, his family moved from Brooklyn to Garden City South, where he attended the local Catholic school, St. Anne's. Later, he commuted back to Brooklyn to attend Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, graduating in 1961.
Giuliani attended Manhattan College in Riverdale, Bronx, where he majored in political science with a minor in philosophy and considered becoming a priest.
Giuliani was elected president of his class in his sophomore year, but was not re-elected in his junior year. He joined the Phi Rho Pi college forensic fraternity and honor society. He graduated in 1965. Giuliani decided to forgo the priesthood and instead attended the New York University School of Law in Manhattan, where he made the NYU Law Review and graduated cum laude with a Juris Doctor degree in 1968.
Giuliani started his political life as a Democrat. He volunteered for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968. He also worked as a Democratic Party committeeman on Long Island in the mid-1960s and voted for George McGovern for president in 1972.
Legal career
Upon graduation from law school, Giuliani clerked for Judge Lloyd Francis MacMahon, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.
Giuliani did not serve in the military during the Vietnam War. His conscription was deferred while he was enrolled at Manhattan College and NYU Law. Upon graduation from the latter in 1968, he was classified 1-A (available for military service), but in 1969 he was reclassified 2-A (essential civilian) as Judge MacMahon's law clerk. In 1970, Giuliani was reclassified 1-A but received a high 308 draft lottery number and was not called up for service.
Giuliani switched his party registration from Democratic to Independent in 1975. This occurred during a period of time in which he was recruited for a position in Washington, D.C. with the Ford administration: Giuliani served as the Associate Deputy Attorney General and chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Harold "Ace" Tyler.
His first high-profile prosecution was of Democratic U.S. Representative Bertram L. Podell (NY-13), who was convicted of corruption. Podell pleaded guilty to conspiracy and conflict of interest for accepting more than $41,000 in campaign contributions and legal fees from a Florida airline to obtain federal rights for a Bahama route. Podell, who maintained a legal practice while serving in Congress, said the payments were legitimate legal fees. The Washington Post later reported: "The trial catapulted future New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani to front-page status when, as assistant U.S. attorney, he relentlessly cross-examined an initially calm Rep. Podell. The congressman reportedly grew more flustered and eventually decided to plead guilty."
From 1977 to 1981, during the Carter administration, Giuliani practiced law at the Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler law firm, as chief of staff to his former boss, Ace Tyler. In later years, Tyler became "disillusioned" by what Tyler described as Giuliani's time as US Attorney, criticizing several of his prosecutions as "overkill".
On December 8, 1980, one month after the election of Ronald Reagan brought Republicans back to power in Washington, he switched his party affiliation from Independent to Republican. Giuliani later said the switches were because he found Democratic policies "naïve", and that "by the time I moved to Washington, the Republicans had come to make more sense to me." Others suggested that the switches were made in order to get positions in the Justice Department. Giuliani's mother maintained in 1988 that he "only became a Republican after he began to get all these jobs from them. He's definitely not a conservative Republican. He thinks he is, but he isn't. He still feels very sorry for the poor."
In 1981, Giuliani was named Associate Attorney General in the Reagan administration, the third-highest position in the Department of Justice. As Associate Attorney General, Giuliani supervised the U.S. Attorney Offices' federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the United States Marshals Service. In a well-publicized 1982 case, Giuliani testified in defense of the federal government's "detention posture" regarding the internment of more than 2,000 Haitian asylum seekers who had entered the country illegally. The U.S. government disputed the assertion that most of the detainees had fled their country due to political persecution, alleging instead that they were "economic migrants". In defense of the government's position, Giuliani testified that "political repression, at least in general, does not exist" under President of Haiti Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime.
In 1983, Giuliani was appointed to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which was technically a demotion but was sought by Giuliani because of his desire to personally litigate cases and because the SDNY is considered the highest profile United States Attorney's Office in the country, and as such, is often used by those who have held the position as a springboard for running for public office. It was in this position that he first gained national prominence by prosecuting numerous high-profile cases, resulting in the convictions of Wall Street figures Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. He also focused on prosecuting drug dealers, organized crime, and corruption in government. He amassed a record of 4,152 convictions and 25 reversals. As a federal prosecutor, Giuliani was credited with bringing the perp walk, parading of suspects in front of the previously alerted media, into common use as a prosecutorial tool. After Giuliani "patented the perp walk", the tool was used by increasing numbers of prosecutors nationwide.
Giuliani's critics claimed that he arranged for people to be arrested, then dropped charges for lack of evidence on high-profile cases rather than going to trial. In a few cases, his arrests of alleged white-collar criminals at their workplaces with charges later dropped or lessened, sparked controversy, and damaged the reputations of the alleged "perps". He claimed veteran stock trader Richard Wigton, of Kidder, Peabody & Co., was guilty of insider trading; in February 1987, he had officers handcuff Wigton and march him through the company's trading floor, with Wigton in tears. Giuliani had his agents arrest Tim Tabor, a young arbitrageur and former colleague of Wigton, so late that he had to stay overnight in jail before posting bond.
Within three months, charges were dropped against both Wigton and Tabor; Giuliani said, "We're not going to go to trial. We're just the tip of the iceberg," but no further charges were forthcoming and the investigation did not end until Giuliani's successor was in place. Giuliani's high-profile raid of the Princeton/Newport firm ended with the defendants having their cases overturned on appeal on the grounds that what they had been convicted of were not crimes.
Mafia Commission trial
In the Mafia Commission Trial, which ran from February 25, 1985, through November 19, 1986, Giuliani indicted eleven organized crime figures, including the heads of New York City's so-called "Five Families", under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) on charges including extortion, labor racketeering, and murder for hire. Time magazine called this "Case of Cases" possibly "the most significant assault on the infrastructure of organized crime since the high command of the Chicago Mafia was swept away in 1943", and quoted Giuliani's stated intention: "Our approach is to wipe out the five families." Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano evaded conviction when he and his underboss, Thomas Bilotti, were murdered on the streets of Midtown Manhattan on December 16, 1985. However, three heads of the Five Families were sentenced to 100 years in prison on January 13, 1987. Genovese and Colombo leaders, Tony Salerno and Carmine Persico received additional sentences in separate trials, with 70-year and 39-year sentences to run consecutively. He was assisted by three Assistant United States Attorneys: Michael Chertoff, the eventual second United States Secretary of Homeland Security and co-author of the Patriot Act; John Savarese, now a partner at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz; and Gil Childers, a later deputy chief of the criminal division for the Southern District of New York and now managing director in the legal department at Goldman Sachs.
According to an FBI memo revealed in 2007, leaders of the Five Families voted in late 1986 on whether to issue a contract for Giuliani's death. Heads of the Lucchese, Bonanno, and Genovese families rejected the idea, though Colombo and Gambino leaders, Carmine Persico and John Gotti, encouraged assassination. In 2014, it was revealed by a former Sicilian Mafia member and informant, Rosario Naimo, that Salvatore Riina, a notorious Sicilian Mafia leader, had ordered a murder contract on Giuliani during the mid-1980s. Riina allegedly was suspicious of Giuliani's efforts prosecuting the American Mafia and was worried that he might have spoken with Italian anti-mafia prosecutors and politicians, including Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who were both murdered in 1992 in separate car bombings. According to Giuliani, the Sicilian Mafia offered $800,000 for his death during his first year as mayor of New York in 1994.
Boesky, Milken trials
Ivan Boesky, a Wall Street arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of about $200million by betting on corporate takeovers, was originally investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for making investments based on tips received from corporate insiders, leading the way for the US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York to investigate as well. These stock and options acquisitions were sometimes brazen, with massive purchases occurring only a few days before a corporation announced a takeover. Although insider trading of this kind was illegal, laws prohibiting it were rarely enforced until Boesky was prosecuted. Boesky cooperated with the SEC and informed on several others, including junk bond trader Michael Milken. Per agreement with Giuliani, Boesky received a -year prison sentence along with a $100million fine. In 1989, Giuliani charged Milken under the RICO Act with 98 counts of racketeering and fraud. In a highly publicized case, Milken was indicted by a grand jury on these charges.
Mayoral campaigns
Giuliani was U.S. Attorney until January 1989, resigning as the Reagan administration ended. He garnered criticism until he left office for his handling of cases, and was accused of prosecuting cases to further his political ambitions. He joined the law firm White & Case in New York City as a partner. He remained with White & Case until May 1990, when he joined the law firm Anderson Kill Olick & Oshinsky, also in New York City.
1989
Giuliani first ran for New York City mayor in 1989, when he attempted to unseat three-term incumbent Ed Koch. He won the September 1989 Republican Party primary election against business magnate Ronald Lauder, in a campaign marked by claims that Giuliani was not a true Republican after an acrimonious debate between the two men. In the Democratic primary, Koch was upset by Manhattan Borough president David Dinkins.
In the general election, Giuliani ran as the fusion candidate of both the Republican and the Liberal parties. The Conservative Party, which had often co-lined the Republican party candidate, withheld support from Giuliani and ran Lauder instead. Conservative Party leaders were unhappy with Giuliani on ideological grounds. They cited the Liberal Party's endorsement statement that Giuliani "agreed with the Liberal Party's views on affirmative action, gay rights, gun control, school prayer and tuition tax credits".
During two televised debates, Giuliani framed himself as an agent of change, saying, "I'm the reformer," that "If we keep going merrily along, this city's going down," and that electing Dinkins would represent "more of the same, more of the rotten politics that have been dragging us down". Giuliani pointed out that Dinkins had not filed a tax return for many years and of several other ethical missteps, in particular a stock transfer to his son. Dinkins filed several years of returns and said the tax matter had been fully paid off. He denied other wrongdoing, saying "what we need is a mayor, not a prosecutor," and that Giuliani refused to say "the R-wordhe doesn't like to admit he's a Republican". Dinkins won the endorsements of three of the four daily New York newspapers, while Giuliani won approval from the New York Post.
In the end, Giuliani lost to Dinkins by a margin of 47,080 votes out of 1,899,845 votes cast, in the closest election in New York City's history. The closeness of the race was particularly noteworthy considering the small percentage of New York City residents who are registered Republicans and resulted in Giuliani being the presumptive nominee for a rematch with Dinkins at the next election.
1993
Four years after his defeat to Dinkins, Giuliani again ran for mayor. Once again, Giuliani also ran on the Liberal Party line but not the Conservative Party line, which ran activist George Marlin.
Although crime had begun to fall during the Dinkins administration, Giuliani's campaign capitalized on the perception that crime was uncontrolled in the city following events such as the Crown Heights riot and the Family Red Apple boycott. The year prior to the election, Giuliani was a key speaker at a Patrolmen's Benevolent Association rally opposing Dinkins, in which Giuliani blamed the police department's low morale on Dinkins' leadership. The rally quickly devolved into a riot, with nearly 4,000 off-duty police officers storming the City Hall and blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.
In his pitch to lower crime rates in the city, Giuliani promised to focus police resources toward shutting down petty crimes and nuisances as a way of restoring the quality of life:
Dinkins and Giuliani never debated during the campaign, because they were never able to agree on how to approach a debate. Dinkins was endorsed by The New York Times and Newsday, while Giuliani was endorsed by the New York Post and, in a key switch from 1989, the Daily News. Giuliani went to visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, seeking his blessing and endorsement.
On election day, Giuliani's campaign hired off-duty cops, firefighters, and corrections officers to monitor polling places in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and The Bronx for cases of voter fraud. Despite objections from the Dinkins campaign, who claimed that the effort would intimidate Democratic voters, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly assigned an additional 52 police captains and 3,500 officers to monitor the city's polling places.
Giuliani won by a margin of 53,367 votes. He became the first Republican elected Mayor of New York City since John Lindsay in 1965. Similar to the election four years prior, Giuliani performed particularly well in the white ethnic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Giuliani saw especially high returns in the borough of Staten Island, as a referendum to consider allowing the borough to secede from New York City was on the ballot.
1997
Giuliani's opponent in 1997 was Democratic Manhattan Borough president Ruth Messinger, who had beaten Al Sharpton in the September 9, 1997 Democratic primary. In the general election, Giuliani once again had the Liberal Party and not the Conservative Party listing. Giuliani ran an aggressive campaign, parlaying his image as a tough leader who had cleaned up the city. Giuliani's popularity was at its highest point to date, with a late October 1997 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showing him as having a 68 percent approval rating; 70 percent of New Yorkers were satisfied with life in the city and 64 percent said things were better in the city compared to four years previously.
Throughout the campaign he was well ahead in the polls and had a strong fund-raising advantage over Messinger. On her part, Messinger lost the support of several usually Democratic constituencies, including gay organizations and large labor unions. The local daily newspapersThe New York Times, Daily News, New York Post and Newsdayall endorsed Giuliani over Messinger.
In the end, Giuliani won 58% of the vote to Messinger's 41%, and became the first registered Republican to win a second term as mayor while on the Republican line since Fiorello H. La Guardia in 1941. Voter turnout was the lowest in twelve years, with 38% of registered voters casting ballots. The margin of victory included gains in his share of the African American vote (20% compared to 1993's 5%) and the Hispanic vote (43% from 37%) while maintaining his base of white ethnic, Catholic and Jewish voters from 1993.
Mayoralty
Giuliani served as mayor of New York City from 1994 through 2001.
Law enforcement
In Giuliani's first term as mayor, the New York City Police Departmentat the instigation of Commissioner Bill Brattonadopted an aggressive enforcement/deterrent strategy based on James Q. Wilson's "Broken Windows" approach. This involved crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as graffiti, turnstile jumping, cannabis possession, and aggressive panhandling by "squeegee men", on the theory that this would send a message that order would be maintained. The legal underpinning for removing the "squeegee men" from the streets was developed under Giuliani's predecessor, Mayor David Dinkins. Bratton, with Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple, also created and instituted CompStat, a computer-driven comparative statistical approach to mapping crime geographically and in terms of emerging criminal patterns, as well as charting officer performance by quantifying criminal apprehensions. Critics of the system assert that it creates an environment in which police officials are encouraged to underreport or otherwise manipulate crime data. An extensive study found a high correlation between crime rates reported by the police through CompStat and rates of crime available from other sources, suggesting there had been no manipulation. The CompStat initiative won the 1996 Innovations in Government Award from the Kennedy School of Government.
During Giuliani's administration, crime rates dropped in New York City. The extent to which Giuliani deserves the credit is disputed. Crime rates in New York City had started to drop in 1991 under previous mayor David Dinkins, three years before Giuliani took office. The rates of most crimes, including all categories of violent crime, made consecutive declines during the last 36 months of Dinkins's four-year term, ending a 30-year upward spiral. A small nationwide drop in crime preceded Giuliani's election, and some critics say he may have been the beneficiary of a trend already in progress. Additional contributing factors to the overall decline in New York City crime during the 1990s were the addition of 7,000 officers to the NYPD, lobbied for and hired by the Dinkins administration, and an overall improvement in the national economy. Changing demographics were a key factor contributing to crime rate reductions, which were similar across the country during this time. Because the crime index is based on that of the FBI, which is self-reported by police departments, some have alleged that crimes were shifted into categories the FBI does not collect.
Some studies conclude that the decline in New York City's crime rate in the 1990s and 2000s exceeds all national figures and therefore should be linked with a local dynamic that was not present as such anywhere else in the country: what University of California, Berkeley sociologist Frank Zimring calls "the most focused form of policing in history". In his book The Great American Crime Decline, Zimring argues that "up to half of New York's crime drop in the 1990s, and virtually 100 percent of its continuing crime decline since 2000, has resulted from policing."
Bratton was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1996. Giuliani reportedly forced Bratton out after two years, in what was seen as a battle of two large egos in which Giuliani was not tolerant of Bratton's celebrity. Bratton went on to become chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Giuliani's term also saw allegations of civil rights abuses and other police misconduct under other commissioners after Bratton's departure. There were police shootings of unarmed suspects, and the scandals surrounding the torture of Abner Louima and the killings of Amadou Diallo, Gidone Busch and Patrick Dorismond. Giuliani supported the New York City Police Department, for example by releasing what he called Dorismond's "extensive criminal record" to the public, including a sealed juvenile file.
City services
The Giuliani administration advocated the privatization of the city's public schools, which he called "dysfunctional", and advocated the reduction of state funding for them. He advocated for a voucher-based system to promote private schooling. Giuliani supported protection for illegal immigrants. He continued a policy of preventing city employees from contacting the Immigration and Naturalization Service about immigration violations, on the grounds that illegal aliens should be able to take actions such as sending their children to school or reporting crimes to the police without fear of deportation.
During his mayoralty, gay and lesbian New Yorkers received domestic partnership rights. Giuliani induced the city's Democratic-controlled New York City Council, which had avoided the issue for years, to pass legislation providing broad protection for same-sex partners. In 1998, he codified local law by granting all city employees equal benefits for their domestic partners.
2000 U.S. Senate campaign
Due to term limits, Giuliani was ineligible to run in 2001 for a third term as mayor. In November 1998, four-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement and Giuliani immediately indicated an interest in running in the 2000 election for the now-open seat. Due to his high profile and visibility Giuliani was supported by the state Republican Party. Giuliani's entrance led Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel and others to recruit then-First Lady Hillary Clinton to run for Moynihan's seat, hoping she might combat his star power.
An early January 1999 poll showed Giuliani trailing Clinton by ten points. In April 1999, Giuliani formed an exploratory committee in connection with the Senate run. By January 2000, polling for the race dramatically reversed, with Giuliani now pulling nine points ahead of Clinton, in part because his campaign was able to take advantage of several campaign stumbles by Clinton. Nevertheless, the Giuliani campaign was showing some structural weaknesses; so closely identified with New York City, he had somewhat limited appeal to normally Republican voters in Upstate New York. The New York Police Department's fatal shooting of Patrick Dorismond in March 2000 inflamed Giuliani's already strained relations with the city's minority communities, and Clinton seized on it as a major campaign issue. By April 2000, reports showed Clinton gaining upstate and generally outworking Giuliani, who said his duties as mayor prevented him from campaigning more. Clinton was now eight to ten points ahead of Giuliani in the polls.
Then followed four tumultuous weeks in which Giuliani learned he had prostate cancer and needed treatment; his extramarital relationship with Judith Nathan became public and the subject of a media frenzy; and he announced a separation from his wife Donna Hanover. After much indecision, on May 19, Giuliani announced his withdrawal from the Senate race.
September 11 terrorist attacks
Response
Giuliani received nationwide attention in the aftermath of the September11 attacks. He made frequent appearances on radio and television on September11 and afterwardsfor example, to indicate that tunnels would be closed as a precautionary measure, and that there was no reason to believe the dispersion of chemical or biological weaponry into the air was a factor in the attack. In his public statements, Giuliani said:
The 9/11 attacks occurred on the scheduled date of the mayoral primary to select the Democratic and Republican candidates to succeed Giuliani. The primary was immediately delayed two weeks to September 25. During this period, Giuliani sought an unprecedented three-month emergency extension of his term from January1 to April1 under the New York State Constitution (Article3 Section 25). He threatened to challenge the law imposing term limits on elected city officials and run for another full four-year term, if the primary candidates did not consent to the extension of his mayoralty. In the end leaders in the State Assembly and Senate indicated that they did not believe the extension was necessary. The election proceeded as scheduled, and the winning candidate, the Giuliani-endorsed Republican convert Michael Bloomberg, took office on January 1, 2002, per normal custom.
Giuliani claimed to have been at the Ground Zero site "as often, if not more, than most workers... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them." Some 9/11 workers have objected to those claims. While his appointment logs were unavailable for the six days immediately following the attacks, Giuliani logged 29 hours at the site over three months beginning September 17. This contrasted with recovery workers at the site who spent this much time at the site in two to three days.
When Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal suggested the attacks were an indication that the United States "should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause," Giuliani asserted, "There is no moral equivalent for this act. There is no justification for it... And one of the reasons I think this happened is because people were engaged in moral equivalency in not understanding the difference between liberal democracies like the United States, like Israel, and terrorist states and those who condone terrorism. So I think not only are those statements wrong, they're part of the problem." Giuliani subsequently rejected the prince's $10million donation to disaster relief in the aftermath of the attack.
Emergency command center location and communications problems
Giuliani has been widely criticized for his decision to locate the Office of Emergency Management headquarters on the 23rd floor inside the 7 World Trade Center building. Those opposing the decision perceived the office as a target for a terrorist attack in light of the previous terrorist attack against the World Trade Center in 1993. The office was unable to coordinate efforts between police and firefighters properly while evacuating its headquarters. Large tanks of diesel fuel were placed in 7World Trade to power the command center. In May 1997, Giuliani put responsibility for selecting the location on Jerome M. Hauer, who had served under Giuliani from 1996 to 2000 before being appointed by him as New York City's first Director of Emergency Management. Hauer has taken exception to that account in interviews and provided Fox News and New York Magazine with a memo demonstrating that he recommended a location in Brooklyn but was overruled by Giuliani. Television journalist Chris Wallace interviewed Giuliani on May 13, 2007, about his 1997 decision to locate the command center at the World Trade Center. Giuliani laughed during Wallace's questions and said that Hauer recommended the World Trade Center site and claimed that Hauer said the WTC site was the best location. Wallace presented Giuliani a photocopy of Hauer's directive letter. The letter urged Giuliani to locate the command center in Brooklyn, instead of lower Manhattan. The February 1996 memo read, "The [Brooklyn] building is secure and not as visible a target as buildings in Lower Manhattan."
In January 2008, an eight-page memo was revealed which detailed the New York City Police Department's opposition in 1998 to location of the city's emergency command center at the Trade Center site. The Giuliani administration overrode these concerns.
The 9/11 Commission Report noted that lack of preparedness could have led to the deaths of first responders at the scene of the attacks. The Commission noted that the radios in use by the fire department were the same radios which had been criticized for their ineffectiveness following the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. Family members of 9/11 victims have said these radios were a complaint of emergency services responders for years. The radios were not working when Fire Department chiefs ordered the 343 firefighters inside the towers to evacuate, and they remained in the towers as the towers collapsed. However, when Giuliani testified before the 9/11 Commission he said the firefighters ignored the evacuation order out of an effort to save lives. Giuliani testified to the commission, where some family members of responders who had died in the attacks appeared to protest his statements. A 1994 mayoral office study of the radios indicated that they were faulty. Replacement radios were purchased in a $33million no-bid contract with Motorola, and implemented in early 2001. However, the radios were recalled in March 2001 after a probationary firefighter's calls for help at a house fire could not be picked up by others at the scene, leaving firemen with the old analog radios from 1993. A book later published by Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, argued that the commission had not pursued a tough enough line of questioning with Giuliani.
An October 2001 study by the National Institute of Environmental Safety and Health said cleanup workers lacked adequate protective gear.
Public reaction
Giuliani gained international attention in the wake of the attacks and was widely hailed for his leadership role during the crisis. Polls taken just six weeks after the attack showed a 79 percent approval rating among New York City voters. This was a dramatic increase over the 36 percent rating he had received a year earlier, which was an average at the end of a two-term mayorship. Oprah Winfrey called him "America's Mayor" at a 9/11 memorial service held at Yankee Stadium on September 23, 2001. Other voices denied it was the mayor who had pulled the city together. "You didn't bring us together, our pain brought us together and our decency brought us together. We would have come together if Bozo was the mayor," said civil rights activist Al Sharpton, in a statement largely supported by Fernando Ferrer, one of three main candidates for the mayoralty at the end of 2001. "He was a power-hungry person," Sharpton also said.
Giuliani was praised by some for his close involvement with the rescue and recovery efforts, but others argue that "Giuliani has exaggerated the role he played after the terrorist attacks, casting himself as a hero for political gain." Giuliani has collected $11.4million from speaking fees in a single year (with increased demand after the attacks). Before September11, Giuliani's assets were estimated to be somewhat less than $2million, but his net worth could now be as high as 30 times that amount. He has made most of his money since leaving office.
Time Person of the Year
On December 24, 2001, Time magazine named Giuliani its Person of the Year for 2001. Time observed that, before 9/11, Giuliani's public image had been that of a rigid, self-righteous, ambitious politician. After 9/11, and perhaps owing also to his bout with prostate cancer, his public image became that of a man who could be counted on to unite a city in the midst of its greatest crisis. Historian Vincent J. Cannato concluded in September 2006:
Aftermath
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was given an honorary knighthood (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani initially downplayed the health effects arising from the September 11 attacks in the Financial District and lower Manhattan areas in the vicinity of the World Trade Center site. He moved quickly to reopen Wall Street, and it was reopened on September 17. In the first month after the attacks, he said "The air quality is safe and acceptable."
Giuliani took control away from agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, leaving the "largely unknown" city Department of Design and Construction in charge of recovery and cleanup. Documents indicate that the Giuliani administration never enforced federal requirements requiring the wearing of respirators. Concurrently, the administration threatened companies with dismissal if cleanup work slowed. In June 2007, Christie Todd Whitman, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), reportedly said the EPA had pushed for workers at the WTC site to wear respirators but she had been blocked by Giuliani. She said she believed the subsequent lung disease and deaths suffered by WTC responders were a result of these actions. However, former deputy mayor Joe Lhota, then with the Giuliani campaign, replied, "All workers at Ground Zero were instructed repeatedly to wear their respirators."
Giuliani asked the city's Congressional delegation to limit the city's liability for Ground Zero illnesses to a total of $350million. Two years after Giuliani finished his term, FEMA appropriated $1billion to a special insurance fund, called the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company, to protect the city against 9/11 lawsuits.
In February 2007, the International Association of Fire Fighters issued a letter asserting that Giuliani rushed to conclude the recovery effort once gold and silver had been recovered from World Trade Center vaults and thereby prevented the remains of many victims from being recovered: "Mayor Giuliani's actions meant that fire fighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills Landfill," it said, adding: "Hundreds remained entombed in Ground Zero when Giuliani gave up on them." Lawyers for the International Association of Fire Fighters seek to interview Giuliani under oath as part of a federal legal action alleging that New York City negligently dumped body parts and other human remains in the Fresh Kills Landfill.
Post-mayoralty
Politics
Before 2008 election
Since leaving office as mayor, Giuliani has remained politically active by campaigning for Republican candidates for political offices at all levels. When George Pataki became Governor in 1995, this represented the first time the positions of both Mayor and Governor were held simultaneously by Republicans since John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. Giuliani and Pataki were instrumental in bringing the 2004 Republican National Convention to New York City. He was a speaker at the convention, and endorsed President George W. Bush for re-election by recalling that immediately after the World Trade Center towers fell,
Similarly, in June 2006, Giuliani started a website called Solutions America to help elect Republican candidates across the nation.
After campaigning on Bush's behalf in the U.S. presidential election of 2004, he was reportedly the top choice for Secretary of Homeland Security after Tom Ridge's resignation. When suggestions were made that Giuliani's confirmation hearings would be marred by details of his past affairs and scandals, he turned down the offer and instead recommended his friend and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. After the formal announcement of Kerik's nomination, information about Kerik's pastmost notably, that he had ties to organized crime, had failed to properly report gifts he had received, had been sued for sexual harassment and had employed an undocumented alien as a domestic servantbecame known, and Kerik withdrew his nomination.
On March 15, 2006, Congress formed the Iraq Study Group (ISG). This bipartisan ten-person panel, of which Giuliani was one of the members, was charged with assessing the Iraq War and making recommendations. They would eventually unanimously conclude that contrary to Bush administration assertions, "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" and called for "changes in the primary mission" that would allow "the United States to begin to move its forces out of Iraq".
On May 24, 2006, after missing all the group's meetings, including a briefing from General David Petraeus, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, Giuliani resigned from the panel, citing "previous time commitments". Giuliani's fundraising schedule had kept him from participating in the panel, a schedule which raised $11.4million in speaking fees over fourteen months, and that Giuliani had been forced to resign after being given "an ultimatum to either show up for meetings or leave the group" by group leader James Baker. Giuliani subsequently said he had started thinking about running for president, and being on the panel might give it a political spin.
Giuliani was described by Newsweek in January 2007 as "one of the most consistent cheerleaders for the president's handling of the war in Iraq" and as of June 2007, he remained one of the few candidates for president to unequivocally support both the basis for the invasion and the execution of the war.
Giuliani spoke in support of the removal of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK, also PMOI, MKO) from the United States State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The group was on the State Department list from 1997 until September 2012. They were placed on the list for killing six Americans in Iran during the 1970s and attempting to attack the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992. Giuliani, along with other former government officials and politicians Ed Rendell, R. James Woolsey, Porter Goss, Louis Freeh, Michael Mukasey, James L. Jones, Tom Ridge, and Howard Dean, were criticized for their involvement with the group. Some were subpoenaed during an inquiry about who was paying the prominent individuals' speaking fees. Giuliani and others wrote an article for the conservative publication National Review stating their position that the group should not be classified as a terrorist organization. They supported their position by pointing out that the United Kingdom and the European Union had already removed the group from their terrorism lists. They further assert that only the United States and Iran still listed it as a terrorist group. However, Canada did not delist the group until December 2012.
2008 presidential campaign
In November 2006, Giuliani announced the formation of an exploratory committee toward a run for the presidency in 2008. In February 2007, he filed a "statement of candidacy" and confirmed on the television program Larry King Live that he was indeed running.
Early polls showed Giuliani with one of the highest levels of name recognition ever recorded along with high levels of support among the Republican candidates. Throughout most of 2007, he was the leader in most nationwide opinion polling among Republicans. Senator John McCain, who ranked a close second behind the New York Mayor, had faded, and most polls showed Giuliani to have more support than any of the other declared Republican candidates, with only former Senator Fred Thompson and former Governor Mitt Romney showing greater support in some per-state Republican polls. On November 7, 2007, Giuliani's campaign received an endorsement from evangelist, Christian Broadcasting Network founder, and past presidential candidate Pat Robertson. This was viewed by political observers as a possibly key development in the race, as it gave credence that evangelicals and other social conservatives could support Giuliani despite some of his positions on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.
Giuliani's campaign hit a difficult stretch during the last two months of 2007, when Bernard Kerik, whom Giuliani had recommended for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security, was indicted on 16 counts of tax fraud and other federal charges. The media reported that when Giuliani was the mayor of New York, he billed several tens of thousands of dollars of mayoral security expenses to obscure city agencies. Those expenses were incurred while he visited Judith Nathan, with whom he was having an extramarital affair (later analysis showed the billing to likely be unrelated to hiding Nathan). Several stories were published in the press regarding clients of Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani who were in opposition to goals of American foreign policy. Giuliani's national poll numbers began steadily slipping and his unusual strategy of focusing more on later, multi-primary big states rather than the smaller, first-voting states was seen at risk.
Despite his strategy, Giuliani competed to a substantial extent in the January 8, 2008, New Hampshire primary but finished a distant fourth with 9percent of the vote. Similar poor results continued in other early contests, when Giuliani's staff went without pay in order to focus all efforts on the crucial late January Florida Republican primary. The shift of the electorate's focus from national security to the state of the economy also hurt Giuliani, as did the resurgence of McCain's similarly themed campaign. On January 29, 2008, Giuliani finished a distant third in the Florida result with 15percent of the vote, trailing McCain and Romney. Facing declining polls and lost leads in the upcoming large Super Tuesday states, including that of his home New York, Giuliani withdrew from the race on January 30, endorsing McCain.
Giuliani's campaign ended up $3.6million in arrears, and in June 2008 Giuliani sought to retire the debt by proposing to appear at Republican fundraisers during the 2008 general election, and have part of the proceeds go towards his campaign. During the 2008 Republican National Convention, Giuliani gave a prime-time speech that praised McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, while criticizing Democratic nominee Barack Obama. He cited Palin's executive experience as a mayor and governor and belittled Obama's lack of same, and his remarks were met with wild applause from the delegates. Giuliani continued to be one of McCain's most active surrogates during the remainder of McCain's eventually unsuccessful campaign.
After 2008 election
Following the end of his presidential campaign, Giuliani's "high appearance fees dropped like a stone". He returned to work at both Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani. His consultancy work included advising Keiko Fujimori with her presidential campaign during the 2011 Peruvian general election. Giuliani also explored hosting a syndicated radio show, and was reported to be in talks with Westwood One about replacing Bill O'Reilly before that position went to Fred Thompson (another unsuccessful 2008 GOP presidential primary candidate). During the March 2009 AIG bonus payments controversy, Giuliani called for U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to step down and said the Obama administration lacked executive competence in dealing with the ongoing financial crisis.
Giuliani said his political career was not necessarily over, and did not rule out a 2010 New York gubernatorial or 2012 presidential bid. A November 2008 Siena College poll indicated that although Governor David Patersonpromoted to the office via the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal a year beforewas popular among New Yorkers, he would have just a slight lead over Giuliani in a hypothetical matchup. By February 2009, after the prolonged Senate appointment process, a Siena College poll indicated that Paterson was losing popularity among New Yorkers, and showed Giuliani with a fifteen-point lead in the hypothetical contest. In January 2009, Giuliani said he would not decide on a gubernatorial run for another six to eight months, adding that he thought it would not be fair to the governor to start campaigning early while the governor tries to focus on his job. Giuliani worked to retire his presidential campaign debt, but by the end of March 2009 it was still $2.4million in arrears, the largest such remaining amount for any of the 2008 contenders. In April 2009, Giuliani strongly opposed Paterson's announced push for same-sex marriage in New York and said it would likely cause a backlash that could put Republicans in statewide office in 2010. By late August 2009, there were still conflicting reports about whether Giuliani was likely to run.
On December 23, 2009, Giuliani announced that he would not seek any office in 2010, saying "The main reason has to do with my two enterprises: Bracewell & Giuliani and Giuliani Partners. I'm very busy in both." The decisions signaled a possible end to Giuliani's political career. During the 2010 midterm elections, Giuliani endorsed and campaigned for Bob Ehrlich and Marco Rubio.
On October 11, 2011, Giuliani announced that he was not running for president. According to Kevin Law, the Director of the Long Island Association, Giuliani believed that "As a moderate, he thought it was a pretty significant challenge. He said it's tough to be a moderate and succeed in GOP primaries," Giuliani said "If it's too late for (New Jersey Governor) Chris Christie, it's too late for me."
At a Republican fund-raising event in February 2015, Giuliani said, "I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president Obama loves America," and "He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country." In response to criticism of the remarks, Giuliani said, "Some people thought it was racistI thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother... This isn't racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism." White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said he agreed with Giuliani "that it was a horrible thing to say", but he would leave it up to the people who heard Giuliani directly to assess whether the remarks were appropriate for the event. Although he received some support for his controversial comments, Giuliani said he also received several death threats within 48 hours.
Relationship with Donald Trump
Presidential campaign supporter
Giuliani supported Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He gave a prime time speech during the first night of the 2016 Republican National Convention. Earlier in the day, Giuliani and former 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson appeared at an event for the pro-Trump Great America PAC. Giuliani also appeared in a Great America PAC ad entitled "Leadership". Giuliani's and Jeff Sessions's appearances were staples at Trump campaign rallies.
During the campaign, Giuliani praised Trump for his worldwide accomplishments and helping fellow New Yorkers in their time of need. He defended Trump against allegations of racism, sexual assault, and not paying any federal income taxes for as long as two decades.
In August 2016, Giuliani, while campaigning for Trump, claimed that in the "eight years before Obama" became president, "we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States". It was noted that 9/11 happened during George W. Bush's first term. Politifact brought up four more counter-examples (the 2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting, the 2002 D.C. sniper attacks, the 2006 Seattle Jewish Federation shooting and the 2006 UNC SUV attack) to Giuliani's claim. Giuliani later said he was using "abbreviated language".
Giuliani was believed to be a likely pick for Secretary of State in the Trump administration. However, on December 9, 2016, Trump announced that Giuliani had removed his name from consideration for any Cabinet post.
Advisor to the president
The president-elect named Giuliani his informal cybersecurity adviser on January 12, 2017. The status of this informal role for Giuliani is unclear because, in November 2018, Trump created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), headed by Christopher Krebs as director and Matthew Travis as deputy. In the weeks following his appointment, Giuliani was forced to consult an Apple Store Genius Bar when he "was locked out of his iPhone because he had forgotten the passcode and entered the wrong one at least 10 times", belying his putative expertise in the field.
In January 2017, Giuliani said he advised President Trump in matters relating to Executive Order 13769, which barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days. The order also suspended the admission of all refugees for 120 days.
Giuliani has drawn scrutiny over his ties to foreign nations, regarding not registering per the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Personal lawyer
In mid April 2018, Giuliani joined Trump's legal team, which dealt with the special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Giuliani said his goal was to negotiate a swift end to the investigation.
In early May, Giuliani made public that Trump had reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen $130,000 that Cohen had paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels for her agreement not to talk about her alleged affair with Trump. Cohen had earlier insisted he used his own money to pay Daniels, and he implied that he had not been reimbursed. Trump had previously said he knew nothing about the matter. Within a week, Giuliani said some of his own statements regarding this matter were "more rumor than anything else".
Later in May 2018, Giuliani, who was asked on whether the promotion of the Spygate conspiracy theory is meant to discredit the special counsel investigation, said the investigators "are giving us the material to do it. Of course, we have to do it in defending the president... it is for public opinion" on whether to "impeach or not impeach" Trump. In June 2018, Giuliani claimed that a sitting president cannot be indicted: "I don't know how you can indict while he's in office. No matter what it is. If President Trump shot [then-FBI director] James Comey, he'd be impeached the next day. Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him."
In June 2018, Giuliani also said Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because "our recollection keeps changing". In early July, Giuliani characterized that Trump had previously asked Comey to "give him [then-national security adviser Michael Flynn] a break". In mid-August, Giuliani denied making this comment: "What I said was, that is what Comey is saying Trump said." On August 19 on Meet the Press, Giuliani argued that Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because Trump could be "trapped into perjury" just by telling "somebody's version of the truth. Not the truth." Giuliani's argument continued: "Truth isn't truth." Giuliani later clarified that he was "referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements".
In late July, Giuliani defended Trump by saying "collusion is not a crime" and that Trump had done nothing wrong because he "didn't hack" or "pay for the hacking". He later elaborated that his comments were a "very, very familiar lawyer's argument" to "attack the legitimacy of the special counsel investigation". He also described and denied several supposed allegations that have never been publicly raised, regarding two earlier meetings among Trump campaign officials to set up the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with Russian citizens. In late August, Giuliani said the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower "meeting was originally for the purpose of getting information about Hillary Clinton".
Additionally in late July, Giuliani attacked Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as an "incredible liar", two months after calling Cohen an "honest, honorable lawyer". In mid-August, Giuliani defended Trump by saying: "The president's an honest man."
It was reported in early September that Giuliani said the White House could and likely would prevent the special counsel investigation from making public certain information in its final report which would be covered by executive privilege. Also according to Giuliani, Trump's personal legal team is already preparing a "counter-report" to refute the potential special counsel investigation's report.
Giuliani privately urged Trump in 2017 to extradite Fethullah Gülen.
In late 2019, Giuliani represented Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, meeting with the Justice Department to ask not to bring charges against him.
In an interview with Olivia Nuzzi in New York magazine, Giuliani, who is a Roman Catholic of Italian descent, said, "Don't tell me I'm anti-Semitic if I oppose George Soros... I'm more of a Jew than Soros is." George Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew who survived The Holocaust. The Anti-Defamation League replied, "Mr. Giuliani should apologize and retract his comments immediately unless he seeks to dog whistle to hardcore anti-Semites and white supremacists who believe this garbage."
In the last days of the Trump administration, when White House aides were soliciting fees to lobby for presidential pardons, Giuliani said that while he'd heard that large fees were being offered, he did not work on clemency cases, saying "I have enough money. I'm not starving."
As of February 16, 2021, Giuliani was reportedly not actively involved in any of Trump's pending legal cases.
Attempts to get Ukraine to carry out investigations
Since at least May 2019, Giuliani has been urging Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the oil company Burisma, whose board of directors once included Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, and to check for irregularities in Ukraine's investigation of Paul Manafort. He said such investigations would benefit his client's defense, and that his efforts had Trump's full support. Toward this end, Giuliani met with Ukrainian officials throughout 2019. In July 2019, Buzzfeed News reported that two Soviet-born Americans, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were liaisons between Giuliani and Ukrainian government officials in this effort. Parnas and Fruman, prolific Republican donors, have neither registered as foreign agents in the United States, nor been evaluated and approved by the State Department. Giuliani responded, "This (report) is a pathetic effort to cover up what are enormous allegations of criminality by the Biden family." Yet by September 2019, there had been no clear evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
As of October 1, 2019, Giuliani hired former Watergate prosecutor Jon Sale to represent him in the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment investigation. The committee also issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents related to the Ukraine scandal. The New York Times reported on October 11, 2019, that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which Giuliani had once led, was investigating him for violating lobbying laws related to his activities in Ukraine. The following month, Bloomberg News reported that the investigation could extend to bribery of foreign officials or conspiracy, and The Wall Street Journal reported Giuliani was being investigated for a possible profit motive in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. Giuliani has denied having any interest in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. In late November, the Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors had just issued subpoenas to multiple associates of Giuliani to potentially investigate certain individuals, apparently including Giuliani, on numerous potential charges, including money laundering, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements to the federal government, and mail/wire fraud.
Parnas and Fruman were arrested for campaign finance violations while attempting to board a one-way flight to Frankfurt from Washington Dulles International Airport on October 9, 2019. Giuliani was paid $500,000 to consult for Lev Parnas's company named "Fraud Guarantee". Republican donor and Trump supporter Long Island attorney Charles Gucciardo paid Giuliani on behalf of Fraud Guarantee in two $250,000 payments, in September and October 2018. Fruman eventually pled guilty in September 2021 to having solicited a contribution by a foreign national.
In May 2019, Giuliani described Ukraine's chief prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko as a "much more honest guy" than his predecessor, Viktor Shokin. After Lutsenko was removed from office, he said in September 2019 that he found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, and that he had met Giuliani about ten times. Giuliani then reversed his stance, saying that Shokin is the one people "should have spoken to", while Lutsenko acted "corruptly" and "is exactly the prosecutor that Joe Biden put in in order to tank the case".
In September 2019, as reports surfaced that a whistleblower was alleging high-level misconduct related to Ukraine, Giuliani went on CNN to discuss the story. When asked if he had tried to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden, he initially replied "No, actually I didn't," but thirty seconds later said, "Of course I did." In a later tweet he seemed to confirm reports that Trump had withheld military assistance funds scheduled for Ukraine unless they carried out the investigation. He said, "The reality is that the president of the United States, whoever he is, has every right to tell the president of another country you better straighten out the corruption in your country if you want me to give you a lot of money. If you're so damn corrupt that you can't investigate allegationsour money is going to get squandered."
Tom Bossert, a former Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump administration, described Giuliani's theory that Ukraine was involved in 2016 U.S. election interference as "debunked"; Giuliani responded that Bossert "doesn't know what the hell he's talking about".
On September 30, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents concerning the Ukraine scandal to Committee members by October 15, 2019. On October 2, 2019, Steve Linick, the State Department's inspector general, delivered a 40-page packet of apparent disinformation regarding former vice president Joe Biden and former Ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, to Capitol Hill. Linick told congressional aides his office questioned Ulrich Brechbuhl, Pompeo's advisor about the origins of the packet. Brechbuhl noted the packet came to him from Pompeo, who said it "came over", and Brechbuhl reportedly presumed it was from the White House. Later that day, Giuliani acknowledged he passed the packet to Pompeo regarding the Ukraine and attacks on Yovanovich. In a November 2019 interview he confirmed that he had "needed Yovanovitch out of the way" because she was going to make his investigations difficult. "They (the State Department) told me they would investigate it," Giuliani added. Giuliani persuaded Trump to remove Yovanovich from office in spring 2019. By April 2021, the U.S attorney's office in Manhattan was investigating the role of Giuliani and his associates in Yovanovitch's removal.
U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that Trump delegated American foreign policy on Ukraine to Giuliani. The late 2019 impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump centered around Giuliani's actions involving Ukraine. In the compiled testimony and in the December reports of the House Intelligence Committee, Giuliani's name was mentioned more than any but Trump's. Some experts suggested that Giuliani may have violated the Logan Act.
On November 22, 2019, Giuliani sent a letter to Senator Lindsey Graham, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, informing him of at least three witnesses from Ukraine who Giuliani claimed had direct oral, documentary, and recorded evidence of Democratic criminal conspiracy with Ukrainians to prevent Trump's election and, after his election, to remove him from office via contrived charges. Giuliani's letter also claims that the witnesses had evidence of the Biden family's involvement in bribery, money laundering, Hobbs Act extortion, and other possible crimes. The letter sought Graham's help obtaining U.S. visas for the witnesses to testify. The next month, Graham invited Giuliani to share his findings with the Judiciary Committee, and soon advised him "to share what he got from Ukraine with the [intelligence community] to make sure it's not Russia propaganda".
Dmytry Firtash is a Ukrainian oligarch who is prominent in the natural gas sector. In 2017, the Justice Department characterized him as being an "upper echelon (associate) of Russian organized crime". Since his 2014 arrest in Vienna, Austria at the request of American authorities, he has been living there on $155 million bail while fighting extradition to the United States on bribery and racketeering charges, and has been seeking to have the charges dropped. Firtash's attorneys obtained a September 2019 statement from Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general who was forced out under pressure from multiple countries and non-governmental organizations, as conveyed to Ukraine by Joe Biden. Shokin falsely asserted in the statement that Biden actually had him fired because he refused to stop his investigation into Burisma. Giuliani, who asserts he has "nothing to do with" and has "never met or talked to" Firtash, promoted the statement in television appearances as purported evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens. Giuliani told CNN he met with a Firtash attorney for two hours in New York City at the time he was seeking information about the Bidens.
Firtash is represented by Trump and Giuliani associates Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, having hired them on Parnas's recommendation in July 2019. The New York Times reported in November 2019 that Giuliani had directed Parnas to approach Firtash with the recommendation, with the proposition that Firtash could help provide damaging information on Biden, which Parna's attorney described was "part of any potential resolution to [Firtash's] extradition matter". Shokin's statement notes that it was prepared "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash ('DF'), for use in legal proceedings in Austria". Giuliani presented the Shokin statement during American television appearances. Bloomberg News reported on October 18 that during the summer of 2019 Firtash associates began attempting to dig up dirt on the Bidens in an effort to solicit Giuliani's assistance with Firtash's legal matters. Bloomberg News also reported that its sources told them Giuliani's high-profile publicity of the Shokin statement had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political quid pro quo. diGenova has said he has known U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr for thirty years, as they both worked in the Reagan Justice Department. The Washington Post reported on October 22 that after they began representing Firtash, Toensing and diGenova secured a rare face-to-face meeting with Barr to argue the Firtash charges should be dropped, but he declined to intervene.
On October 18, The New York Times reported that weeks earlier, before his associates Parnas and Fruman were indicted, Giuliani met with officials with the criminal and fraud divisions of the Justice Department regarding what Giuliani characterized as a "very, very sensitive" foreign bribery case involving a client of his. The Times did not name whom the case involved, but shortly after publication of the story Giuliani told a reporter it was not Firtash. Two days later, the Justice Department said its officials would not have met with Giuliani had they known his associates were under investigation by the SDNY.
On December 3, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee's report included phone records acquired via subpoenas, including numerous phone calls made by Giuliani between April and August 2019. Calls involved Giuliani in contact with Kurt Volker, Republican Representative and House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, Lev Parnas, numbers associated with the Office of Management and Budget and the White House switchboard, and an unidentified White House official whose phone number is referenced as "-1". Chairman Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee announced after the report's release that his committee was investigating whether "-1" referred to President Trump, citing grand jury evidence from the trial of convicted Trump-associate Roger Stone in which the phone number "-1" was shown to have referred to Trump. Writing for The Washington Post, analyst Philip Bump reasoned that Giuliani's calls with "-1" are 'likely' calls with Trump citing that Giuliani speaks longer with "-1" than any other person, "-1" always calls Giuliani, and generally after Giuliani calls the White House switchboard, and timing of some of President Trump's actions shortly after Giuliani's calls with "-1" ended.
In early December 2019, while the House Judiciary Committee began holding public hearings for the impeachment inquiry, Giuliani returned to Ukraine to interview former Ukrainian officials for a documentary series seeking to discredit the impeachment proceedings. U.S. officials told The Washington Post that Giuliani would have been considered a target of Russian intelligence efforts from early in Trump's presidency, and particularly after Giuliani turned his focus to Ukraine — a former Soviet republic under attack from Russia and with deep penetration by Russian intelligence services. Analysts say Trump's and Giuliani's habit of communicating over unencrypted lines makes it highly likely that foreign intelligence agencies could be listening in on the president's unsecured calls with Giuliani; and that foreign intelligence agencies often collect intelligence about a primary target through monitoring communications of other people who interact with that target.
In a December 2019 opinion piece, former FBI director, CIA director and federal judge William Webster wrote of "a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love". In addition to chastising President Trump and attorney general Bill Barr, Webster wrote he was "profoundly disappointed in another longtime, respected friend, Rudy Giuliani" because his "activities of late concerning Ukraine have, at a minimum, failed the smell test of propriety". Since 2005, Webster had served as the chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
NBC News reported in December 2020 that SDNY investigators, which were reported in late 2019 to be investigating Giuliani's activities, had discussed with Justice Department officials in Washington the possibility of acquiring Giuliani's emails, which might require headquarters approval due to protection by attorney–client privilege. The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY had requested a search warrant of Giuliani's electronic records in summer 2020, but were met with resistance from high-level political appointees in the Washington headquarters, ostensibly because the election was near, while career officials were supportive of the search warrant. The Justice Department generally avoids taking significant actions relating to political figures that might become public within sixty days of an election. Senior political appointees nevertheless opposed the effort after the election, noting Giuliani played a leading role in challenging the election results. The officials deferred the matter to the incoming Biden administration.
Federal investigators in Manhattan executed search warrants on the early morning of April 28, 2021 at Giuliani's office and Upper East Side apartment, seizing his electronic devices and searching the apartment. FBI agents also executed a search warrant that day on Toensing's Washington, D.C.-area home and confiscated her cellphone. In April 2021, Giuliani's attorney said investigators told him they had searched his client's iCloud account beginning in late 2019, later arguing to a judge that the search was illegal and so the subsequent raid on Giuliani's properties was "fruit of this poisoned tree," demanding to review documents justifying the iCloud search. In May 2021, the SDNY confirmed in a court filing that in late 2019 it obtained search warrants for Giuliani's iCloud account, and that of Toensing, as part of "an ongoing, multi-year grand jury investigation into conduct involving Giuliani, Toensing, and others," and argued that attorneys for Giuliani and Toensing were not entitled to review the underlying documents of the warrants prior to any charges. Giuiliani and Toensing asserted their attorney-client privilege with clients may have been violated by the iCloud searches, which investigators disputed, saying they employed a "filter team" to prevent them from seeing information potentially protected by attorney-client privilege. Federal judge J. Paul Oetken days later ruled in favor of investigators regarding the warrant documents and granted their request for a special master to ensure attorney-client privilege was maintained. The special master released more than 3,000 of Giuliani's communications to prosecutors in January 2022, agreeing to withhold forty messages for which Giuliani had asserted "privilege and/or highly personal" status and rejecting 37 such assertions.
The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY was scrutinizing Giuliani's association with Firtash in efforts to discredit the Bidens, and efforts to lobby the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs. Time reported in May 2021 it had spoken with three unidentified witnesses who said they were questioned by investigators, two of whom said they had worked with Giuliani while cooperating with investigators; one witness said investigators were particularly interested in Giuliani's association with Firtash.
United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 found that Ukrainian politician Andrii Derkach was among proxies of Russian intelligence who promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about Biden "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration". Giuliani met with Derkach in December 2019.
In April 2021, Forensic News reported that the SDNY investigation into Giuliani had expanded to include a criminal probe of Derkach and Andrii Artemenko. The New York Times confirmed weeks later that Derkach was the subject of a criminal investigation into foreign interference in the 2020 United States elections. "Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have been investigating whether several Ukrainian officials helped orchestrate a wide-ranging plan to meddle in the 2020 presidential campaign, including using Rudolph W. Giuliani to spread their misleading claims about President Biden and tilt the election in Donald J. Trump's favor," the Times reported.
On June 8, 2021, CNN uncovered exclusive audio of a 2019 phone call from Giuliani to Ukraine, stating that "Rudy Giuliani relentlessly pressured and coaxed the Ukrainian government in 2019 to investigate baseless conspiracies about then-candidate Joe Biden."
2020 election lawsuits
In November 2020, after Joe Biden was named president-elect, Trump placed Giuliani in charge of lawsuits related to alleged voter irregularities in the 2020 United States presidential election. Trump designated Giuliani to lead a legal team to challenge the election results. This team—a self-described "elite strike force" that included Sidney Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing and Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis—appeared at a November 19 press conference in which they made numerous false and unsubstantiated assertions revolving around an international Communist conspiracy, rigged voting machines, and polling place fraud.
Giuliani repeatedly publicly denounced the use of provisional ballots (in which the poll worker does not see the voter's name on the rolls, so the voter swears an affidavit oath that they are registered to vote), arguing that the practice enables fraud, although Giuliani himself had cast this type of ballot on October 31, 2020, in Manhattan.
By January 8, 2021, Trump and his team had lost 63 lawsuits. A month later, Giuliani was no longer representing Trump in any pending cases, according to a Trump adviser. While Trump continued to fundraise, purportedly for his election-related legal fights, as of the end of July 2021 he had not given any of this money to Giuliani. In October 2021, in another context, Trump remarked: "I do pay my lawyers when they do a good job."
In December 2021, two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye” Moss, sued Giuliani for defamation.
Pennsylvania lawsuit
One early lawsuit sought to invalidate up to 700,000 mail-in ballots and stop Pennsylvania from certifying its election results. Giuliani claimed to have signed affidavits attesting to voter fraud and election official misconduct in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Despite not having argued a case in any courtroom for over three decades, Giuliani applied for special permission to represent the Trump presidential campaign in the federal court of Pennsylvania. (In his application, he misrepresented his status with the District of Columbia Bar, claiming that he was a member in good standing, whereas D.C. had suspended him for nonpayment of fees.) In his first day in court on the case, which was November 17, 2020, Giuliani struggled with rudimentary legal processes and was accused by lawyers for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State of making legal arguments that were "disgraceful in an American courtroom". Judge Matthew Brann questioned how Giuliani could justify "asking this court to invalidate some 6.8 million votes thereby disenfranchising every single voter in the commonwealth."
His federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania was dismissed with prejudice on November 21, 2020, with the judge citing "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations" which were "unsupported by evidence". Giuliani and Jenna Ellis reacted by stating that the ruling "helps" the Trump campaign "get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court". They also pointed out that the judge, Matthew W. Brann, was "Obama-appointed", though Brann is also a Republican and a former member of the right-leaning Federalist Society.
The Trump campaign appealed the lawsuit to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel on November 27 rejected the Trump campaign's attempt to undo Pennsylvania's vote certification, because the Trump campaign's "claims have no merit". The panel also ruled that the District Court was correct in preventing the Trump campaign from conducting a second amendment of its complaint. An amendment would be pointless, ruled the judges, because the Trump campaign was not bringing facts before the court, and not even alleging fraud. Judge Stephanos Bibas highlighted that Giuliani himself told the district court that the Trump campaign "doesn't plead fraud", and that this "is not a fraud case". The panel concluded that neither "specific allegations" nor "proof" was provided in this case, and that the Trump campaign "cannot win this lawsuit".
Giuliani and Ellis reacted to the appeals court ruling by condemning the "activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania". Of the three Appeal Court judges, Stephanos Bibas, who delivered the opinion, was appointed by Trump himself, while judges D. Brooks Smith and Michael Chagares were appointed by Republican president George W. Bush.
Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits
As part of Giuliani's allegations that voting machines had been rigged, he made several false assertions about two rival companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. These false claims included that Smartmatic owned Dominion; that Dominion voting machines used Smartmatic software; that Dominion voting machines sent vote data to Smartmatic at foreign locations; that Dominion was founded by the former socialist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez; and that Dominion is a "radical-left" company with connections to antifa.
Both companies sued Giuliani and Fox News. Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Giuliani on January 25, 2021, seeking $1.3billion in damages, and separately sued Fox News for $1.6 billion. On February 4, 2021, Smartmatic also filed a lawsuit that accused Giuliani, Fox News, some hosts at Fox News, and Sidney Powell of engaging in a "disinformation campaign" against the company, and asked for $2.7billion in damages.
On September 10, 2021, Fox News told Giuliani that neither he nor his son Andrew would be allowed on their network for nearly three months.
Attack on the Capitol
On January 6, 2021, Giuliani spoke at a "Save America March" rally on the Ellipse that was attended by Trump supporters protesting the election results. He repeated conspiracy theories that voting machines used in the election were "crooked" and called for "trial by combat". Trump supporters subsequently stormed the U.S. Capitol in a riot that resulted in the deaths of five people, including a police officer, and temporarily disrupted the counting of the Electoral College vote.
Giuliani had reportedly been calling Republican lawmakers to urge them to delay the electoral vote count in order to ultimately throw the election to Trump. Giuliani attempted to contact Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Trump ally, around 7:00p.m. on January 6, after the Capitol storming, to ask him to "try to just slow it down" by objecting to multiple states and "raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrowideally until the end of tomorrow". However, Giuliani mistakenly left the message on the voicemail of another senator, who leaked the recording to The Dispatch. Rick Perlstein, a noted historian of the American conservative political movement, termed Giuliani's attempts to slow certification in the wake of the riot as treasonous. "Sedition. Open and shut. He talked about the time that was being opened up. He was welcoming, and using, the violence. This needs to be investigated," Perlstein tweeted on January 11, 2021.
Giuliani faced criticism for his appearance at the rally and the Capitol riot that followed it. Former Congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called for the arrest of Giuliani, President Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. Manhattan College president Brennan O'Donnell stated in a January7 open letter to the college community, "one of the loudest voices fueling the anger, hatred, and violence that spilled out yesterday is a graduate of our College, Rudolph Giuliani. His conduct as a leader of the campaign to de-legitimize the election and disenfranchise millions of votershas been and continues to be a repudiation of the deepest values of his alma mater."
On January 11, the New York State Bar Association, an advocacy group for the legal profession in New York state, announced that it was launching an investigation into whether Giuliani should be removed from its membership rolls, noting both Giuliani's comments to the Trump supporter rally at the Ellipse on January 6, and that it "has received hundreds of complaints in recent months about Mr. Giuliani and his baseless efforts on behalf of President Trump to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 presidential election and, after the votes were cast, to overturn its legitimate results". Removal from the group's membership rolls would not directly disbar Giuliani from practicing law in New York. New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman and lawyers' group Lawyers Defending American Democracy, also filed a complaints against Giuliani with the Attorney Grievance Committee of the First Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court, which has the authority to discipline and disbar licensed New York lawyers.
Also on January 11, 2021, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said that he is looking at whether to charge Giuliani, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Representative Mo Brooks, with inciting the violent attack.
On January 29, Giuliani falsely claimed that The Lincoln Project played a role in the organization of the Capitol riot. In response, Steve Schmidt announced that the group would be taking legal action against Giuliani for defamation.
On March 5, 2021, Representative Eric Swalwell filed a civil lawsuit against Giuliani and three others (Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Representative Mo Brooks), seeking damages for their alleged role in inciting the Capitol riot.
Giuliani was subpoenaed in January 2022 to testify before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Suspension of law license
On June 24, 2021, a New York appellate court suspended Giuliani's law license. The panel of five justices found that there was "uncontroverted" evidence that Giuliani made "demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public" and that "These false statements were made to improperly bolster (Giuliani's) narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client." The court concluded that Giuliani's conduct "immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law". His license was also suspended in Washington D.C. on July 7, 2021.
Giuliani Partners
After leaving the New York City mayor's office, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners LLC, in 2002, a firm that has been categorized by multiple media outlets as a lobbying entity capitalizing on Giuliani's name recognition, and which has been the subject of allegations surrounding staff hired by Giuliani and due to the firm's chosen client base. Over five years, Giuliani Partners earned more than $100million.
In June 2007, he stepped down as CEO and Chairman of Giuliani Partners, although this action was not made public until December 4, 2007; he maintained his equity interest in the firm. Giuliani subsequently returned to active participation in the firm following the election. In late 2009, Giuliani announced that they had a security consulting contract with Rio de Janeiro, Brazil regarding the 2016 Summer Olympics. He faced criticism in 2012 for advising people once allied with Slobodan Milošević who had lauded Serbian war criminals.
Bracewell & Giuliani
In 2005, Giuliani joined the law firm of Bracewell & Patterson LLP (renamed Bracewell & Giuliani LLP) as a name partner and basis for the expanding firm's new New York office. When he joined the Texas-based firm he brought Marc Mukasey, the son of Attorney General Michael Mukasey, into the firm.
Despite a busy schedule, Giuliani was highly active in the day-to-day business of the law firm, which was a high-profile supplier of legal and lobbying services to the oil, gas, and energy industries. Its aggressive defense of pollution-causing coal-fired power plants threatened to cause political risk for Giuliani, but association with the firm helped Giuliani achieve fund-raising success in Texas. In 2006, Giuliani acted as the lead counsel and lead spokesmen for Bracewell & Giuliani client Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, during their negotiations with federal prosecutors over charges that the pharmaceutical company misled the public about OxyContin's addictive properties. The agreement reached resulted in Purdue Pharma and some of its executives paying $634.5million in fines.
Bracewell & Giuliani represented corporate clients before many U.S. government departments and agencies. Some clients have worked with corporations and foreign governments.
Giuliani left the firm in January 2016, by "amicable agreement", and the firm was rebranded as Bracewell LLP.
Greenberg Traurig
In January 2016, Giuliani moved to the law firm Greenberg Traurig, where he served as the global chairman for Greenberg's cybersecurity and crisis management group, as well as a senior advisor to the firm's executive chairman. In April 2018, he took an unpaid leave of absence when he joined Trump's legal defense team. He resigned from the firm on May 9, 2018.
Lobbying in Romania
In August 2018, Giuliani was retained by Freeh Group International Solutions, a global consulting firm run by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, which paid him a fee to lobby Romanian president Klaus Iohannis to change Romania's anti-corruption policy and reduce the role of the National Anticorruption Directorate. Giuliani argued that the anti-corruption efforts had gone too far.
Podcast
In January 2020, Giuliani launched a podcast, Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
Personal life
Marriages and relationships
Giuliani married Regina Peruggi, whom he had known since childhood, on October 26, 1968. The marriage was in trouble by the mid-1970s and they agreed to a trial separation in 1975. Peruggi did not accompany him to Washington when he accepted the job in the Attorney General's Office. Giuliani met local television personality Donna Hanover sometime in 1982, and they began dating when she was working in Miami. Giuliani filed for legal separation from Peruggi on August 12, 1982. The Giuliani-Peruggi marriage legally ended in two ways: a civil divorce was issued by the end of 1982, while a Roman Catholic church annulment of the marriage was granted at the end of 1983, reportedly because Giuliani had discovered that he and Peruggi were second cousins. Alan Placa, Giuliani's best man, later became a priest and helped secure the annulment. Giuliani and Peruggi had no children.
Giuliani married Hanover in a Catholic ceremony at St. Monica's Church in Manhattan on April 15, 1984. They had two children, Andrew and Caroline Rose, who is a filmmaker in the LGBTQ+ community and has described herself as "multiverses apart" from her father.
Giuliani was still married to Hanover in May 1999 when he met Judith Nathan, a sales manager for a pharmaceutical company, at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar. By 1996, Donna Hanover had reverted to her professional name and virtually stopped appearing in public with her husband amid rumors of marital problems. Nathan and Giuliani formed an ongoing relationship. In summer 1999, Giuliani charged the costs for his NYPD security detail to obscure city agencies in order to keep his relationship with Nathan from public scrutiny. The police department began providing Nathan with city-provided chauffeur services in early 2000.
By March 2000, Giuliani had stopped wearing his wedding ring. The appearances that he and Nathan made at functions and events became publicly visible, although they were not mentioned in the press. The Daily News and the New York Post both broke news of Giuliani's relationship with Nathan in early May 2000. Giuliani first publicly acknowledged her on May 3, 2000, when he said Judith was his "very good friend".
On May 10, 2000, Giuliani held a press conference to announce that he intended to separate from Hanover. Giuliani had not informed Hanover about his plans before the press conference. This was an omission for which Giuliani was widely criticized. Giuliani then went on to praise Nathan as a "very, very fine woman" and said about Hanover that "over the course of some period of time in many ways, we've grown to live independent and separate lives." Hours later Hanover said, "I had hoped that we could keep this marriage together. For several years, it was difficult to participate in Rudy's public life because of his relationship with one staff member."
Giuliani moved out of Gracie Mansion by August 2001 and into an apartment with a couple he was friends with. Giuliani filed for divorce from Hanover in October 2000, and a public battle broke out between their representatives. Nathan was barred by court order from entering Gracie Mansion or meeting his children before the divorce was final.
In May 2001, Giuliani's attorney revealed that Giuliani was impotent due to prostate cancer treatments and had not had sex with Nathan for the preceding year. "You don't get through treatment for cancer and radiation all by yourself," Giuliani said. "You need people to help you and care for you and support you. And I'm very fortunate I had a lot of people who did that, but nobody did more to help me than Judith Nathan." In a court case, Giuliani argued that he planned to introduce Nathan to his children on Father's Day 2001 and that Hanover had prevented this visit. Giuliani and Hanover finally settled their divorce case in July 2002 after his mayoralty had ended, with Giuliani paying Hanover a $6.8million settlement and granting her custody of their children. Giuliani married Nathan on May 24, 2003, and gained a stepdaughter, Whitney. It was also Nathan's third marriage after two divorces.
By March 2007, The New York Times and the Daily News reported that Giuliani had become estranged from both his son Andrew and his daughter Caroline. In 2014, he said his relationship with his children was better than ever, and was spotted eating and playing golf with Andrew.
Nathan filed for divorce from Giuliani on April 4, 2018, after 15 years of marriage. According to an interview with New York magazine, "For a variety of reasons that I know as a spouse and a nurse... he has become a different man." The divorce was settled on December 10, 2019.
In October 2020, following myriad joint public appearances, Giuliani confirmed that he is in a relationship with Maria Ryan, a nurse practitioner and hospital administrator whom his ex-wife Nathan has alleged to have been his mistress for an indeterminate period during their marriage. As of 2018, Ryan was married to United States Marine Corps veteran Robert Ryan, with Giuliani characterizing the couple as platonic friends in response to contemporaneous press inquiries.
Prostate cancer
In April 1981, Giuliani's father died, at age 73, of prostate cancer, at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center. 19 years later, in April 2000, Giuliani, then aged 55, was diagnosed with prostate cancer following a prostate biopsy, after an elevated screening PSA. Giuliani chose a combination prostate cancer treatment consisting of four months of neoadjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy, then low dose-rate prostate brachytherapy with permanent implantation of ninety TheraSeed radioactive palladium-103 seeds in his prostate in September 2000, followed two months later by five weeks of fifteen-minute, five-days-a-week external beam radiotherapy at Mount Sinai Medical Center, with five months of adjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy.
COVID-19
On December 6, 2020, Trump announced that Giuliani had contracted COVID-19. Giuliani was admitted to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital the same day. He was discharged from the hospital on December 9.
It was unclear when he received the positive test. In the days leading up to the announcement, Giuliani had been to multiple indoor hearings without wearing a mask, and requested that others remove their masks. The Arizona Legislature closed for one week starting on December 7, 2020, as 15 current and future members had met with Giuliani. He had also met with Republican legislators in Michigan and Georgia, potentially exposing them.
Religious beliefs
Giuliani has declined to comment publicly on his religious practice and beliefs, although he identifies religion as an important part of his life. When asked if he is a practicing Catholic, Giuliani answered, "My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not-so-good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests."
Television appearances
Giuliani was reportedly revealed to be the first unmasking on the seventh season of The Masked Singer, which caused judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke to storm off the set.
Awards and honors
In 1998, Giuliani received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York".
House of Savoy: Knight Grand Cross (motu proprio) of the Order of Merit of Savoy (December 2001)
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2001
In 2002, the Episcopal Diocese of New York gave Giuliani the Fiorello LaGuardia Public Service Award for Valor and Leadership in the Time of Global Crisis.
Also in 2002, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan awarded Giuliani the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award.
In 2002, he received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually byJefferson Awards.
In 2003, Giuliani received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award
In 2004, construction began on the Rudolph W. Giuliani Trauma Center at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York.
In 2005, Giuliani received honorary degrees from Loyola College in Maryland and Middlebury College. In 2007, Giuliani received an honorary Doctorate in Public Administration from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. In 2021, Middlebury announced that it was revoking the degree given to Giuliani.
In 2006, Rudy and Judith Giuliani were honored by the American Heart Association at its annual Heart of the Hamptons benefit in Water Mill, New York.
In 2007, Giuliani was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), receiving the NIAF Special Achievement Award for Public Service.
In 2007, Giuliani was awarded the Margaret Thatcher Medal of Freedom by the Atlantic Bridge.
In the 2009 graduation ceremony for Drexel University's Earle Mack School of Law, Giuliani was the keynote speaker and recipient of an honorary degree. In 2021, Drexel announced that it was rescinding the degree.
Giuliani was the Robert C. Vance Distinguished Lecturer at Central Connecticut State University in 2013.
Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa, University of Rhode Island, 2003 (revoked January 2022)
Media references
In 1993, Giuliani made a cameo appearance as himself in the Seinfeld episode "The Non-Fat Yogurt", which is a fictionalized account of the 1993 mayoral election. Giuliani's scenes were filmed the morning after his real world election.
In 2003, Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story was released starring actor James Woods as Giuliani.
In 2018, Giuliani was portrayed multiple times on Saturday Night Live by Kate McKinnon. McKinnon continued portraying him in 2019.
In 2020, Giuliani made a cameo appearance on a Netflix true crime limited series' Fear City: New York vs The Mafia, talking about his role in leading the 1980s federal prosecution of the Five Families.
In 2020, Giuliani made an unwitting appearance in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. In the mockumentary film, Giuliani agrees to an interview with Borat's "daughter", Tutar (played by actress Maria Bakalova), who is disguised as a reporter. When invited to Tutar's hotel room, Giuliani proceeds to lie on her bed and reach inside his trousers; they are immediately interrupted by Borat, who says: "She 15. She too old for you." Giuliani later disregarded the accusation, calling it a "complete fabrication" and saying he was rather "tucking in [his] shirt after taking off the recording equipment". In 2021, Giuliani won two Razzie awards for his part in the film – for Worst Supporting Actor and, with his pants zipper for Worst Screen Combo.
See also
Disputes surrounding the 2020 United States presidential election results
Electoral history of Rudy Giuliani
Political positions of Rudy Giuliani
Public image of Rudy Giuliani
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Timeline of New York City, 1990s–2000s
References
Further reading
Barrett, Wayne, (2000). Rudy!: An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani. Basic Books; (Reprint by Diane Publishing Co.).
Brodeur, Christopher X. (2002). Perverted Little Creep: Mayor Giuliani vs Mayor Brodeur. ExtremeNY books, .
Dinkins, David N.; Knobler, Peter (2013). A Mayor's Life: Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic. PublicAffairs,
Gonzalez, Juan, (2002). Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse. New Press, .
Koch, Edward I. (1999). Giuliani: Nasty Man. Barricade Books. .
Mandery, Evan (1999). The Campaign: Rudy Giuliani, Ruth Messinger, Al Sharpton, and the Race to Be Mayor of New York City. Westview Press, .
Newfield, Jack, (2003). The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania. Thunder's Mouth Press, .
Paterson, David "Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity."Skyhorse Publishing. New York, New York, 2020.
Polner, Robert, (2005). America's Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani's New York. Soft Skull Press, .
Polner, Robert, (2007). America's Mayor, America's President? The Strange Career of Rudy Giuliani. [Preface by Jimmy Breslin] Soft Skull Press, .
External links
La Guardia and Wagner Archives/The Giuliani Collection
TPM infographic: Tracking Rudy Giuliani's Foreign Dealings
Suspension of Giuliani's New York State law license — Attorney Grievance Committee for the Supreme Court of the State of New York Appellate Division
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Living people
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Writers from Brooklyn | false | [
"Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742 (1970), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court refused to hold that large sentencing discounts and threats of the death penalty are sufficient evidence of coercion.\n\nBackground\n\nTrial \nRobert Brady was indicted in 1959 for kidnapping and failing to release the hostage without harm, which under 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a) imposed a maximum penalty of death if the jury recommended it. When he learned that his co-defendant had confessed to the crime and agreed to testify against him Brady changed his plea from not guilty to guilty. The trial judge twice questioned him on whether the plea was made voluntarily. \nThe Court: …Having read the presentence report and the statement you made to the probation office, I want to be certain that you know what you are doing and you did know that when you entered a plea of guilty the other day. Do you want to let that plea of guilty stand, or do you want to withdraw it and plead not guilty?\n\nDefendant Brady: I want to let that plea stand, sir\n\nThe Court: You understand that, in doing that, you are admitting and confessing the truth of the charge contained in the indictment and that you enter a plea of guilty voluntarily, without persuasion, coercion of any kind? Is that right?\n\nDefendant Brady: Yes, your Honor.\n\nThe Court: And you do do that?\n\nDefendant Brady: Yes, I do.\n\nThe Court: You plead guilty to the charge?\n\nDefendant Brady: Yes, I do.\n\nUpon his acceptance of his plea the trial judge imposed sentence of fifty years imprisonment, later reduced to thirty.\n\nAppeal \nIn 1967 Brady sought post-conviction relief arguing that 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a) was coercive in nature and impermissible under United States v. Jackson which was decided after his conviction. In United States v. Jackson, the court ruled that 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a) was unconstitutional because the death sentence could only be imposed by a jury. The court concluded that the statute made death the risk of a jury trial and that this was impermissible. Brady argued that every guilty plea entered under § 1201 was invalid when the fear of death is shown to have been a factor. The District Court for the District of New Mexico denied relief. The District Court concluded that Brady changed his plea to guilty after learning that his codefendant would plead guilty, not due to the threat of death under § 1201. The Appeals Court for the Tenth Circuit agreed with the District Court and denied relief.\n\nOpinion of the Court \nJustice White delivered the unanimous opinion of the court. He quotes from United States v. Jackson \"the fact that the Federal Kidnapping Act tends to discourage defendants from insisting upon their innocence and demanding a jury trial by jury hardly implies that every defendant who enters a guilty plea to a charge under the Act does so involuntarily.” By ruling that all guilty pleas entered under § 1201 “would rob the criminal process of much of its flexibility.\" The court ruled that Brady was not coerced by § 1201. He entered his guilty plea with full knowledge and willingness; it was not the court's fault that the defendant did not anticipate United States v. Jackson.\n\nSee also \n Federal Kidnapping Act\n United States v. Jackson\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \nCase summary at Quimbee\n\nUnited States plea bargaining case law\nUnited States Supreme Court cases\nUnited States Supreme Court cases of the Burger Court\n1970 in United States case law",
"In the United States, the trial penalty refers to the difference between the smaller sentence offered to a defendant in a plea bargain prior to a criminal trial versus the larger sentence the defendant could receive if they elect to go to trial. It sits at the center of a legal debate over whether trial penalties abridge defendants' Sixth Amendment right to trial.\n\nBackground\nIn a plea bargain, a criminal defendant waives their right to trial and agrees to plead guilty to a lesser charge than would have been brought against them at trial or agrees to plead guilty to the original charge in exchange for a sentence that is less than the maximum possible. Plea bargaining is pervasive in the United States, with most criminal defendants accepting a plea deal rather than going to trial. At the federal level, just 2% of defendants elect to go to trial. \n\nThe constitutionality of plea bargaining has been repeatedly affirmed by the United States Supreme Court (e.g. Brady v. United States), provided that the defendant enter into the plea deal voluntarily.\n\nDefinition\nThe trial penalty is the \"discrepancy between the sentence the prosecutor is willing to offer in exchange for a guilty plea and the sentence that would be imposed after a trial\". Many plea bargains require that the defendant waive certain constitutional rights, such as the right to challenge unlawfully procured evidence and the right to appeal; the loss of these rights is also sometimes considered part of the trial penalty.\n\nCriticism\n\nRight to trial\nCritics argue that the trial penalty has the effect of depriving defendants' of their Sixth Amendment right to \"a speedy and public trial\". A 2015 statistical analysis of federal cases by Andrew Chongesh Kim concluded that defendants who exercise their right to trial are penalized with sentences 64% longer than they would have received had they accepted a plea deal. Kim argues that this makes trial by jury \"less of a right and more of a trap for fools\". \n\nThe National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) has been a particularly harsh critic of the trial penalty, arguing that it is \"now so severe and pervasive that it has virtually eliminated the constitutional right to a trial\", which has had the consequence of replacing the system of trial by jury laid out in the United States Constitution with a system of plea bargains. Trial penalties, they point out, impose such harsh sanctions on choosing to go to trial—with prosecutors sometimes threatening multi-decade prison sentences if a plea deal of only a few years is not accepted—that trial penalties amount to coercing defendants to plead guilty. This coercion, they argue, renders plea bargains unconstitutional. \n\nThe lawyer Alan Dershowitz has also called the trial penalty unconstitutional. In the Wall Street Journal, he argued that trial penalties render most plea bargains unconstitutional because they amount to a punishment for exercising the right to trial, and any right is abridged \"when you're punished for exercising it\".\n\nPresumption of innocence\nThe National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) has argued that trial penalties strip defendants of their presumption of innocence, pointing out that the \"pressures defendants face in the plea bargaining process are so strong even innocent people can be convinced to plead guilty to crimes they did not commit\". The Association argues that this casts doubt \"on the assumption that defendants who plead guilty do so voluntarily\".\n\nReferences\n\nCriminal law\nEthically disputed judicial practices\nLegal terminology\nCivil liberties in the United States"
] |
[
"Rudy Giuliani",
"Appointees as defendants",
"How many appointees acted as defendants?",
"In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding,",
"Did he appoint anyone else?",
"In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury",
"how many defendants were there?",
"Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign.",
"What was he on trial for?",
"Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009, in a New York district court, to eight federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements,",
"What was Russell Harding on the stand for?",
"In 2005, Harding pleaded guilty to defrauding the Housing Development Corporation and to possession of child pornography.",
"Were there other defendants?",
"I don't know.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"After Giuliani left office, Kerik was subject to state and federal investigations resulting in his pleading guilty in 2006,",
"What did he plead guilty to?",
"to two unrelated ethics violations."
] | C_7a9b28f537444b1fa4b7ec7d83b31da1_1 | Was Giuliani ever tried? | 9 | Along with Richard Roberts, Russell Harding and Bernard Kerik, was Giuliani ever tried? | Rudy Giuliani | Several of Giuliani's appointees to head City agencies became defendants in criminal proceedings. In 2000, Giuliani appointed 34-year-old Russell Harding, the son of Liberal Party of New York leader and longtime Giuliani mentor Raymond Harding, to head the New York City Housing Development Corporation, although Harding had neither a college degree nor relevant experience. In 2005, Harding pleaded guilty to defrauding the Housing Development Corporation and to possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Russell Harding committed suicide in 2012. In a related matter, Richard Roberts, appointed by Giuliani as Housing Commissioner and as chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, pleaded guilty to perjury after lying to a grand jury about a car that Harding bought for him with City funds. Giuliani was a longtime backer of Bernard Kerik, who started out as a NYPD detective driving for Giuliani's campaign. Giuliani appointed him as the Commissioner of the Department of Correction and then as the Police Commissioner. Giuliani was also the godfather to Kerik's two youngest children. After Giuliani left office, Kerik was subject to state and federal investigations resulting in his pleading guilty in 2006, in a Bronx Supreme Court, to two unrelated ethics violations. Kerik was ordered to pay $221,000 in fines. Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009, in a New York district court, to eight federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements, and on February 18, 2010, he was sentenced to four years in federal prison. Giuliani was not implicated in any of the proceedings. CANNOTANSWER | Giuliani was not implicated in any of the proceedings. | Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and disbarred attorney who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 1983 and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989.
Giuliani led the 1980s federal prosecution of New York City mafia bosses as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. After a failed campaign for Mayor of New York City in the 1989 election, he succeeded in 1993, and was reelected in 1997, campaigning on a "tough on crime" platform. He led New York's controversial "civic cleanup" as its mayor from 1994 to 2001. Mayor Giuliani appointed an outsider, William Bratton, as New York City's new police commissioner. Reforming the police department's administration and policing practices, they applied the broken windows theory, which cites social disorder, like disrepair and vandalism, for attracting loitering addicts, panhandlers, and prostitutes, followed by serious and violent criminals. In particular, Giuliani focused on removing panhandlers and sex clubs from Times Square, promoting a "family values" vibe and a return to the area's earlier focus on business, theater, and the arts. As crime rates fell steeply, well ahead of the national average pace, Giuliani was widely credited, though later critics cite other contributing factors. In 2000, he ran against First Lady Hillary Clinton for a US Senate seat from New York, but left the race once diagnosed with prostate cancer. For his mayoral leadership after the September11 attacks in 2001, he was called "America's mayor". He was named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2001, and was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
In 2002, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners, and acquired, but later sold, an investment banking firm, Giuliani Capital Advisors. In 2005, he joined a law firm, renamed Bracewell & Giuliani. Vying for the Republican Party's 2008 presidential nomination, Giuliani was an early frontrunner, yet did poorly in the primary election, withdrew, and endorsed the party's subsequent nominee, John McCain. Declining to run for New York governor in 2010 and for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, Giuliani focused on the activities of his business firms. In addition, he has often been engaged for public speaking, political commentary, and Republican campaign support.
Giuliani joined President Donald Trump's personal legal team in April 2018. His activities as Trump's attorney have drawn renewed media scrutiny, including allegations that he engaged in corruption and profiteering. In late 2019, Giuliani was reportedly under federal investigation for violating lobbying laws, and possibly several other charges, as a central figure in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which resulted in Trump's first impeachment. Following the 2020 presidential election, he represented Trump in many lawsuits filed in attempts to overturn the election results, making false and debunked allegations about rigged voting machines, polling place fraud, and an international communist conspiracy. As a consequence, his license to practice law was suspended in New York State in June 2021 and in the District of Columbia in July 2021.
Early life
Giuliani was born in the East Flatbush section, then an Italian-American enclave, in New York City's borough of Brooklyn, the only child of working-class parents Helen (née D'Avanzo; 1909–2002) and Harold Angelo Giuliani (1908–1981), both children of Italian immigrants. Giuliani is of Tuscan descent on his father's side, as his paternal grandparents (Rodolfo and Evangelina Giuliani) were born in Montecatini Terme, Tuscany, Italy. He was raised a Roman Catholic. Harold Giuliani, a plumber and a bartender, had trouble holding a job, was convicted of felony assault and robbery, and served prison time in Sing Sing. Once released, he worked as an enforcer for his brother-in-law Leo D'Avanzo, who operated an organized crime-affiliated loan sharking and gambling ring at a restaurant in Brooklyn. The couple lived in East Flatbush until Harold died of prostate cancer in 1981, whereupon Helen moved to Manhattan's Upper East Side.
When Giuliani was seven years old in 1951, his family moved from Brooklyn to Garden City South, where he attended the local Catholic school, St. Anne's. Later, he commuted back to Brooklyn to attend Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, graduating in 1961.
Giuliani attended Manhattan College in Riverdale, Bronx, where he majored in political science with a minor in philosophy and considered becoming a priest.
Giuliani was elected president of his class in his sophomore year, but was not re-elected in his junior year. He joined the Phi Rho Pi college forensic fraternity and honor society. He graduated in 1965. Giuliani decided to forgo the priesthood and instead attended the New York University School of Law in Manhattan, where he made the NYU Law Review and graduated cum laude with a Juris Doctor degree in 1968.
Giuliani started his political life as a Democrat. He volunteered for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968. He also worked as a Democratic Party committeeman on Long Island in the mid-1960s and voted for George McGovern for president in 1972.
Legal career
Upon graduation from law school, Giuliani clerked for Judge Lloyd Francis MacMahon, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.
Giuliani did not serve in the military during the Vietnam War. His conscription was deferred while he was enrolled at Manhattan College and NYU Law. Upon graduation from the latter in 1968, he was classified 1-A (available for military service), but in 1969 he was reclassified 2-A (essential civilian) as Judge MacMahon's law clerk. In 1970, Giuliani was reclassified 1-A but received a high 308 draft lottery number and was not called up for service.
Giuliani switched his party registration from Democratic to Independent in 1975. This occurred during a period of time in which he was recruited for a position in Washington, D.C. with the Ford administration: Giuliani served as the Associate Deputy Attorney General and chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Harold "Ace" Tyler.
His first high-profile prosecution was of Democratic U.S. Representative Bertram L. Podell (NY-13), who was convicted of corruption. Podell pleaded guilty to conspiracy and conflict of interest for accepting more than $41,000 in campaign contributions and legal fees from a Florida airline to obtain federal rights for a Bahama route. Podell, who maintained a legal practice while serving in Congress, said the payments were legitimate legal fees. The Washington Post later reported: "The trial catapulted future New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani to front-page status when, as assistant U.S. attorney, he relentlessly cross-examined an initially calm Rep. Podell. The congressman reportedly grew more flustered and eventually decided to plead guilty."
From 1977 to 1981, during the Carter administration, Giuliani practiced law at the Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler law firm, as chief of staff to his former boss, Ace Tyler. In later years, Tyler became "disillusioned" by what Tyler described as Giuliani's time as US Attorney, criticizing several of his prosecutions as "overkill".
On December 8, 1980, one month after the election of Ronald Reagan brought Republicans back to power in Washington, he switched his party affiliation from Independent to Republican. Giuliani later said the switches were because he found Democratic policies "naïve", and that "by the time I moved to Washington, the Republicans had come to make more sense to me." Others suggested that the switches were made in order to get positions in the Justice Department. Giuliani's mother maintained in 1988 that he "only became a Republican after he began to get all these jobs from them. He's definitely not a conservative Republican. He thinks he is, but he isn't. He still feels very sorry for the poor."
In 1981, Giuliani was named Associate Attorney General in the Reagan administration, the third-highest position in the Department of Justice. As Associate Attorney General, Giuliani supervised the U.S. Attorney Offices' federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the United States Marshals Service. In a well-publicized 1982 case, Giuliani testified in defense of the federal government's "detention posture" regarding the internment of more than 2,000 Haitian asylum seekers who had entered the country illegally. The U.S. government disputed the assertion that most of the detainees had fled their country due to political persecution, alleging instead that they were "economic migrants". In defense of the government's position, Giuliani testified that "political repression, at least in general, does not exist" under President of Haiti Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime.
In 1983, Giuliani was appointed to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which was technically a demotion but was sought by Giuliani because of his desire to personally litigate cases and because the SDNY is considered the highest profile United States Attorney's Office in the country, and as such, is often used by those who have held the position as a springboard for running for public office. It was in this position that he first gained national prominence by prosecuting numerous high-profile cases, resulting in the convictions of Wall Street figures Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. He also focused on prosecuting drug dealers, organized crime, and corruption in government. He amassed a record of 4,152 convictions and 25 reversals. As a federal prosecutor, Giuliani was credited with bringing the perp walk, parading of suspects in front of the previously alerted media, into common use as a prosecutorial tool. After Giuliani "patented the perp walk", the tool was used by increasing numbers of prosecutors nationwide.
Giuliani's critics claimed that he arranged for people to be arrested, then dropped charges for lack of evidence on high-profile cases rather than going to trial. In a few cases, his arrests of alleged white-collar criminals at their workplaces with charges later dropped or lessened, sparked controversy, and damaged the reputations of the alleged "perps". He claimed veteran stock trader Richard Wigton, of Kidder, Peabody & Co., was guilty of insider trading; in February 1987, he had officers handcuff Wigton and march him through the company's trading floor, with Wigton in tears. Giuliani had his agents arrest Tim Tabor, a young arbitrageur and former colleague of Wigton, so late that he had to stay overnight in jail before posting bond.
Within three months, charges were dropped against both Wigton and Tabor; Giuliani said, "We're not going to go to trial. We're just the tip of the iceberg," but no further charges were forthcoming and the investigation did not end until Giuliani's successor was in place. Giuliani's high-profile raid of the Princeton/Newport firm ended with the defendants having their cases overturned on appeal on the grounds that what they had been convicted of were not crimes.
Mafia Commission trial
In the Mafia Commission Trial, which ran from February 25, 1985, through November 19, 1986, Giuliani indicted eleven organized crime figures, including the heads of New York City's so-called "Five Families", under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) on charges including extortion, labor racketeering, and murder for hire. Time magazine called this "Case of Cases" possibly "the most significant assault on the infrastructure of organized crime since the high command of the Chicago Mafia was swept away in 1943", and quoted Giuliani's stated intention: "Our approach is to wipe out the five families." Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano evaded conviction when he and his underboss, Thomas Bilotti, were murdered on the streets of Midtown Manhattan on December 16, 1985. However, three heads of the Five Families were sentenced to 100 years in prison on January 13, 1987. Genovese and Colombo leaders, Tony Salerno and Carmine Persico received additional sentences in separate trials, with 70-year and 39-year sentences to run consecutively. He was assisted by three Assistant United States Attorneys: Michael Chertoff, the eventual second United States Secretary of Homeland Security and co-author of the Patriot Act; John Savarese, now a partner at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz; and Gil Childers, a later deputy chief of the criminal division for the Southern District of New York and now managing director in the legal department at Goldman Sachs.
According to an FBI memo revealed in 2007, leaders of the Five Families voted in late 1986 on whether to issue a contract for Giuliani's death. Heads of the Lucchese, Bonanno, and Genovese families rejected the idea, though Colombo and Gambino leaders, Carmine Persico and John Gotti, encouraged assassination. In 2014, it was revealed by a former Sicilian Mafia member and informant, Rosario Naimo, that Salvatore Riina, a notorious Sicilian Mafia leader, had ordered a murder contract on Giuliani during the mid-1980s. Riina allegedly was suspicious of Giuliani's efforts prosecuting the American Mafia and was worried that he might have spoken with Italian anti-mafia prosecutors and politicians, including Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who were both murdered in 1992 in separate car bombings. According to Giuliani, the Sicilian Mafia offered $800,000 for his death during his first year as mayor of New York in 1994.
Boesky, Milken trials
Ivan Boesky, a Wall Street arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of about $200million by betting on corporate takeovers, was originally investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for making investments based on tips received from corporate insiders, leading the way for the US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York to investigate as well. These stock and options acquisitions were sometimes brazen, with massive purchases occurring only a few days before a corporation announced a takeover. Although insider trading of this kind was illegal, laws prohibiting it were rarely enforced until Boesky was prosecuted. Boesky cooperated with the SEC and informed on several others, including junk bond trader Michael Milken. Per agreement with Giuliani, Boesky received a -year prison sentence along with a $100million fine. In 1989, Giuliani charged Milken under the RICO Act with 98 counts of racketeering and fraud. In a highly publicized case, Milken was indicted by a grand jury on these charges.
Mayoral campaigns
Giuliani was U.S. Attorney until January 1989, resigning as the Reagan administration ended. He garnered criticism until he left office for his handling of cases, and was accused of prosecuting cases to further his political ambitions. He joined the law firm White & Case in New York City as a partner. He remained with White & Case until May 1990, when he joined the law firm Anderson Kill Olick & Oshinsky, also in New York City.
1989
Giuliani first ran for New York City mayor in 1989, when he attempted to unseat three-term incumbent Ed Koch. He won the September 1989 Republican Party primary election against business magnate Ronald Lauder, in a campaign marked by claims that Giuliani was not a true Republican after an acrimonious debate between the two men. In the Democratic primary, Koch was upset by Manhattan Borough president David Dinkins.
In the general election, Giuliani ran as the fusion candidate of both the Republican and the Liberal parties. The Conservative Party, which had often co-lined the Republican party candidate, withheld support from Giuliani and ran Lauder instead. Conservative Party leaders were unhappy with Giuliani on ideological grounds. They cited the Liberal Party's endorsement statement that Giuliani "agreed with the Liberal Party's views on affirmative action, gay rights, gun control, school prayer and tuition tax credits".
During two televised debates, Giuliani framed himself as an agent of change, saying, "I'm the reformer," that "If we keep going merrily along, this city's going down," and that electing Dinkins would represent "more of the same, more of the rotten politics that have been dragging us down". Giuliani pointed out that Dinkins had not filed a tax return for many years and of several other ethical missteps, in particular a stock transfer to his son. Dinkins filed several years of returns and said the tax matter had been fully paid off. He denied other wrongdoing, saying "what we need is a mayor, not a prosecutor," and that Giuliani refused to say "the R-wordhe doesn't like to admit he's a Republican". Dinkins won the endorsements of three of the four daily New York newspapers, while Giuliani won approval from the New York Post.
In the end, Giuliani lost to Dinkins by a margin of 47,080 votes out of 1,899,845 votes cast, in the closest election in New York City's history. The closeness of the race was particularly noteworthy considering the small percentage of New York City residents who are registered Republicans and resulted in Giuliani being the presumptive nominee for a rematch with Dinkins at the next election.
1993
Four years after his defeat to Dinkins, Giuliani again ran for mayor. Once again, Giuliani also ran on the Liberal Party line but not the Conservative Party line, which ran activist George Marlin.
Although crime had begun to fall during the Dinkins administration, Giuliani's campaign capitalized on the perception that crime was uncontrolled in the city following events such as the Crown Heights riot and the Family Red Apple boycott. The year prior to the election, Giuliani was a key speaker at a Patrolmen's Benevolent Association rally opposing Dinkins, in which Giuliani blamed the police department's low morale on Dinkins' leadership. The rally quickly devolved into a riot, with nearly 4,000 off-duty police officers storming the City Hall and blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.
In his pitch to lower crime rates in the city, Giuliani promised to focus police resources toward shutting down petty crimes and nuisances as a way of restoring the quality of life:
Dinkins and Giuliani never debated during the campaign, because they were never able to agree on how to approach a debate. Dinkins was endorsed by The New York Times and Newsday, while Giuliani was endorsed by the New York Post and, in a key switch from 1989, the Daily News. Giuliani went to visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, seeking his blessing and endorsement.
On election day, Giuliani's campaign hired off-duty cops, firefighters, and corrections officers to monitor polling places in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and The Bronx for cases of voter fraud. Despite objections from the Dinkins campaign, who claimed that the effort would intimidate Democratic voters, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly assigned an additional 52 police captains and 3,500 officers to monitor the city's polling places.
Giuliani won by a margin of 53,367 votes. He became the first Republican elected Mayor of New York City since John Lindsay in 1965. Similar to the election four years prior, Giuliani performed particularly well in the white ethnic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Giuliani saw especially high returns in the borough of Staten Island, as a referendum to consider allowing the borough to secede from New York City was on the ballot.
1997
Giuliani's opponent in 1997 was Democratic Manhattan Borough president Ruth Messinger, who had beaten Al Sharpton in the September 9, 1997 Democratic primary. In the general election, Giuliani once again had the Liberal Party and not the Conservative Party listing. Giuliani ran an aggressive campaign, parlaying his image as a tough leader who had cleaned up the city. Giuliani's popularity was at its highest point to date, with a late October 1997 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showing him as having a 68 percent approval rating; 70 percent of New Yorkers were satisfied with life in the city and 64 percent said things were better in the city compared to four years previously.
Throughout the campaign he was well ahead in the polls and had a strong fund-raising advantage over Messinger. On her part, Messinger lost the support of several usually Democratic constituencies, including gay organizations and large labor unions. The local daily newspapersThe New York Times, Daily News, New York Post and Newsdayall endorsed Giuliani over Messinger.
In the end, Giuliani won 58% of the vote to Messinger's 41%, and became the first registered Republican to win a second term as mayor while on the Republican line since Fiorello H. La Guardia in 1941. Voter turnout was the lowest in twelve years, with 38% of registered voters casting ballots. The margin of victory included gains in his share of the African American vote (20% compared to 1993's 5%) and the Hispanic vote (43% from 37%) while maintaining his base of white ethnic, Catholic and Jewish voters from 1993.
Mayoralty
Giuliani served as mayor of New York City from 1994 through 2001.
Law enforcement
In Giuliani's first term as mayor, the New York City Police Departmentat the instigation of Commissioner Bill Brattonadopted an aggressive enforcement/deterrent strategy based on James Q. Wilson's "Broken Windows" approach. This involved crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as graffiti, turnstile jumping, cannabis possession, and aggressive panhandling by "squeegee men", on the theory that this would send a message that order would be maintained. The legal underpinning for removing the "squeegee men" from the streets was developed under Giuliani's predecessor, Mayor David Dinkins. Bratton, with Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple, also created and instituted CompStat, a computer-driven comparative statistical approach to mapping crime geographically and in terms of emerging criminal patterns, as well as charting officer performance by quantifying criminal apprehensions. Critics of the system assert that it creates an environment in which police officials are encouraged to underreport or otherwise manipulate crime data. An extensive study found a high correlation between crime rates reported by the police through CompStat and rates of crime available from other sources, suggesting there had been no manipulation. The CompStat initiative won the 1996 Innovations in Government Award from the Kennedy School of Government.
During Giuliani's administration, crime rates dropped in New York City. The extent to which Giuliani deserves the credit is disputed. Crime rates in New York City had started to drop in 1991 under previous mayor David Dinkins, three years before Giuliani took office. The rates of most crimes, including all categories of violent crime, made consecutive declines during the last 36 months of Dinkins's four-year term, ending a 30-year upward spiral. A small nationwide drop in crime preceded Giuliani's election, and some critics say he may have been the beneficiary of a trend already in progress. Additional contributing factors to the overall decline in New York City crime during the 1990s were the addition of 7,000 officers to the NYPD, lobbied for and hired by the Dinkins administration, and an overall improvement in the national economy. Changing demographics were a key factor contributing to crime rate reductions, which were similar across the country during this time. Because the crime index is based on that of the FBI, which is self-reported by police departments, some have alleged that crimes were shifted into categories the FBI does not collect.
Some studies conclude that the decline in New York City's crime rate in the 1990s and 2000s exceeds all national figures and therefore should be linked with a local dynamic that was not present as such anywhere else in the country: what University of California, Berkeley sociologist Frank Zimring calls "the most focused form of policing in history". In his book The Great American Crime Decline, Zimring argues that "up to half of New York's crime drop in the 1990s, and virtually 100 percent of its continuing crime decline since 2000, has resulted from policing."
Bratton was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1996. Giuliani reportedly forced Bratton out after two years, in what was seen as a battle of two large egos in which Giuliani was not tolerant of Bratton's celebrity. Bratton went on to become chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Giuliani's term also saw allegations of civil rights abuses and other police misconduct under other commissioners after Bratton's departure. There were police shootings of unarmed suspects, and the scandals surrounding the torture of Abner Louima and the killings of Amadou Diallo, Gidone Busch and Patrick Dorismond. Giuliani supported the New York City Police Department, for example by releasing what he called Dorismond's "extensive criminal record" to the public, including a sealed juvenile file.
City services
The Giuliani administration advocated the privatization of the city's public schools, which he called "dysfunctional", and advocated the reduction of state funding for them. He advocated for a voucher-based system to promote private schooling. Giuliani supported protection for illegal immigrants. He continued a policy of preventing city employees from contacting the Immigration and Naturalization Service about immigration violations, on the grounds that illegal aliens should be able to take actions such as sending their children to school or reporting crimes to the police without fear of deportation.
During his mayoralty, gay and lesbian New Yorkers received domestic partnership rights. Giuliani induced the city's Democratic-controlled New York City Council, which had avoided the issue for years, to pass legislation providing broad protection for same-sex partners. In 1998, he codified local law by granting all city employees equal benefits for their domestic partners.
2000 U.S. Senate campaign
Due to term limits, Giuliani was ineligible to run in 2001 for a third term as mayor. In November 1998, four-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement and Giuliani immediately indicated an interest in running in the 2000 election for the now-open seat. Due to his high profile and visibility Giuliani was supported by the state Republican Party. Giuliani's entrance led Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel and others to recruit then-First Lady Hillary Clinton to run for Moynihan's seat, hoping she might combat his star power.
An early January 1999 poll showed Giuliani trailing Clinton by ten points. In April 1999, Giuliani formed an exploratory committee in connection with the Senate run. By January 2000, polling for the race dramatically reversed, with Giuliani now pulling nine points ahead of Clinton, in part because his campaign was able to take advantage of several campaign stumbles by Clinton. Nevertheless, the Giuliani campaign was showing some structural weaknesses; so closely identified with New York City, he had somewhat limited appeal to normally Republican voters in Upstate New York. The New York Police Department's fatal shooting of Patrick Dorismond in March 2000 inflamed Giuliani's already strained relations with the city's minority communities, and Clinton seized on it as a major campaign issue. By April 2000, reports showed Clinton gaining upstate and generally outworking Giuliani, who said his duties as mayor prevented him from campaigning more. Clinton was now eight to ten points ahead of Giuliani in the polls.
Then followed four tumultuous weeks in which Giuliani learned he had prostate cancer and needed treatment; his extramarital relationship with Judith Nathan became public and the subject of a media frenzy; and he announced a separation from his wife Donna Hanover. After much indecision, on May 19, Giuliani announced his withdrawal from the Senate race.
September 11 terrorist attacks
Response
Giuliani received nationwide attention in the aftermath of the September11 attacks. He made frequent appearances on radio and television on September11 and afterwardsfor example, to indicate that tunnels would be closed as a precautionary measure, and that there was no reason to believe the dispersion of chemical or biological weaponry into the air was a factor in the attack. In his public statements, Giuliani said:
The 9/11 attacks occurred on the scheduled date of the mayoral primary to select the Democratic and Republican candidates to succeed Giuliani. The primary was immediately delayed two weeks to September 25. During this period, Giuliani sought an unprecedented three-month emergency extension of his term from January1 to April1 under the New York State Constitution (Article3 Section 25). He threatened to challenge the law imposing term limits on elected city officials and run for another full four-year term, if the primary candidates did not consent to the extension of his mayoralty. In the end leaders in the State Assembly and Senate indicated that they did not believe the extension was necessary. The election proceeded as scheduled, and the winning candidate, the Giuliani-endorsed Republican convert Michael Bloomberg, took office on January 1, 2002, per normal custom.
Giuliani claimed to have been at the Ground Zero site "as often, if not more, than most workers... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them." Some 9/11 workers have objected to those claims. While his appointment logs were unavailable for the six days immediately following the attacks, Giuliani logged 29 hours at the site over three months beginning September 17. This contrasted with recovery workers at the site who spent this much time at the site in two to three days.
When Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal suggested the attacks were an indication that the United States "should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause," Giuliani asserted, "There is no moral equivalent for this act. There is no justification for it... And one of the reasons I think this happened is because people were engaged in moral equivalency in not understanding the difference between liberal democracies like the United States, like Israel, and terrorist states and those who condone terrorism. So I think not only are those statements wrong, they're part of the problem." Giuliani subsequently rejected the prince's $10million donation to disaster relief in the aftermath of the attack.
Emergency command center location and communications problems
Giuliani has been widely criticized for his decision to locate the Office of Emergency Management headquarters on the 23rd floor inside the 7 World Trade Center building. Those opposing the decision perceived the office as a target for a terrorist attack in light of the previous terrorist attack against the World Trade Center in 1993. The office was unable to coordinate efforts between police and firefighters properly while evacuating its headquarters. Large tanks of diesel fuel were placed in 7World Trade to power the command center. In May 1997, Giuliani put responsibility for selecting the location on Jerome M. Hauer, who had served under Giuliani from 1996 to 2000 before being appointed by him as New York City's first Director of Emergency Management. Hauer has taken exception to that account in interviews and provided Fox News and New York Magazine with a memo demonstrating that he recommended a location in Brooklyn but was overruled by Giuliani. Television journalist Chris Wallace interviewed Giuliani on May 13, 2007, about his 1997 decision to locate the command center at the World Trade Center. Giuliani laughed during Wallace's questions and said that Hauer recommended the World Trade Center site and claimed that Hauer said the WTC site was the best location. Wallace presented Giuliani a photocopy of Hauer's directive letter. The letter urged Giuliani to locate the command center in Brooklyn, instead of lower Manhattan. The February 1996 memo read, "The [Brooklyn] building is secure and not as visible a target as buildings in Lower Manhattan."
In January 2008, an eight-page memo was revealed which detailed the New York City Police Department's opposition in 1998 to location of the city's emergency command center at the Trade Center site. The Giuliani administration overrode these concerns.
The 9/11 Commission Report noted that lack of preparedness could have led to the deaths of first responders at the scene of the attacks. The Commission noted that the radios in use by the fire department were the same radios which had been criticized for their ineffectiveness following the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. Family members of 9/11 victims have said these radios were a complaint of emergency services responders for years. The radios were not working when Fire Department chiefs ordered the 343 firefighters inside the towers to evacuate, and they remained in the towers as the towers collapsed. However, when Giuliani testified before the 9/11 Commission he said the firefighters ignored the evacuation order out of an effort to save lives. Giuliani testified to the commission, where some family members of responders who had died in the attacks appeared to protest his statements. A 1994 mayoral office study of the radios indicated that they were faulty. Replacement radios were purchased in a $33million no-bid contract with Motorola, and implemented in early 2001. However, the radios were recalled in March 2001 after a probationary firefighter's calls for help at a house fire could not be picked up by others at the scene, leaving firemen with the old analog radios from 1993. A book later published by Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, argued that the commission had not pursued a tough enough line of questioning with Giuliani.
An October 2001 study by the National Institute of Environmental Safety and Health said cleanup workers lacked adequate protective gear.
Public reaction
Giuliani gained international attention in the wake of the attacks and was widely hailed for his leadership role during the crisis. Polls taken just six weeks after the attack showed a 79 percent approval rating among New York City voters. This was a dramatic increase over the 36 percent rating he had received a year earlier, which was an average at the end of a two-term mayorship. Oprah Winfrey called him "America's Mayor" at a 9/11 memorial service held at Yankee Stadium on September 23, 2001. Other voices denied it was the mayor who had pulled the city together. "You didn't bring us together, our pain brought us together and our decency brought us together. We would have come together if Bozo was the mayor," said civil rights activist Al Sharpton, in a statement largely supported by Fernando Ferrer, one of three main candidates for the mayoralty at the end of 2001. "He was a power-hungry person," Sharpton also said.
Giuliani was praised by some for his close involvement with the rescue and recovery efforts, but others argue that "Giuliani has exaggerated the role he played after the terrorist attacks, casting himself as a hero for political gain." Giuliani has collected $11.4million from speaking fees in a single year (with increased demand after the attacks). Before September11, Giuliani's assets were estimated to be somewhat less than $2million, but his net worth could now be as high as 30 times that amount. He has made most of his money since leaving office.
Time Person of the Year
On December 24, 2001, Time magazine named Giuliani its Person of the Year for 2001. Time observed that, before 9/11, Giuliani's public image had been that of a rigid, self-righteous, ambitious politician. After 9/11, and perhaps owing also to his bout with prostate cancer, his public image became that of a man who could be counted on to unite a city in the midst of its greatest crisis. Historian Vincent J. Cannato concluded in September 2006:
Aftermath
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was given an honorary knighthood (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani initially downplayed the health effects arising from the September 11 attacks in the Financial District and lower Manhattan areas in the vicinity of the World Trade Center site. He moved quickly to reopen Wall Street, and it was reopened on September 17. In the first month after the attacks, he said "The air quality is safe and acceptable."
Giuliani took control away from agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, leaving the "largely unknown" city Department of Design and Construction in charge of recovery and cleanup. Documents indicate that the Giuliani administration never enforced federal requirements requiring the wearing of respirators. Concurrently, the administration threatened companies with dismissal if cleanup work slowed. In June 2007, Christie Todd Whitman, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), reportedly said the EPA had pushed for workers at the WTC site to wear respirators but she had been blocked by Giuliani. She said she believed the subsequent lung disease and deaths suffered by WTC responders were a result of these actions. However, former deputy mayor Joe Lhota, then with the Giuliani campaign, replied, "All workers at Ground Zero were instructed repeatedly to wear their respirators."
Giuliani asked the city's Congressional delegation to limit the city's liability for Ground Zero illnesses to a total of $350million. Two years after Giuliani finished his term, FEMA appropriated $1billion to a special insurance fund, called the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company, to protect the city against 9/11 lawsuits.
In February 2007, the International Association of Fire Fighters issued a letter asserting that Giuliani rushed to conclude the recovery effort once gold and silver had been recovered from World Trade Center vaults and thereby prevented the remains of many victims from being recovered: "Mayor Giuliani's actions meant that fire fighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills Landfill," it said, adding: "Hundreds remained entombed in Ground Zero when Giuliani gave up on them." Lawyers for the International Association of Fire Fighters seek to interview Giuliani under oath as part of a federal legal action alleging that New York City negligently dumped body parts and other human remains in the Fresh Kills Landfill.
Post-mayoralty
Politics
Before 2008 election
Since leaving office as mayor, Giuliani has remained politically active by campaigning for Republican candidates for political offices at all levels. When George Pataki became Governor in 1995, this represented the first time the positions of both Mayor and Governor were held simultaneously by Republicans since John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. Giuliani and Pataki were instrumental in bringing the 2004 Republican National Convention to New York City. He was a speaker at the convention, and endorsed President George W. Bush for re-election by recalling that immediately after the World Trade Center towers fell,
Similarly, in June 2006, Giuliani started a website called Solutions America to help elect Republican candidates across the nation.
After campaigning on Bush's behalf in the U.S. presidential election of 2004, he was reportedly the top choice for Secretary of Homeland Security after Tom Ridge's resignation. When suggestions were made that Giuliani's confirmation hearings would be marred by details of his past affairs and scandals, he turned down the offer and instead recommended his friend and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. After the formal announcement of Kerik's nomination, information about Kerik's pastmost notably, that he had ties to organized crime, had failed to properly report gifts he had received, had been sued for sexual harassment and had employed an undocumented alien as a domestic servantbecame known, and Kerik withdrew his nomination.
On March 15, 2006, Congress formed the Iraq Study Group (ISG). This bipartisan ten-person panel, of which Giuliani was one of the members, was charged with assessing the Iraq War and making recommendations. They would eventually unanimously conclude that contrary to Bush administration assertions, "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" and called for "changes in the primary mission" that would allow "the United States to begin to move its forces out of Iraq".
On May 24, 2006, after missing all the group's meetings, including a briefing from General David Petraeus, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, Giuliani resigned from the panel, citing "previous time commitments". Giuliani's fundraising schedule had kept him from participating in the panel, a schedule which raised $11.4million in speaking fees over fourteen months, and that Giuliani had been forced to resign after being given "an ultimatum to either show up for meetings or leave the group" by group leader James Baker. Giuliani subsequently said he had started thinking about running for president, and being on the panel might give it a political spin.
Giuliani was described by Newsweek in January 2007 as "one of the most consistent cheerleaders for the president's handling of the war in Iraq" and as of June 2007, he remained one of the few candidates for president to unequivocally support both the basis for the invasion and the execution of the war.
Giuliani spoke in support of the removal of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK, also PMOI, MKO) from the United States State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The group was on the State Department list from 1997 until September 2012. They were placed on the list for killing six Americans in Iran during the 1970s and attempting to attack the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992. Giuliani, along with other former government officials and politicians Ed Rendell, R. James Woolsey, Porter Goss, Louis Freeh, Michael Mukasey, James L. Jones, Tom Ridge, and Howard Dean, were criticized for their involvement with the group. Some were subpoenaed during an inquiry about who was paying the prominent individuals' speaking fees. Giuliani and others wrote an article for the conservative publication National Review stating their position that the group should not be classified as a terrorist organization. They supported their position by pointing out that the United Kingdom and the European Union had already removed the group from their terrorism lists. They further assert that only the United States and Iran still listed it as a terrorist group. However, Canada did not delist the group until December 2012.
2008 presidential campaign
In November 2006, Giuliani announced the formation of an exploratory committee toward a run for the presidency in 2008. In February 2007, he filed a "statement of candidacy" and confirmed on the television program Larry King Live that he was indeed running.
Early polls showed Giuliani with one of the highest levels of name recognition ever recorded along with high levels of support among the Republican candidates. Throughout most of 2007, he was the leader in most nationwide opinion polling among Republicans. Senator John McCain, who ranked a close second behind the New York Mayor, had faded, and most polls showed Giuliani to have more support than any of the other declared Republican candidates, with only former Senator Fred Thompson and former Governor Mitt Romney showing greater support in some per-state Republican polls. On November 7, 2007, Giuliani's campaign received an endorsement from evangelist, Christian Broadcasting Network founder, and past presidential candidate Pat Robertson. This was viewed by political observers as a possibly key development in the race, as it gave credence that evangelicals and other social conservatives could support Giuliani despite some of his positions on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.
Giuliani's campaign hit a difficult stretch during the last two months of 2007, when Bernard Kerik, whom Giuliani had recommended for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security, was indicted on 16 counts of tax fraud and other federal charges. The media reported that when Giuliani was the mayor of New York, he billed several tens of thousands of dollars of mayoral security expenses to obscure city agencies. Those expenses were incurred while he visited Judith Nathan, with whom he was having an extramarital affair (later analysis showed the billing to likely be unrelated to hiding Nathan). Several stories were published in the press regarding clients of Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani who were in opposition to goals of American foreign policy. Giuliani's national poll numbers began steadily slipping and his unusual strategy of focusing more on later, multi-primary big states rather than the smaller, first-voting states was seen at risk.
Despite his strategy, Giuliani competed to a substantial extent in the January 8, 2008, New Hampshire primary but finished a distant fourth with 9percent of the vote. Similar poor results continued in other early contests, when Giuliani's staff went without pay in order to focus all efforts on the crucial late January Florida Republican primary. The shift of the electorate's focus from national security to the state of the economy also hurt Giuliani, as did the resurgence of McCain's similarly themed campaign. On January 29, 2008, Giuliani finished a distant third in the Florida result with 15percent of the vote, trailing McCain and Romney. Facing declining polls and lost leads in the upcoming large Super Tuesday states, including that of his home New York, Giuliani withdrew from the race on January 30, endorsing McCain.
Giuliani's campaign ended up $3.6million in arrears, and in June 2008 Giuliani sought to retire the debt by proposing to appear at Republican fundraisers during the 2008 general election, and have part of the proceeds go towards his campaign. During the 2008 Republican National Convention, Giuliani gave a prime-time speech that praised McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, while criticizing Democratic nominee Barack Obama. He cited Palin's executive experience as a mayor and governor and belittled Obama's lack of same, and his remarks were met with wild applause from the delegates. Giuliani continued to be one of McCain's most active surrogates during the remainder of McCain's eventually unsuccessful campaign.
After 2008 election
Following the end of his presidential campaign, Giuliani's "high appearance fees dropped like a stone". He returned to work at both Giuliani Partners and Bracewell & Giuliani. His consultancy work included advising Keiko Fujimori with her presidential campaign during the 2011 Peruvian general election. Giuliani also explored hosting a syndicated radio show, and was reported to be in talks with Westwood One about replacing Bill O'Reilly before that position went to Fred Thompson (another unsuccessful 2008 GOP presidential primary candidate). During the March 2009 AIG bonus payments controversy, Giuliani called for U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to step down and said the Obama administration lacked executive competence in dealing with the ongoing financial crisis.
Giuliani said his political career was not necessarily over, and did not rule out a 2010 New York gubernatorial or 2012 presidential bid. A November 2008 Siena College poll indicated that although Governor David Patersonpromoted to the office via the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal a year beforewas popular among New Yorkers, he would have just a slight lead over Giuliani in a hypothetical matchup. By February 2009, after the prolonged Senate appointment process, a Siena College poll indicated that Paterson was losing popularity among New Yorkers, and showed Giuliani with a fifteen-point lead in the hypothetical contest. In January 2009, Giuliani said he would not decide on a gubernatorial run for another six to eight months, adding that he thought it would not be fair to the governor to start campaigning early while the governor tries to focus on his job. Giuliani worked to retire his presidential campaign debt, but by the end of March 2009 it was still $2.4million in arrears, the largest such remaining amount for any of the 2008 contenders. In April 2009, Giuliani strongly opposed Paterson's announced push for same-sex marriage in New York and said it would likely cause a backlash that could put Republicans in statewide office in 2010. By late August 2009, there were still conflicting reports about whether Giuliani was likely to run.
On December 23, 2009, Giuliani announced that he would not seek any office in 2010, saying "The main reason has to do with my two enterprises: Bracewell & Giuliani and Giuliani Partners. I'm very busy in both." The decisions signaled a possible end to Giuliani's political career. During the 2010 midterm elections, Giuliani endorsed and campaigned for Bob Ehrlich and Marco Rubio.
On October 11, 2011, Giuliani announced that he was not running for president. According to Kevin Law, the Director of the Long Island Association, Giuliani believed that "As a moderate, he thought it was a pretty significant challenge. He said it's tough to be a moderate and succeed in GOP primaries," Giuliani said "If it's too late for (New Jersey Governor) Chris Christie, it's too late for me."
At a Republican fund-raising event in February 2015, Giuliani said, "I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president Obama loves America," and "He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country." In response to criticism of the remarks, Giuliani said, "Some people thought it was racistI thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother... This isn't racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism." White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said he agreed with Giuliani "that it was a horrible thing to say", but he would leave it up to the people who heard Giuliani directly to assess whether the remarks were appropriate for the event. Although he received some support for his controversial comments, Giuliani said he also received several death threats within 48 hours.
Relationship with Donald Trump
Presidential campaign supporter
Giuliani supported Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He gave a prime time speech during the first night of the 2016 Republican National Convention. Earlier in the day, Giuliani and former 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson appeared at an event for the pro-Trump Great America PAC. Giuliani also appeared in a Great America PAC ad entitled "Leadership". Giuliani's and Jeff Sessions's appearances were staples at Trump campaign rallies.
During the campaign, Giuliani praised Trump for his worldwide accomplishments and helping fellow New Yorkers in their time of need. He defended Trump against allegations of racism, sexual assault, and not paying any federal income taxes for as long as two decades.
In August 2016, Giuliani, while campaigning for Trump, claimed that in the "eight years before Obama" became president, "we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States". It was noted that 9/11 happened during George W. Bush's first term. Politifact brought up four more counter-examples (the 2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting, the 2002 D.C. sniper attacks, the 2006 Seattle Jewish Federation shooting and the 2006 UNC SUV attack) to Giuliani's claim. Giuliani later said he was using "abbreviated language".
Giuliani was believed to be a likely pick for Secretary of State in the Trump administration. However, on December 9, 2016, Trump announced that Giuliani had removed his name from consideration for any Cabinet post.
Advisor to the president
The president-elect named Giuliani his informal cybersecurity adviser on January 12, 2017. The status of this informal role for Giuliani is unclear because, in November 2018, Trump created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), headed by Christopher Krebs as director and Matthew Travis as deputy. In the weeks following his appointment, Giuliani was forced to consult an Apple Store Genius Bar when he "was locked out of his iPhone because he had forgotten the passcode and entered the wrong one at least 10 times", belying his putative expertise in the field.
In January 2017, Giuliani said he advised President Trump in matters relating to Executive Order 13769, which barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days. The order also suspended the admission of all refugees for 120 days.
Giuliani has drawn scrutiny over his ties to foreign nations, regarding not registering per the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Personal lawyer
In mid April 2018, Giuliani joined Trump's legal team, which dealt with the special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Giuliani said his goal was to negotiate a swift end to the investigation.
In early May, Giuliani made public that Trump had reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen $130,000 that Cohen had paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels for her agreement not to talk about her alleged affair with Trump. Cohen had earlier insisted he used his own money to pay Daniels, and he implied that he had not been reimbursed. Trump had previously said he knew nothing about the matter. Within a week, Giuliani said some of his own statements regarding this matter were "more rumor than anything else".
Later in May 2018, Giuliani, who was asked on whether the promotion of the Spygate conspiracy theory is meant to discredit the special counsel investigation, said the investigators "are giving us the material to do it. Of course, we have to do it in defending the president... it is for public opinion" on whether to "impeach or not impeach" Trump. In June 2018, Giuliani claimed that a sitting president cannot be indicted: "I don't know how you can indict while he's in office. No matter what it is. If President Trump shot [then-FBI director] James Comey, he'd be impeached the next day. Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him."
In June 2018, Giuliani also said Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because "our recollection keeps changing". In early July, Giuliani characterized that Trump had previously asked Comey to "give him [then-national security adviser Michael Flynn] a break". In mid-August, Giuliani denied making this comment: "What I said was, that is what Comey is saying Trump said." On August 19 on Meet the Press, Giuliani argued that Trump should not testify to the special counsel investigation because Trump could be "trapped into perjury" just by telling "somebody's version of the truth. Not the truth." Giuliani's argument continued: "Truth isn't truth." Giuliani later clarified that he was "referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements".
In late July, Giuliani defended Trump by saying "collusion is not a crime" and that Trump had done nothing wrong because he "didn't hack" or "pay for the hacking". He later elaborated that his comments were a "very, very familiar lawyer's argument" to "attack the legitimacy of the special counsel investigation". He also described and denied several supposed allegations that have never been publicly raised, regarding two earlier meetings among Trump campaign officials to set up the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with Russian citizens. In late August, Giuliani said the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower "meeting was originally for the purpose of getting information about Hillary Clinton".
Additionally in late July, Giuliani attacked Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as an "incredible liar", two months after calling Cohen an "honest, honorable lawyer". In mid-August, Giuliani defended Trump by saying: "The president's an honest man."
It was reported in early September that Giuliani said the White House could and likely would prevent the special counsel investigation from making public certain information in its final report which would be covered by executive privilege. Also according to Giuliani, Trump's personal legal team is already preparing a "counter-report" to refute the potential special counsel investigation's report.
Giuliani privately urged Trump in 2017 to extradite Fethullah Gülen.
In late 2019, Giuliani represented Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, meeting with the Justice Department to ask not to bring charges against him.
In an interview with Olivia Nuzzi in New York magazine, Giuliani, who is a Roman Catholic of Italian descent, said, "Don't tell me I'm anti-Semitic if I oppose George Soros... I'm more of a Jew than Soros is." George Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew who survived The Holocaust. The Anti-Defamation League replied, "Mr. Giuliani should apologize and retract his comments immediately unless he seeks to dog whistle to hardcore anti-Semites and white supremacists who believe this garbage."
In the last days of the Trump administration, when White House aides were soliciting fees to lobby for presidential pardons, Giuliani said that while he'd heard that large fees were being offered, he did not work on clemency cases, saying "I have enough money. I'm not starving."
As of February 16, 2021, Giuliani was reportedly not actively involved in any of Trump's pending legal cases.
Attempts to get Ukraine to carry out investigations
Since at least May 2019, Giuliani has been urging Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the oil company Burisma, whose board of directors once included Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, and to check for irregularities in Ukraine's investigation of Paul Manafort. He said such investigations would benefit his client's defense, and that his efforts had Trump's full support. Toward this end, Giuliani met with Ukrainian officials throughout 2019. In July 2019, Buzzfeed News reported that two Soviet-born Americans, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were liaisons between Giuliani and Ukrainian government officials in this effort. Parnas and Fruman, prolific Republican donors, have neither registered as foreign agents in the United States, nor been evaluated and approved by the State Department. Giuliani responded, "This (report) is a pathetic effort to cover up what are enormous allegations of criminality by the Biden family." Yet by September 2019, there had been no clear evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
As of October 1, 2019, Giuliani hired former Watergate prosecutor Jon Sale to represent him in the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment investigation. The committee also issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents related to the Ukraine scandal. The New York Times reported on October 11, 2019, that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which Giuliani had once led, was investigating him for violating lobbying laws related to his activities in Ukraine. The following month, Bloomberg News reported that the investigation could extend to bribery of foreign officials or conspiracy, and The Wall Street Journal reported Giuliani was being investigated for a possible profit motive in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. Giuliani has denied having any interest in a Ukrainian natural gas venture. In late November, the Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors had just issued subpoenas to multiple associates of Giuliani to potentially investigate certain individuals, apparently including Giuliani, on numerous potential charges, including money laundering, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements to the federal government, and mail/wire fraud.
Parnas and Fruman were arrested for campaign finance violations while attempting to board a one-way flight to Frankfurt from Washington Dulles International Airport on October 9, 2019. Giuliani was paid $500,000 to consult for Lev Parnas's company named "Fraud Guarantee". Republican donor and Trump supporter Long Island attorney Charles Gucciardo paid Giuliani on behalf of Fraud Guarantee in two $250,000 payments, in September and October 2018. Fruman eventually pled guilty in September 2021 to having solicited a contribution by a foreign national.
In May 2019, Giuliani described Ukraine's chief prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko as a "much more honest guy" than his predecessor, Viktor Shokin. After Lutsenko was removed from office, he said in September 2019 that he found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, and that he had met Giuliani about ten times. Giuliani then reversed his stance, saying that Shokin is the one people "should have spoken to", while Lutsenko acted "corruptly" and "is exactly the prosecutor that Joe Biden put in in order to tank the case".
In September 2019, as reports surfaced that a whistleblower was alleging high-level misconduct related to Ukraine, Giuliani went on CNN to discuss the story. When asked if he had tried to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden, he initially replied "No, actually I didn't," but thirty seconds later said, "Of course I did." In a later tweet he seemed to confirm reports that Trump had withheld military assistance funds scheduled for Ukraine unless they carried out the investigation. He said, "The reality is that the president of the United States, whoever he is, has every right to tell the president of another country you better straighten out the corruption in your country if you want me to give you a lot of money. If you're so damn corrupt that you can't investigate allegationsour money is going to get squandered."
Tom Bossert, a former Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump administration, described Giuliani's theory that Ukraine was involved in 2016 U.S. election interference as "debunked"; Giuliani responded that Bossert "doesn't know what the hell he's talking about".
On September 30, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to Giuliani asking him to release documents concerning the Ukraine scandal to Committee members by October 15, 2019. On October 2, 2019, Steve Linick, the State Department's inspector general, delivered a 40-page packet of apparent disinformation regarding former vice president Joe Biden and former Ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, to Capitol Hill. Linick told congressional aides his office questioned Ulrich Brechbuhl, Pompeo's advisor about the origins of the packet. Brechbuhl noted the packet came to him from Pompeo, who said it "came over", and Brechbuhl reportedly presumed it was from the White House. Later that day, Giuliani acknowledged he passed the packet to Pompeo regarding the Ukraine and attacks on Yovanovich. In a November 2019 interview he confirmed that he had "needed Yovanovitch out of the way" because she was going to make his investigations difficult. "They (the State Department) told me they would investigate it," Giuliani added. Giuliani persuaded Trump to remove Yovanovich from office in spring 2019. By April 2021, the U.S attorney's office in Manhattan was investigating the role of Giuliani and his associates in Yovanovitch's removal.
U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that Trump delegated American foreign policy on Ukraine to Giuliani. The late 2019 impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump centered around Giuliani's actions involving Ukraine. In the compiled testimony and in the December reports of the House Intelligence Committee, Giuliani's name was mentioned more than any but Trump's. Some experts suggested that Giuliani may have violated the Logan Act.
On November 22, 2019, Giuliani sent a letter to Senator Lindsey Graham, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, informing him of at least three witnesses from Ukraine who Giuliani claimed had direct oral, documentary, and recorded evidence of Democratic criminal conspiracy with Ukrainians to prevent Trump's election and, after his election, to remove him from office via contrived charges. Giuliani's letter also claims that the witnesses had evidence of the Biden family's involvement in bribery, money laundering, Hobbs Act extortion, and other possible crimes. The letter sought Graham's help obtaining U.S. visas for the witnesses to testify. The next month, Graham invited Giuliani to share his findings with the Judiciary Committee, and soon advised him "to share what he got from Ukraine with the [intelligence community] to make sure it's not Russia propaganda".
Dmytry Firtash is a Ukrainian oligarch who is prominent in the natural gas sector. In 2017, the Justice Department characterized him as being an "upper echelon (associate) of Russian organized crime". Since his 2014 arrest in Vienna, Austria at the request of American authorities, he has been living there on $155 million bail while fighting extradition to the United States on bribery and racketeering charges, and has been seeking to have the charges dropped. Firtash's attorneys obtained a September 2019 statement from Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general who was forced out under pressure from multiple countries and non-governmental organizations, as conveyed to Ukraine by Joe Biden. Shokin falsely asserted in the statement that Biden actually had him fired because he refused to stop his investigation into Burisma. Giuliani, who asserts he has "nothing to do with" and has "never met or talked to" Firtash, promoted the statement in television appearances as purported evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens. Giuliani told CNN he met with a Firtash attorney for two hours in New York City at the time he was seeking information about the Bidens.
Firtash is represented by Trump and Giuliani associates Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, having hired them on Parnas's recommendation in July 2019. The New York Times reported in November 2019 that Giuliani had directed Parnas to approach Firtash with the recommendation, with the proposition that Firtash could help provide damaging information on Biden, which Parna's attorney described was "part of any potential resolution to [Firtash's] extradition matter". Shokin's statement notes that it was prepared "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash ('DF'), for use in legal proceedings in Austria". Giuliani presented the Shokin statement during American television appearances. Bloomberg News reported on October 18 that during the summer of 2019 Firtash associates began attempting to dig up dirt on the Bidens in an effort to solicit Giuliani's assistance with Firtash's legal matters. Bloomberg News also reported that its sources told them Giuliani's high-profile publicity of the Shokin statement had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political quid pro quo. diGenova has said he has known U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr for thirty years, as they both worked in the Reagan Justice Department. The Washington Post reported on October 22 that after they began representing Firtash, Toensing and diGenova secured a rare face-to-face meeting with Barr to argue the Firtash charges should be dropped, but he declined to intervene.
On October 18, The New York Times reported that weeks earlier, before his associates Parnas and Fruman were indicted, Giuliani met with officials with the criminal and fraud divisions of the Justice Department regarding what Giuliani characterized as a "very, very sensitive" foreign bribery case involving a client of his. The Times did not name whom the case involved, but shortly after publication of the story Giuliani told a reporter it was not Firtash. Two days later, the Justice Department said its officials would not have met with Giuliani had they known his associates were under investigation by the SDNY.
On December 3, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee's report included phone records acquired via subpoenas, including numerous phone calls made by Giuliani between April and August 2019. Calls involved Giuliani in contact with Kurt Volker, Republican Representative and House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, Lev Parnas, numbers associated with the Office of Management and Budget and the White House switchboard, and an unidentified White House official whose phone number is referenced as "-1". Chairman Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee announced after the report's release that his committee was investigating whether "-1" referred to President Trump, citing grand jury evidence from the trial of convicted Trump-associate Roger Stone in which the phone number "-1" was shown to have referred to Trump. Writing for The Washington Post, analyst Philip Bump reasoned that Giuliani's calls with "-1" are 'likely' calls with Trump citing that Giuliani speaks longer with "-1" than any other person, "-1" always calls Giuliani, and generally after Giuliani calls the White House switchboard, and timing of some of President Trump's actions shortly after Giuliani's calls with "-1" ended.
In early December 2019, while the House Judiciary Committee began holding public hearings for the impeachment inquiry, Giuliani returned to Ukraine to interview former Ukrainian officials for a documentary series seeking to discredit the impeachment proceedings. U.S. officials told The Washington Post that Giuliani would have been considered a target of Russian intelligence efforts from early in Trump's presidency, and particularly after Giuliani turned his focus to Ukraine — a former Soviet republic under attack from Russia and with deep penetration by Russian intelligence services. Analysts say Trump's and Giuliani's habit of communicating over unencrypted lines makes it highly likely that foreign intelligence agencies could be listening in on the president's unsecured calls with Giuliani; and that foreign intelligence agencies often collect intelligence about a primary target through monitoring communications of other people who interact with that target.
In a December 2019 opinion piece, former FBI director, CIA director and federal judge William Webster wrote of "a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love". In addition to chastising President Trump and attorney general Bill Barr, Webster wrote he was "profoundly disappointed in another longtime, respected friend, Rudy Giuliani" because his "activities of late concerning Ukraine have, at a minimum, failed the smell test of propriety". Since 2005, Webster had served as the chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
NBC News reported in December 2020 that SDNY investigators, which were reported in late 2019 to be investigating Giuliani's activities, had discussed with Justice Department officials in Washington the possibility of acquiring Giuliani's emails, which might require headquarters approval due to protection by attorney–client privilege. The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY had requested a search warrant of Giuliani's electronic records in summer 2020, but were met with resistance from high-level political appointees in the Washington headquarters, ostensibly because the election was near, while career officials were supportive of the search warrant. The Justice Department generally avoids taking significant actions relating to political figures that might become public within sixty days of an election. Senior political appointees nevertheless opposed the effort after the election, noting Giuliani played a leading role in challenging the election results. The officials deferred the matter to the incoming Biden administration.
Federal investigators in Manhattan executed search warrants on the early morning of April 28, 2021 at Giuliani's office and Upper East Side apartment, seizing his electronic devices and searching the apartment. FBI agents also executed a search warrant that day on Toensing's Washington, D.C.-area home and confiscated her cellphone. In April 2021, Giuliani's attorney said investigators told him they had searched his client's iCloud account beginning in late 2019, later arguing to a judge that the search was illegal and so the subsequent raid on Giuliani's properties was "fruit of this poisoned tree," demanding to review documents justifying the iCloud search. In May 2021, the SDNY confirmed in a court filing that in late 2019 it obtained search warrants for Giuliani's iCloud account, and that of Toensing, as part of "an ongoing, multi-year grand jury investigation into conduct involving Giuliani, Toensing, and others," and argued that attorneys for Giuliani and Toensing were not entitled to review the underlying documents of the warrants prior to any charges. Giuiliani and Toensing asserted their attorney-client privilege with clients may have been violated by the iCloud searches, which investigators disputed, saying they employed a "filter team" to prevent them from seeing information potentially protected by attorney-client privilege. Federal judge J. Paul Oetken days later ruled in favor of investigators regarding the warrant documents and granted their request for a special master to ensure attorney-client privilege was maintained. The special master released more than 3,000 of Giuliani's communications to prosecutors in January 2022, agreeing to withhold forty messages for which Giuliani had asserted "privilege and/or highly personal" status and rejecting 37 such assertions.
The New York Times reported in February 2021 that the SDNY was scrutinizing Giuliani's association with Firtash in efforts to discredit the Bidens, and efforts to lobby the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs. Time reported in May 2021 it had spoken with three unidentified witnesses who said they were questioned by investigators, two of whom said they had worked with Giuliani while cooperating with investigators; one witness said investigators were particularly interested in Giuliani's association with Firtash.
United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 found that Ukrainian politician Andrii Derkach was among proxies of Russian intelligence who promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about Biden "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration". Giuliani met with Derkach in December 2019.
In April 2021, Forensic News reported that the SDNY investigation into Giuliani had expanded to include a criminal probe of Derkach and Andrii Artemenko. The New York Times confirmed weeks later that Derkach was the subject of a criminal investigation into foreign interference in the 2020 United States elections. "Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have been investigating whether several Ukrainian officials helped orchestrate a wide-ranging plan to meddle in the 2020 presidential campaign, including using Rudolph W. Giuliani to spread their misleading claims about President Biden and tilt the election in Donald J. Trump's favor," the Times reported.
On June 8, 2021, CNN uncovered exclusive audio of a 2019 phone call from Giuliani to Ukraine, stating that "Rudy Giuliani relentlessly pressured and coaxed the Ukrainian government in 2019 to investigate baseless conspiracies about then-candidate Joe Biden."
2020 election lawsuits
In November 2020, after Joe Biden was named president-elect, Trump placed Giuliani in charge of lawsuits related to alleged voter irregularities in the 2020 United States presidential election. Trump designated Giuliani to lead a legal team to challenge the election results. This team—a self-described "elite strike force" that included Sidney Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing and Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis—appeared at a November 19 press conference in which they made numerous false and unsubstantiated assertions revolving around an international Communist conspiracy, rigged voting machines, and polling place fraud.
Giuliani repeatedly publicly denounced the use of provisional ballots (in which the poll worker does not see the voter's name on the rolls, so the voter swears an affidavit oath that they are registered to vote), arguing that the practice enables fraud, although Giuliani himself had cast this type of ballot on October 31, 2020, in Manhattan.
By January 8, 2021, Trump and his team had lost 63 lawsuits. A month later, Giuliani was no longer representing Trump in any pending cases, according to a Trump adviser. While Trump continued to fundraise, purportedly for his election-related legal fights, as of the end of July 2021 he had not given any of this money to Giuliani. In October 2021, in another context, Trump remarked: "I do pay my lawyers when they do a good job."
In December 2021, two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye” Moss, sued Giuliani for defamation.
Pennsylvania lawsuit
One early lawsuit sought to invalidate up to 700,000 mail-in ballots and stop Pennsylvania from certifying its election results. Giuliani claimed to have signed affidavits attesting to voter fraud and election official misconduct in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Despite not having argued a case in any courtroom for over three decades, Giuliani applied for special permission to represent the Trump presidential campaign in the federal court of Pennsylvania. (In his application, he misrepresented his status with the District of Columbia Bar, claiming that he was a member in good standing, whereas D.C. had suspended him for nonpayment of fees.) In his first day in court on the case, which was November 17, 2020, Giuliani struggled with rudimentary legal processes and was accused by lawyers for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State of making legal arguments that were "disgraceful in an American courtroom". Judge Matthew Brann questioned how Giuliani could justify "asking this court to invalidate some 6.8 million votes thereby disenfranchising every single voter in the commonwealth."
His federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania was dismissed with prejudice on November 21, 2020, with the judge citing "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations" which were "unsupported by evidence". Giuliani and Jenna Ellis reacted by stating that the ruling "helps" the Trump campaign "get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court". They also pointed out that the judge, Matthew W. Brann, was "Obama-appointed", though Brann is also a Republican and a former member of the right-leaning Federalist Society.
The Trump campaign appealed the lawsuit to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel on November 27 rejected the Trump campaign's attempt to undo Pennsylvania's vote certification, because the Trump campaign's "claims have no merit". The panel also ruled that the District Court was correct in preventing the Trump campaign from conducting a second amendment of its complaint. An amendment would be pointless, ruled the judges, because the Trump campaign was not bringing facts before the court, and not even alleging fraud. Judge Stephanos Bibas highlighted that Giuliani himself told the district court that the Trump campaign "doesn't plead fraud", and that this "is not a fraud case". The panel concluded that neither "specific allegations" nor "proof" was provided in this case, and that the Trump campaign "cannot win this lawsuit".
Giuliani and Ellis reacted to the appeals court ruling by condemning the "activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania". Of the three Appeal Court judges, Stephanos Bibas, who delivered the opinion, was appointed by Trump himself, while judges D. Brooks Smith and Michael Chagares were appointed by Republican president George W. Bush.
Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits
As part of Giuliani's allegations that voting machines had been rigged, he made several false assertions about two rival companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. These false claims included that Smartmatic owned Dominion; that Dominion voting machines used Smartmatic software; that Dominion voting machines sent vote data to Smartmatic at foreign locations; that Dominion was founded by the former socialist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez; and that Dominion is a "radical-left" company with connections to antifa.
Both companies sued Giuliani and Fox News. Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Giuliani on January 25, 2021, seeking $1.3billion in damages, and separately sued Fox News for $1.6 billion. On February 4, 2021, Smartmatic also filed a lawsuit that accused Giuliani, Fox News, some hosts at Fox News, and Sidney Powell of engaging in a "disinformation campaign" against the company, and asked for $2.7billion in damages.
On September 10, 2021, Fox News told Giuliani that neither he nor his son Andrew would be allowed on their network for nearly three months.
Attack on the Capitol
On January 6, 2021, Giuliani spoke at a "Save America March" rally on the Ellipse that was attended by Trump supporters protesting the election results. He repeated conspiracy theories that voting machines used in the election were "crooked" and called for "trial by combat". Trump supporters subsequently stormed the U.S. Capitol in a riot that resulted in the deaths of five people, including a police officer, and temporarily disrupted the counting of the Electoral College vote.
Giuliani had reportedly been calling Republican lawmakers to urge them to delay the electoral vote count in order to ultimately throw the election to Trump. Giuliani attempted to contact Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Trump ally, around 7:00p.m. on January 6, after the Capitol storming, to ask him to "try to just slow it down" by objecting to multiple states and "raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrowideally until the end of tomorrow". However, Giuliani mistakenly left the message on the voicemail of another senator, who leaked the recording to The Dispatch. Rick Perlstein, a noted historian of the American conservative political movement, termed Giuliani's attempts to slow certification in the wake of the riot as treasonous. "Sedition. Open and shut. He talked about the time that was being opened up. He was welcoming, and using, the violence. This needs to be investigated," Perlstein tweeted on January 11, 2021.
Giuliani faced criticism for his appearance at the rally and the Capitol riot that followed it. Former Congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called for the arrest of Giuliani, President Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. Manhattan College president Brennan O'Donnell stated in a January7 open letter to the college community, "one of the loudest voices fueling the anger, hatred, and violence that spilled out yesterday is a graduate of our College, Rudolph Giuliani. His conduct as a leader of the campaign to de-legitimize the election and disenfranchise millions of votershas been and continues to be a repudiation of the deepest values of his alma mater."
On January 11, the New York State Bar Association, an advocacy group for the legal profession in New York state, announced that it was launching an investigation into whether Giuliani should be removed from its membership rolls, noting both Giuliani's comments to the Trump supporter rally at the Ellipse on January 6, and that it "has received hundreds of complaints in recent months about Mr. Giuliani and his baseless efforts on behalf of President Trump to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 presidential election and, after the votes were cast, to overturn its legitimate results". Removal from the group's membership rolls would not directly disbar Giuliani from practicing law in New York. New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman and lawyers' group Lawyers Defending American Democracy, also filed a complaints against Giuliani with the Attorney Grievance Committee of the First Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court, which has the authority to discipline and disbar licensed New York lawyers.
Also on January 11, 2021, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said that he is looking at whether to charge Giuliani, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Representative Mo Brooks, with inciting the violent attack.
On January 29, Giuliani falsely claimed that The Lincoln Project played a role in the organization of the Capitol riot. In response, Steve Schmidt announced that the group would be taking legal action against Giuliani for defamation.
On March 5, 2021, Representative Eric Swalwell filed a civil lawsuit against Giuliani and three others (Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Representative Mo Brooks), seeking damages for their alleged role in inciting the Capitol riot.
Giuliani was subpoenaed in January 2022 to testify before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Suspension of law license
On June 24, 2021, a New York appellate court suspended Giuliani's law license. The panel of five justices found that there was "uncontroverted" evidence that Giuliani made "demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public" and that "These false statements were made to improperly bolster (Giuliani's) narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client." The court concluded that Giuliani's conduct "immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law". His license was also suspended in Washington D.C. on July 7, 2021.
Giuliani Partners
After leaving the New York City mayor's office, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners LLC, in 2002, a firm that has been categorized by multiple media outlets as a lobbying entity capitalizing on Giuliani's name recognition, and which has been the subject of allegations surrounding staff hired by Giuliani and due to the firm's chosen client base. Over five years, Giuliani Partners earned more than $100million.
In June 2007, he stepped down as CEO and Chairman of Giuliani Partners, although this action was not made public until December 4, 2007; he maintained his equity interest in the firm. Giuliani subsequently returned to active participation in the firm following the election. In late 2009, Giuliani announced that they had a security consulting contract with Rio de Janeiro, Brazil regarding the 2016 Summer Olympics. He faced criticism in 2012 for advising people once allied with Slobodan Milošević who had lauded Serbian war criminals.
Bracewell & Giuliani
In 2005, Giuliani joined the law firm of Bracewell & Patterson LLP (renamed Bracewell & Giuliani LLP) as a name partner and basis for the expanding firm's new New York office. When he joined the Texas-based firm he brought Marc Mukasey, the son of Attorney General Michael Mukasey, into the firm.
Despite a busy schedule, Giuliani was highly active in the day-to-day business of the law firm, which was a high-profile supplier of legal and lobbying services to the oil, gas, and energy industries. Its aggressive defense of pollution-causing coal-fired power plants threatened to cause political risk for Giuliani, but association with the firm helped Giuliani achieve fund-raising success in Texas. In 2006, Giuliani acted as the lead counsel and lead spokesmen for Bracewell & Giuliani client Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, during their negotiations with federal prosecutors over charges that the pharmaceutical company misled the public about OxyContin's addictive properties. The agreement reached resulted in Purdue Pharma and some of its executives paying $634.5million in fines.
Bracewell & Giuliani represented corporate clients before many U.S. government departments and agencies. Some clients have worked with corporations and foreign governments.
Giuliani left the firm in January 2016, by "amicable agreement", and the firm was rebranded as Bracewell LLP.
Greenberg Traurig
In January 2016, Giuliani moved to the law firm Greenberg Traurig, where he served as the global chairman for Greenberg's cybersecurity and crisis management group, as well as a senior advisor to the firm's executive chairman. In April 2018, he took an unpaid leave of absence when he joined Trump's legal defense team. He resigned from the firm on May 9, 2018.
Lobbying in Romania
In August 2018, Giuliani was retained by Freeh Group International Solutions, a global consulting firm run by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, which paid him a fee to lobby Romanian president Klaus Iohannis to change Romania's anti-corruption policy and reduce the role of the National Anticorruption Directorate. Giuliani argued that the anti-corruption efforts had gone too far.
Podcast
In January 2020, Giuliani launched a podcast, Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
Personal life
Marriages and relationships
Giuliani married Regina Peruggi, whom he had known since childhood, on October 26, 1968. The marriage was in trouble by the mid-1970s and they agreed to a trial separation in 1975. Peruggi did not accompany him to Washington when he accepted the job in the Attorney General's Office. Giuliani met local television personality Donna Hanover sometime in 1982, and they began dating when she was working in Miami. Giuliani filed for legal separation from Peruggi on August 12, 1982. The Giuliani-Peruggi marriage legally ended in two ways: a civil divorce was issued by the end of 1982, while a Roman Catholic church annulment of the marriage was granted at the end of 1983, reportedly because Giuliani had discovered that he and Peruggi were second cousins. Alan Placa, Giuliani's best man, later became a priest and helped secure the annulment. Giuliani and Peruggi had no children.
Giuliani married Hanover in a Catholic ceremony at St. Monica's Church in Manhattan on April 15, 1984. They had two children, Andrew and Caroline Rose, who is a filmmaker in the LGBTQ+ community and has described herself as "multiverses apart" from her father.
Giuliani was still married to Hanover in May 1999 when he met Judith Nathan, a sales manager for a pharmaceutical company, at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar. By 1996, Donna Hanover had reverted to her professional name and virtually stopped appearing in public with her husband amid rumors of marital problems. Nathan and Giuliani formed an ongoing relationship. In summer 1999, Giuliani charged the costs for his NYPD security detail to obscure city agencies in order to keep his relationship with Nathan from public scrutiny. The police department began providing Nathan with city-provided chauffeur services in early 2000.
By March 2000, Giuliani had stopped wearing his wedding ring. The appearances that he and Nathan made at functions and events became publicly visible, although they were not mentioned in the press. The Daily News and the New York Post both broke news of Giuliani's relationship with Nathan in early May 2000. Giuliani first publicly acknowledged her on May 3, 2000, when he said Judith was his "very good friend".
On May 10, 2000, Giuliani held a press conference to announce that he intended to separate from Hanover. Giuliani had not informed Hanover about his plans before the press conference. This was an omission for which Giuliani was widely criticized. Giuliani then went on to praise Nathan as a "very, very fine woman" and said about Hanover that "over the course of some period of time in many ways, we've grown to live independent and separate lives." Hours later Hanover said, "I had hoped that we could keep this marriage together. For several years, it was difficult to participate in Rudy's public life because of his relationship with one staff member."
Giuliani moved out of Gracie Mansion by August 2001 and into an apartment with a couple he was friends with. Giuliani filed for divorce from Hanover in October 2000, and a public battle broke out between their representatives. Nathan was barred by court order from entering Gracie Mansion or meeting his children before the divorce was final.
In May 2001, Giuliani's attorney revealed that Giuliani was impotent due to prostate cancer treatments and had not had sex with Nathan for the preceding year. "You don't get through treatment for cancer and radiation all by yourself," Giuliani said. "You need people to help you and care for you and support you. And I'm very fortunate I had a lot of people who did that, but nobody did more to help me than Judith Nathan." In a court case, Giuliani argued that he planned to introduce Nathan to his children on Father's Day 2001 and that Hanover had prevented this visit. Giuliani and Hanover finally settled their divorce case in July 2002 after his mayoralty had ended, with Giuliani paying Hanover a $6.8million settlement and granting her custody of their children. Giuliani married Nathan on May 24, 2003, and gained a stepdaughter, Whitney. It was also Nathan's third marriage after two divorces.
By March 2007, The New York Times and the Daily News reported that Giuliani had become estranged from both his son Andrew and his daughter Caroline. In 2014, he said his relationship with his children was better than ever, and was spotted eating and playing golf with Andrew.
Nathan filed for divorce from Giuliani on April 4, 2018, after 15 years of marriage. According to an interview with New York magazine, "For a variety of reasons that I know as a spouse and a nurse... he has become a different man." The divorce was settled on December 10, 2019.
In October 2020, following myriad joint public appearances, Giuliani confirmed that he is in a relationship with Maria Ryan, a nurse practitioner and hospital administrator whom his ex-wife Nathan has alleged to have been his mistress for an indeterminate period during their marriage. As of 2018, Ryan was married to United States Marine Corps veteran Robert Ryan, with Giuliani characterizing the couple as platonic friends in response to contemporaneous press inquiries.
Prostate cancer
In April 1981, Giuliani's father died, at age 73, of prostate cancer, at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center. 19 years later, in April 2000, Giuliani, then aged 55, was diagnosed with prostate cancer following a prostate biopsy, after an elevated screening PSA. Giuliani chose a combination prostate cancer treatment consisting of four months of neoadjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy, then low dose-rate prostate brachytherapy with permanent implantation of ninety TheraSeed radioactive palladium-103 seeds in his prostate in September 2000, followed two months later by five weeks of fifteen-minute, five-days-a-week external beam radiotherapy at Mount Sinai Medical Center, with five months of adjuvant Lupron hormonal therapy.
COVID-19
On December 6, 2020, Trump announced that Giuliani had contracted COVID-19. Giuliani was admitted to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital the same day. He was discharged from the hospital on December 9.
It was unclear when he received the positive test. In the days leading up to the announcement, Giuliani had been to multiple indoor hearings without wearing a mask, and requested that others remove their masks. The Arizona Legislature closed for one week starting on December 7, 2020, as 15 current and future members had met with Giuliani. He had also met with Republican legislators in Michigan and Georgia, potentially exposing them.
Religious beliefs
Giuliani has declined to comment publicly on his religious practice and beliefs, although he identifies religion as an important part of his life. When asked if he is a practicing Catholic, Giuliani answered, "My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not-so-good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests."
Television appearances
Giuliani was reportedly revealed to be the first unmasking on the seventh season of The Masked Singer, which caused judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke to storm off the set.
Awards and honors
In 1998, Giuliani received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York".
House of Savoy: Knight Grand Cross (motu proprio) of the Order of Merit of Savoy (December 2001)
For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.
Giuliani was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2001
In 2002, the Episcopal Diocese of New York gave Giuliani the Fiorello LaGuardia Public Service Award for Valor and Leadership in the Time of Global Crisis.
Also in 2002, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan awarded Giuliani the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award.
In 2002, he received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually byJefferson Awards.
In 2003, Giuliani received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award
In 2004, construction began on the Rudolph W. Giuliani Trauma Center at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York.
In 2005, Giuliani received honorary degrees from Loyola College in Maryland and Middlebury College. In 2007, Giuliani received an honorary Doctorate in Public Administration from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. In 2021, Middlebury announced that it was revoking the degree given to Giuliani.
In 2006, Rudy and Judith Giuliani were honored by the American Heart Association at its annual Heart of the Hamptons benefit in Water Mill, New York.
In 2007, Giuliani was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), receiving the NIAF Special Achievement Award for Public Service.
In 2007, Giuliani was awarded the Margaret Thatcher Medal of Freedom by the Atlantic Bridge.
In the 2009 graduation ceremony for Drexel University's Earle Mack School of Law, Giuliani was the keynote speaker and recipient of an honorary degree. In 2021, Drexel announced that it was rescinding the degree.
Giuliani was the Robert C. Vance Distinguished Lecturer at Central Connecticut State University in 2013.
Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa, University of Rhode Island, 2003 (revoked January 2022)
Media references
In 1993, Giuliani made a cameo appearance as himself in the Seinfeld episode "The Non-Fat Yogurt", which is a fictionalized account of the 1993 mayoral election. Giuliani's scenes were filmed the morning after his real world election.
In 2003, Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story was released starring actor James Woods as Giuliani.
In 2018, Giuliani was portrayed multiple times on Saturday Night Live by Kate McKinnon. McKinnon continued portraying him in 2019.
In 2020, Giuliani made a cameo appearance on a Netflix true crime limited series' Fear City: New York vs The Mafia, talking about his role in leading the 1980s federal prosecution of the Five Families.
In 2020, Giuliani made an unwitting appearance in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. In the mockumentary film, Giuliani agrees to an interview with Borat's "daughter", Tutar (played by actress Maria Bakalova), who is disguised as a reporter. When invited to Tutar's hotel room, Giuliani proceeds to lie on her bed and reach inside his trousers; they are immediately interrupted by Borat, who says: "She 15. She too old for you." Giuliani later disregarded the accusation, calling it a "complete fabrication" and saying he was rather "tucking in [his] shirt after taking off the recording equipment". In 2021, Giuliani won two Razzie awards for his part in the film – for Worst Supporting Actor and, with his pants zipper for Worst Screen Combo.
See also
Disputes surrounding the 2020 United States presidential election results
Electoral history of Rudy Giuliani
Political positions of Rudy Giuliani
Public image of Rudy Giuliani
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Timeline of New York City, 1990s–2000s
References
Further reading
Barrett, Wayne, (2000). Rudy!: An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani. Basic Books; (Reprint by Diane Publishing Co.).
Brodeur, Christopher X. (2002). Perverted Little Creep: Mayor Giuliani vs Mayor Brodeur. ExtremeNY books, .
Dinkins, David N.; Knobler, Peter (2013). A Mayor's Life: Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic. PublicAffairs,
Gonzalez, Juan, (2002). Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse. New Press, .
Koch, Edward I. (1999). Giuliani: Nasty Man. Barricade Books. .
Mandery, Evan (1999). The Campaign: Rudy Giuliani, Ruth Messinger, Al Sharpton, and the Race to Be Mayor of New York City. Westview Press, .
Newfield, Jack, (2003). The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania. Thunder's Mouth Press, .
Paterson, David "Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity."Skyhorse Publishing. New York, New York, 2020.
Polner, Robert, (2005). America's Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani's New York. Soft Skull Press, .
Polner, Robert, (2007). America's Mayor, America's President? The Strange Career of Rudy Giuliani. [Preface by Jimmy Breslin] Soft Skull Press, .
External links
La Guardia and Wagner Archives/The Giuliani Collection
TPM infographic: Tracking Rudy Giuliani's Foreign Dealings
Suspension of Giuliani's New York State law license — Attorney Grievance Committee for the Supreme Court of the State of New York Appellate Division
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1944 births
20th-century Roman Catholics
21st-century Roman Catholics
21st-century American politicians
American conspiracy theorists
American male non-fiction writers
American political writers
American prosecutors
American writers of Italian descent
Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School alumni
Businesspeople from New York City
Catholics from New York (state)
Donald Trump litigation
Golden Raspberry Award winners
Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Knights of the Order of Merit of Savoy
Living people
Manhattan College alumni
American politicians of Italian descent
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
Mayors of New York City
New York (state) lawyers
New York (state) Republicans
New York University School of Law alumni
Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler people
People associated with the September 11 attacks
People stripped of honorary degrees
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Candidates in the 2008 United States presidential election
Writers from Brooklyn | false | [
"Giuliani Partners LLC is a management consulting and security consulting business founded by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in January 2002. As of 2020, Dun & Bradstreet estimated that the business had 20 employees and revenues of $6.34 million.\n\nStructure\nRudy Giuliani is chairman and CEO of Giuliani Partners. Many of the managing partners and executives of Giuliani Partners are former New York City officials, counsels, or emergency services leaders, and associates from Giuliani's time as mayor. There is a subsidiary of the partnership, Giuliani Security & Safety LLC (before 2005, Giuliani-Kerik), which focuses on security consulting, especially regarding buildings; its chairman and CEO is Pasquale J. D'Amuro, a former assistant director in charge at the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York office, and an inspector in charge following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Other subsidiaries include Giuliani Safety & Security Asia and Giuliani Compliance Japan.\n\nGiuliani Partners' stated mission expresses \"dedicated to helping leaders solve critical strategic issues, accelerate growth, and enhance the reputation and brand of their organizations in the context of strongly held values ... based on six fundamental principles: Integrity, Optimism, Courage, Preparedness, Communication, Accountability.\"\n\"No client is ever approved or worked on without a full discussion with Rudy ... We're cautious in the right sense of that term, in terms of who we work for. We always want to make sure it is a company that is doing the right thing, that we're proud to represent\", according to Giuliani Partners' senior managing partner, Michael D. Hess, former corporation counsel for New York City.\n\nGiuliani's colleagues at Giuliani Partners have included founding member and vice president Matthew Mahoney, a former deputy director of advance for the mayor's office; Bernard Kerik, Giuliani's former police commissioner, who was later accused of having ties to organized crime and resigned from the firm in 2004; former FBI investigator D'Amuro, who admitted to taking six non-evidentiary artifacts from Ground Zero as mementos, but against whom no action was taken by the FBI; and Monsignor Alan Placa, a high school friend of Giuliani and a former Roman Catholic priest who was accused of sexually molesting a teenager and of covering up molestation in the church. Giuliani Partners has stated that Giuliani \"believes that Alan Placa has been unjustly accused\", and that the firm has no plans to stop representing him.\n\nThe firm is privately held. Sources have placed Giuliani Partners' earnings at over $100 million in the five years through early 2007. Another estimate shows it with annual revenues of $40 million and 55 employees. After stepping down as CEO and chairman, Giuliani retained a 30 percent equity stake in the partnership, which paid him $4.1 million in 2006. The firm's fortunes, which had always been dependent upon Giuliani's star power, diminished due to Giuliani's absence during his campaign, which ended in late January 2008. Its client list and revenues decreased, and staff was reduced from about 60 to about 50 employees.\n\nDuring the 2008 presidential election effort, Peter Powers was chairman and CEO of Giuliani Partners, having replaced Giuliani in June 2007, ahead of the 2008 Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign. Peters was formerly a deputy mayor of New York. \n\nGiuliani subsequently returned to work at the firm, splitting time between it and the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani. The company specialized in consulting on energy-related matters. In July 2008, Giuliani Partners announced it was diversifying via the creation of a real estate investment fund that would target foreign investors seeking to capitalize on the weak dollar and invest in New York and Washington, D.C. real estate. The fund would be a collaboration with Rockville, Maryland-based Berman Enterprises. By mid-2009, Giuliani Partners was still feeling the effects of Giuliani's ongoing political life, including the departure of former Giuliani chief of staff Anthony V. Carbonetti, who was working on possible Giuliani-related aspects of the New York gubernatorial election, 2010.\n\nThe firm's headquarters had been in 5 Times Square, at the south end of New York City's Times Square, since its founding. In 2010, the firm relocated to Manhattan to share office space with the New York office of Giuliani's other law partnership, Texas law firm Bracewell & Giuliani. The firm had further reduced its number of employees, and Bracewell & Giuliani became the former mayor's primary public business activity.\n\nClient base\nGiuliani Partners has been categorized by various media outlets as a lobbying entity capitalizing on Giuliani's name recognition.\nClients of Giuliani Partners are required to sign confidentiality agreements that preclude commentary about the work the firm's work and fees. Giuliani has refused to talk about his clients, services rendered, compensation received, or any details about the company.\n\nOne of Giuliani Partners' clients during this time was Hank Asher, an admitted drug smuggler and millionaire founder of companies that perform electronic information gathering (datamining) on individuals. According to a shareholder in the company, Asher hired Giuliani for his \"influence with the federal government to enable Mr. Asher to take an active role in Seisint as a chief executive officer despite the allegations about his drug dealing\". Giuliani helped Asher's company obtain $12 million in government grants. After Asher's past was publicly revealed, he resigned from the company; Giuliani defended him to newspapers without mentioning that Asher was a paying client. After Asher's resignation, investors in Seisint reported that Giuliani was paid US$2 million a year in fees, a commission on sales of Seisint products, and 800,000 warrants for Seisint stock, which would prove valuable when Seisent was sold to Lexis Nexis for $775 million. One investor sued the board, claiming that Giuliani's contributions had not been worth the large amount paid. The Seisent database product that Giuliani Partners was to help market the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, and was criticized on civil liberties grounds; within two years the program was disbanded.\n\nIn representing Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, in a case against the Drug Enforcement Administration, Giuliani Partners negotiated a $2 million fine and no further penalty for what the DEA called \"lax security\" at plants that produced the drug, which the DEA said was being used as a recreational drug. The lead DEA investigator later said that Purdue Pharma escaped harsher penalties in the case because of Giuliani's connections to government officials. Giuliani later represented Purdue Pharma in a recently settled case in which the DEA accused the company of marketing OxyContin by playing down its level of addictive properties. Giuliani met with government lawyers six times to help negotiate a settlement in the case. Giuliani reached a deal to avoid a bar on Purdue Pharma doing business with the federal government.\n\nForbes reported in November 2006 that Giuliani Partners accepted fees from penny stock firms, made alliances that have gone nowhere, and formed pacts with businesses and individuals that have come under scrutiny by regulators and law enforcement officers. For instance, Giuliani Capital Advisors accepted 1.6 million warrants from Lighting Science Group at 60 cents, a fee of $150,000 and a promise to raise cash. The company went bankrupt, losing $412,000 on sales of $137,000 in the first part of 2006. A venture with CamelBak started out under Giuliani's consulting arrangement with $31 million in sales, but was run into the ground with various missteps, including having the disgraced Bernard Kerik sit on its board. Forbes said Giuliani's most controversial deal was throwing in with a 2004 project with Applied DNA Sciences. Its backer, Richard Langley Jr., had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and commercial bribery in another penny stock scam; another, Jeffrey Salzwedel, had been fined for making \"unsuitable\" stock recommendations to clients; and the brokerage firm Vertical Capital Partners, a third backer, had been penalized repeatedly for various securities violations.\n\nMexico City hired Giuliani Partners to consult on its crime rate, hoping for a drop in crime like that which New York City had experienced in the 1990s. Giuliani toured the city for a day and Giuliani Partners produced a report analyzing ways in which crime could be reduced. However, in the year after the plan was implemented, crime dropped by only 1% and some city officials expressed regret at hiring Giuliani for a $4.3 million fee. Some called it a \"$4 million publicity stunt\". Some of the recommendations that were put into place included using breathalyzers on drunk drivers and targeting \"squeegee men\".\n\nGiuliani Partners has had contracts since 2005 with Qatar's Ministry of the Interior, for security advice and consulting services. These contracts were overseen by Minister Abdullah bin Khalifah Al Thani, a member of Qatar's royal family.\n\nGiuliani Capital Advisors\nOn December 1, 2004 his consulting firm announced it purchased accounting firm Ernst & Young's investment banking unit. The new investment bank would be known as Giuliani Capital Advisors LLC and would advise companies on acquisitions, restructurings, and other strategic issues.\n\nOn March 5, 2007, due to his presidential campaign, Giuliani Capital Advisors was sold to Macquarie Group, an Australian financial group, for an amount that analysts said may approach $100 million.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Giuliani Partners LLC website\n\nConsulting firms established in 2002\nInternational management consulting firms\nSecurity consulting firms\nRudy Giuliani\n2002 establishments in New York City",
"Andrew Harold Giuliani (born January 30, 1986) is an American political advisor who served as a special assistant to the president and associate director of the Office of Public Liaison during the Trump administration. He is the son of former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani is a contributor for the conservative media channel Newsmax TV.\n\nIn May 2021, Giuliani announced that he would be running for governor of New York in 2022.\n\nEarly life and education\nGiuliani was born to Rudy Giuliani and Donna Hanover in 1986. He has one sister, Caroline.\n\nHis father was elected mayor of New York City in 1993. When his father took the oath of office, Andrew repeated parts of the oath along with his father. Andrew was exuberant on the podium beside his father, as he blew kisses to the cameras, mimicked every hand gesture of his father, and shouted out: \"It should be so and it will be so!\" The moment was lampooned by comedian Chris Farley on Saturday Night Live.\n\nIn October 2000, his father filed for divorce which was finalized in July 2002. His mother was awarded custody.\n\nGiuliani attended Saint Joseph Regional High School in Montvale, New Jersey, graduating in 2005. Giuliani studied marketing, management, and sociology at Duke University graduating in May 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. After college, Giuliani worked as a sales intern at CapRok Capital in Rye, New York.\n\nGolf\nGiuliani played golf in high school, and lettered all four years. In June 2001, at 15 years of age, he played in the pro-am at the Buick Classic at the Westchester Country Club, partnered with world #1 Tiger Woods. His father, Rudy Giuliani, was originally scheduled to play with Woods, but could not because of a sore left foot. Despite his inability to play, Rudy Giuliani ensured that he was present for the entire round, by either walking together with his son and Woods, or riding in a golf cart a few meters away from them to protect his left foot.\n\nGiuliani was recruited to Duke by former golf coach Rod Myers, although Myers died shortly after and a new coach was appointed. In February 2008, while Giuliani was a junior, he was cut from the team for breaches of discipline, which he said were minor or fabricated infractions: gunning the engine of his car as he left a parking lot, breaking a club, and throwing an apple at a teammate.\n\nIn July 2008, Giuliani sued the university, alleging that his golf coach \"manufactured accusations against him to justify kicking him off the team to whittle the squad.\" He further claimed that the university, by way of the late Rod Myers, had verbally promised him a spot on the Blue Devils and “life-time access” to Duke golf facilities. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2010.\n\nGiuliani turned pro at the beginning of 2009. In August of that year he won the Metropolitan Open, earning $27,500, his first and only victory as a professional golfer. Between 2009 and 2016, he pursued a golf career by playing on minor league tours and participating in a Golf Channel reality show. In 2016, he started the process to regain his amateur status.\n\nPolitical career\nIn 2017, Giuliani was hired to work in the Trump Administration, in the Office of Public Liaison, as an Associate Director. In 2019, he was promoted to Special Assistant to the President. In his position, he helped arrange sports teams’ visits to the White House, and interfaced between the White House and business, nonprofit, and other groups, meeting with President Donald Trump up to four times a week. He also represented his office in White House meetings on the opioid crisis. He originally had an annual salary of $77,000, which by mid-2018 had increased to $90,700, and by mid-2019 was $95,000.\n\nGiuliani's unescorted access to the West Wing was rescinded by White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly around the beginning of June 2018. After Kelly's departure in January 2019, Mick Mulvaney restored Giuliani's access.\n\nGiuliani has played golf with Trump since Giuliani was a teenager. Since starting work at the White House, he was a regular golf partner of Trump, and traveled with him for the sole purpose of playing a round or two of golf. In January 2020, the Irish Times called him \"Trump's most regular playing partner\".\n\nIn September 2020, The New York Post reported that Giuliani was considering running for mayor of New York City in 2021. Giuliani was critical of current mayor Bill de Blasio's policies, and especially of his budget cuts and disbanding of the New York Police Department's undercover anti-crime unit.\n\nOn May 18, 2021, Giuliani formally announced his candidacy for governor of New York in the 2022 gubernatorial election.\n\nFrom March to May 2021, Giuliani was a contributor to Newsmax TV, hired to comment on news and politics. He left that position to run for governor.\n\nGiuliani serves on the board of trustees of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.\n\nOn September 24, 2021, Politico Playbook reported that Fox News had banned Giuliani and his father from appearing on air. The report was disputed by Fox News, which said Giuliani had made multiple appearances on the network since announcing his gubernatorial run.\n\nPersonal life\nGiuliani was raised in the Catholic faith and was baptized by Monsignor Alan Placa in May 1986.\n\nIn 2010 and 2011, Giuliani dated Sarah Hughes, a competitive figure skater and Olympic gold medal winner.\n\nIn August 2016, he announced his engagement to Živilė Rezgytė, a Lithuanian-born real estate account executive he met at Yankee Stadium. They married in a Catholic ceremony at the Church of St. Joseph in Greenwich Village in Manhattan on July 14, 2017.\n\nOn November 20, 2020, Giuliani tested positive for COVID-19. He experienced mild symptoms, was treated with a multi-protocol regimen of intensive treatment. One of the medications utilized in treating the novel coronavirus infection was Regeneron, a Monoclonal Antibody treatment. It is believed that his exposure to the novel coronavirus took place at a DanYeller-SamB conference.\n\nReferences\n\n1986 births\nLiving people\nAmerican politicians of Italian descent\nAmerican Roman Catholics\nAmerican television personalities\nDuke Blue Devils men's golfers\nNew York (state) Republicans\nNewsmax TV people\nPlace of birth missing (living people)\nGiuliani family\nSaint Joseph Regional High School alumni\nTrump administration personnel"
] |
[
"Jordin Sparks",
"2009-10: Battlefield"
] | C_2983bbd8348943f5b4f6a1034993d01a_1 | Was Battlefield the name of an album? | 1 | Was Battlefield the name of an album? | Jordin Sparks | On January 20, 2009, Sparks performed "Faith" at the Commander-in-Chief's Inaugural Ball hosted by President Barack Obama during the First inauguration of Barack Obama. Her second studio album, Battlefield was released in the United States on July 21, 2009. The album's title track was released as the lead single on May 25, 2009, and reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100. The song peaked in the top five in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In the United States, Battlefield debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200, peaking higher than her debut album's position of number ten. However, the album was notably unsuccessful compared to her debut, only selling 177,000 copies in the U.S and having failed to earn any chart certificates. In support of the album, Sparks opened for The Jonas Brothers on the North America leg of the Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009, starting on June 20, 2009. She also opened for Britney Spears on the second leg of her Circus Tour in North America, beginning on August 24, 2009. Sparks served as a replacement for Ciara. She opened with Kristinia DeBarge, Girlicious, and One Call. "S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", was released as the second single from Battlefield on September 15, 2009. The song topped the U.S Hot Dance Club Songs chart, becoming Sparks's first number one on the chart and peaked in the top fifteen in the United Kingdom. During this time, she recorded the duet, "Art of Love", with Australian artist Guy Sebastian for his fifth studio album, Like It Like That. The song reached the top ten in Australia and New Zealand and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The third single from Battlefield, "Don't Let It Go to Your Head", was released in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2010. In May 2010, Sparks embarked on her first headlining tour in the United States, the Battlefield Tour. It began on May 1, 2010, and ended on July 18, 2010, stopping in over 35 major cities in the United States. In support of the DVD/Blu-ray re-release of the Disney animated film, Beauty and the Beast, Sparks recorded a cover of the film's title track for the soundtrack. A music video for the song was released on October 18, 2010. CANNOTANSWER | S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", was released as the second single from Battlefield on September 15, 2009. | Jordin Sparks-Thomas (born December 22, 1989) is an American singer, songwriter and actress. She rose to fame in 2007 after winning the sixth season of American Idol at age 17, becoming the youngest winner in the series' history. Her self-titled debut studio album, released later that year, was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and has sold over two million copies worldwide. The album spawned the Billboard Hot 100 top-ten singles "Tattoo" and "No Air"; the latter, a collaboration with Chris Brown, is currently the third highest-selling single by any American Idol contestant, selling over three million digital copies in the United States. The song earned Sparks her first Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.
Sparks's second studio album, Battlefield (2009), debuted at number 7 on the Billboard 200 chart. Its title single reached number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, making Sparks the only American Idol contestant to have her first five singles reach the top 20 in the United States. The second single, "S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", became Sparks's first number one on the Hot Dance Club Play chart. Throughout her career, Sparks has received numerous accolades, including an NAACP Image Award, a BET Award, an American Music Award, a People's Choice Award and two Teen Choice Awards. In 2009, Billboard magazine ranked her as the 91st Artist of the 2000s Decade. In 2012, Sparks was ranked at number 92 on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Women in Music". As of February 2012, she has sold 1.3 million albums and 10.2 million singles in the United States alone, making her one of the most successful American Idol contestants of all time.
Following the release of Battlefield, Sparks ventured into acting, pursuing television and Broadway. She made her stage debut as Nina Rosario in the musical In The Heights (2010), and her feature film debut as the titular character in Sparkle (2012). Sparks has also released several perfumes, including Because of You... in 2010 as well as Fascinate and Ambition in 2012. After a five-year absence from music, she released a mixtape, #ByeFelicia (2014), under a new record deal with Louder Than Life/Red Associated Labels, a joint deal with Sony Music Entertainment. Sparks' R&B third studio album and most recent to date, Right Here Right Now (2015), saw smaller commercial success but received positive reviews from music critics.
Early life
Sparks was born in Phoenix, Arizona, to Jodi ( Wiedmann) Jackson and former professional American football player Phillippi Sparks. Jordin has a younger brother, Phillippi "PJ" Sparks Jr., who plays football at Arizona Christian University. Her father is of African-American, French, and Cherokee descent and her mother is of German, English, Scottish, and Norwegian descent. She grew up in the suburbs of Ridgewood, New Jersey, while her father played as a defensive back for the New York Giants. After living in New Jersey, Sparks attended Northwest Community Christian School in Phoenix through the eighth grade. Sparks attended Sandra Day O'Connor High School until 2006 when she was homeschooled by her grandmother, Pam Wiedmann, to better concentrate on her singing. Sparks is an evangelical Christian and attends Calvary Community Church in Phoenix. On her American Idol biography, she thanks her parents, grandparents, and God for her win. She won an award for best young artist of the year in Arizona three years in a row.
Career
2006: Career beginnings and American Idol
Before appearing on American Idol, Sparks participated in and won such talent competitions as Coca-Cola's Rising Star, the Gospel Music Association Academy's Overall Spotlight Award, America's Most Talented Kids, Colgate Country Showdown, and the 2006 Drug Free AZ Superstar Search. From the time Jordin was nine years old until her win as American Idol 2007, her maternal grandmother, Pam Wiedmann, managed her. Prior to Idol, Sparks frequently performed the national anthem at various local sporting events, notably for the Phoenix Suns, Arizona Cardinals, and Arizona Diamondbacks. Sparks also appeared with Alice Cooper in his 2004 Christmas show and toured with Christian contemporary singer Michael W. Smith in 2006. In 2006, Sparks was one of six winners of the Phoenix Torrid search for the "Next Plus Size Model". She was flown to California, where she was featured in Torrid ads and promotional pieces. A full-page ad for Torrid featuring Sparks ran in the December 2006 issue of Seventeen magazine.
In the summer of 2006, at the age of 16, Sparks auditioned twice for the sixth season of American Idol: once in Los Angeles but failed to make it past the first round; and again in Seattle after winning Arizona Idol, a talent competition conducted by Phoenix Fox station KSAZ-TV. The Seattle audition is the one seen in the January 17, 2007, broadcast of American Idol, in which she earned a "gold ticket" and the right to appear in the Hollywood Round. American Idol judge Randy Jackson made the offhand prediction that "Curly hair will win this year." While on the show, Sparks gained a loyal fan base known as "Sparkplugs". On May 23, 2007, at the age of 17, Sparks won the sixth season of American Idol. She remains the youngest winner in American Idol history. Cowell said, "Jordin was the most improved over the whole season – didn't start the best, but midway through this was the girl who suddenly got momentum." He included that "Young girl, likeable, and the singer won over the entertainer [Lewis]."
Four selected songs Sparks had performed on American Idol, including the season's coronation song, "This Is My Now", were made available on her self-titled EP, released on May 22, 2007, the day before the grand finale. The coronation song "This Is My Now" peaked at number fifteen on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Sparks's first top-fifteen hit on the chart. The following summer, Sparks took part in the American Idols LIVE! Tour 2007 from July 6 to September 23, 2007, along with other contestants in the top ten.
Since her win in 2007, Sparks has returned to Idol six times. She performed twice on the seventh season of American Idol, once on the Idol Gives Back results show singing "No Air" with Chris Brown and again with "One Step at a Time" on May 21, 2008, for the finale. She performed "Battlefield" on the May 13, 2009, episode of American Idol.
The following year, Sparks took part in a tribute to Simon Cowell with other former contestants at the ninth season finale on May 26, 2010. During the tenth season, Sparks performed her new song "I Am Woman" on the Top 4 results show. She appeared on the finale of the eleventh season singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" alongside that year's fourth-place contestant Hollie Cavanagh. Sparks was the most recent female to win the competition until the twelfth season. In a comedic clip on the finale, "We Were Sabotaged", the boys of the twelfth season realize that she was the "mastermind" behind the girls' sabotage because it was five years since a girl had won.
Performances/results
When Ryan Seacrest announced the results for this particular night, Sparks was declared safe placing in the top three.
Due to the Idol Gives Back performance, the Top 6 remained intact for another week.
2007–08: Jordin Sparks and breakthrough
After winning American Idol, Sparks signed to 19 Recordings/Jive Records, becoming the first Idol winner to join the label. On August 27, 2007, she released her debut single, "Tattoo", which peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Sparks's first top-ten hit on the chart. The song certified platinum in the United States and Australia. To date, "Tattoo" has sold over two million copies in the U.S.
Sparks released her self-titled debut studio album on November 20, 2007, which debuted at number ten on the Billboard 200. To date, it has sold over a million copies in the U.S and was certified platinum by the RIAA. "No Air", a duet with Chris Brown, was released as the second single from the album in February 2008. In the United States, the song peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 becoming Sparks's best-charting single to date. It was also her first song to appear on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, where it reached number four. To date, the song has sold over three million copies in the U.S, making Sparks the first American Idol contestant to reach the three million mark. It also became Brown's first song to hit three million. "No Air" also charted in Australia and New Zealand, where it reached number one, receiving platinum certifications in both countries.
On February 3, 2008, Sparks sang the National Anthem at Super Bowl XLII. She performed in a tribute to Aretha Franklin at the NAACP Awards in February, as well. She had previously performed in a tribute to Diana Ross in December 2007.
In support of the album, Sparks opened for Alicia Keys on the North America leg of her As I Am Tour, starting on April 19, 2008. Before the tour, a career-threatening throat injury forced Sparks to cancel a few weeks of the shows. Officials revealed she was suffering an acute vocal cord hemorrhage and was ordered strict vocal rest until the condition improved. Sparks was back on the road by April 30, 2008, and remained on the tour until June 18, 2008. Sparks later joined Keys for the tour leg in Australia and New Zealand in December 2008.
The album's third single, "One Step at a Time", was released in June 2008. It peaked at number seventeen on the Billboard Hot 100, giving Sparks her fourth top twenty hit on the chart. This makes Sparks the only American Idol contestant to have her first four singles reach the top twenty of the Hot 100. It also charted in the top twenty in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In New Zealand, the song reached number two and was certified gold by the RIANZ. In August 2008, Sparks co-headlined the Jesse & Jordin LIVE Tour with Jesse McCartney in the United States and Canada.
Sparks received two MTV Video Music Award nominations for Best Female Video for "No Air" and Best New Artist at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. While at the awards show, Sparks caused controversy by responding to a joke made by host Russell Brand during his opening monologue, in which he held up a silver ring, claiming to have relieved one of the Jonas Brothers of their virginity, saying he would "take them more seriously if they wore it (the ring) around their genitals". Sparks who also wears a promise ring began her introduction of T.I. and Rihanna by saying "It's not bad to wear a promise ring because not everybody, guy or girl, wants to be a slut." In response to the controversy over her "slut" remark, Sparks told Entertainment Weekly that she does not regret the remark, commenting that "I wish I would've worded it differently – that somebody who doesn't wear a promise ring isn't necessarily a slut – but I can't take it back now." At the 2008 American Music Awards, Sparks won the award for Favorite Artist in the Adult Contemporary Category.
2009–10: Battlefield
On January 20, 2009, Sparks performed "Faith" at the Commander-in-Chief's Inaugural Ball hosted by President Barack Obama during the First inauguration of Barack Obama. Her second studio album, Battlefield was released in the United States on July 21, 2009. The album's title track was released as the lead single on May 25, 2009, and reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100. The song peaked in the top five in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In the United States, Battlefield debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200, peaking higher than her debut album's position of number ten. However, the album was notably unsuccessful compared to her debut, only selling 177,000 copies in the U.S and having failed to earn any chart certificates.
In support of the album, Sparks opened for The Jonas Brothers on the North America leg of the Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009, starting on June 20, 2009. She also opened for Britney Spears on the second leg of her Circus Tour in North America, beginning on August 24, 2009. Sparks served as a replacement for Ciara. She opened with Kristinia DeBarge, Girlicious, and One Call.
"S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", was released as the second single from Battlefield on September 15, 2009. The song topped the U.S Hot Dance Club Songs chart, becoming Sparks's first number one on the chart and peaked in the top fifteen in the United Kingdom. During this time, she recorded the duet, "Art of Love", with Australian artist Guy Sebastian for his fifth studio album, Like It Like That. The song reached the top ten in Australia and New Zealand and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The third single from Battlefield, "Don't Let It Go to Your Head", was released in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2010.
In May 2010, Sparks embarked on her first headlining tour in the United States, the Battlefield Tour. It began on May 1, 2010, and ended on July 18, 2010, stopping in over 35 major cities in the United States. In support of the DVD/Blu-ray re-release of the Disney animated film, Beauty and the Beast, Sparks recorded a cover of the film's title track for the soundtrack. A music video for the song was released on October 18, 2010.
2010–12: Solo music hiatus, compilations and films
In March 2011, Sparks recorded a music video for a song called "The World I Knew" for the film, African Cats, which was released on April 22, 2011. She was featured on the Big Time Rush song "Count on You", and the show with the same name, "Big Time Sparks" that aired June 18, 2010.
On May 5, 2011, it was revealed that Sparks would release a non-album single, "I Am Woman". To support her new single, Sparks served as an opening act for the NKOTBSB summer tour. On May 12, 2011, Sparks performed "I Am Woman" on the American Idol Top 4 results show. It debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 at number eighty-two with 33,000 downloads sold. It also debuted on the US Billboard Digital Songs at number fifty-seven. Sparks performed "I Am Woman" on Regis and Kelly on June 14.
On June 16, 2011, Sparks had her first-ever bikini shoot for the cover of People's Most Amazing Bodies issue. When speaking about her weight loss and diet to Access Hollywood, Sparks said, "My diet has pretty much remained the same, like if I want a piece of bread, I'm gonna have a piece of bread, but I'm making healthier decisions like instead of a bag of chips for a snack, I'll see if I can find an apple. I've also upped my intake of vegetables and I'm drinking a lot more water."
Sparks stated in an August 2011 interview there was no scheduled release date for her third album which was still in production. A song, "You Gotta Want It", was to be part of an NFL compilation album, Official Gameday Music of the NFL Vol. 2. According to reports, the song would be available to download on iTunes and Amazon on September 27. The song was co-written by Chris Weaver and Matthew J. Rogers while being produced by Cash Money Records' Cool & Dre.
On October 7, 2011, RCA Music Group announced it was disbanding Jive Records along with Arista Records and J Records. With the shutdown, Sparks (and all other artists previously signed to these three labels) would release her future material (including her upcoming third studio album) on the RCA Records brand. On November 14, 2011, it was announced that Sparks had recorded an original song called "Angels Are Singing" as a part of ABC Family's "12 Dates of Christmas".
On February 29, 2012, Sparks's boyfriend Jason Derulo took to Twitter announcing the official remix of his single "It Girl" featuring Sparks. There was a video released with the remix, which showed home videos, of Derulo and Sparks together as well as pictures.
On September 12, 2011, it was announced that Sparks would be making her feature film debut playing the lead role in the music-themed pic Sparkle, a remake of the 1976 film inspired by the story of The Supremes. The remake was set in 1968 Detroit, during the rise of Motown. The story focused on the youngest sister, a music prodigy named Sparkle Williams (Sparks), and her struggle to become a star while overcoming issues that were tearing her family apart. R&B singer Aaliyah was originally tapped to star as Sparkle; however, following her death in a 2001 plane crash, production on the film, which was scheduled for 2002, had been derailed. Sparkle was filmed in the fall of 2011 over a two-month period. The movie, starring both Sparks and Houston, was released on August 17 in the United States. On May 21, 2012, "Celebrate", the last song Whitney Houston recorded with Sparks, premiered at RyanSeacrest.com. It was made available for digital download on iTunes on June 5. The song was featured on the Sparkle: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack album as the first official single. The accompanying music video for Celebrate was filmed on May 30, 2012. The video was shot over 2 days and was released on June 27. A sneak peek of the video premiered on entertainment tonight on June 4, 2012.
On July 24, 2012, it was officially announced that Sparks would star in her second film, an indie drama "'The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete'". The George Tillman Jr-directed film stars Jennifer Hudson, Sparks, Jeffrey Wright, and Anthony Mackie. Michael Starrbury wrote the script, which follows two inner-city youths left to fend for themselves over the summer after their mothers are taken away by the authorities. Production on the film began on July 23, 2012, in Brooklyn. Alicia Keys is the film's executive producer. The film is produced by Street State Pictures.
On August 9, 2012, Sparks stated in an interview with Billboard, that she had about seven songs set so far for her third album. Sparks stated "It's going to be different from what my fans have heard before. With (2009's) 'Battlefield' it was pop/rock and a little bit of pop/R&B, but I'm going for more of the R&B side now, so it's like R&B/pop instead of pop/R&B." In an interview with MTV, Sparks confirmed she had recorded a duet with Jason Derulo and it would be on the album and could serve as a potential single. Sparks performed on VH1 Divas 2012 with fellow singers Miley Cyrus, Kelly Rowland and Ciara. The show premiered on December 16, 2012. Sparks joined singers Ledisi and Melanie Fiona in a tribute to Whitney Houston.
2013–14: Left Behind and label change
In an October 2010 interview, Sparks revealed she had begun working on her third studio album. During an interview with Good Day New York in November 2010, Sparks confirmed she would be recording the album in New York and Arizona. In January 2011, it was reported that Sparks and John Legend were working on songs together in the studio.
In early May 2013, Sparks took to Twitter announcing that she and RCA Records had finally come to an agreement with releasing new material. Sparks asked her fans to email her their opinions and frustrations regarding the delay in the release of her third studio album. A few days following the meeting, Sparks announced that her new music would be released in the fall of 2013.
On July 22, 2013, it was announced that the first promotional track from her upcoming third studio album would be released on August 1, 2013. "Skipping a Beat" was officially released on August 1, 2013. The buzz single became available for download on August 13, 2013. Sparks was featured on Jason Derulo's third studio album, Tattoos, which was released on September 24, 2013, on "Vertigo". It was announced that Sparks's third album had officially been completed and was awaiting release. However, it was later announced that new music from Sparks would not be released until early 2014 due to timing issues with acting projects as well as placement issues within her label RCA.
On August 9, 2013, it was announced that Sparks had signed on to join the cast of the action science fiction-thriller film Left Behind. Sparks's character is named Shasta, but for the most part, her role was kept under wraps. One of the films, producers Paul Lalonde said that "She will be a passenger on a plane that the film's main character Captain Rayford Steele is piloting. Sparks will co-star alongside Nicolas Cage as Captain Rayford Steele, Chad Michael Murray as Cameron "Buck" Williams and Nicky Whelan as Hattie Durham. The film is set for release on October 3, 2014. The film's shooting began on August 9, 2013, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. On October 7, 2013, it was announced that Sparks would guest star in an upcoming episode in the fourteenth season of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Sparks played Alison Stone, a high school teacher who somehow found herself scared and covered in blood in a hotel room crime scene. The season episode, "Check In & Check Out" was set to air on November 20, 2013.
On December 9, 2013, Sparks partnered with Glade and the Young People's Chorus of New York City to release a brand new Christmas holiday anthem "This Is My Wish." From December 9 until December 31, 2013, the song was made available for free download through Glade's official website. Sparks made her first televised performance of the song on the same day on The Today Show.
After experiencing multiple delays in the release of Sparks's third album due to RCA refusing to put her in their roster, citing that her acting projects had prevented them from reaching a deal, Sparks was released from her contract from RCA records and eventually signed to Salaam Remi's new label imprint 'Louder than Life', a subsidiary of Sony Music. Remi had previously worked with Sparks on the Sparkle film soundtrack. As a result of the new deal, all the material Sparks had previously recorded for her third album under RCA has subsequently been scrapped and had since begun re-recording and writing new material for her third album since January 2014. An official announcement of Sparks's signing to the new label had only been released a year later in August 2014.
2014–2017: #ByeFelicia and Right Here Right Now
It was announced on May 8, 2014, that Sparks would be hosting the 2014 Billboard Music Awards 'Samsung Red Carpet', alongside Lance Bass and Ted Stryker. Sparks was also listed to present.
In an interview with AOL Radio News on May 30, 2014, Sparks announced that the first official single off her upcoming third studio album would have a summer 2014 release, with a fall 2014 album release. The album and single were expected to be released through RCA Records.
On August 15, 2014, Salaam Remi took to Instagram to preview the logo for his new label, Louder than Life, a subsidiary of Sony Music. Remi also announced that Sparks is now a part of the Louder than Life roster. In an article with Music Connection, Remi also announced he would be producing Sparks's upcoming album. During a promotional tour for Sparks's new movie, Left Behind, Sparks announced that she was in the finishing stages of her new album. Sparks announced that she is also no longer with her previous label, RCA Records. Sparks stated her single was due by the end of the year, with an album release in 2015. Sparks stated that she and her label were picking the first single, first look, and deciding on the album name.
On September 30, Sparks's label released a promotional single for Left Behind, "I Wish We'd All Been Ready", which became available on music outlets the same day.
On October 23, 2014, Remi hosted a music showcase featuring Sparks. Sparks showcased three songs, two of which were performed live. Sparks announced this was the first time she performed new music for people outside of the industry. On November 4, Sparks announced that the first single off her upcoming third album would be released in a two-week time frame. Sparks announcement to Lance Bass brought speculation that the single would be released on November 18, 2014. On November 23, Sparks announced during an interview at the American Music Awards that new music would be released on November 25, 2014. Following that announcement, Sparks posted a clip of a song, "How Bout Now", a remix of Drake's song. On November 24, Sparks followed up with an official release of "How Bout Now", which debuted on the 'LALeakers' SoundCloud page and website. Sparks also stated that the official release of her mixtape, #ByeFelicia, would be released the following day at 11:11 PST.
On November 25, it was announced that Sparks would release her third studio album, Right Here Right Now, in early 2015, under Louder Than Life/Red Associated Labels, subsidiaries of Sony Music Entertainment, in conjunction with 19 Recordings.
On December 2, the song "It Ain't You" from Sparks's mixtape #ByeFelicia, became available for pre-order on major music markets and was also uploaded to Sparks's Vevo YouTube page. The single was released on December 15, 2014, as a promotional single and first off from Sparks's third album. On December 16, Right Here Right Now became available for pre-order on Sparks's official website. On February 11, the first single for Sparks's album Double Tap featuring 2Chainz became available for pre-order. The single was released on March 2, 2015, and the music video was released on March 10, 2015.
Sparks performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the 2015 Indianapolis 500.
In May 2016, Sparks was cast in the feature film God Bless the Broken Road, based on the song of the same name. While originally announced for a 2016 release, as of June 2018 it has yet to find a distributor and has not been released.
On May 20, 2016, Sparks split ways with Louder Than Life record company.
On October 2, 2016, Food Network aired a pilot episode of Sparks's new potential series Sugar and Sparks, focusing on her dream to own her own bakery and mastering the baking industry with the help of Duff Goldman. The first episode, "Keep it Simple, Sparks", was produced by Ryan Seacrest.
Sparks joined Thomas Rhett and Molly Sims in judging Miss America 2018.
2018–present: Reality show and return to music
On February 12, 2018, Sparks told OK magazine in an interview that she was recording her fourth album. Sparks, who is currently unsigned, said she had finished five to six songs for the album. She drew inspiration from her new marriage and son.
In May 2018, Sparks and Dana began production on their reality show. She said "they [will] get to see just Jordin. Drop the Sparks and you just get to see Jordin, and you get to see Dana, and you get to see both of us together and how we interact". She continued, saying "I'm super excited for people to see it. It's been a little exhausting. I'm not used to cameras all in my face all the time, but I think it's really going to show a good side of us." On August 28, it was announced that the pilot for Sparks' special Jordin Sparks: A Baby Story would air on September 6 on Lifetime.
In August 2018, KIN Network released a web series, Heart of Batter with Jordin Sparks, focused on Sparks's love for baking.
In 2019, Sparks released a joint EP with R&B singer Elijah Blake, 1990 Forever.
Sparks was cast as a Broadway replacement for Jenna Hunterson in Waitress, from September 16 to November 24, 2019.
On June 2, 2020, after over five years of not releasing any solo music, Sparks returned with the single "Unknown". On July 31, 2020, she released another new single, "Red Sangria".
In 2021, Sparks competed on The Masked Dancer as "Exotic Bird" and finished in fifth place.
Personal life
In April 2008, Sparks suffered acute vocal cord hemorrhaging due to overusing her vocal cords. Doctors ordered vocal rest, forcing Sparks to cancel appearances, including scheduled cameos on Alicia Keys's tour. Doctors cleared Sparks a month later, letting her rejoin the tour.
Sparks and Jason Derulo dated for three years and ended their relationship in 2014.
On July 17, 2017, Sparks married Dana Isaiah (born: Dana Isaiah Thomas), a fitness model, in Hawaii. In November 2017 People published news of her pregnancy. On May 2, 2018, Sparks gave birth to her first child, a son.
Other ventures
Endorsements
In April 2008, it was announced that Sparks would team up with cosmetics company, Avon, to become a spokesperson for the teen-focused line Mark. In November 2008, Sparks teamed up with Wet Seal to create her own clothing line 'Sparks', The line launched on November 19, 2008, featuring sizes XS to XL. Sparks said, "I am so excited that Wet Seal and I have been able to create a line of clothing that will appeal to more girls than ever before."
In October 2010, Sparks released her debut fragrance, Because of You... This fragrance was exclusively distributed at first by Dots Department Stores, but by November was made available to other retail stores. Sparks wanted this product to be affordable for her fans, yet still high end. "When I was starting this project, I really wanted it to be affordable. I looked at some other celebrity fragrances, and they were like $80. Even now, I look at a fragrance that's $80, and I can't bring myself to spend that much." In March 2012, due to the success of her first fragrance, Sparks released her second fragrance, Fascinate, exclusively with Dots Fashions as a sister scent to her first. It was announced on October 22, 2012, that Sparks was releasing her third fragrance Ambition. In an interview Sparks said; "Right now, I feel like I can take on the world. Ambition is the perfect word for where I am in my life right now". Her new scent is available in retail stores such as Bon-Ton. It was released in stores and online on November 8, 2012, before Sparks presented the fragrance at an official launch party in Milwaukee on December 1, 2012.
Acting and Broadway
In 2009, she made her acting debut on Disney's The Suite Life on Deck, guest starring as herself in the "Crossing Jordin" episode. The episode aired on October 23, 2009. Sparks also guest starred on the hit Nickelodeon show, Big Time Rush. The episode aired on June 18, 2010. On May 3, 2010, it was announced that Sparks would join the cast of the Broadway show In the Heights as Nina Rosario. Sparks took part in the production from August 19 through November 14 for a consecutive 12 weeks. In addition, Sparks did a voice over on Team Umizoomi as the Blue Mermaid. The episode aired on May 13, 2011.
In 2012, Sparks made her film debut in Sparkle. Following the release of Sparkle in 2012, Sparks began auditioning for several television and film roles while also receiving scripts from companies interested in having her a part of their projects. First of which was an indie drama film, The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete, which follows two inner-city youths left to fend for themselves over the summer after their mothers are taken away by the authorities. Sparks plays Alice a neighbor and friend of character Mister. She will also be in the film, The Grace of Jake, which follows ex-inmate and wandering musician Jake who travels to a small town in Arkansas intent on exacting revenge from his father, but begins to unravel a complicated family history as he befriends the locals. The film was in post production and was set for release on October 3, 2014. Sparks plays Nicole Lovely the preachers daughter.
Sparks played the part of Abby in Dear Secret Santa, a Lifetime Television romantic Christmas film that premiered on November 30, 2013. Sparks will play Shasta Carvell in Left Behind, an apocalyptic thriller, based on the novel series of the same name. The film is a reboot of Left Behind: The Movie, which is based on the idea of a pre-tribulation Rapture. In November 2013, Sparks guest starred on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Sparks plays Alison Stone, a high school teacher who somehow finds herself scared and covered in blood in a hotel room crime scene. The season episode, "Check In & Check Out" aired on November 20, 2013.
Philanthropy
In 2007, Sparks was asked by a relative who works for SOS Children's Villages in Florida to design a denim jacket festooned with Swarovski Crystal to support orphans. In February 2008, Sparks traveled to Ghana. She was part of the delegation of (then presidential couple) George and Laura Bush to help with Malaria No More, an organization with a goal to end malaria deaths in Africa by 2015. Sparks joined Laura Bush at the Maamobi Polyclinic, where the Bush donated a number of treated bed nets to local female traders in order to help combat the scourge of malaria in Ghana. While there, Sparks sang "Amazing Grace" to the durbar of chieftains who had gathered at the venue to give audience to Laura Bush. Sparks said, "Traveling to Ghana with Malaria No More gives me the incredible opportunity to see for myself what a difference a simple mosquito net can make in the life of a child."
In 2008, Sparks supported Dosomething.org's Do Something 101 campaign by filming a public service announcement explaining the nationwide school supplies drive project. She further supported the campaign by helping out at the Do Something 101 School Supply Volunteer Event held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
On May 20, 2009, Sparks became an endorser for the Got Milk? campaign, an American advertising campaign encouraging the consumption of cow's milk. On September 17, 2009, Sparks took part in the VH1 Divas special, a concert created to support the channel's Save The Music Foundation. The concert was held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York where Sparks performed the second single from her Battlefield album, S.O.S. (Let the Music Play), as well as "A Broken Wing" with Martina McBride. In February 2010, Sparks was one of the many artists who contributed to "We Are the World 25 for Haiti", a charity single for the victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Sparks teamed up with Pennyroyal Silver creator and designer, Tim Foster, to create her very own necklace design for the company's signature collection. Proceeds of the necklace funded medical units in Haiti.
On July 28, 2011, Sparks performed a live surprise concert in Times Square. Sparks was named the "VH1 Save The Music Foundation Ambassador" in 2011. It was announced on November 9, 2011, that Sparks would be a 'Vh1 Save the Music Ambassador' again for 2012. Sparks was joined by fellow American Idol contestant Chris Daughtry, Lupe Fiasco, Katy Perry and others. During Sparks segment as ambassador she hosted a surprise concert series in Times Square. Sparks and VH1 gave fans the opportunity to submit an essay on 'What Music Means to you?'. The winner of the essay contest won a trip for two, to New York City to stand alongside of Sparks at her pop-up concert. The winner chosen was Deavan Ebersole, from Hagerstown, Maryland.
Sparks has also shown support for Little Kids Rock, a national non-profit that works to restore and revitalize music education in disadvantaged US public schools, by donating items for auction to raise money for the organization.
I'm M.A.D. Are You? campaign
Initiated by Sparks and her younger brother P.J. in 2008, the I'm M.A.D. Are You? campaign cultivates community advocacy and volunteerism among teens and young adults. M.A.D. stands for Making A Difference. On February 3, 2010, Sparks and David Archuleta performed at the "Jordin Sparks Experience", held at the Eden Roc Renaissance Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. All proceeds raised by the event went to a number of charities, including the Miami Children's Hospital Foundation. Since 2008, Sparks and the campaign travels to the Super Bowls designated city to host a week of charitable events, to raise money for several charities. In June 2010, the "Thumbs Up to X the TXT" pledge campaign, established by Allstate, made its way to Sparks's Battlefield Tour, presented by Mike & Ike to encourage teens and their families not to text while driving. Fans at Sparks's concerts made a pledge not to text and drive by adding their thumbprint to a traveling banner at each of her shows. The campaign began at Sparks's Battlefield Tour on June 3, 2010, and ended on July 18, 2010. Sparks is the main spokesperson for the "I'm M.A.D., Are You?" campaign. She also supports Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, which helps to raise money for children with cancer. Sparks traveled to Louisiana in June 2010 to visit the Gulf Coast oil spill with the Audubon Society to view the effects of the oil spill on the wildlife and marshes.
Since 2008, the campaign has raised over $500,000.
Discography
Studio albums
Jordin Sparks (2007)
Battlefield (2009)
Right Here Right Now (2015)
Cider & Hennessy (2020)
EPs and mixtapes
2006: For Now
2007: Jordin Sparks (EP)
2014: #ByeFelicia
2019: 1990 Forever (EP) (with Elijah Blake)
2020: Sounds Like Me (EP)
Tours
Headlining
2010: Battlefield Tour
Joint tours
2007: American Idols LIVE! Tour 2007
2008: Jesse & Jordin Live
Opening act
2008: As I Am Tour
2009: Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009
2009: The Circus Starring Britney Spears
2011: NKOTBSB Tour
See also
List of Idols winners
Awards and nominations
Filmography
Television
Film
Broadway
References
External links
Jordin Sparks in In the Heights
1989 births
Living people
19 Recordings artists
21st-century American actresses
21st-century American businesspeople
21st-century Protestants
Actresses from Phoenix, Arizona
African-American actresses
African-American businesspeople
African-American Christians
African-American female models
African-American women singer-songwriters
American women pop singers
American child singers
American cosmetics businesspeople
American evangelicals
American fashion businesspeople
American Idol winners
Businesspeople from Arizona
Jive Records artists
Musicians from Glendale, Arizona
Musicians from Phoenix, Arizona
RCA Records artists
American television actresses
American film actresses
American voice actresses
American stage actresses
American child actresses
Guitarists from Arizona
21st-century African-American women singers
21st-century American businesswomen
21st-century American women guitarists
21st-century American guitarists
Singer-songwriters from Arizona | true | [
"No Science is an electronic music duo composed of Swedish producers and composers Johan Skugge and Jukka Rintamäki. They are best known for composing the soundtrack of the first-person shooter video games Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4.\n\nHistory\n\nJukka Rintamäki is an artist who has worked as a bassist, singer and songwriter of the band Silverbullit from Gothenburg. Johan Skugge was previously in the band Yvonne. The two formed the duo No Science in 2010 and used a combination of synth, drum machine and steel guitar. They have been working together since creating the music for the computer game Battlefield 3 in 2010. They also composed the soundtrack for the sequel, Battlefield 4. \nThe duo's debut single as No Science, Magnificent Arp was released in late 2013. In February 2015 the single \"Bits\" was released featuring a remix by Swedish artist Jay-Jay Johanson. No Science's first album Lucky Resident was released in March 2015, and includes an appearance by El Perro del Mar.\n\nDiscography\n\nAlbums\n Lucky Resident (2015)\n\nSingles\n \"Familiar Skies\" (2015)\n \"Bits\" (2015)\n \"Magnificent Arp\" (2013)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n Official page at BLVVD\n jukkarintamaki.com\n\nSwedish electronic musicians\nLiving people\nYear of birth missing (living people)",
"Panzer AG is the name of an aggrotech/industrial rock side-project by Norwegian Andy LaPlegua, the founder of futurepop band Icon of Coil. Formed in 2004, Panzer AG's sound combines Power noise, Industrial, Trance, Rock and other genres to create a caustic but danceable form of music.\n\nHistory\n\nAfter experimenting with a variety of music styles, such as Futurepop with Icon of Coil, as well as aggrotech, power noise and industrial with Combichrist, LaPlegua furthered his sound by increasing the aggressiveness of both his lyrical content and his music. As well, where Icon Of Coil is purely Electronica, and Combichrist dabbles a tad with Industrial Rock, Panzer AG combines elements of industrial music, Trance Music and Hard rock. The result was the full-length album, This Is My Battlefield on the Metropolis Records label.\n\nWith the success of This Is My Battlefield, Panzer AG began working on a follow-up album, which was entitled Your World Is Burning, which was released in 2006. A slight departure in style from This Is My Battlefield, it is said to have been \"incorporating more of a 'Pretty Hate Machine era' industrial rock feel.\" The album peaked at #2 on the German Alternative Charts (DAC) and ranked #23 on the DAC Top Albums of 2006.\n\nDiscography\n This Is My Battlefield – Metropolis Records 2004\n Your World Is Burning – Metropolis Records 2006\n\nSee also\n\nAndy LaPlegua\nCombichrist\nIcon of Coil\n\nExternal links \n Metropolis Records' website\n Panzer AG's MySpace page\n\nReferences\n\nElectro-industrial music groups\nMetropolis Records artists"
] |
[
"Jordin Sparks",
"2009-10: Battlefield",
"Was Battlefield the name of an album?",
"S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)\", was released as the second single from Battlefield on September 15, 2009."
] | C_2983bbd8348943f5b4f6a1034993d01a_1 | What singles were on this album? | 2 | What other singles were on Battlefield? | Jordin Sparks | On January 20, 2009, Sparks performed "Faith" at the Commander-in-Chief's Inaugural Ball hosted by President Barack Obama during the First inauguration of Barack Obama. Her second studio album, Battlefield was released in the United States on July 21, 2009. The album's title track was released as the lead single on May 25, 2009, and reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100. The song peaked in the top five in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In the United States, Battlefield debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200, peaking higher than her debut album's position of number ten. However, the album was notably unsuccessful compared to her debut, only selling 177,000 copies in the U.S and having failed to earn any chart certificates. In support of the album, Sparks opened for The Jonas Brothers on the North America leg of the Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009, starting on June 20, 2009. She also opened for Britney Spears on the second leg of her Circus Tour in North America, beginning on August 24, 2009. Sparks served as a replacement for Ciara. She opened with Kristinia DeBarge, Girlicious, and One Call. "S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", was released as the second single from Battlefield on September 15, 2009. The song topped the U.S Hot Dance Club Songs chart, becoming Sparks's first number one on the chart and peaked in the top fifteen in the United Kingdom. During this time, she recorded the duet, "Art of Love", with Australian artist Guy Sebastian for his fifth studio album, Like It Like That. The song reached the top ten in Australia and New Zealand and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The third single from Battlefield, "Don't Let It Go to Your Head", was released in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2010. In May 2010, Sparks embarked on her first headlining tour in the United States, the Battlefield Tour. It began on May 1, 2010, and ended on July 18, 2010, stopping in over 35 major cities in the United States. In support of the DVD/Blu-ray re-release of the Disney animated film, Beauty and the Beast, Sparks recorded a cover of the film's title track for the soundtrack. A music video for the song was released on October 18, 2010. CANNOTANSWER | The third single from Battlefield, "Don't Let It Go to Your Head", | Jordin Sparks-Thomas (born December 22, 1989) is an American singer, songwriter and actress. She rose to fame in 2007 after winning the sixth season of American Idol at age 17, becoming the youngest winner in the series' history. Her self-titled debut studio album, released later that year, was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and has sold over two million copies worldwide. The album spawned the Billboard Hot 100 top-ten singles "Tattoo" and "No Air"; the latter, a collaboration with Chris Brown, is currently the third highest-selling single by any American Idol contestant, selling over three million digital copies in the United States. The song earned Sparks her first Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.
Sparks's second studio album, Battlefield (2009), debuted at number 7 on the Billboard 200 chart. Its title single reached number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, making Sparks the only American Idol contestant to have her first five singles reach the top 20 in the United States. The second single, "S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", became Sparks's first number one on the Hot Dance Club Play chart. Throughout her career, Sparks has received numerous accolades, including an NAACP Image Award, a BET Award, an American Music Award, a People's Choice Award and two Teen Choice Awards. In 2009, Billboard magazine ranked her as the 91st Artist of the 2000s Decade. In 2012, Sparks was ranked at number 92 on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Women in Music". As of February 2012, she has sold 1.3 million albums and 10.2 million singles in the United States alone, making her one of the most successful American Idol contestants of all time.
Following the release of Battlefield, Sparks ventured into acting, pursuing television and Broadway. She made her stage debut as Nina Rosario in the musical In The Heights (2010), and her feature film debut as the titular character in Sparkle (2012). Sparks has also released several perfumes, including Because of You... in 2010 as well as Fascinate and Ambition in 2012. After a five-year absence from music, she released a mixtape, #ByeFelicia (2014), under a new record deal with Louder Than Life/Red Associated Labels, a joint deal with Sony Music Entertainment. Sparks' R&B third studio album and most recent to date, Right Here Right Now (2015), saw smaller commercial success but received positive reviews from music critics.
Early life
Sparks was born in Phoenix, Arizona, to Jodi ( Wiedmann) Jackson and former professional American football player Phillippi Sparks. Jordin has a younger brother, Phillippi "PJ" Sparks Jr., who plays football at Arizona Christian University. Her father is of African-American, French, and Cherokee descent and her mother is of German, English, Scottish, and Norwegian descent. She grew up in the suburbs of Ridgewood, New Jersey, while her father played as a defensive back for the New York Giants. After living in New Jersey, Sparks attended Northwest Community Christian School in Phoenix through the eighth grade. Sparks attended Sandra Day O'Connor High School until 2006 when she was homeschooled by her grandmother, Pam Wiedmann, to better concentrate on her singing. Sparks is an evangelical Christian and attends Calvary Community Church in Phoenix. On her American Idol biography, she thanks her parents, grandparents, and God for her win. She won an award for best young artist of the year in Arizona three years in a row.
Career
2006: Career beginnings and American Idol
Before appearing on American Idol, Sparks participated in and won such talent competitions as Coca-Cola's Rising Star, the Gospel Music Association Academy's Overall Spotlight Award, America's Most Talented Kids, Colgate Country Showdown, and the 2006 Drug Free AZ Superstar Search. From the time Jordin was nine years old until her win as American Idol 2007, her maternal grandmother, Pam Wiedmann, managed her. Prior to Idol, Sparks frequently performed the national anthem at various local sporting events, notably for the Phoenix Suns, Arizona Cardinals, and Arizona Diamondbacks. Sparks also appeared with Alice Cooper in his 2004 Christmas show and toured with Christian contemporary singer Michael W. Smith in 2006. In 2006, Sparks was one of six winners of the Phoenix Torrid search for the "Next Plus Size Model". She was flown to California, where she was featured in Torrid ads and promotional pieces. A full-page ad for Torrid featuring Sparks ran in the December 2006 issue of Seventeen magazine.
In the summer of 2006, at the age of 16, Sparks auditioned twice for the sixth season of American Idol: once in Los Angeles but failed to make it past the first round; and again in Seattle after winning Arizona Idol, a talent competition conducted by Phoenix Fox station KSAZ-TV. The Seattle audition is the one seen in the January 17, 2007, broadcast of American Idol, in which she earned a "gold ticket" and the right to appear in the Hollywood Round. American Idol judge Randy Jackson made the offhand prediction that "Curly hair will win this year." While on the show, Sparks gained a loyal fan base known as "Sparkplugs". On May 23, 2007, at the age of 17, Sparks won the sixth season of American Idol. She remains the youngest winner in American Idol history. Cowell said, "Jordin was the most improved over the whole season – didn't start the best, but midway through this was the girl who suddenly got momentum." He included that "Young girl, likeable, and the singer won over the entertainer [Lewis]."
Four selected songs Sparks had performed on American Idol, including the season's coronation song, "This Is My Now", were made available on her self-titled EP, released on May 22, 2007, the day before the grand finale. The coronation song "This Is My Now" peaked at number fifteen on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Sparks's first top-fifteen hit on the chart. The following summer, Sparks took part in the American Idols LIVE! Tour 2007 from July 6 to September 23, 2007, along with other contestants in the top ten.
Since her win in 2007, Sparks has returned to Idol six times. She performed twice on the seventh season of American Idol, once on the Idol Gives Back results show singing "No Air" with Chris Brown and again with "One Step at a Time" on May 21, 2008, for the finale. She performed "Battlefield" on the May 13, 2009, episode of American Idol.
The following year, Sparks took part in a tribute to Simon Cowell with other former contestants at the ninth season finale on May 26, 2010. During the tenth season, Sparks performed her new song "I Am Woman" on the Top 4 results show. She appeared on the finale of the eleventh season singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" alongside that year's fourth-place contestant Hollie Cavanagh. Sparks was the most recent female to win the competition until the twelfth season. In a comedic clip on the finale, "We Were Sabotaged", the boys of the twelfth season realize that she was the "mastermind" behind the girls' sabotage because it was five years since a girl had won.
Performances/results
When Ryan Seacrest announced the results for this particular night, Sparks was declared safe placing in the top three.
Due to the Idol Gives Back performance, the Top 6 remained intact for another week.
2007–08: Jordin Sparks and breakthrough
After winning American Idol, Sparks signed to 19 Recordings/Jive Records, becoming the first Idol winner to join the label. On August 27, 2007, she released her debut single, "Tattoo", which peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Sparks's first top-ten hit on the chart. The song certified platinum in the United States and Australia. To date, "Tattoo" has sold over two million copies in the U.S.
Sparks released her self-titled debut studio album on November 20, 2007, which debuted at number ten on the Billboard 200. To date, it has sold over a million copies in the U.S and was certified platinum by the RIAA. "No Air", a duet with Chris Brown, was released as the second single from the album in February 2008. In the United States, the song peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 becoming Sparks's best-charting single to date. It was also her first song to appear on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, where it reached number four. To date, the song has sold over three million copies in the U.S, making Sparks the first American Idol contestant to reach the three million mark. It also became Brown's first song to hit three million. "No Air" also charted in Australia and New Zealand, where it reached number one, receiving platinum certifications in both countries.
On February 3, 2008, Sparks sang the National Anthem at Super Bowl XLII. She performed in a tribute to Aretha Franklin at the NAACP Awards in February, as well. She had previously performed in a tribute to Diana Ross in December 2007.
In support of the album, Sparks opened for Alicia Keys on the North America leg of her As I Am Tour, starting on April 19, 2008. Before the tour, a career-threatening throat injury forced Sparks to cancel a few weeks of the shows. Officials revealed she was suffering an acute vocal cord hemorrhage and was ordered strict vocal rest until the condition improved. Sparks was back on the road by April 30, 2008, and remained on the tour until June 18, 2008. Sparks later joined Keys for the tour leg in Australia and New Zealand in December 2008.
The album's third single, "One Step at a Time", was released in June 2008. It peaked at number seventeen on the Billboard Hot 100, giving Sparks her fourth top twenty hit on the chart. This makes Sparks the only American Idol contestant to have her first four singles reach the top twenty of the Hot 100. It also charted in the top twenty in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In New Zealand, the song reached number two and was certified gold by the RIANZ. In August 2008, Sparks co-headlined the Jesse & Jordin LIVE Tour with Jesse McCartney in the United States and Canada.
Sparks received two MTV Video Music Award nominations for Best Female Video for "No Air" and Best New Artist at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. While at the awards show, Sparks caused controversy by responding to a joke made by host Russell Brand during his opening monologue, in which he held up a silver ring, claiming to have relieved one of the Jonas Brothers of their virginity, saying he would "take them more seriously if they wore it (the ring) around their genitals". Sparks who also wears a promise ring began her introduction of T.I. and Rihanna by saying "It's not bad to wear a promise ring because not everybody, guy or girl, wants to be a slut." In response to the controversy over her "slut" remark, Sparks told Entertainment Weekly that she does not regret the remark, commenting that "I wish I would've worded it differently – that somebody who doesn't wear a promise ring isn't necessarily a slut – but I can't take it back now." At the 2008 American Music Awards, Sparks won the award for Favorite Artist in the Adult Contemporary Category.
2009–10: Battlefield
On January 20, 2009, Sparks performed "Faith" at the Commander-in-Chief's Inaugural Ball hosted by President Barack Obama during the First inauguration of Barack Obama. Her second studio album, Battlefield was released in the United States on July 21, 2009. The album's title track was released as the lead single on May 25, 2009, and reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100. The song peaked in the top five in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In the United States, Battlefield debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200, peaking higher than her debut album's position of number ten. However, the album was notably unsuccessful compared to her debut, only selling 177,000 copies in the U.S and having failed to earn any chart certificates.
In support of the album, Sparks opened for The Jonas Brothers on the North America leg of the Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009, starting on June 20, 2009. She also opened for Britney Spears on the second leg of her Circus Tour in North America, beginning on August 24, 2009. Sparks served as a replacement for Ciara. She opened with Kristinia DeBarge, Girlicious, and One Call.
"S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", was released as the second single from Battlefield on September 15, 2009. The song topped the U.S Hot Dance Club Songs chart, becoming Sparks's first number one on the chart and peaked in the top fifteen in the United Kingdom. During this time, she recorded the duet, "Art of Love", with Australian artist Guy Sebastian for his fifth studio album, Like It Like That. The song reached the top ten in Australia and New Zealand and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The third single from Battlefield, "Don't Let It Go to Your Head", was released in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2010.
In May 2010, Sparks embarked on her first headlining tour in the United States, the Battlefield Tour. It began on May 1, 2010, and ended on July 18, 2010, stopping in over 35 major cities in the United States. In support of the DVD/Blu-ray re-release of the Disney animated film, Beauty and the Beast, Sparks recorded a cover of the film's title track for the soundtrack. A music video for the song was released on October 18, 2010.
2010–12: Solo music hiatus, compilations and films
In March 2011, Sparks recorded a music video for a song called "The World I Knew" for the film, African Cats, which was released on April 22, 2011. She was featured on the Big Time Rush song "Count on You", and the show with the same name, "Big Time Sparks" that aired June 18, 2010.
On May 5, 2011, it was revealed that Sparks would release a non-album single, "I Am Woman". To support her new single, Sparks served as an opening act for the NKOTBSB summer tour. On May 12, 2011, Sparks performed "I Am Woman" on the American Idol Top 4 results show. It debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 at number eighty-two with 33,000 downloads sold. It also debuted on the US Billboard Digital Songs at number fifty-seven. Sparks performed "I Am Woman" on Regis and Kelly on June 14.
On June 16, 2011, Sparks had her first-ever bikini shoot for the cover of People's Most Amazing Bodies issue. When speaking about her weight loss and diet to Access Hollywood, Sparks said, "My diet has pretty much remained the same, like if I want a piece of bread, I'm gonna have a piece of bread, but I'm making healthier decisions like instead of a bag of chips for a snack, I'll see if I can find an apple. I've also upped my intake of vegetables and I'm drinking a lot more water."
Sparks stated in an August 2011 interview there was no scheduled release date for her third album which was still in production. A song, "You Gotta Want It", was to be part of an NFL compilation album, Official Gameday Music of the NFL Vol. 2. According to reports, the song would be available to download on iTunes and Amazon on September 27. The song was co-written by Chris Weaver and Matthew J. Rogers while being produced by Cash Money Records' Cool & Dre.
On October 7, 2011, RCA Music Group announced it was disbanding Jive Records along with Arista Records and J Records. With the shutdown, Sparks (and all other artists previously signed to these three labels) would release her future material (including her upcoming third studio album) on the RCA Records brand. On November 14, 2011, it was announced that Sparks had recorded an original song called "Angels Are Singing" as a part of ABC Family's "12 Dates of Christmas".
On February 29, 2012, Sparks's boyfriend Jason Derulo took to Twitter announcing the official remix of his single "It Girl" featuring Sparks. There was a video released with the remix, which showed home videos, of Derulo and Sparks together as well as pictures.
On September 12, 2011, it was announced that Sparks would be making her feature film debut playing the lead role in the music-themed pic Sparkle, a remake of the 1976 film inspired by the story of The Supremes. The remake was set in 1968 Detroit, during the rise of Motown. The story focused on the youngest sister, a music prodigy named Sparkle Williams (Sparks), and her struggle to become a star while overcoming issues that were tearing her family apart. R&B singer Aaliyah was originally tapped to star as Sparkle; however, following her death in a 2001 plane crash, production on the film, which was scheduled for 2002, had been derailed. Sparkle was filmed in the fall of 2011 over a two-month period. The movie, starring both Sparks and Houston, was released on August 17 in the United States. On May 21, 2012, "Celebrate", the last song Whitney Houston recorded with Sparks, premiered at RyanSeacrest.com. It was made available for digital download on iTunes on June 5. The song was featured on the Sparkle: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack album as the first official single. The accompanying music video for Celebrate was filmed on May 30, 2012. The video was shot over 2 days and was released on June 27. A sneak peek of the video premiered on entertainment tonight on June 4, 2012.
On July 24, 2012, it was officially announced that Sparks would star in her second film, an indie drama "'The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete'". The George Tillman Jr-directed film stars Jennifer Hudson, Sparks, Jeffrey Wright, and Anthony Mackie. Michael Starrbury wrote the script, which follows two inner-city youths left to fend for themselves over the summer after their mothers are taken away by the authorities. Production on the film began on July 23, 2012, in Brooklyn. Alicia Keys is the film's executive producer. The film is produced by Street State Pictures.
On August 9, 2012, Sparks stated in an interview with Billboard, that she had about seven songs set so far for her third album. Sparks stated "It's going to be different from what my fans have heard before. With (2009's) 'Battlefield' it was pop/rock and a little bit of pop/R&B, but I'm going for more of the R&B side now, so it's like R&B/pop instead of pop/R&B." In an interview with MTV, Sparks confirmed she had recorded a duet with Jason Derulo and it would be on the album and could serve as a potential single. Sparks performed on VH1 Divas 2012 with fellow singers Miley Cyrus, Kelly Rowland and Ciara. The show premiered on December 16, 2012. Sparks joined singers Ledisi and Melanie Fiona in a tribute to Whitney Houston.
2013–14: Left Behind and label change
In an October 2010 interview, Sparks revealed she had begun working on her third studio album. During an interview with Good Day New York in November 2010, Sparks confirmed she would be recording the album in New York and Arizona. In January 2011, it was reported that Sparks and John Legend were working on songs together in the studio.
In early May 2013, Sparks took to Twitter announcing that she and RCA Records had finally come to an agreement with releasing new material. Sparks asked her fans to email her their opinions and frustrations regarding the delay in the release of her third studio album. A few days following the meeting, Sparks announced that her new music would be released in the fall of 2013.
On July 22, 2013, it was announced that the first promotional track from her upcoming third studio album would be released on August 1, 2013. "Skipping a Beat" was officially released on August 1, 2013. The buzz single became available for download on August 13, 2013. Sparks was featured on Jason Derulo's third studio album, Tattoos, which was released on September 24, 2013, on "Vertigo". It was announced that Sparks's third album had officially been completed and was awaiting release. However, it was later announced that new music from Sparks would not be released until early 2014 due to timing issues with acting projects as well as placement issues within her label RCA.
On August 9, 2013, it was announced that Sparks had signed on to join the cast of the action science fiction-thriller film Left Behind. Sparks's character is named Shasta, but for the most part, her role was kept under wraps. One of the films, producers Paul Lalonde said that "She will be a passenger on a plane that the film's main character Captain Rayford Steele is piloting. Sparks will co-star alongside Nicolas Cage as Captain Rayford Steele, Chad Michael Murray as Cameron "Buck" Williams and Nicky Whelan as Hattie Durham. The film is set for release on October 3, 2014. The film's shooting began on August 9, 2013, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. On October 7, 2013, it was announced that Sparks would guest star in an upcoming episode in the fourteenth season of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Sparks played Alison Stone, a high school teacher who somehow found herself scared and covered in blood in a hotel room crime scene. The season episode, "Check In & Check Out" was set to air on November 20, 2013.
On December 9, 2013, Sparks partnered with Glade and the Young People's Chorus of New York City to release a brand new Christmas holiday anthem "This Is My Wish." From December 9 until December 31, 2013, the song was made available for free download through Glade's official website. Sparks made her first televised performance of the song on the same day on The Today Show.
After experiencing multiple delays in the release of Sparks's third album due to RCA refusing to put her in their roster, citing that her acting projects had prevented them from reaching a deal, Sparks was released from her contract from RCA records and eventually signed to Salaam Remi's new label imprint 'Louder than Life', a subsidiary of Sony Music. Remi had previously worked with Sparks on the Sparkle film soundtrack. As a result of the new deal, all the material Sparks had previously recorded for her third album under RCA has subsequently been scrapped and had since begun re-recording and writing new material for her third album since January 2014. An official announcement of Sparks's signing to the new label had only been released a year later in August 2014.
2014–2017: #ByeFelicia and Right Here Right Now
It was announced on May 8, 2014, that Sparks would be hosting the 2014 Billboard Music Awards 'Samsung Red Carpet', alongside Lance Bass and Ted Stryker. Sparks was also listed to present.
In an interview with AOL Radio News on May 30, 2014, Sparks announced that the first official single off her upcoming third studio album would have a summer 2014 release, with a fall 2014 album release. The album and single were expected to be released through RCA Records.
On August 15, 2014, Salaam Remi took to Instagram to preview the logo for his new label, Louder than Life, a subsidiary of Sony Music. Remi also announced that Sparks is now a part of the Louder than Life roster. In an article with Music Connection, Remi also announced he would be producing Sparks's upcoming album. During a promotional tour for Sparks's new movie, Left Behind, Sparks announced that she was in the finishing stages of her new album. Sparks announced that she is also no longer with her previous label, RCA Records. Sparks stated her single was due by the end of the year, with an album release in 2015. Sparks stated that she and her label were picking the first single, first look, and deciding on the album name.
On September 30, Sparks's label released a promotional single for Left Behind, "I Wish We'd All Been Ready", which became available on music outlets the same day.
On October 23, 2014, Remi hosted a music showcase featuring Sparks. Sparks showcased three songs, two of which were performed live. Sparks announced this was the first time she performed new music for people outside of the industry. On November 4, Sparks announced that the first single off her upcoming third album would be released in a two-week time frame. Sparks announcement to Lance Bass brought speculation that the single would be released on November 18, 2014. On November 23, Sparks announced during an interview at the American Music Awards that new music would be released on November 25, 2014. Following that announcement, Sparks posted a clip of a song, "How Bout Now", a remix of Drake's song. On November 24, Sparks followed up with an official release of "How Bout Now", which debuted on the 'LALeakers' SoundCloud page and website. Sparks also stated that the official release of her mixtape, #ByeFelicia, would be released the following day at 11:11 PST.
On November 25, it was announced that Sparks would release her third studio album, Right Here Right Now, in early 2015, under Louder Than Life/Red Associated Labels, subsidiaries of Sony Music Entertainment, in conjunction with 19 Recordings.
On December 2, the song "It Ain't You" from Sparks's mixtape #ByeFelicia, became available for pre-order on major music markets and was also uploaded to Sparks's Vevo YouTube page. The single was released on December 15, 2014, as a promotional single and first off from Sparks's third album. On December 16, Right Here Right Now became available for pre-order on Sparks's official website. On February 11, the first single for Sparks's album Double Tap featuring 2Chainz became available for pre-order. The single was released on March 2, 2015, and the music video was released on March 10, 2015.
Sparks performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the 2015 Indianapolis 500.
In May 2016, Sparks was cast in the feature film God Bless the Broken Road, based on the song of the same name. While originally announced for a 2016 release, as of June 2018 it has yet to find a distributor and has not been released.
On May 20, 2016, Sparks split ways with Louder Than Life record company.
On October 2, 2016, Food Network aired a pilot episode of Sparks's new potential series Sugar and Sparks, focusing on her dream to own her own bakery and mastering the baking industry with the help of Duff Goldman. The first episode, "Keep it Simple, Sparks", was produced by Ryan Seacrest.
Sparks joined Thomas Rhett and Molly Sims in judging Miss America 2018.
2018–present: Reality show and return to music
On February 12, 2018, Sparks told OK magazine in an interview that she was recording her fourth album. Sparks, who is currently unsigned, said she had finished five to six songs for the album. She drew inspiration from her new marriage and son.
In May 2018, Sparks and Dana began production on their reality show. She said "they [will] get to see just Jordin. Drop the Sparks and you just get to see Jordin, and you get to see Dana, and you get to see both of us together and how we interact". She continued, saying "I'm super excited for people to see it. It's been a little exhausting. I'm not used to cameras all in my face all the time, but I think it's really going to show a good side of us." On August 28, it was announced that the pilot for Sparks' special Jordin Sparks: A Baby Story would air on September 6 on Lifetime.
In August 2018, KIN Network released a web series, Heart of Batter with Jordin Sparks, focused on Sparks's love for baking.
In 2019, Sparks released a joint EP with R&B singer Elijah Blake, 1990 Forever.
Sparks was cast as a Broadway replacement for Jenna Hunterson in Waitress, from September 16 to November 24, 2019.
On June 2, 2020, after over five years of not releasing any solo music, Sparks returned with the single "Unknown". On July 31, 2020, she released another new single, "Red Sangria".
In 2021, Sparks competed on The Masked Dancer as "Exotic Bird" and finished in fifth place.
Personal life
In April 2008, Sparks suffered acute vocal cord hemorrhaging due to overusing her vocal cords. Doctors ordered vocal rest, forcing Sparks to cancel appearances, including scheduled cameos on Alicia Keys's tour. Doctors cleared Sparks a month later, letting her rejoin the tour.
Sparks and Jason Derulo dated for three years and ended their relationship in 2014.
On July 17, 2017, Sparks married Dana Isaiah (born: Dana Isaiah Thomas), a fitness model, in Hawaii. In November 2017 People published news of her pregnancy. On May 2, 2018, Sparks gave birth to her first child, a son.
Other ventures
Endorsements
In April 2008, it was announced that Sparks would team up with cosmetics company, Avon, to become a spokesperson for the teen-focused line Mark. In November 2008, Sparks teamed up with Wet Seal to create her own clothing line 'Sparks', The line launched on November 19, 2008, featuring sizes XS to XL. Sparks said, "I am so excited that Wet Seal and I have been able to create a line of clothing that will appeal to more girls than ever before."
In October 2010, Sparks released her debut fragrance, Because of You... This fragrance was exclusively distributed at first by Dots Department Stores, but by November was made available to other retail stores. Sparks wanted this product to be affordable for her fans, yet still high end. "When I was starting this project, I really wanted it to be affordable. I looked at some other celebrity fragrances, and they were like $80. Even now, I look at a fragrance that's $80, and I can't bring myself to spend that much." In March 2012, due to the success of her first fragrance, Sparks released her second fragrance, Fascinate, exclusively with Dots Fashions as a sister scent to her first. It was announced on October 22, 2012, that Sparks was releasing her third fragrance Ambition. In an interview Sparks said; "Right now, I feel like I can take on the world. Ambition is the perfect word for where I am in my life right now". Her new scent is available in retail stores such as Bon-Ton. It was released in stores and online on November 8, 2012, before Sparks presented the fragrance at an official launch party in Milwaukee on December 1, 2012.
Acting and Broadway
In 2009, she made her acting debut on Disney's The Suite Life on Deck, guest starring as herself in the "Crossing Jordin" episode. The episode aired on October 23, 2009. Sparks also guest starred on the hit Nickelodeon show, Big Time Rush. The episode aired on June 18, 2010. On May 3, 2010, it was announced that Sparks would join the cast of the Broadway show In the Heights as Nina Rosario. Sparks took part in the production from August 19 through November 14 for a consecutive 12 weeks. In addition, Sparks did a voice over on Team Umizoomi as the Blue Mermaid. The episode aired on May 13, 2011.
In 2012, Sparks made her film debut in Sparkle. Following the release of Sparkle in 2012, Sparks began auditioning for several television and film roles while also receiving scripts from companies interested in having her a part of their projects. First of which was an indie drama film, The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete, which follows two inner-city youths left to fend for themselves over the summer after their mothers are taken away by the authorities. Sparks plays Alice a neighbor and friend of character Mister. She will also be in the film, The Grace of Jake, which follows ex-inmate and wandering musician Jake who travels to a small town in Arkansas intent on exacting revenge from his father, but begins to unravel a complicated family history as he befriends the locals. The film was in post production and was set for release on October 3, 2014. Sparks plays Nicole Lovely the preachers daughter.
Sparks played the part of Abby in Dear Secret Santa, a Lifetime Television romantic Christmas film that premiered on November 30, 2013. Sparks will play Shasta Carvell in Left Behind, an apocalyptic thriller, based on the novel series of the same name. The film is a reboot of Left Behind: The Movie, which is based on the idea of a pre-tribulation Rapture. In November 2013, Sparks guest starred on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Sparks plays Alison Stone, a high school teacher who somehow finds herself scared and covered in blood in a hotel room crime scene. The season episode, "Check In & Check Out" aired on November 20, 2013.
Philanthropy
In 2007, Sparks was asked by a relative who works for SOS Children's Villages in Florida to design a denim jacket festooned with Swarovski Crystal to support orphans. In February 2008, Sparks traveled to Ghana. She was part of the delegation of (then presidential couple) George and Laura Bush to help with Malaria No More, an organization with a goal to end malaria deaths in Africa by 2015. Sparks joined Laura Bush at the Maamobi Polyclinic, where the Bush donated a number of treated bed nets to local female traders in order to help combat the scourge of malaria in Ghana. While there, Sparks sang "Amazing Grace" to the durbar of chieftains who had gathered at the venue to give audience to Laura Bush. Sparks said, "Traveling to Ghana with Malaria No More gives me the incredible opportunity to see for myself what a difference a simple mosquito net can make in the life of a child."
In 2008, Sparks supported Dosomething.org's Do Something 101 campaign by filming a public service announcement explaining the nationwide school supplies drive project. She further supported the campaign by helping out at the Do Something 101 School Supply Volunteer Event held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
On May 20, 2009, Sparks became an endorser for the Got Milk? campaign, an American advertising campaign encouraging the consumption of cow's milk. On September 17, 2009, Sparks took part in the VH1 Divas special, a concert created to support the channel's Save The Music Foundation. The concert was held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York where Sparks performed the second single from her Battlefield album, S.O.S. (Let the Music Play), as well as "A Broken Wing" with Martina McBride. In February 2010, Sparks was one of the many artists who contributed to "We Are the World 25 for Haiti", a charity single for the victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Sparks teamed up with Pennyroyal Silver creator and designer, Tim Foster, to create her very own necklace design for the company's signature collection. Proceeds of the necklace funded medical units in Haiti.
On July 28, 2011, Sparks performed a live surprise concert in Times Square. Sparks was named the "VH1 Save The Music Foundation Ambassador" in 2011. It was announced on November 9, 2011, that Sparks would be a 'Vh1 Save the Music Ambassador' again for 2012. Sparks was joined by fellow American Idol contestant Chris Daughtry, Lupe Fiasco, Katy Perry and others. During Sparks segment as ambassador she hosted a surprise concert series in Times Square. Sparks and VH1 gave fans the opportunity to submit an essay on 'What Music Means to you?'. The winner of the essay contest won a trip for two, to New York City to stand alongside of Sparks at her pop-up concert. The winner chosen was Deavan Ebersole, from Hagerstown, Maryland.
Sparks has also shown support for Little Kids Rock, a national non-profit that works to restore and revitalize music education in disadvantaged US public schools, by donating items for auction to raise money for the organization.
I'm M.A.D. Are You? campaign
Initiated by Sparks and her younger brother P.J. in 2008, the I'm M.A.D. Are You? campaign cultivates community advocacy and volunteerism among teens and young adults. M.A.D. stands for Making A Difference. On February 3, 2010, Sparks and David Archuleta performed at the "Jordin Sparks Experience", held at the Eden Roc Renaissance Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. All proceeds raised by the event went to a number of charities, including the Miami Children's Hospital Foundation. Since 2008, Sparks and the campaign travels to the Super Bowls designated city to host a week of charitable events, to raise money for several charities. In June 2010, the "Thumbs Up to X the TXT" pledge campaign, established by Allstate, made its way to Sparks's Battlefield Tour, presented by Mike & Ike to encourage teens and their families not to text while driving. Fans at Sparks's concerts made a pledge not to text and drive by adding their thumbprint to a traveling banner at each of her shows. The campaign began at Sparks's Battlefield Tour on June 3, 2010, and ended on July 18, 2010. Sparks is the main spokesperson for the "I'm M.A.D., Are You?" campaign. She also supports Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, which helps to raise money for children with cancer. Sparks traveled to Louisiana in June 2010 to visit the Gulf Coast oil spill with the Audubon Society to view the effects of the oil spill on the wildlife and marshes.
Since 2008, the campaign has raised over $500,000.
Discography
Studio albums
Jordin Sparks (2007)
Battlefield (2009)
Right Here Right Now (2015)
Cider & Hennessy (2020)
EPs and mixtapes
2006: For Now
2007: Jordin Sparks (EP)
2014: #ByeFelicia
2019: 1990 Forever (EP) (with Elijah Blake)
2020: Sounds Like Me (EP)
Tours
Headlining
2010: Battlefield Tour
Joint tours
2007: American Idols LIVE! Tour 2007
2008: Jesse & Jordin Live
Opening act
2008: As I Am Tour
2009: Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009
2009: The Circus Starring Britney Spears
2011: NKOTBSB Tour
See also
List of Idols winners
Awards and nominations
Filmography
Television
Film
Broadway
References
External links
Jordin Sparks in In the Heights
1989 births
Living people
19 Recordings artists
21st-century American actresses
21st-century American businesspeople
21st-century Protestants
Actresses from Phoenix, Arizona
African-American actresses
African-American businesspeople
African-American Christians
African-American female models
African-American women singer-songwriters
American women pop singers
American child singers
American cosmetics businesspeople
American evangelicals
American fashion businesspeople
American Idol winners
Businesspeople from Arizona
Jive Records artists
Musicians from Glendale, Arizona
Musicians from Phoenix, Arizona
RCA Records artists
American television actresses
American film actresses
American voice actresses
American stage actresses
American child actresses
Guitarists from Arizona
21st-century African-American women singers
21st-century American businesswomen
21st-century American women guitarists
21st-century American guitarists
Singer-songwriters from Arizona | true | [
"This is a comprehensive listing of official releases by Nick Lachey, an American pop singer. Nick has released four studio albums, eight singles, and four music videos under Motown Records, Universal Records and Jive Records.\n\nLachey's debut album, SoulO, was released on November 11, 2003 reached #51 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart. Two singles were released: \"Shut Up\" and \"This I Swear\". However, only the latter charted, where it reached #11 on the U.S. Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart. \n\nHis second album, What's Left of Me, was released on May 9, 2006. It was a bigger success on the Billboard charts, where it reached a number 2 peak. The title track was released as the first single from the album and it became Lachey's first Top 10 single on the Hot 100. The following single, \"I Can't Hate You Anymore\", only reached number 87 on the Hot 100. A third and final single, \"Resolution\" was released, however, it only reached number 77 on the Pop 100 (now the Mainstream Top 40).\n\nIn 2009, two more singles were released. They were intended on being the lead singles for an upcoming third studio album, however, the album has been pushed back several times. It was expected that the album would be released sometime in 2010, however it was revealed in January 2010 that Lachey's label, Jive Records, have put the new album on hold indefinitely.\n\nAlbums\n\nSingles\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nDiscographies of American artists\nPop music discographies\nDiscography",
"Followers is an album by the American contemporary Christian music (CCM) band Tenth Avenue North. It was released by Provident Label Group, a division of Sony Music Entertainment, under its Reunion Records label, on October 14, 2016. The album reached No. 5 on the Billboard Christian Albums chart, and No. 151 on the Billboard 200. Three singles from the album were released: \"What You Want\" in 2016, and \"I Have This Hope\" and \"Control (Somehow You Want Me)\" in 2017, all of which appeared on the Billboard Hot Christian Songs chart.\n\nRelease and performance \n\nFollowers was released on October 14, 2016, by Provident Label Group LLC, a division of Sony Music Entertainment. It first charted on both the US Billboard Christian Albums and Billboard 200 on the week of November 5, 2016, peaking that week on both charts at No. 5 and No. 151, respectively.\n\nThree singles were released from the album. The first, \"What You Want\", was released five months in advance of the album on May 13, 2016, and charted on the Billboard Hot Christian Songs list, peaking at No. 17 on September 3, 2016. The other two were released in 2017 after the album, and reached the top 10 on Hot Christian Songs: \"I Have This Hope\" peaked at No. 5 on June 10, 2017, and \"Control (Somehow You Want Me)\" peaked at No. 7 on January 13, 2018.\n\nReception \n\nCCM Magazine gave the album 4 out of 5 stars, and cited its \"killer vocal work on honest, relatable lyrics paired with ... strong songwriting.\"\n\nChristian review website JesusFreakHideout rated the album 3.5 out of 5 stars. The review said the album was \"pretty much what you would expect from a CCM release\" and wrote that \"What You Want\" was \"the most energetic song on the album\". It singled out the opening track as \"excellent\" and the closing track as \"powerful\", and characterized the remaining songs as \"eight solid but otherwise ordinary tracks.\"\n\nTrack listing\n\"Afraid\" (3:48)\n\"What You Want\" (3:37)\n\"Overflow\" (3:40)\n\"I Have This Hope\" (3:24)\n\"One Thing\" (3:28)\n\"Sparrow (Under Heaven's Eyes)\" (3:59)\n\"No One Can Steal Our Joy\" (3:40)\n\"Control (Somehow You Want Me)\" (4:08)\n\"Fighting for You\" (3:22)\n\"I Confess\" (5:15)\n\nChart performance\n\nReferences\n\n2016 albums\nTenth Avenue North albums"
] |
[
"Jordin Sparks",
"2009-10: Battlefield",
"Was Battlefield the name of an album?",
"S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)\", was released as the second single from Battlefield on September 15, 2009.",
"What singles were on this album?",
"The third single from Battlefield, \"Don't Let It Go to Your Head\","
] | C_2983bbd8348943f5b4f6a1034993d01a_1 | Did she tour after releasing this album? | 3 | Did Jordin Sparks tour after releasing Battlefield? | Jordin Sparks | On January 20, 2009, Sparks performed "Faith" at the Commander-in-Chief's Inaugural Ball hosted by President Barack Obama during the First inauguration of Barack Obama. Her second studio album, Battlefield was released in the United States on July 21, 2009. The album's title track was released as the lead single on May 25, 2009, and reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100. The song peaked in the top five in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In the United States, Battlefield debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200, peaking higher than her debut album's position of number ten. However, the album was notably unsuccessful compared to her debut, only selling 177,000 copies in the U.S and having failed to earn any chart certificates. In support of the album, Sparks opened for The Jonas Brothers on the North America leg of the Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009, starting on June 20, 2009. She also opened for Britney Spears on the second leg of her Circus Tour in North America, beginning on August 24, 2009. Sparks served as a replacement for Ciara. She opened with Kristinia DeBarge, Girlicious, and One Call. "S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", was released as the second single from Battlefield on September 15, 2009. The song topped the U.S Hot Dance Club Songs chart, becoming Sparks's first number one on the chart and peaked in the top fifteen in the United Kingdom. During this time, she recorded the duet, "Art of Love", with Australian artist Guy Sebastian for his fifth studio album, Like It Like That. The song reached the top ten in Australia and New Zealand and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The third single from Battlefield, "Don't Let It Go to Your Head", was released in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2010. In May 2010, Sparks embarked on her first headlining tour in the United States, the Battlefield Tour. It began on May 1, 2010, and ended on July 18, 2010, stopping in over 35 major cities in the United States. In support of the DVD/Blu-ray re-release of the Disney animated film, Beauty and the Beast, Sparks recorded a cover of the film's title track for the soundtrack. A music video for the song was released on October 18, 2010. CANNOTANSWER | In May 2010, Sparks embarked on her first headlining tour in the United States, | Jordin Sparks-Thomas (born December 22, 1989) is an American singer, songwriter and actress. She rose to fame in 2007 after winning the sixth season of American Idol at age 17, becoming the youngest winner in the series' history. Her self-titled debut studio album, released later that year, was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and has sold over two million copies worldwide. The album spawned the Billboard Hot 100 top-ten singles "Tattoo" and "No Air"; the latter, a collaboration with Chris Brown, is currently the third highest-selling single by any American Idol contestant, selling over three million digital copies in the United States. The song earned Sparks her first Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.
Sparks's second studio album, Battlefield (2009), debuted at number 7 on the Billboard 200 chart. Its title single reached number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, making Sparks the only American Idol contestant to have her first five singles reach the top 20 in the United States. The second single, "S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", became Sparks's first number one on the Hot Dance Club Play chart. Throughout her career, Sparks has received numerous accolades, including an NAACP Image Award, a BET Award, an American Music Award, a People's Choice Award and two Teen Choice Awards. In 2009, Billboard magazine ranked her as the 91st Artist of the 2000s Decade. In 2012, Sparks was ranked at number 92 on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Women in Music". As of February 2012, she has sold 1.3 million albums and 10.2 million singles in the United States alone, making her one of the most successful American Idol contestants of all time.
Following the release of Battlefield, Sparks ventured into acting, pursuing television and Broadway. She made her stage debut as Nina Rosario in the musical In The Heights (2010), and her feature film debut as the titular character in Sparkle (2012). Sparks has also released several perfumes, including Because of You... in 2010 as well as Fascinate and Ambition in 2012. After a five-year absence from music, she released a mixtape, #ByeFelicia (2014), under a new record deal with Louder Than Life/Red Associated Labels, a joint deal with Sony Music Entertainment. Sparks' R&B third studio album and most recent to date, Right Here Right Now (2015), saw smaller commercial success but received positive reviews from music critics.
Early life
Sparks was born in Phoenix, Arizona, to Jodi ( Wiedmann) Jackson and former professional American football player Phillippi Sparks. Jordin has a younger brother, Phillippi "PJ" Sparks Jr., who plays football at Arizona Christian University. Her father is of African-American, French, and Cherokee descent and her mother is of German, English, Scottish, and Norwegian descent. She grew up in the suburbs of Ridgewood, New Jersey, while her father played as a defensive back for the New York Giants. After living in New Jersey, Sparks attended Northwest Community Christian School in Phoenix through the eighth grade. Sparks attended Sandra Day O'Connor High School until 2006 when she was homeschooled by her grandmother, Pam Wiedmann, to better concentrate on her singing. Sparks is an evangelical Christian and attends Calvary Community Church in Phoenix. On her American Idol biography, she thanks her parents, grandparents, and God for her win. She won an award for best young artist of the year in Arizona three years in a row.
Career
2006: Career beginnings and American Idol
Before appearing on American Idol, Sparks participated in and won such talent competitions as Coca-Cola's Rising Star, the Gospel Music Association Academy's Overall Spotlight Award, America's Most Talented Kids, Colgate Country Showdown, and the 2006 Drug Free AZ Superstar Search. From the time Jordin was nine years old until her win as American Idol 2007, her maternal grandmother, Pam Wiedmann, managed her. Prior to Idol, Sparks frequently performed the national anthem at various local sporting events, notably for the Phoenix Suns, Arizona Cardinals, and Arizona Diamondbacks. Sparks also appeared with Alice Cooper in his 2004 Christmas show and toured with Christian contemporary singer Michael W. Smith in 2006. In 2006, Sparks was one of six winners of the Phoenix Torrid search for the "Next Plus Size Model". She was flown to California, where she was featured in Torrid ads and promotional pieces. A full-page ad for Torrid featuring Sparks ran in the December 2006 issue of Seventeen magazine.
In the summer of 2006, at the age of 16, Sparks auditioned twice for the sixth season of American Idol: once in Los Angeles but failed to make it past the first round; and again in Seattle after winning Arizona Idol, a talent competition conducted by Phoenix Fox station KSAZ-TV. The Seattle audition is the one seen in the January 17, 2007, broadcast of American Idol, in which she earned a "gold ticket" and the right to appear in the Hollywood Round. American Idol judge Randy Jackson made the offhand prediction that "Curly hair will win this year." While on the show, Sparks gained a loyal fan base known as "Sparkplugs". On May 23, 2007, at the age of 17, Sparks won the sixth season of American Idol. She remains the youngest winner in American Idol history. Cowell said, "Jordin was the most improved over the whole season – didn't start the best, but midway through this was the girl who suddenly got momentum." He included that "Young girl, likeable, and the singer won over the entertainer [Lewis]."
Four selected songs Sparks had performed on American Idol, including the season's coronation song, "This Is My Now", were made available on her self-titled EP, released on May 22, 2007, the day before the grand finale. The coronation song "This Is My Now" peaked at number fifteen on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Sparks's first top-fifteen hit on the chart. The following summer, Sparks took part in the American Idols LIVE! Tour 2007 from July 6 to September 23, 2007, along with other contestants in the top ten.
Since her win in 2007, Sparks has returned to Idol six times. She performed twice on the seventh season of American Idol, once on the Idol Gives Back results show singing "No Air" with Chris Brown and again with "One Step at a Time" on May 21, 2008, for the finale. She performed "Battlefield" on the May 13, 2009, episode of American Idol.
The following year, Sparks took part in a tribute to Simon Cowell with other former contestants at the ninth season finale on May 26, 2010. During the tenth season, Sparks performed her new song "I Am Woman" on the Top 4 results show. She appeared on the finale of the eleventh season singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" alongside that year's fourth-place contestant Hollie Cavanagh. Sparks was the most recent female to win the competition until the twelfth season. In a comedic clip on the finale, "We Were Sabotaged", the boys of the twelfth season realize that she was the "mastermind" behind the girls' sabotage because it was five years since a girl had won.
Performances/results
When Ryan Seacrest announced the results for this particular night, Sparks was declared safe placing in the top three.
Due to the Idol Gives Back performance, the Top 6 remained intact for another week.
2007–08: Jordin Sparks and breakthrough
After winning American Idol, Sparks signed to 19 Recordings/Jive Records, becoming the first Idol winner to join the label. On August 27, 2007, she released her debut single, "Tattoo", which peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Sparks's first top-ten hit on the chart. The song certified platinum in the United States and Australia. To date, "Tattoo" has sold over two million copies in the U.S.
Sparks released her self-titled debut studio album on November 20, 2007, which debuted at number ten on the Billboard 200. To date, it has sold over a million copies in the U.S and was certified platinum by the RIAA. "No Air", a duet with Chris Brown, was released as the second single from the album in February 2008. In the United States, the song peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 becoming Sparks's best-charting single to date. It was also her first song to appear on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, where it reached number four. To date, the song has sold over three million copies in the U.S, making Sparks the first American Idol contestant to reach the three million mark. It also became Brown's first song to hit three million. "No Air" also charted in Australia and New Zealand, where it reached number one, receiving platinum certifications in both countries.
On February 3, 2008, Sparks sang the National Anthem at Super Bowl XLII. She performed in a tribute to Aretha Franklin at the NAACP Awards in February, as well. She had previously performed in a tribute to Diana Ross in December 2007.
In support of the album, Sparks opened for Alicia Keys on the North America leg of her As I Am Tour, starting on April 19, 2008. Before the tour, a career-threatening throat injury forced Sparks to cancel a few weeks of the shows. Officials revealed she was suffering an acute vocal cord hemorrhage and was ordered strict vocal rest until the condition improved. Sparks was back on the road by April 30, 2008, and remained on the tour until June 18, 2008. Sparks later joined Keys for the tour leg in Australia and New Zealand in December 2008.
The album's third single, "One Step at a Time", was released in June 2008. It peaked at number seventeen on the Billboard Hot 100, giving Sparks her fourth top twenty hit on the chart. This makes Sparks the only American Idol contestant to have her first four singles reach the top twenty of the Hot 100. It also charted in the top twenty in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In New Zealand, the song reached number two and was certified gold by the RIANZ. In August 2008, Sparks co-headlined the Jesse & Jordin LIVE Tour with Jesse McCartney in the United States and Canada.
Sparks received two MTV Video Music Award nominations for Best Female Video for "No Air" and Best New Artist at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. While at the awards show, Sparks caused controversy by responding to a joke made by host Russell Brand during his opening monologue, in which he held up a silver ring, claiming to have relieved one of the Jonas Brothers of their virginity, saying he would "take them more seriously if they wore it (the ring) around their genitals". Sparks who also wears a promise ring began her introduction of T.I. and Rihanna by saying "It's not bad to wear a promise ring because not everybody, guy or girl, wants to be a slut." In response to the controversy over her "slut" remark, Sparks told Entertainment Weekly that she does not regret the remark, commenting that "I wish I would've worded it differently – that somebody who doesn't wear a promise ring isn't necessarily a slut – but I can't take it back now." At the 2008 American Music Awards, Sparks won the award for Favorite Artist in the Adult Contemporary Category.
2009–10: Battlefield
On January 20, 2009, Sparks performed "Faith" at the Commander-in-Chief's Inaugural Ball hosted by President Barack Obama during the First inauguration of Barack Obama. Her second studio album, Battlefield was released in the United States on July 21, 2009. The album's title track was released as the lead single on May 25, 2009, and reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100. The song peaked in the top five in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In the United States, Battlefield debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200, peaking higher than her debut album's position of number ten. However, the album was notably unsuccessful compared to her debut, only selling 177,000 copies in the U.S and having failed to earn any chart certificates.
In support of the album, Sparks opened for The Jonas Brothers on the North America leg of the Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009, starting on June 20, 2009. She also opened for Britney Spears on the second leg of her Circus Tour in North America, beginning on August 24, 2009. Sparks served as a replacement for Ciara. She opened with Kristinia DeBarge, Girlicious, and One Call.
"S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", was released as the second single from Battlefield on September 15, 2009. The song topped the U.S Hot Dance Club Songs chart, becoming Sparks's first number one on the chart and peaked in the top fifteen in the United Kingdom. During this time, she recorded the duet, "Art of Love", with Australian artist Guy Sebastian for his fifth studio album, Like It Like That. The song reached the top ten in Australia and New Zealand and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The third single from Battlefield, "Don't Let It Go to Your Head", was released in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2010.
In May 2010, Sparks embarked on her first headlining tour in the United States, the Battlefield Tour. It began on May 1, 2010, and ended on July 18, 2010, stopping in over 35 major cities in the United States. In support of the DVD/Blu-ray re-release of the Disney animated film, Beauty and the Beast, Sparks recorded a cover of the film's title track for the soundtrack. A music video for the song was released on October 18, 2010.
2010–12: Solo music hiatus, compilations and films
In March 2011, Sparks recorded a music video for a song called "The World I Knew" for the film, African Cats, which was released on April 22, 2011. She was featured on the Big Time Rush song "Count on You", and the show with the same name, "Big Time Sparks" that aired June 18, 2010.
On May 5, 2011, it was revealed that Sparks would release a non-album single, "I Am Woman". To support her new single, Sparks served as an opening act for the NKOTBSB summer tour. On May 12, 2011, Sparks performed "I Am Woman" on the American Idol Top 4 results show. It debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 at number eighty-two with 33,000 downloads sold. It also debuted on the US Billboard Digital Songs at number fifty-seven. Sparks performed "I Am Woman" on Regis and Kelly on June 14.
On June 16, 2011, Sparks had her first-ever bikini shoot for the cover of People's Most Amazing Bodies issue. When speaking about her weight loss and diet to Access Hollywood, Sparks said, "My diet has pretty much remained the same, like if I want a piece of bread, I'm gonna have a piece of bread, but I'm making healthier decisions like instead of a bag of chips for a snack, I'll see if I can find an apple. I've also upped my intake of vegetables and I'm drinking a lot more water."
Sparks stated in an August 2011 interview there was no scheduled release date for her third album which was still in production. A song, "You Gotta Want It", was to be part of an NFL compilation album, Official Gameday Music of the NFL Vol. 2. According to reports, the song would be available to download on iTunes and Amazon on September 27. The song was co-written by Chris Weaver and Matthew J. Rogers while being produced by Cash Money Records' Cool & Dre.
On October 7, 2011, RCA Music Group announced it was disbanding Jive Records along with Arista Records and J Records. With the shutdown, Sparks (and all other artists previously signed to these three labels) would release her future material (including her upcoming third studio album) on the RCA Records brand. On November 14, 2011, it was announced that Sparks had recorded an original song called "Angels Are Singing" as a part of ABC Family's "12 Dates of Christmas".
On February 29, 2012, Sparks's boyfriend Jason Derulo took to Twitter announcing the official remix of his single "It Girl" featuring Sparks. There was a video released with the remix, which showed home videos, of Derulo and Sparks together as well as pictures.
On September 12, 2011, it was announced that Sparks would be making her feature film debut playing the lead role in the music-themed pic Sparkle, a remake of the 1976 film inspired by the story of The Supremes. The remake was set in 1968 Detroit, during the rise of Motown. The story focused on the youngest sister, a music prodigy named Sparkle Williams (Sparks), and her struggle to become a star while overcoming issues that were tearing her family apart. R&B singer Aaliyah was originally tapped to star as Sparkle; however, following her death in a 2001 plane crash, production on the film, which was scheduled for 2002, had been derailed. Sparkle was filmed in the fall of 2011 over a two-month period. The movie, starring both Sparks and Houston, was released on August 17 in the United States. On May 21, 2012, "Celebrate", the last song Whitney Houston recorded with Sparks, premiered at RyanSeacrest.com. It was made available for digital download on iTunes on June 5. The song was featured on the Sparkle: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack album as the first official single. The accompanying music video for Celebrate was filmed on May 30, 2012. The video was shot over 2 days and was released on June 27. A sneak peek of the video premiered on entertainment tonight on June 4, 2012.
On July 24, 2012, it was officially announced that Sparks would star in her second film, an indie drama "'The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete'". The George Tillman Jr-directed film stars Jennifer Hudson, Sparks, Jeffrey Wright, and Anthony Mackie. Michael Starrbury wrote the script, which follows two inner-city youths left to fend for themselves over the summer after their mothers are taken away by the authorities. Production on the film began on July 23, 2012, in Brooklyn. Alicia Keys is the film's executive producer. The film is produced by Street State Pictures.
On August 9, 2012, Sparks stated in an interview with Billboard, that she had about seven songs set so far for her third album. Sparks stated "It's going to be different from what my fans have heard before. With (2009's) 'Battlefield' it was pop/rock and a little bit of pop/R&B, but I'm going for more of the R&B side now, so it's like R&B/pop instead of pop/R&B." In an interview with MTV, Sparks confirmed she had recorded a duet with Jason Derulo and it would be on the album and could serve as a potential single. Sparks performed on VH1 Divas 2012 with fellow singers Miley Cyrus, Kelly Rowland and Ciara. The show premiered on December 16, 2012. Sparks joined singers Ledisi and Melanie Fiona in a tribute to Whitney Houston.
2013–14: Left Behind and label change
In an October 2010 interview, Sparks revealed she had begun working on her third studio album. During an interview with Good Day New York in November 2010, Sparks confirmed she would be recording the album in New York and Arizona. In January 2011, it was reported that Sparks and John Legend were working on songs together in the studio.
In early May 2013, Sparks took to Twitter announcing that she and RCA Records had finally come to an agreement with releasing new material. Sparks asked her fans to email her their opinions and frustrations regarding the delay in the release of her third studio album. A few days following the meeting, Sparks announced that her new music would be released in the fall of 2013.
On July 22, 2013, it was announced that the first promotional track from her upcoming third studio album would be released on August 1, 2013. "Skipping a Beat" was officially released on August 1, 2013. The buzz single became available for download on August 13, 2013. Sparks was featured on Jason Derulo's third studio album, Tattoos, which was released on September 24, 2013, on "Vertigo". It was announced that Sparks's third album had officially been completed and was awaiting release. However, it was later announced that new music from Sparks would not be released until early 2014 due to timing issues with acting projects as well as placement issues within her label RCA.
On August 9, 2013, it was announced that Sparks had signed on to join the cast of the action science fiction-thriller film Left Behind. Sparks's character is named Shasta, but for the most part, her role was kept under wraps. One of the films, producers Paul Lalonde said that "She will be a passenger on a plane that the film's main character Captain Rayford Steele is piloting. Sparks will co-star alongside Nicolas Cage as Captain Rayford Steele, Chad Michael Murray as Cameron "Buck" Williams and Nicky Whelan as Hattie Durham. The film is set for release on October 3, 2014. The film's shooting began on August 9, 2013, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. On October 7, 2013, it was announced that Sparks would guest star in an upcoming episode in the fourteenth season of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Sparks played Alison Stone, a high school teacher who somehow found herself scared and covered in blood in a hotel room crime scene. The season episode, "Check In & Check Out" was set to air on November 20, 2013.
On December 9, 2013, Sparks partnered with Glade and the Young People's Chorus of New York City to release a brand new Christmas holiday anthem "This Is My Wish." From December 9 until December 31, 2013, the song was made available for free download through Glade's official website. Sparks made her first televised performance of the song on the same day on The Today Show.
After experiencing multiple delays in the release of Sparks's third album due to RCA refusing to put her in their roster, citing that her acting projects had prevented them from reaching a deal, Sparks was released from her contract from RCA records and eventually signed to Salaam Remi's new label imprint 'Louder than Life', a subsidiary of Sony Music. Remi had previously worked with Sparks on the Sparkle film soundtrack. As a result of the new deal, all the material Sparks had previously recorded for her third album under RCA has subsequently been scrapped and had since begun re-recording and writing new material for her third album since January 2014. An official announcement of Sparks's signing to the new label had only been released a year later in August 2014.
2014–2017: #ByeFelicia and Right Here Right Now
It was announced on May 8, 2014, that Sparks would be hosting the 2014 Billboard Music Awards 'Samsung Red Carpet', alongside Lance Bass and Ted Stryker. Sparks was also listed to present.
In an interview with AOL Radio News on May 30, 2014, Sparks announced that the first official single off her upcoming third studio album would have a summer 2014 release, with a fall 2014 album release. The album and single were expected to be released through RCA Records.
On August 15, 2014, Salaam Remi took to Instagram to preview the logo for his new label, Louder than Life, a subsidiary of Sony Music. Remi also announced that Sparks is now a part of the Louder than Life roster. In an article with Music Connection, Remi also announced he would be producing Sparks's upcoming album. During a promotional tour for Sparks's new movie, Left Behind, Sparks announced that she was in the finishing stages of her new album. Sparks announced that she is also no longer with her previous label, RCA Records. Sparks stated her single was due by the end of the year, with an album release in 2015. Sparks stated that she and her label were picking the first single, first look, and deciding on the album name.
On September 30, Sparks's label released a promotional single for Left Behind, "I Wish We'd All Been Ready", which became available on music outlets the same day.
On October 23, 2014, Remi hosted a music showcase featuring Sparks. Sparks showcased three songs, two of which were performed live. Sparks announced this was the first time she performed new music for people outside of the industry. On November 4, Sparks announced that the first single off her upcoming third album would be released in a two-week time frame. Sparks announcement to Lance Bass brought speculation that the single would be released on November 18, 2014. On November 23, Sparks announced during an interview at the American Music Awards that new music would be released on November 25, 2014. Following that announcement, Sparks posted a clip of a song, "How Bout Now", a remix of Drake's song. On November 24, Sparks followed up with an official release of "How Bout Now", which debuted on the 'LALeakers' SoundCloud page and website. Sparks also stated that the official release of her mixtape, #ByeFelicia, would be released the following day at 11:11 PST.
On November 25, it was announced that Sparks would release her third studio album, Right Here Right Now, in early 2015, under Louder Than Life/Red Associated Labels, subsidiaries of Sony Music Entertainment, in conjunction with 19 Recordings.
On December 2, the song "It Ain't You" from Sparks's mixtape #ByeFelicia, became available for pre-order on major music markets and was also uploaded to Sparks's Vevo YouTube page. The single was released on December 15, 2014, as a promotional single and first off from Sparks's third album. On December 16, Right Here Right Now became available for pre-order on Sparks's official website. On February 11, the first single for Sparks's album Double Tap featuring 2Chainz became available for pre-order. The single was released on March 2, 2015, and the music video was released on March 10, 2015.
Sparks performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the 2015 Indianapolis 500.
In May 2016, Sparks was cast in the feature film God Bless the Broken Road, based on the song of the same name. While originally announced for a 2016 release, as of June 2018 it has yet to find a distributor and has not been released.
On May 20, 2016, Sparks split ways with Louder Than Life record company.
On October 2, 2016, Food Network aired a pilot episode of Sparks's new potential series Sugar and Sparks, focusing on her dream to own her own bakery and mastering the baking industry with the help of Duff Goldman. The first episode, "Keep it Simple, Sparks", was produced by Ryan Seacrest.
Sparks joined Thomas Rhett and Molly Sims in judging Miss America 2018.
2018–present: Reality show and return to music
On February 12, 2018, Sparks told OK magazine in an interview that she was recording her fourth album. Sparks, who is currently unsigned, said she had finished five to six songs for the album. She drew inspiration from her new marriage and son.
In May 2018, Sparks and Dana began production on their reality show. She said "they [will] get to see just Jordin. Drop the Sparks and you just get to see Jordin, and you get to see Dana, and you get to see both of us together and how we interact". She continued, saying "I'm super excited for people to see it. It's been a little exhausting. I'm not used to cameras all in my face all the time, but I think it's really going to show a good side of us." On August 28, it was announced that the pilot for Sparks' special Jordin Sparks: A Baby Story would air on September 6 on Lifetime.
In August 2018, KIN Network released a web series, Heart of Batter with Jordin Sparks, focused on Sparks's love for baking.
In 2019, Sparks released a joint EP with R&B singer Elijah Blake, 1990 Forever.
Sparks was cast as a Broadway replacement for Jenna Hunterson in Waitress, from September 16 to November 24, 2019.
On June 2, 2020, after over five years of not releasing any solo music, Sparks returned with the single "Unknown". On July 31, 2020, she released another new single, "Red Sangria".
In 2021, Sparks competed on The Masked Dancer as "Exotic Bird" and finished in fifth place.
Personal life
In April 2008, Sparks suffered acute vocal cord hemorrhaging due to overusing her vocal cords. Doctors ordered vocal rest, forcing Sparks to cancel appearances, including scheduled cameos on Alicia Keys's tour. Doctors cleared Sparks a month later, letting her rejoin the tour.
Sparks and Jason Derulo dated for three years and ended their relationship in 2014.
On July 17, 2017, Sparks married Dana Isaiah (born: Dana Isaiah Thomas), a fitness model, in Hawaii. In November 2017 People published news of her pregnancy. On May 2, 2018, Sparks gave birth to her first child, a son.
Other ventures
Endorsements
In April 2008, it was announced that Sparks would team up with cosmetics company, Avon, to become a spokesperson for the teen-focused line Mark. In November 2008, Sparks teamed up with Wet Seal to create her own clothing line 'Sparks', The line launched on November 19, 2008, featuring sizes XS to XL. Sparks said, "I am so excited that Wet Seal and I have been able to create a line of clothing that will appeal to more girls than ever before."
In October 2010, Sparks released her debut fragrance, Because of You... This fragrance was exclusively distributed at first by Dots Department Stores, but by November was made available to other retail stores. Sparks wanted this product to be affordable for her fans, yet still high end. "When I was starting this project, I really wanted it to be affordable. I looked at some other celebrity fragrances, and they were like $80. Even now, I look at a fragrance that's $80, and I can't bring myself to spend that much." In March 2012, due to the success of her first fragrance, Sparks released her second fragrance, Fascinate, exclusively with Dots Fashions as a sister scent to her first. It was announced on October 22, 2012, that Sparks was releasing her third fragrance Ambition. In an interview Sparks said; "Right now, I feel like I can take on the world. Ambition is the perfect word for where I am in my life right now". Her new scent is available in retail stores such as Bon-Ton. It was released in stores and online on November 8, 2012, before Sparks presented the fragrance at an official launch party in Milwaukee on December 1, 2012.
Acting and Broadway
In 2009, she made her acting debut on Disney's The Suite Life on Deck, guest starring as herself in the "Crossing Jordin" episode. The episode aired on October 23, 2009. Sparks also guest starred on the hit Nickelodeon show, Big Time Rush. The episode aired on June 18, 2010. On May 3, 2010, it was announced that Sparks would join the cast of the Broadway show In the Heights as Nina Rosario. Sparks took part in the production from August 19 through November 14 for a consecutive 12 weeks. In addition, Sparks did a voice over on Team Umizoomi as the Blue Mermaid. The episode aired on May 13, 2011.
In 2012, Sparks made her film debut in Sparkle. Following the release of Sparkle in 2012, Sparks began auditioning for several television and film roles while also receiving scripts from companies interested in having her a part of their projects. First of which was an indie drama film, The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete, which follows two inner-city youths left to fend for themselves over the summer after their mothers are taken away by the authorities. Sparks plays Alice a neighbor and friend of character Mister. She will also be in the film, The Grace of Jake, which follows ex-inmate and wandering musician Jake who travels to a small town in Arkansas intent on exacting revenge from his father, but begins to unravel a complicated family history as he befriends the locals. The film was in post production and was set for release on October 3, 2014. Sparks plays Nicole Lovely the preachers daughter.
Sparks played the part of Abby in Dear Secret Santa, a Lifetime Television romantic Christmas film that premiered on November 30, 2013. Sparks will play Shasta Carvell in Left Behind, an apocalyptic thriller, based on the novel series of the same name. The film is a reboot of Left Behind: The Movie, which is based on the idea of a pre-tribulation Rapture. In November 2013, Sparks guest starred on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Sparks plays Alison Stone, a high school teacher who somehow finds herself scared and covered in blood in a hotel room crime scene. The season episode, "Check In & Check Out" aired on November 20, 2013.
Philanthropy
In 2007, Sparks was asked by a relative who works for SOS Children's Villages in Florida to design a denim jacket festooned with Swarovski Crystal to support orphans. In February 2008, Sparks traveled to Ghana. She was part of the delegation of (then presidential couple) George and Laura Bush to help with Malaria No More, an organization with a goal to end malaria deaths in Africa by 2015. Sparks joined Laura Bush at the Maamobi Polyclinic, where the Bush donated a number of treated bed nets to local female traders in order to help combat the scourge of malaria in Ghana. While there, Sparks sang "Amazing Grace" to the durbar of chieftains who had gathered at the venue to give audience to Laura Bush. Sparks said, "Traveling to Ghana with Malaria No More gives me the incredible opportunity to see for myself what a difference a simple mosquito net can make in the life of a child."
In 2008, Sparks supported Dosomething.org's Do Something 101 campaign by filming a public service announcement explaining the nationwide school supplies drive project. She further supported the campaign by helping out at the Do Something 101 School Supply Volunteer Event held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
On May 20, 2009, Sparks became an endorser for the Got Milk? campaign, an American advertising campaign encouraging the consumption of cow's milk. On September 17, 2009, Sparks took part in the VH1 Divas special, a concert created to support the channel's Save The Music Foundation. The concert was held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York where Sparks performed the second single from her Battlefield album, S.O.S. (Let the Music Play), as well as "A Broken Wing" with Martina McBride. In February 2010, Sparks was one of the many artists who contributed to "We Are the World 25 for Haiti", a charity single for the victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Sparks teamed up with Pennyroyal Silver creator and designer, Tim Foster, to create her very own necklace design for the company's signature collection. Proceeds of the necklace funded medical units in Haiti.
On July 28, 2011, Sparks performed a live surprise concert in Times Square. Sparks was named the "VH1 Save The Music Foundation Ambassador" in 2011. It was announced on November 9, 2011, that Sparks would be a 'Vh1 Save the Music Ambassador' again for 2012. Sparks was joined by fellow American Idol contestant Chris Daughtry, Lupe Fiasco, Katy Perry and others. During Sparks segment as ambassador she hosted a surprise concert series in Times Square. Sparks and VH1 gave fans the opportunity to submit an essay on 'What Music Means to you?'. The winner of the essay contest won a trip for two, to New York City to stand alongside of Sparks at her pop-up concert. The winner chosen was Deavan Ebersole, from Hagerstown, Maryland.
Sparks has also shown support for Little Kids Rock, a national non-profit that works to restore and revitalize music education in disadvantaged US public schools, by donating items for auction to raise money for the organization.
I'm M.A.D. Are You? campaign
Initiated by Sparks and her younger brother P.J. in 2008, the I'm M.A.D. Are You? campaign cultivates community advocacy and volunteerism among teens and young adults. M.A.D. stands for Making A Difference. On February 3, 2010, Sparks and David Archuleta performed at the "Jordin Sparks Experience", held at the Eden Roc Renaissance Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. All proceeds raised by the event went to a number of charities, including the Miami Children's Hospital Foundation. Since 2008, Sparks and the campaign travels to the Super Bowls designated city to host a week of charitable events, to raise money for several charities. In June 2010, the "Thumbs Up to X the TXT" pledge campaign, established by Allstate, made its way to Sparks's Battlefield Tour, presented by Mike & Ike to encourage teens and their families not to text while driving. Fans at Sparks's concerts made a pledge not to text and drive by adding their thumbprint to a traveling banner at each of her shows. The campaign began at Sparks's Battlefield Tour on June 3, 2010, and ended on July 18, 2010. Sparks is the main spokesperson for the "I'm M.A.D., Are You?" campaign. She also supports Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, which helps to raise money for children with cancer. Sparks traveled to Louisiana in June 2010 to visit the Gulf Coast oil spill with the Audubon Society to view the effects of the oil spill on the wildlife and marshes.
Since 2008, the campaign has raised over $500,000.
Discography
Studio albums
Jordin Sparks (2007)
Battlefield (2009)
Right Here Right Now (2015)
Cider & Hennessy (2020)
EPs and mixtapes
2006: For Now
2007: Jordin Sparks (EP)
2014: #ByeFelicia
2019: 1990 Forever (EP) (with Elijah Blake)
2020: Sounds Like Me (EP)
Tours
Headlining
2010: Battlefield Tour
Joint tours
2007: American Idols LIVE! Tour 2007
2008: Jesse & Jordin Live
Opening act
2008: As I Am Tour
2009: Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009
2009: The Circus Starring Britney Spears
2011: NKOTBSB Tour
See also
List of Idols winners
Awards and nominations
Filmography
Television
Film
Broadway
References
External links
Jordin Sparks in In the Heights
1989 births
Living people
19 Recordings artists
21st-century American actresses
21st-century American businesspeople
21st-century Protestants
Actresses from Phoenix, Arizona
African-American actresses
African-American businesspeople
African-American Christians
African-American female models
African-American women singer-songwriters
American women pop singers
American child singers
American cosmetics businesspeople
American evangelicals
American fashion businesspeople
American Idol winners
Businesspeople from Arizona
Jive Records artists
Musicians from Glendale, Arizona
Musicians from Phoenix, Arizona
RCA Records artists
American television actresses
American film actresses
American voice actresses
American stage actresses
American child actresses
Guitarists from Arizona
21st-century African-American women singers
21st-century American businesswomen
21st-century American women guitarists
21st-century American guitarists
Singer-songwriters from Arizona | true | [
"Signe Svendsen (born 16 October 1974) is a Danish singer. She took part in Eurovision Song Contest 2001 with the duo formation Rollo & King singing \"Never Ever Let You Go\" that was runner-up in the competition. She has developed a solo career with release of two albums.\n\nCareer\nSvendsen graduated from Nyborg Gymnasium and Rytmisk Musikkonservatorium in 1998. She gained fame through her participation in Eurovision Song Contest in 2001.\n\nShe continued on with a solo career and toured with Niels Hausgaard in 2007-2010 releasing Ny passager, her debut solo album in 2010. She wrote or co-wrote eight of the ten titles of the album. She promoted the album with a tour later releasing recordings from the tour in her 2011 album Live 2010. In June 2012, she released the single \"Din Sang\" (meaning Your Song) from her second album Kun de faldne rejser sig igen on 9 September 2013 that reached Top 3 in Tracklisten, the official Danish Albums Chart.\n\nSvendsen has also appeared in a number of Danish television programs, including Spørg Charlie (Ask Charlie) and Signe og B.S. på afveje (with B. S. Christiansen).\n\nDiscography\n\nAlbums\n\nLive albums\n2011: Live 2010\n\nSingles\n\nfeatured in\n\nReferences\n\n1974 births\nLiving people\n21st-century Danish women singers",
"American singer Selena Gomez has released three studio albums since her solo debut in 2013. This has resulted in two concert tours all of them worldwide, and a lot of TV and award shows performances. During her Disney Channel days Gomez formed Selena Gomez & The Scene, her first musical group. The musical formation broke up in 2012 after ending their third and final concert tour named We Own the Night Tour. After the band's departure, Gomez has been releasing new music as a solo artist. She has been promoting all of her albums as well as her debut one Stars Dance, through 2013 and 2014, through performances at several festivals including the Rodeo Houston.\n\nA tour in support of the album began in August 2013 and was named Stars Dance Tour. The tour was scheduled to visit Asia and Oceania between January and February 2014 but those legs were cancelled due to Gomez being diagnosed with lupus. After completion, the tour grossed over $20 million.\n\nIn November 2014 Gomez released her first compilation album which she named For You. The album included tracks from her Hollywood Records days as well as a new track named \"The Heart Wants What It Wants\".\n\nIn December 2014, Gomez signed with Interscope Records after releasing four studio albums with Hollywood Records. In October 2015, Gomez released her second studio album as a solo artist; Revival. The singer announced in late November that she would tour the world with a tour in support of the new album. The tour began in Las Vegas in May 2016 and ended three months later in New Zealand. The Revival Tour was expected to visit Europe in October and November 2016 before visiting Latin America the following month but got canceled in August 2016 due to the singer's anxiety and depression, both symptoms of her disease.\n\nIn 2017 Gomez started to work on her next album, her second with Interscope often referred to as SG2 on social media. Through the year she released some musical collaborations with artists like Kygo and Marshmello. She also released two singles intended to be the first one's off her new record named \"Bad Liar\" and \"Fetish\". However the release of the album was delayed and rescheduled to be released at the end of 2019. In May 2018, the singer released a new single, \"Back to You\" as part of the 13 Reasons Why soundtrack; a Netflix original series on which Gomez has been the executive producer since its debut in March 2017.\n\nConcert tours\n\nLive performances\n\nKiss & Tell era\n\nA Year without Rain era\n\nWhen the Sun Goes Down era\n\nStars Dance era\n\nRevival era\n\nRare era\n\nReferences \n\nLive performances\nSelena Gomez"
] |
[
"Jordin Sparks",
"2009-10: Battlefield",
"Was Battlefield the name of an album?",
"S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)\", was released as the second single from Battlefield on September 15, 2009.",
"What singles were on this album?",
"The third single from Battlefield, \"Don't Let It Go to Your Head\",",
"Did she tour after releasing this album?",
"In May 2010, Sparks embarked on her first headlining tour in the United States,"
] | C_2983bbd8348943f5b4f6a1034993d01a_1 | Did she tour with anyone? | 4 | Did Jordin Sparks tour with anyone? | Jordin Sparks | On January 20, 2009, Sparks performed "Faith" at the Commander-in-Chief's Inaugural Ball hosted by President Barack Obama during the First inauguration of Barack Obama. Her second studio album, Battlefield was released in the United States on July 21, 2009. The album's title track was released as the lead single on May 25, 2009, and reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100. The song peaked in the top five in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In the United States, Battlefield debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200, peaking higher than her debut album's position of number ten. However, the album was notably unsuccessful compared to her debut, only selling 177,000 copies in the U.S and having failed to earn any chart certificates. In support of the album, Sparks opened for The Jonas Brothers on the North America leg of the Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009, starting on June 20, 2009. She also opened for Britney Spears on the second leg of her Circus Tour in North America, beginning on August 24, 2009. Sparks served as a replacement for Ciara. She opened with Kristinia DeBarge, Girlicious, and One Call. "S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", was released as the second single from Battlefield on September 15, 2009. The song topped the U.S Hot Dance Club Songs chart, becoming Sparks's first number one on the chart and peaked in the top fifteen in the United Kingdom. During this time, she recorded the duet, "Art of Love", with Australian artist Guy Sebastian for his fifth studio album, Like It Like That. The song reached the top ten in Australia and New Zealand and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The third single from Battlefield, "Don't Let It Go to Your Head", was released in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2010. In May 2010, Sparks embarked on her first headlining tour in the United States, the Battlefield Tour. It began on May 1, 2010, and ended on July 18, 2010, stopping in over 35 major cities in the United States. In support of the DVD/Blu-ray re-release of the Disney animated film, Beauty and the Beast, Sparks recorded a cover of the film's title track for the soundtrack. A music video for the song was released on October 18, 2010. CANNOTANSWER | In support of the album, Sparks opened for The Jonas Brothers on the North America leg of the Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009, | Jordin Sparks-Thomas (born December 22, 1989) is an American singer, songwriter and actress. She rose to fame in 2007 after winning the sixth season of American Idol at age 17, becoming the youngest winner in the series' history. Her self-titled debut studio album, released later that year, was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and has sold over two million copies worldwide. The album spawned the Billboard Hot 100 top-ten singles "Tattoo" and "No Air"; the latter, a collaboration with Chris Brown, is currently the third highest-selling single by any American Idol contestant, selling over three million digital copies in the United States. The song earned Sparks her first Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.
Sparks's second studio album, Battlefield (2009), debuted at number 7 on the Billboard 200 chart. Its title single reached number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, making Sparks the only American Idol contestant to have her first five singles reach the top 20 in the United States. The second single, "S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", became Sparks's first number one on the Hot Dance Club Play chart. Throughout her career, Sparks has received numerous accolades, including an NAACP Image Award, a BET Award, an American Music Award, a People's Choice Award and two Teen Choice Awards. In 2009, Billboard magazine ranked her as the 91st Artist of the 2000s Decade. In 2012, Sparks was ranked at number 92 on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Women in Music". As of February 2012, she has sold 1.3 million albums and 10.2 million singles in the United States alone, making her one of the most successful American Idol contestants of all time.
Following the release of Battlefield, Sparks ventured into acting, pursuing television and Broadway. She made her stage debut as Nina Rosario in the musical In The Heights (2010), and her feature film debut as the titular character in Sparkle (2012). Sparks has also released several perfumes, including Because of You... in 2010 as well as Fascinate and Ambition in 2012. After a five-year absence from music, she released a mixtape, #ByeFelicia (2014), under a new record deal with Louder Than Life/Red Associated Labels, a joint deal with Sony Music Entertainment. Sparks' R&B third studio album and most recent to date, Right Here Right Now (2015), saw smaller commercial success but received positive reviews from music critics.
Early life
Sparks was born in Phoenix, Arizona, to Jodi ( Wiedmann) Jackson and former professional American football player Phillippi Sparks. Jordin has a younger brother, Phillippi "PJ" Sparks Jr., who plays football at Arizona Christian University. Her father is of African-American, French, and Cherokee descent and her mother is of German, English, Scottish, and Norwegian descent. She grew up in the suburbs of Ridgewood, New Jersey, while her father played as a defensive back for the New York Giants. After living in New Jersey, Sparks attended Northwest Community Christian School in Phoenix through the eighth grade. Sparks attended Sandra Day O'Connor High School until 2006 when she was homeschooled by her grandmother, Pam Wiedmann, to better concentrate on her singing. Sparks is an evangelical Christian and attends Calvary Community Church in Phoenix. On her American Idol biography, she thanks her parents, grandparents, and God for her win. She won an award for best young artist of the year in Arizona three years in a row.
Career
2006: Career beginnings and American Idol
Before appearing on American Idol, Sparks participated in and won such talent competitions as Coca-Cola's Rising Star, the Gospel Music Association Academy's Overall Spotlight Award, America's Most Talented Kids, Colgate Country Showdown, and the 2006 Drug Free AZ Superstar Search. From the time Jordin was nine years old until her win as American Idol 2007, her maternal grandmother, Pam Wiedmann, managed her. Prior to Idol, Sparks frequently performed the national anthem at various local sporting events, notably for the Phoenix Suns, Arizona Cardinals, and Arizona Diamondbacks. Sparks also appeared with Alice Cooper in his 2004 Christmas show and toured with Christian contemporary singer Michael W. Smith in 2006. In 2006, Sparks was one of six winners of the Phoenix Torrid search for the "Next Plus Size Model". She was flown to California, where she was featured in Torrid ads and promotional pieces. A full-page ad for Torrid featuring Sparks ran in the December 2006 issue of Seventeen magazine.
In the summer of 2006, at the age of 16, Sparks auditioned twice for the sixth season of American Idol: once in Los Angeles but failed to make it past the first round; and again in Seattle after winning Arizona Idol, a talent competition conducted by Phoenix Fox station KSAZ-TV. The Seattle audition is the one seen in the January 17, 2007, broadcast of American Idol, in which she earned a "gold ticket" and the right to appear in the Hollywood Round. American Idol judge Randy Jackson made the offhand prediction that "Curly hair will win this year." While on the show, Sparks gained a loyal fan base known as "Sparkplugs". On May 23, 2007, at the age of 17, Sparks won the sixth season of American Idol. She remains the youngest winner in American Idol history. Cowell said, "Jordin was the most improved over the whole season – didn't start the best, but midway through this was the girl who suddenly got momentum." He included that "Young girl, likeable, and the singer won over the entertainer [Lewis]."
Four selected songs Sparks had performed on American Idol, including the season's coronation song, "This Is My Now", were made available on her self-titled EP, released on May 22, 2007, the day before the grand finale. The coronation song "This Is My Now" peaked at number fifteen on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Sparks's first top-fifteen hit on the chart. The following summer, Sparks took part in the American Idols LIVE! Tour 2007 from July 6 to September 23, 2007, along with other contestants in the top ten.
Since her win in 2007, Sparks has returned to Idol six times. She performed twice on the seventh season of American Idol, once on the Idol Gives Back results show singing "No Air" with Chris Brown and again with "One Step at a Time" on May 21, 2008, for the finale. She performed "Battlefield" on the May 13, 2009, episode of American Idol.
The following year, Sparks took part in a tribute to Simon Cowell with other former contestants at the ninth season finale on May 26, 2010. During the tenth season, Sparks performed her new song "I Am Woman" on the Top 4 results show. She appeared on the finale of the eleventh season singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" alongside that year's fourth-place contestant Hollie Cavanagh. Sparks was the most recent female to win the competition until the twelfth season. In a comedic clip on the finale, "We Were Sabotaged", the boys of the twelfth season realize that she was the "mastermind" behind the girls' sabotage because it was five years since a girl had won.
Performances/results
When Ryan Seacrest announced the results for this particular night, Sparks was declared safe placing in the top three.
Due to the Idol Gives Back performance, the Top 6 remained intact for another week.
2007–08: Jordin Sparks and breakthrough
After winning American Idol, Sparks signed to 19 Recordings/Jive Records, becoming the first Idol winner to join the label. On August 27, 2007, she released her debut single, "Tattoo", which peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Sparks's first top-ten hit on the chart. The song certified platinum in the United States and Australia. To date, "Tattoo" has sold over two million copies in the U.S.
Sparks released her self-titled debut studio album on November 20, 2007, which debuted at number ten on the Billboard 200. To date, it has sold over a million copies in the U.S and was certified platinum by the RIAA. "No Air", a duet with Chris Brown, was released as the second single from the album in February 2008. In the United States, the song peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 becoming Sparks's best-charting single to date. It was also her first song to appear on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, where it reached number four. To date, the song has sold over three million copies in the U.S, making Sparks the first American Idol contestant to reach the three million mark. It also became Brown's first song to hit three million. "No Air" also charted in Australia and New Zealand, where it reached number one, receiving platinum certifications in both countries.
On February 3, 2008, Sparks sang the National Anthem at Super Bowl XLII. She performed in a tribute to Aretha Franklin at the NAACP Awards in February, as well. She had previously performed in a tribute to Diana Ross in December 2007.
In support of the album, Sparks opened for Alicia Keys on the North America leg of her As I Am Tour, starting on April 19, 2008. Before the tour, a career-threatening throat injury forced Sparks to cancel a few weeks of the shows. Officials revealed she was suffering an acute vocal cord hemorrhage and was ordered strict vocal rest until the condition improved. Sparks was back on the road by April 30, 2008, and remained on the tour until June 18, 2008. Sparks later joined Keys for the tour leg in Australia and New Zealand in December 2008.
The album's third single, "One Step at a Time", was released in June 2008. It peaked at number seventeen on the Billboard Hot 100, giving Sparks her fourth top twenty hit on the chart. This makes Sparks the only American Idol contestant to have her first four singles reach the top twenty of the Hot 100. It also charted in the top twenty in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In New Zealand, the song reached number two and was certified gold by the RIANZ. In August 2008, Sparks co-headlined the Jesse & Jordin LIVE Tour with Jesse McCartney in the United States and Canada.
Sparks received two MTV Video Music Award nominations for Best Female Video for "No Air" and Best New Artist at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. While at the awards show, Sparks caused controversy by responding to a joke made by host Russell Brand during his opening monologue, in which he held up a silver ring, claiming to have relieved one of the Jonas Brothers of their virginity, saying he would "take them more seriously if they wore it (the ring) around their genitals". Sparks who also wears a promise ring began her introduction of T.I. and Rihanna by saying "It's not bad to wear a promise ring because not everybody, guy or girl, wants to be a slut." In response to the controversy over her "slut" remark, Sparks told Entertainment Weekly that she does not regret the remark, commenting that "I wish I would've worded it differently – that somebody who doesn't wear a promise ring isn't necessarily a slut – but I can't take it back now." At the 2008 American Music Awards, Sparks won the award for Favorite Artist in the Adult Contemporary Category.
2009–10: Battlefield
On January 20, 2009, Sparks performed "Faith" at the Commander-in-Chief's Inaugural Ball hosted by President Barack Obama during the First inauguration of Barack Obama. Her second studio album, Battlefield was released in the United States on July 21, 2009. The album's title track was released as the lead single on May 25, 2009, and reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100. The song peaked in the top five in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In the United States, Battlefield debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200, peaking higher than her debut album's position of number ten. However, the album was notably unsuccessful compared to her debut, only selling 177,000 copies in the U.S and having failed to earn any chart certificates.
In support of the album, Sparks opened for The Jonas Brothers on the North America leg of the Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009, starting on June 20, 2009. She also opened for Britney Spears on the second leg of her Circus Tour in North America, beginning on August 24, 2009. Sparks served as a replacement for Ciara. She opened with Kristinia DeBarge, Girlicious, and One Call.
"S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", was released as the second single from Battlefield on September 15, 2009. The song topped the U.S Hot Dance Club Songs chart, becoming Sparks's first number one on the chart and peaked in the top fifteen in the United Kingdom. During this time, she recorded the duet, "Art of Love", with Australian artist Guy Sebastian for his fifth studio album, Like It Like That. The song reached the top ten in Australia and New Zealand and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The third single from Battlefield, "Don't Let It Go to Your Head", was released in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2010.
In May 2010, Sparks embarked on her first headlining tour in the United States, the Battlefield Tour. It began on May 1, 2010, and ended on July 18, 2010, stopping in over 35 major cities in the United States. In support of the DVD/Blu-ray re-release of the Disney animated film, Beauty and the Beast, Sparks recorded a cover of the film's title track for the soundtrack. A music video for the song was released on October 18, 2010.
2010–12: Solo music hiatus, compilations and films
In March 2011, Sparks recorded a music video for a song called "The World I Knew" for the film, African Cats, which was released on April 22, 2011. She was featured on the Big Time Rush song "Count on You", and the show with the same name, "Big Time Sparks" that aired June 18, 2010.
On May 5, 2011, it was revealed that Sparks would release a non-album single, "I Am Woman". To support her new single, Sparks served as an opening act for the NKOTBSB summer tour. On May 12, 2011, Sparks performed "I Am Woman" on the American Idol Top 4 results show. It debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 at number eighty-two with 33,000 downloads sold. It also debuted on the US Billboard Digital Songs at number fifty-seven. Sparks performed "I Am Woman" on Regis and Kelly on June 14.
On June 16, 2011, Sparks had her first-ever bikini shoot for the cover of People's Most Amazing Bodies issue. When speaking about her weight loss and diet to Access Hollywood, Sparks said, "My diet has pretty much remained the same, like if I want a piece of bread, I'm gonna have a piece of bread, but I'm making healthier decisions like instead of a bag of chips for a snack, I'll see if I can find an apple. I've also upped my intake of vegetables and I'm drinking a lot more water."
Sparks stated in an August 2011 interview there was no scheduled release date for her third album which was still in production. A song, "You Gotta Want It", was to be part of an NFL compilation album, Official Gameday Music of the NFL Vol. 2. According to reports, the song would be available to download on iTunes and Amazon on September 27. The song was co-written by Chris Weaver and Matthew J. Rogers while being produced by Cash Money Records' Cool & Dre.
On October 7, 2011, RCA Music Group announced it was disbanding Jive Records along with Arista Records and J Records. With the shutdown, Sparks (and all other artists previously signed to these three labels) would release her future material (including her upcoming third studio album) on the RCA Records brand. On November 14, 2011, it was announced that Sparks had recorded an original song called "Angels Are Singing" as a part of ABC Family's "12 Dates of Christmas".
On February 29, 2012, Sparks's boyfriend Jason Derulo took to Twitter announcing the official remix of his single "It Girl" featuring Sparks. There was a video released with the remix, which showed home videos, of Derulo and Sparks together as well as pictures.
On September 12, 2011, it was announced that Sparks would be making her feature film debut playing the lead role in the music-themed pic Sparkle, a remake of the 1976 film inspired by the story of The Supremes. The remake was set in 1968 Detroit, during the rise of Motown. The story focused on the youngest sister, a music prodigy named Sparkle Williams (Sparks), and her struggle to become a star while overcoming issues that were tearing her family apart. R&B singer Aaliyah was originally tapped to star as Sparkle; however, following her death in a 2001 plane crash, production on the film, which was scheduled for 2002, had been derailed. Sparkle was filmed in the fall of 2011 over a two-month period. The movie, starring both Sparks and Houston, was released on August 17 in the United States. On May 21, 2012, "Celebrate", the last song Whitney Houston recorded with Sparks, premiered at RyanSeacrest.com. It was made available for digital download on iTunes on June 5. The song was featured on the Sparkle: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack album as the first official single. The accompanying music video for Celebrate was filmed on May 30, 2012. The video was shot over 2 days and was released on June 27. A sneak peek of the video premiered on entertainment tonight on June 4, 2012.
On July 24, 2012, it was officially announced that Sparks would star in her second film, an indie drama "'The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete'". The George Tillman Jr-directed film stars Jennifer Hudson, Sparks, Jeffrey Wright, and Anthony Mackie. Michael Starrbury wrote the script, which follows two inner-city youths left to fend for themselves over the summer after their mothers are taken away by the authorities. Production on the film began on July 23, 2012, in Brooklyn. Alicia Keys is the film's executive producer. The film is produced by Street State Pictures.
On August 9, 2012, Sparks stated in an interview with Billboard, that she had about seven songs set so far for her third album. Sparks stated "It's going to be different from what my fans have heard before. With (2009's) 'Battlefield' it was pop/rock and a little bit of pop/R&B, but I'm going for more of the R&B side now, so it's like R&B/pop instead of pop/R&B." In an interview with MTV, Sparks confirmed she had recorded a duet with Jason Derulo and it would be on the album and could serve as a potential single. Sparks performed on VH1 Divas 2012 with fellow singers Miley Cyrus, Kelly Rowland and Ciara. The show premiered on December 16, 2012. Sparks joined singers Ledisi and Melanie Fiona in a tribute to Whitney Houston.
2013–14: Left Behind and label change
In an October 2010 interview, Sparks revealed she had begun working on her third studio album. During an interview with Good Day New York in November 2010, Sparks confirmed she would be recording the album in New York and Arizona. In January 2011, it was reported that Sparks and John Legend were working on songs together in the studio.
In early May 2013, Sparks took to Twitter announcing that she and RCA Records had finally come to an agreement with releasing new material. Sparks asked her fans to email her their opinions and frustrations regarding the delay in the release of her third studio album. A few days following the meeting, Sparks announced that her new music would be released in the fall of 2013.
On July 22, 2013, it was announced that the first promotional track from her upcoming third studio album would be released on August 1, 2013. "Skipping a Beat" was officially released on August 1, 2013. The buzz single became available for download on August 13, 2013. Sparks was featured on Jason Derulo's third studio album, Tattoos, which was released on September 24, 2013, on "Vertigo". It was announced that Sparks's third album had officially been completed and was awaiting release. However, it was later announced that new music from Sparks would not be released until early 2014 due to timing issues with acting projects as well as placement issues within her label RCA.
On August 9, 2013, it was announced that Sparks had signed on to join the cast of the action science fiction-thriller film Left Behind. Sparks's character is named Shasta, but for the most part, her role was kept under wraps. One of the films, producers Paul Lalonde said that "She will be a passenger on a plane that the film's main character Captain Rayford Steele is piloting. Sparks will co-star alongside Nicolas Cage as Captain Rayford Steele, Chad Michael Murray as Cameron "Buck" Williams and Nicky Whelan as Hattie Durham. The film is set for release on October 3, 2014. The film's shooting began on August 9, 2013, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. On October 7, 2013, it was announced that Sparks would guest star in an upcoming episode in the fourteenth season of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Sparks played Alison Stone, a high school teacher who somehow found herself scared and covered in blood in a hotel room crime scene. The season episode, "Check In & Check Out" was set to air on November 20, 2013.
On December 9, 2013, Sparks partnered with Glade and the Young People's Chorus of New York City to release a brand new Christmas holiday anthem "This Is My Wish." From December 9 until December 31, 2013, the song was made available for free download through Glade's official website. Sparks made her first televised performance of the song on the same day on The Today Show.
After experiencing multiple delays in the release of Sparks's third album due to RCA refusing to put her in their roster, citing that her acting projects had prevented them from reaching a deal, Sparks was released from her contract from RCA records and eventually signed to Salaam Remi's new label imprint 'Louder than Life', a subsidiary of Sony Music. Remi had previously worked with Sparks on the Sparkle film soundtrack. As a result of the new deal, all the material Sparks had previously recorded for her third album under RCA has subsequently been scrapped and had since begun re-recording and writing new material for her third album since January 2014. An official announcement of Sparks's signing to the new label had only been released a year later in August 2014.
2014–2017: #ByeFelicia and Right Here Right Now
It was announced on May 8, 2014, that Sparks would be hosting the 2014 Billboard Music Awards 'Samsung Red Carpet', alongside Lance Bass and Ted Stryker. Sparks was also listed to present.
In an interview with AOL Radio News on May 30, 2014, Sparks announced that the first official single off her upcoming third studio album would have a summer 2014 release, with a fall 2014 album release. The album and single were expected to be released through RCA Records.
On August 15, 2014, Salaam Remi took to Instagram to preview the logo for his new label, Louder than Life, a subsidiary of Sony Music. Remi also announced that Sparks is now a part of the Louder than Life roster. In an article with Music Connection, Remi also announced he would be producing Sparks's upcoming album. During a promotional tour for Sparks's new movie, Left Behind, Sparks announced that she was in the finishing stages of her new album. Sparks announced that she is also no longer with her previous label, RCA Records. Sparks stated her single was due by the end of the year, with an album release in 2015. Sparks stated that she and her label were picking the first single, first look, and deciding on the album name.
On September 30, Sparks's label released a promotional single for Left Behind, "I Wish We'd All Been Ready", which became available on music outlets the same day.
On October 23, 2014, Remi hosted a music showcase featuring Sparks. Sparks showcased three songs, two of which were performed live. Sparks announced this was the first time she performed new music for people outside of the industry. On November 4, Sparks announced that the first single off her upcoming third album would be released in a two-week time frame. Sparks announcement to Lance Bass brought speculation that the single would be released on November 18, 2014. On November 23, Sparks announced during an interview at the American Music Awards that new music would be released on November 25, 2014. Following that announcement, Sparks posted a clip of a song, "How Bout Now", a remix of Drake's song. On November 24, Sparks followed up with an official release of "How Bout Now", which debuted on the 'LALeakers' SoundCloud page and website. Sparks also stated that the official release of her mixtape, #ByeFelicia, would be released the following day at 11:11 PST.
On November 25, it was announced that Sparks would release her third studio album, Right Here Right Now, in early 2015, under Louder Than Life/Red Associated Labels, subsidiaries of Sony Music Entertainment, in conjunction with 19 Recordings.
On December 2, the song "It Ain't You" from Sparks's mixtape #ByeFelicia, became available for pre-order on major music markets and was also uploaded to Sparks's Vevo YouTube page. The single was released on December 15, 2014, as a promotional single and first off from Sparks's third album. On December 16, Right Here Right Now became available for pre-order on Sparks's official website. On February 11, the first single for Sparks's album Double Tap featuring 2Chainz became available for pre-order. The single was released on March 2, 2015, and the music video was released on March 10, 2015.
Sparks performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the 2015 Indianapolis 500.
In May 2016, Sparks was cast in the feature film God Bless the Broken Road, based on the song of the same name. While originally announced for a 2016 release, as of June 2018 it has yet to find a distributor and has not been released.
On May 20, 2016, Sparks split ways with Louder Than Life record company.
On October 2, 2016, Food Network aired a pilot episode of Sparks's new potential series Sugar and Sparks, focusing on her dream to own her own bakery and mastering the baking industry with the help of Duff Goldman. The first episode, "Keep it Simple, Sparks", was produced by Ryan Seacrest.
Sparks joined Thomas Rhett and Molly Sims in judging Miss America 2018.
2018–present: Reality show and return to music
On February 12, 2018, Sparks told OK magazine in an interview that she was recording her fourth album. Sparks, who is currently unsigned, said she had finished five to six songs for the album. She drew inspiration from her new marriage and son.
In May 2018, Sparks and Dana began production on their reality show. She said "they [will] get to see just Jordin. Drop the Sparks and you just get to see Jordin, and you get to see Dana, and you get to see both of us together and how we interact". She continued, saying "I'm super excited for people to see it. It's been a little exhausting. I'm not used to cameras all in my face all the time, but I think it's really going to show a good side of us." On August 28, it was announced that the pilot for Sparks' special Jordin Sparks: A Baby Story would air on September 6 on Lifetime.
In August 2018, KIN Network released a web series, Heart of Batter with Jordin Sparks, focused on Sparks's love for baking.
In 2019, Sparks released a joint EP with R&B singer Elijah Blake, 1990 Forever.
Sparks was cast as a Broadway replacement for Jenna Hunterson in Waitress, from September 16 to November 24, 2019.
On June 2, 2020, after over five years of not releasing any solo music, Sparks returned with the single "Unknown". On July 31, 2020, she released another new single, "Red Sangria".
In 2021, Sparks competed on The Masked Dancer as "Exotic Bird" and finished in fifth place.
Personal life
In April 2008, Sparks suffered acute vocal cord hemorrhaging due to overusing her vocal cords. Doctors ordered vocal rest, forcing Sparks to cancel appearances, including scheduled cameos on Alicia Keys's tour. Doctors cleared Sparks a month later, letting her rejoin the tour.
Sparks and Jason Derulo dated for three years and ended their relationship in 2014.
On July 17, 2017, Sparks married Dana Isaiah (born: Dana Isaiah Thomas), a fitness model, in Hawaii. In November 2017 People published news of her pregnancy. On May 2, 2018, Sparks gave birth to her first child, a son.
Other ventures
Endorsements
In April 2008, it was announced that Sparks would team up with cosmetics company, Avon, to become a spokesperson for the teen-focused line Mark. In November 2008, Sparks teamed up with Wet Seal to create her own clothing line 'Sparks', The line launched on November 19, 2008, featuring sizes XS to XL. Sparks said, "I am so excited that Wet Seal and I have been able to create a line of clothing that will appeal to more girls than ever before."
In October 2010, Sparks released her debut fragrance, Because of You... This fragrance was exclusively distributed at first by Dots Department Stores, but by November was made available to other retail stores. Sparks wanted this product to be affordable for her fans, yet still high end. "When I was starting this project, I really wanted it to be affordable. I looked at some other celebrity fragrances, and they were like $80. Even now, I look at a fragrance that's $80, and I can't bring myself to spend that much." In March 2012, due to the success of her first fragrance, Sparks released her second fragrance, Fascinate, exclusively with Dots Fashions as a sister scent to her first. It was announced on October 22, 2012, that Sparks was releasing her third fragrance Ambition. In an interview Sparks said; "Right now, I feel like I can take on the world. Ambition is the perfect word for where I am in my life right now". Her new scent is available in retail stores such as Bon-Ton. It was released in stores and online on November 8, 2012, before Sparks presented the fragrance at an official launch party in Milwaukee on December 1, 2012.
Acting and Broadway
In 2009, she made her acting debut on Disney's The Suite Life on Deck, guest starring as herself in the "Crossing Jordin" episode. The episode aired on October 23, 2009. Sparks also guest starred on the hit Nickelodeon show, Big Time Rush. The episode aired on June 18, 2010. On May 3, 2010, it was announced that Sparks would join the cast of the Broadway show In the Heights as Nina Rosario. Sparks took part in the production from August 19 through November 14 for a consecutive 12 weeks. In addition, Sparks did a voice over on Team Umizoomi as the Blue Mermaid. The episode aired on May 13, 2011.
In 2012, Sparks made her film debut in Sparkle. Following the release of Sparkle in 2012, Sparks began auditioning for several television and film roles while also receiving scripts from companies interested in having her a part of their projects. First of which was an indie drama film, The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete, which follows two inner-city youths left to fend for themselves over the summer after their mothers are taken away by the authorities. Sparks plays Alice a neighbor and friend of character Mister. She will also be in the film, The Grace of Jake, which follows ex-inmate and wandering musician Jake who travels to a small town in Arkansas intent on exacting revenge from his father, but begins to unravel a complicated family history as he befriends the locals. The film was in post production and was set for release on October 3, 2014. Sparks plays Nicole Lovely the preachers daughter.
Sparks played the part of Abby in Dear Secret Santa, a Lifetime Television romantic Christmas film that premiered on November 30, 2013. Sparks will play Shasta Carvell in Left Behind, an apocalyptic thriller, based on the novel series of the same name. The film is a reboot of Left Behind: The Movie, which is based on the idea of a pre-tribulation Rapture. In November 2013, Sparks guest starred on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Sparks plays Alison Stone, a high school teacher who somehow finds herself scared and covered in blood in a hotel room crime scene. The season episode, "Check In & Check Out" aired on November 20, 2013.
Philanthropy
In 2007, Sparks was asked by a relative who works for SOS Children's Villages in Florida to design a denim jacket festooned with Swarovski Crystal to support orphans. In February 2008, Sparks traveled to Ghana. She was part of the delegation of (then presidential couple) George and Laura Bush to help with Malaria No More, an organization with a goal to end malaria deaths in Africa by 2015. Sparks joined Laura Bush at the Maamobi Polyclinic, where the Bush donated a number of treated bed nets to local female traders in order to help combat the scourge of malaria in Ghana. While there, Sparks sang "Amazing Grace" to the durbar of chieftains who had gathered at the venue to give audience to Laura Bush. Sparks said, "Traveling to Ghana with Malaria No More gives me the incredible opportunity to see for myself what a difference a simple mosquito net can make in the life of a child."
In 2008, Sparks supported Dosomething.org's Do Something 101 campaign by filming a public service announcement explaining the nationwide school supplies drive project. She further supported the campaign by helping out at the Do Something 101 School Supply Volunteer Event held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
On May 20, 2009, Sparks became an endorser for the Got Milk? campaign, an American advertising campaign encouraging the consumption of cow's milk. On September 17, 2009, Sparks took part in the VH1 Divas special, a concert created to support the channel's Save The Music Foundation. The concert was held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York where Sparks performed the second single from her Battlefield album, S.O.S. (Let the Music Play), as well as "A Broken Wing" with Martina McBride. In February 2010, Sparks was one of the many artists who contributed to "We Are the World 25 for Haiti", a charity single for the victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Sparks teamed up with Pennyroyal Silver creator and designer, Tim Foster, to create her very own necklace design for the company's signature collection. Proceeds of the necklace funded medical units in Haiti.
On July 28, 2011, Sparks performed a live surprise concert in Times Square. Sparks was named the "VH1 Save The Music Foundation Ambassador" in 2011. It was announced on November 9, 2011, that Sparks would be a 'Vh1 Save the Music Ambassador' again for 2012. Sparks was joined by fellow American Idol contestant Chris Daughtry, Lupe Fiasco, Katy Perry and others. During Sparks segment as ambassador she hosted a surprise concert series in Times Square. Sparks and VH1 gave fans the opportunity to submit an essay on 'What Music Means to you?'. The winner of the essay contest won a trip for two, to New York City to stand alongside of Sparks at her pop-up concert. The winner chosen was Deavan Ebersole, from Hagerstown, Maryland.
Sparks has also shown support for Little Kids Rock, a national non-profit that works to restore and revitalize music education in disadvantaged US public schools, by donating items for auction to raise money for the organization.
I'm M.A.D. Are You? campaign
Initiated by Sparks and her younger brother P.J. in 2008, the I'm M.A.D. Are You? campaign cultivates community advocacy and volunteerism among teens and young adults. M.A.D. stands for Making A Difference. On February 3, 2010, Sparks and David Archuleta performed at the "Jordin Sparks Experience", held at the Eden Roc Renaissance Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. All proceeds raised by the event went to a number of charities, including the Miami Children's Hospital Foundation. Since 2008, Sparks and the campaign travels to the Super Bowls designated city to host a week of charitable events, to raise money for several charities. In June 2010, the "Thumbs Up to X the TXT" pledge campaign, established by Allstate, made its way to Sparks's Battlefield Tour, presented by Mike & Ike to encourage teens and their families not to text while driving. Fans at Sparks's concerts made a pledge not to text and drive by adding their thumbprint to a traveling banner at each of her shows. The campaign began at Sparks's Battlefield Tour on June 3, 2010, and ended on July 18, 2010. Sparks is the main spokesperson for the "I'm M.A.D., Are You?" campaign. She also supports Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, which helps to raise money for children with cancer. Sparks traveled to Louisiana in June 2010 to visit the Gulf Coast oil spill with the Audubon Society to view the effects of the oil spill on the wildlife and marshes.
Since 2008, the campaign has raised over $500,000.
Discography
Studio albums
Jordin Sparks (2007)
Battlefield (2009)
Right Here Right Now (2015)
Cider & Hennessy (2020)
EPs and mixtapes
2006: For Now
2007: Jordin Sparks (EP)
2014: #ByeFelicia
2019: 1990 Forever (EP) (with Elijah Blake)
2020: Sounds Like Me (EP)
Tours
Headlining
2010: Battlefield Tour
Joint tours
2007: American Idols LIVE! Tour 2007
2008: Jesse & Jordin Live
Opening act
2008: As I Am Tour
2009: Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009
2009: The Circus Starring Britney Spears
2011: NKOTBSB Tour
See also
List of Idols winners
Awards and nominations
Filmography
Television
Film
Broadway
References
External links
Jordin Sparks in In the Heights
1989 births
Living people
19 Recordings artists
21st-century American actresses
21st-century American businesspeople
21st-century Protestants
Actresses from Phoenix, Arizona
African-American actresses
African-American businesspeople
African-American Christians
African-American female models
African-American women singer-songwriters
American women pop singers
American child singers
American cosmetics businesspeople
American evangelicals
American fashion businesspeople
American Idol winners
Businesspeople from Arizona
Jive Records artists
Musicians from Glendale, Arizona
Musicians from Phoenix, Arizona
RCA Records artists
American television actresses
American film actresses
American voice actresses
American stage actresses
American child actresses
Guitarists from Arizona
21st-century African-American women singers
21st-century American businesswomen
21st-century American women guitarists
21st-century American guitarists
Singer-songwriters from Arizona | true | [
"Jeanne Cinnante Galway, Lady Galway (born October 8, 1955) is an American-born concert flutist and teacher who lives in Switzerland. She is married to flutist James Galway and they often tour as a pair. They both live in Switzerland.\n\nBiography\nJeanne Cinnante was born and raised in and around Long Island, New York. She started playing the flute when she was 10 and said she had to purchase her own flutes with babysitting money. She graduated in 1973 from John Glenn High School in Elwood, then attended Mannes College of Music in New York City.\n\nShe met Sir James Galway in 1982 and they dated for two years before marrying in 1984. She did not perform between 1984 and 1992 due to the stress of traveling and supporting her husband on tour, managing his business affairs, and taking care of his young children. They now travel and perform together. In addition to performing with her husband, she sometimes performs as a solo artist or as part of the trio Zephyr (with pianist Jonathan Feldman and cellist Darrett Adkins). She teaches and actively supports music education. In 2008, Irish America magazine awarded James and Jeanne Galway the \"Spirit of Ireland\" award in recognition of their roles as musical ambassadors.\n\nShe currently lives with her husband in Lucerne, Switzerland. Galway currently performs on an 18 carat, James Galway edition gold Nagahara flute. Her husband no longer performs with anyone else.\n\nDiscography\n\"My Magic Flute\" with Sir James Galway and Sinfonia Varsovia\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\nAmerican classical flautists\n1955 births\nLiving people\nAmerican expatriates in Switzerland\nClassical musicians from New York (state)",
"I Could Be With Anyone is an EP released by Kevin Devine in support of his fifth album, Brother's Blood, and his winter 2008 tour with Manchester Orchestra. The title track is featured on Brother's Blood, while the other 3 tracks are exclusive to the EP. Both \"She Stayed As Steam\" and \"What's Keeping Us Young\" were previously available to stream on Kevin's MySpace page, however, the EP features a new version of \"What's Keeping Us Young\".\n\nOn June 5, 2009 the video for \"I Could Be With Anyone\" premiered on Spinner.com, featuring \"a series of couples both real and staged in various stages of their relationships.\" \n\nThe title track was later covered by Manchester Orchestra on a split EP with Devine, entitled I Could Be the Only One. The band's lead vocalist Andy Hull describes the song as \"...an incredibly real and painfully-depressing song. I've loved this tune since the moment I heard it.\"\n\nA full band version of \"She Stayed as Steam\" featured as a bonus track on international version of Brother's Blood and would later be released as the title track of the She Stayed as Steam EP.\n\nTrack listing\n I Could Be With Anyone\n The Weather Is Wonderful\n She Stayed As Steam (Demo)\n What's Keeping Us Young\n\nReferences\n\nKevin Devine EPs\n2008 EPs"
] |
[
"Jordin Sparks",
"2009-10: Battlefield",
"Was Battlefield the name of an album?",
"S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)\", was released as the second single from Battlefield on September 15, 2009.",
"What singles were on this album?",
"The third single from Battlefield, \"Don't Let It Go to Your Head\",",
"Did she tour after releasing this album?",
"In May 2010, Sparks embarked on her first headlining tour in the United States,",
"Did she tour with anyone?",
"In support of the album, Sparks opened for The Jonas Brothers on the North America leg of the Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009,"
] | C_2983bbd8348943f5b4f6a1034993d01a_1 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 5 | In addition to the info about the album and who Jordin Sparks toured with, are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | Jordin Sparks | On January 20, 2009, Sparks performed "Faith" at the Commander-in-Chief's Inaugural Ball hosted by President Barack Obama during the First inauguration of Barack Obama. Her second studio album, Battlefield was released in the United States on July 21, 2009. The album's title track was released as the lead single on May 25, 2009, and reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100. The song peaked in the top five in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In the United States, Battlefield debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200, peaking higher than her debut album's position of number ten. However, the album was notably unsuccessful compared to her debut, only selling 177,000 copies in the U.S and having failed to earn any chart certificates. In support of the album, Sparks opened for The Jonas Brothers on the North America leg of the Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009, starting on June 20, 2009. She also opened for Britney Spears on the second leg of her Circus Tour in North America, beginning on August 24, 2009. Sparks served as a replacement for Ciara. She opened with Kristinia DeBarge, Girlicious, and One Call. "S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", was released as the second single from Battlefield on September 15, 2009. The song topped the U.S Hot Dance Club Songs chart, becoming Sparks's first number one on the chart and peaked in the top fifteen in the United Kingdom. During this time, she recorded the duet, "Art of Love", with Australian artist Guy Sebastian for his fifth studio album, Like It Like That. The song reached the top ten in Australia and New Zealand and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The third single from Battlefield, "Don't Let It Go to Your Head", was released in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2010. In May 2010, Sparks embarked on her first headlining tour in the United States, the Battlefield Tour. It began on May 1, 2010, and ended on July 18, 2010, stopping in over 35 major cities in the United States. In support of the DVD/Blu-ray re-release of the Disney animated film, Beauty and the Beast, Sparks recorded a cover of the film's title track for the soundtrack. A music video for the song was released on October 18, 2010. CANNOTANSWER | She also opened for Britney Spears on the second leg of her Circus Tour in North America, beginning on August 24, 2009. | Jordin Sparks-Thomas (born December 22, 1989) is an American singer, songwriter and actress. She rose to fame in 2007 after winning the sixth season of American Idol at age 17, becoming the youngest winner in the series' history. Her self-titled debut studio album, released later that year, was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and has sold over two million copies worldwide. The album spawned the Billboard Hot 100 top-ten singles "Tattoo" and "No Air"; the latter, a collaboration with Chris Brown, is currently the third highest-selling single by any American Idol contestant, selling over three million digital copies in the United States. The song earned Sparks her first Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.
Sparks's second studio album, Battlefield (2009), debuted at number 7 on the Billboard 200 chart. Its title single reached number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, making Sparks the only American Idol contestant to have her first five singles reach the top 20 in the United States. The second single, "S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", became Sparks's first number one on the Hot Dance Club Play chart. Throughout her career, Sparks has received numerous accolades, including an NAACP Image Award, a BET Award, an American Music Award, a People's Choice Award and two Teen Choice Awards. In 2009, Billboard magazine ranked her as the 91st Artist of the 2000s Decade. In 2012, Sparks was ranked at number 92 on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Women in Music". As of February 2012, she has sold 1.3 million albums and 10.2 million singles in the United States alone, making her one of the most successful American Idol contestants of all time.
Following the release of Battlefield, Sparks ventured into acting, pursuing television and Broadway. She made her stage debut as Nina Rosario in the musical In The Heights (2010), and her feature film debut as the titular character in Sparkle (2012). Sparks has also released several perfumes, including Because of You... in 2010 as well as Fascinate and Ambition in 2012. After a five-year absence from music, she released a mixtape, #ByeFelicia (2014), under a new record deal with Louder Than Life/Red Associated Labels, a joint deal with Sony Music Entertainment. Sparks' R&B third studio album and most recent to date, Right Here Right Now (2015), saw smaller commercial success but received positive reviews from music critics.
Early life
Sparks was born in Phoenix, Arizona, to Jodi ( Wiedmann) Jackson and former professional American football player Phillippi Sparks. Jordin has a younger brother, Phillippi "PJ" Sparks Jr., who plays football at Arizona Christian University. Her father is of African-American, French, and Cherokee descent and her mother is of German, English, Scottish, and Norwegian descent. She grew up in the suburbs of Ridgewood, New Jersey, while her father played as a defensive back for the New York Giants. After living in New Jersey, Sparks attended Northwest Community Christian School in Phoenix through the eighth grade. Sparks attended Sandra Day O'Connor High School until 2006 when she was homeschooled by her grandmother, Pam Wiedmann, to better concentrate on her singing. Sparks is an evangelical Christian and attends Calvary Community Church in Phoenix. On her American Idol biography, she thanks her parents, grandparents, and God for her win. She won an award for best young artist of the year in Arizona three years in a row.
Career
2006: Career beginnings and American Idol
Before appearing on American Idol, Sparks participated in and won such talent competitions as Coca-Cola's Rising Star, the Gospel Music Association Academy's Overall Spotlight Award, America's Most Talented Kids, Colgate Country Showdown, and the 2006 Drug Free AZ Superstar Search. From the time Jordin was nine years old until her win as American Idol 2007, her maternal grandmother, Pam Wiedmann, managed her. Prior to Idol, Sparks frequently performed the national anthem at various local sporting events, notably for the Phoenix Suns, Arizona Cardinals, and Arizona Diamondbacks. Sparks also appeared with Alice Cooper in his 2004 Christmas show and toured with Christian contemporary singer Michael W. Smith in 2006. In 2006, Sparks was one of six winners of the Phoenix Torrid search for the "Next Plus Size Model". She was flown to California, where she was featured in Torrid ads and promotional pieces. A full-page ad for Torrid featuring Sparks ran in the December 2006 issue of Seventeen magazine.
In the summer of 2006, at the age of 16, Sparks auditioned twice for the sixth season of American Idol: once in Los Angeles but failed to make it past the first round; and again in Seattle after winning Arizona Idol, a talent competition conducted by Phoenix Fox station KSAZ-TV. The Seattle audition is the one seen in the January 17, 2007, broadcast of American Idol, in which she earned a "gold ticket" and the right to appear in the Hollywood Round. American Idol judge Randy Jackson made the offhand prediction that "Curly hair will win this year." While on the show, Sparks gained a loyal fan base known as "Sparkplugs". On May 23, 2007, at the age of 17, Sparks won the sixth season of American Idol. She remains the youngest winner in American Idol history. Cowell said, "Jordin was the most improved over the whole season – didn't start the best, but midway through this was the girl who suddenly got momentum." He included that "Young girl, likeable, and the singer won over the entertainer [Lewis]."
Four selected songs Sparks had performed on American Idol, including the season's coronation song, "This Is My Now", were made available on her self-titled EP, released on May 22, 2007, the day before the grand finale. The coronation song "This Is My Now" peaked at number fifteen on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Sparks's first top-fifteen hit on the chart. The following summer, Sparks took part in the American Idols LIVE! Tour 2007 from July 6 to September 23, 2007, along with other contestants in the top ten.
Since her win in 2007, Sparks has returned to Idol six times. She performed twice on the seventh season of American Idol, once on the Idol Gives Back results show singing "No Air" with Chris Brown and again with "One Step at a Time" on May 21, 2008, for the finale. She performed "Battlefield" on the May 13, 2009, episode of American Idol.
The following year, Sparks took part in a tribute to Simon Cowell with other former contestants at the ninth season finale on May 26, 2010. During the tenth season, Sparks performed her new song "I Am Woman" on the Top 4 results show. She appeared on the finale of the eleventh season singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" alongside that year's fourth-place contestant Hollie Cavanagh. Sparks was the most recent female to win the competition until the twelfth season. In a comedic clip on the finale, "We Were Sabotaged", the boys of the twelfth season realize that she was the "mastermind" behind the girls' sabotage because it was five years since a girl had won.
Performances/results
When Ryan Seacrest announced the results for this particular night, Sparks was declared safe placing in the top three.
Due to the Idol Gives Back performance, the Top 6 remained intact for another week.
2007–08: Jordin Sparks and breakthrough
After winning American Idol, Sparks signed to 19 Recordings/Jive Records, becoming the first Idol winner to join the label. On August 27, 2007, she released her debut single, "Tattoo", which peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Sparks's first top-ten hit on the chart. The song certified platinum in the United States and Australia. To date, "Tattoo" has sold over two million copies in the U.S.
Sparks released her self-titled debut studio album on November 20, 2007, which debuted at number ten on the Billboard 200. To date, it has sold over a million copies in the U.S and was certified platinum by the RIAA. "No Air", a duet with Chris Brown, was released as the second single from the album in February 2008. In the United States, the song peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 becoming Sparks's best-charting single to date. It was also her first song to appear on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, where it reached number four. To date, the song has sold over three million copies in the U.S, making Sparks the first American Idol contestant to reach the three million mark. It also became Brown's first song to hit three million. "No Air" also charted in Australia and New Zealand, where it reached number one, receiving platinum certifications in both countries.
On February 3, 2008, Sparks sang the National Anthem at Super Bowl XLII. She performed in a tribute to Aretha Franklin at the NAACP Awards in February, as well. She had previously performed in a tribute to Diana Ross in December 2007.
In support of the album, Sparks opened for Alicia Keys on the North America leg of her As I Am Tour, starting on April 19, 2008. Before the tour, a career-threatening throat injury forced Sparks to cancel a few weeks of the shows. Officials revealed she was suffering an acute vocal cord hemorrhage and was ordered strict vocal rest until the condition improved. Sparks was back on the road by April 30, 2008, and remained on the tour until June 18, 2008. Sparks later joined Keys for the tour leg in Australia and New Zealand in December 2008.
The album's third single, "One Step at a Time", was released in June 2008. It peaked at number seventeen on the Billboard Hot 100, giving Sparks her fourth top twenty hit on the chart. This makes Sparks the only American Idol contestant to have her first four singles reach the top twenty of the Hot 100. It also charted in the top twenty in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In New Zealand, the song reached number two and was certified gold by the RIANZ. In August 2008, Sparks co-headlined the Jesse & Jordin LIVE Tour with Jesse McCartney in the United States and Canada.
Sparks received two MTV Video Music Award nominations for Best Female Video for "No Air" and Best New Artist at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. While at the awards show, Sparks caused controversy by responding to a joke made by host Russell Brand during his opening monologue, in which he held up a silver ring, claiming to have relieved one of the Jonas Brothers of their virginity, saying he would "take them more seriously if they wore it (the ring) around their genitals". Sparks who also wears a promise ring began her introduction of T.I. and Rihanna by saying "It's not bad to wear a promise ring because not everybody, guy or girl, wants to be a slut." In response to the controversy over her "slut" remark, Sparks told Entertainment Weekly that she does not regret the remark, commenting that "I wish I would've worded it differently – that somebody who doesn't wear a promise ring isn't necessarily a slut – but I can't take it back now." At the 2008 American Music Awards, Sparks won the award for Favorite Artist in the Adult Contemporary Category.
2009–10: Battlefield
On January 20, 2009, Sparks performed "Faith" at the Commander-in-Chief's Inaugural Ball hosted by President Barack Obama during the First inauguration of Barack Obama. Her second studio album, Battlefield was released in the United States on July 21, 2009. The album's title track was released as the lead single on May 25, 2009, and reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100. The song peaked in the top five in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In the United States, Battlefield debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200, peaking higher than her debut album's position of number ten. However, the album was notably unsuccessful compared to her debut, only selling 177,000 copies in the U.S and having failed to earn any chart certificates.
In support of the album, Sparks opened for The Jonas Brothers on the North America leg of the Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009, starting on June 20, 2009. She also opened for Britney Spears on the second leg of her Circus Tour in North America, beginning on August 24, 2009. Sparks served as a replacement for Ciara. She opened with Kristinia DeBarge, Girlicious, and One Call.
"S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)", was released as the second single from Battlefield on September 15, 2009. The song topped the U.S Hot Dance Club Songs chart, becoming Sparks's first number one on the chart and peaked in the top fifteen in the United Kingdom. During this time, she recorded the duet, "Art of Love", with Australian artist Guy Sebastian for his fifth studio album, Like It Like That. The song reached the top ten in Australia and New Zealand and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The third single from Battlefield, "Don't Let It Go to Your Head", was released in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2010.
In May 2010, Sparks embarked on her first headlining tour in the United States, the Battlefield Tour. It began on May 1, 2010, and ended on July 18, 2010, stopping in over 35 major cities in the United States. In support of the DVD/Blu-ray re-release of the Disney animated film, Beauty and the Beast, Sparks recorded a cover of the film's title track for the soundtrack. A music video for the song was released on October 18, 2010.
2010–12: Solo music hiatus, compilations and films
In March 2011, Sparks recorded a music video for a song called "The World I Knew" for the film, African Cats, which was released on April 22, 2011. She was featured on the Big Time Rush song "Count on You", and the show with the same name, "Big Time Sparks" that aired June 18, 2010.
On May 5, 2011, it was revealed that Sparks would release a non-album single, "I Am Woman". To support her new single, Sparks served as an opening act for the NKOTBSB summer tour. On May 12, 2011, Sparks performed "I Am Woman" on the American Idol Top 4 results show. It debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 at number eighty-two with 33,000 downloads sold. It also debuted on the US Billboard Digital Songs at number fifty-seven. Sparks performed "I Am Woman" on Regis and Kelly on June 14.
On June 16, 2011, Sparks had her first-ever bikini shoot for the cover of People's Most Amazing Bodies issue. When speaking about her weight loss and diet to Access Hollywood, Sparks said, "My diet has pretty much remained the same, like if I want a piece of bread, I'm gonna have a piece of bread, but I'm making healthier decisions like instead of a bag of chips for a snack, I'll see if I can find an apple. I've also upped my intake of vegetables and I'm drinking a lot more water."
Sparks stated in an August 2011 interview there was no scheduled release date for her third album which was still in production. A song, "You Gotta Want It", was to be part of an NFL compilation album, Official Gameday Music of the NFL Vol. 2. According to reports, the song would be available to download on iTunes and Amazon on September 27. The song was co-written by Chris Weaver and Matthew J. Rogers while being produced by Cash Money Records' Cool & Dre.
On October 7, 2011, RCA Music Group announced it was disbanding Jive Records along with Arista Records and J Records. With the shutdown, Sparks (and all other artists previously signed to these three labels) would release her future material (including her upcoming third studio album) on the RCA Records brand. On November 14, 2011, it was announced that Sparks had recorded an original song called "Angels Are Singing" as a part of ABC Family's "12 Dates of Christmas".
On February 29, 2012, Sparks's boyfriend Jason Derulo took to Twitter announcing the official remix of his single "It Girl" featuring Sparks. There was a video released with the remix, which showed home videos, of Derulo and Sparks together as well as pictures.
On September 12, 2011, it was announced that Sparks would be making her feature film debut playing the lead role in the music-themed pic Sparkle, a remake of the 1976 film inspired by the story of The Supremes. The remake was set in 1968 Detroit, during the rise of Motown. The story focused on the youngest sister, a music prodigy named Sparkle Williams (Sparks), and her struggle to become a star while overcoming issues that were tearing her family apart. R&B singer Aaliyah was originally tapped to star as Sparkle; however, following her death in a 2001 plane crash, production on the film, which was scheduled for 2002, had been derailed. Sparkle was filmed in the fall of 2011 over a two-month period. The movie, starring both Sparks and Houston, was released on August 17 in the United States. On May 21, 2012, "Celebrate", the last song Whitney Houston recorded with Sparks, premiered at RyanSeacrest.com. It was made available for digital download on iTunes on June 5. The song was featured on the Sparkle: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack album as the first official single. The accompanying music video for Celebrate was filmed on May 30, 2012. The video was shot over 2 days and was released on June 27. A sneak peek of the video premiered on entertainment tonight on June 4, 2012.
On July 24, 2012, it was officially announced that Sparks would star in her second film, an indie drama "'The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete'". The George Tillman Jr-directed film stars Jennifer Hudson, Sparks, Jeffrey Wright, and Anthony Mackie. Michael Starrbury wrote the script, which follows two inner-city youths left to fend for themselves over the summer after their mothers are taken away by the authorities. Production on the film began on July 23, 2012, in Brooklyn. Alicia Keys is the film's executive producer. The film is produced by Street State Pictures.
On August 9, 2012, Sparks stated in an interview with Billboard, that she had about seven songs set so far for her third album. Sparks stated "It's going to be different from what my fans have heard before. With (2009's) 'Battlefield' it was pop/rock and a little bit of pop/R&B, but I'm going for more of the R&B side now, so it's like R&B/pop instead of pop/R&B." In an interview with MTV, Sparks confirmed she had recorded a duet with Jason Derulo and it would be on the album and could serve as a potential single. Sparks performed on VH1 Divas 2012 with fellow singers Miley Cyrus, Kelly Rowland and Ciara. The show premiered on December 16, 2012. Sparks joined singers Ledisi and Melanie Fiona in a tribute to Whitney Houston.
2013–14: Left Behind and label change
In an October 2010 interview, Sparks revealed she had begun working on her third studio album. During an interview with Good Day New York in November 2010, Sparks confirmed she would be recording the album in New York and Arizona. In January 2011, it was reported that Sparks and John Legend were working on songs together in the studio.
In early May 2013, Sparks took to Twitter announcing that she and RCA Records had finally come to an agreement with releasing new material. Sparks asked her fans to email her their opinions and frustrations regarding the delay in the release of her third studio album. A few days following the meeting, Sparks announced that her new music would be released in the fall of 2013.
On July 22, 2013, it was announced that the first promotional track from her upcoming third studio album would be released on August 1, 2013. "Skipping a Beat" was officially released on August 1, 2013. The buzz single became available for download on August 13, 2013. Sparks was featured on Jason Derulo's third studio album, Tattoos, which was released on September 24, 2013, on "Vertigo". It was announced that Sparks's third album had officially been completed and was awaiting release. However, it was later announced that new music from Sparks would not be released until early 2014 due to timing issues with acting projects as well as placement issues within her label RCA.
On August 9, 2013, it was announced that Sparks had signed on to join the cast of the action science fiction-thriller film Left Behind. Sparks's character is named Shasta, but for the most part, her role was kept under wraps. One of the films, producers Paul Lalonde said that "She will be a passenger on a plane that the film's main character Captain Rayford Steele is piloting. Sparks will co-star alongside Nicolas Cage as Captain Rayford Steele, Chad Michael Murray as Cameron "Buck" Williams and Nicky Whelan as Hattie Durham. The film is set for release on October 3, 2014. The film's shooting began on August 9, 2013, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. On October 7, 2013, it was announced that Sparks would guest star in an upcoming episode in the fourteenth season of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Sparks played Alison Stone, a high school teacher who somehow found herself scared and covered in blood in a hotel room crime scene. The season episode, "Check In & Check Out" was set to air on November 20, 2013.
On December 9, 2013, Sparks partnered with Glade and the Young People's Chorus of New York City to release a brand new Christmas holiday anthem "This Is My Wish." From December 9 until December 31, 2013, the song was made available for free download through Glade's official website. Sparks made her first televised performance of the song on the same day on The Today Show.
After experiencing multiple delays in the release of Sparks's third album due to RCA refusing to put her in their roster, citing that her acting projects had prevented them from reaching a deal, Sparks was released from her contract from RCA records and eventually signed to Salaam Remi's new label imprint 'Louder than Life', a subsidiary of Sony Music. Remi had previously worked with Sparks on the Sparkle film soundtrack. As a result of the new deal, all the material Sparks had previously recorded for her third album under RCA has subsequently been scrapped and had since begun re-recording and writing new material for her third album since January 2014. An official announcement of Sparks's signing to the new label had only been released a year later in August 2014.
2014–2017: #ByeFelicia and Right Here Right Now
It was announced on May 8, 2014, that Sparks would be hosting the 2014 Billboard Music Awards 'Samsung Red Carpet', alongside Lance Bass and Ted Stryker. Sparks was also listed to present.
In an interview with AOL Radio News on May 30, 2014, Sparks announced that the first official single off her upcoming third studio album would have a summer 2014 release, with a fall 2014 album release. The album and single were expected to be released through RCA Records.
On August 15, 2014, Salaam Remi took to Instagram to preview the logo for his new label, Louder than Life, a subsidiary of Sony Music. Remi also announced that Sparks is now a part of the Louder than Life roster. In an article with Music Connection, Remi also announced he would be producing Sparks's upcoming album. During a promotional tour for Sparks's new movie, Left Behind, Sparks announced that she was in the finishing stages of her new album. Sparks announced that she is also no longer with her previous label, RCA Records. Sparks stated her single was due by the end of the year, with an album release in 2015. Sparks stated that she and her label were picking the first single, first look, and deciding on the album name.
On September 30, Sparks's label released a promotional single for Left Behind, "I Wish We'd All Been Ready", which became available on music outlets the same day.
On October 23, 2014, Remi hosted a music showcase featuring Sparks. Sparks showcased three songs, two of which were performed live. Sparks announced this was the first time she performed new music for people outside of the industry. On November 4, Sparks announced that the first single off her upcoming third album would be released in a two-week time frame. Sparks announcement to Lance Bass brought speculation that the single would be released on November 18, 2014. On November 23, Sparks announced during an interview at the American Music Awards that new music would be released on November 25, 2014. Following that announcement, Sparks posted a clip of a song, "How Bout Now", a remix of Drake's song. On November 24, Sparks followed up with an official release of "How Bout Now", which debuted on the 'LALeakers' SoundCloud page and website. Sparks also stated that the official release of her mixtape, #ByeFelicia, would be released the following day at 11:11 PST.
On November 25, it was announced that Sparks would release her third studio album, Right Here Right Now, in early 2015, under Louder Than Life/Red Associated Labels, subsidiaries of Sony Music Entertainment, in conjunction with 19 Recordings.
On December 2, the song "It Ain't You" from Sparks's mixtape #ByeFelicia, became available for pre-order on major music markets and was also uploaded to Sparks's Vevo YouTube page. The single was released on December 15, 2014, as a promotional single and first off from Sparks's third album. On December 16, Right Here Right Now became available for pre-order on Sparks's official website. On February 11, the first single for Sparks's album Double Tap featuring 2Chainz became available for pre-order. The single was released on March 2, 2015, and the music video was released on March 10, 2015.
Sparks performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the 2015 Indianapolis 500.
In May 2016, Sparks was cast in the feature film God Bless the Broken Road, based on the song of the same name. While originally announced for a 2016 release, as of June 2018 it has yet to find a distributor and has not been released.
On May 20, 2016, Sparks split ways with Louder Than Life record company.
On October 2, 2016, Food Network aired a pilot episode of Sparks's new potential series Sugar and Sparks, focusing on her dream to own her own bakery and mastering the baking industry with the help of Duff Goldman. The first episode, "Keep it Simple, Sparks", was produced by Ryan Seacrest.
Sparks joined Thomas Rhett and Molly Sims in judging Miss America 2018.
2018–present: Reality show and return to music
On February 12, 2018, Sparks told OK magazine in an interview that she was recording her fourth album. Sparks, who is currently unsigned, said she had finished five to six songs for the album. She drew inspiration from her new marriage and son.
In May 2018, Sparks and Dana began production on their reality show. She said "they [will] get to see just Jordin. Drop the Sparks and you just get to see Jordin, and you get to see Dana, and you get to see both of us together and how we interact". She continued, saying "I'm super excited for people to see it. It's been a little exhausting. I'm not used to cameras all in my face all the time, but I think it's really going to show a good side of us." On August 28, it was announced that the pilot for Sparks' special Jordin Sparks: A Baby Story would air on September 6 on Lifetime.
In August 2018, KIN Network released a web series, Heart of Batter with Jordin Sparks, focused on Sparks's love for baking.
In 2019, Sparks released a joint EP with R&B singer Elijah Blake, 1990 Forever.
Sparks was cast as a Broadway replacement for Jenna Hunterson in Waitress, from September 16 to November 24, 2019.
On June 2, 2020, after over five years of not releasing any solo music, Sparks returned with the single "Unknown". On July 31, 2020, she released another new single, "Red Sangria".
In 2021, Sparks competed on The Masked Dancer as "Exotic Bird" and finished in fifth place.
Personal life
In April 2008, Sparks suffered acute vocal cord hemorrhaging due to overusing her vocal cords. Doctors ordered vocal rest, forcing Sparks to cancel appearances, including scheduled cameos on Alicia Keys's tour. Doctors cleared Sparks a month later, letting her rejoin the tour.
Sparks and Jason Derulo dated for three years and ended their relationship in 2014.
On July 17, 2017, Sparks married Dana Isaiah (born: Dana Isaiah Thomas), a fitness model, in Hawaii. In November 2017 People published news of her pregnancy. On May 2, 2018, Sparks gave birth to her first child, a son.
Other ventures
Endorsements
In April 2008, it was announced that Sparks would team up with cosmetics company, Avon, to become a spokesperson for the teen-focused line Mark. In November 2008, Sparks teamed up with Wet Seal to create her own clothing line 'Sparks', The line launched on November 19, 2008, featuring sizes XS to XL. Sparks said, "I am so excited that Wet Seal and I have been able to create a line of clothing that will appeal to more girls than ever before."
In October 2010, Sparks released her debut fragrance, Because of You... This fragrance was exclusively distributed at first by Dots Department Stores, but by November was made available to other retail stores. Sparks wanted this product to be affordable for her fans, yet still high end. "When I was starting this project, I really wanted it to be affordable. I looked at some other celebrity fragrances, and they were like $80. Even now, I look at a fragrance that's $80, and I can't bring myself to spend that much." In March 2012, due to the success of her first fragrance, Sparks released her second fragrance, Fascinate, exclusively with Dots Fashions as a sister scent to her first. It was announced on October 22, 2012, that Sparks was releasing her third fragrance Ambition. In an interview Sparks said; "Right now, I feel like I can take on the world. Ambition is the perfect word for where I am in my life right now". Her new scent is available in retail stores such as Bon-Ton. It was released in stores and online on November 8, 2012, before Sparks presented the fragrance at an official launch party in Milwaukee on December 1, 2012.
Acting and Broadway
In 2009, she made her acting debut on Disney's The Suite Life on Deck, guest starring as herself in the "Crossing Jordin" episode. The episode aired on October 23, 2009. Sparks also guest starred on the hit Nickelodeon show, Big Time Rush. The episode aired on June 18, 2010. On May 3, 2010, it was announced that Sparks would join the cast of the Broadway show In the Heights as Nina Rosario. Sparks took part in the production from August 19 through November 14 for a consecutive 12 weeks. In addition, Sparks did a voice over on Team Umizoomi as the Blue Mermaid. The episode aired on May 13, 2011.
In 2012, Sparks made her film debut in Sparkle. Following the release of Sparkle in 2012, Sparks began auditioning for several television and film roles while also receiving scripts from companies interested in having her a part of their projects. First of which was an indie drama film, The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete, which follows two inner-city youths left to fend for themselves over the summer after their mothers are taken away by the authorities. Sparks plays Alice a neighbor and friend of character Mister. She will also be in the film, The Grace of Jake, which follows ex-inmate and wandering musician Jake who travels to a small town in Arkansas intent on exacting revenge from his father, but begins to unravel a complicated family history as he befriends the locals. The film was in post production and was set for release on October 3, 2014. Sparks plays Nicole Lovely the preachers daughter.
Sparks played the part of Abby in Dear Secret Santa, a Lifetime Television romantic Christmas film that premiered on November 30, 2013. Sparks will play Shasta Carvell in Left Behind, an apocalyptic thriller, based on the novel series of the same name. The film is a reboot of Left Behind: The Movie, which is based on the idea of a pre-tribulation Rapture. In November 2013, Sparks guest starred on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Sparks plays Alison Stone, a high school teacher who somehow finds herself scared and covered in blood in a hotel room crime scene. The season episode, "Check In & Check Out" aired on November 20, 2013.
Philanthropy
In 2007, Sparks was asked by a relative who works for SOS Children's Villages in Florida to design a denim jacket festooned with Swarovski Crystal to support orphans. In February 2008, Sparks traveled to Ghana. She was part of the delegation of (then presidential couple) George and Laura Bush to help with Malaria No More, an organization with a goal to end malaria deaths in Africa by 2015. Sparks joined Laura Bush at the Maamobi Polyclinic, where the Bush donated a number of treated bed nets to local female traders in order to help combat the scourge of malaria in Ghana. While there, Sparks sang "Amazing Grace" to the durbar of chieftains who had gathered at the venue to give audience to Laura Bush. Sparks said, "Traveling to Ghana with Malaria No More gives me the incredible opportunity to see for myself what a difference a simple mosquito net can make in the life of a child."
In 2008, Sparks supported Dosomething.org's Do Something 101 campaign by filming a public service announcement explaining the nationwide school supplies drive project. She further supported the campaign by helping out at the Do Something 101 School Supply Volunteer Event held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
On May 20, 2009, Sparks became an endorser for the Got Milk? campaign, an American advertising campaign encouraging the consumption of cow's milk. On September 17, 2009, Sparks took part in the VH1 Divas special, a concert created to support the channel's Save The Music Foundation. The concert was held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York where Sparks performed the second single from her Battlefield album, S.O.S. (Let the Music Play), as well as "A Broken Wing" with Martina McBride. In February 2010, Sparks was one of the many artists who contributed to "We Are the World 25 for Haiti", a charity single for the victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Sparks teamed up with Pennyroyal Silver creator and designer, Tim Foster, to create her very own necklace design for the company's signature collection. Proceeds of the necklace funded medical units in Haiti.
On July 28, 2011, Sparks performed a live surprise concert in Times Square. Sparks was named the "VH1 Save The Music Foundation Ambassador" in 2011. It was announced on November 9, 2011, that Sparks would be a 'Vh1 Save the Music Ambassador' again for 2012. Sparks was joined by fellow American Idol contestant Chris Daughtry, Lupe Fiasco, Katy Perry and others. During Sparks segment as ambassador she hosted a surprise concert series in Times Square. Sparks and VH1 gave fans the opportunity to submit an essay on 'What Music Means to you?'. The winner of the essay contest won a trip for two, to New York City to stand alongside of Sparks at her pop-up concert. The winner chosen was Deavan Ebersole, from Hagerstown, Maryland.
Sparks has also shown support for Little Kids Rock, a national non-profit that works to restore and revitalize music education in disadvantaged US public schools, by donating items for auction to raise money for the organization.
I'm M.A.D. Are You? campaign
Initiated by Sparks and her younger brother P.J. in 2008, the I'm M.A.D. Are You? campaign cultivates community advocacy and volunteerism among teens and young adults. M.A.D. stands for Making A Difference. On February 3, 2010, Sparks and David Archuleta performed at the "Jordin Sparks Experience", held at the Eden Roc Renaissance Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. All proceeds raised by the event went to a number of charities, including the Miami Children's Hospital Foundation. Since 2008, Sparks and the campaign travels to the Super Bowls designated city to host a week of charitable events, to raise money for several charities. In June 2010, the "Thumbs Up to X the TXT" pledge campaign, established by Allstate, made its way to Sparks's Battlefield Tour, presented by Mike & Ike to encourage teens and their families not to text while driving. Fans at Sparks's concerts made a pledge not to text and drive by adding their thumbprint to a traveling banner at each of her shows. The campaign began at Sparks's Battlefield Tour on June 3, 2010, and ended on July 18, 2010. Sparks is the main spokesperson for the "I'm M.A.D., Are You?" campaign. She also supports Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, which helps to raise money for children with cancer. Sparks traveled to Louisiana in June 2010 to visit the Gulf Coast oil spill with the Audubon Society to view the effects of the oil spill on the wildlife and marshes.
Since 2008, the campaign has raised over $500,000.
Discography
Studio albums
Jordin Sparks (2007)
Battlefield (2009)
Right Here Right Now (2015)
Cider & Hennessy (2020)
EPs and mixtapes
2006: For Now
2007: Jordin Sparks (EP)
2014: #ByeFelicia
2019: 1990 Forever (EP) (with Elijah Blake)
2020: Sounds Like Me (EP)
Tours
Headlining
2010: Battlefield Tour
Joint tours
2007: American Idols LIVE! Tour 2007
2008: Jesse & Jordin Live
Opening act
2008: As I Am Tour
2009: Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009
2009: The Circus Starring Britney Spears
2011: NKOTBSB Tour
See also
List of Idols winners
Awards and nominations
Filmography
Television
Film
Broadway
References
External links
Jordin Sparks in In the Heights
1989 births
Living people
19 Recordings artists
21st-century American actresses
21st-century American businesspeople
21st-century Protestants
Actresses from Phoenix, Arizona
African-American actresses
African-American businesspeople
African-American Christians
African-American female models
African-American women singer-songwriters
American women pop singers
American child singers
American cosmetics businesspeople
American evangelicals
American fashion businesspeople
American Idol winners
Businesspeople from Arizona
Jive Records artists
Musicians from Glendale, Arizona
Musicians from Phoenix, Arizona
RCA Records artists
American television actresses
American film actresses
American voice actresses
American stage actresses
American child actresses
Guitarists from Arizona
21st-century African-American women singers
21st-century American businesswomen
21st-century American women guitarists
21st-century American guitarists
Singer-songwriters from Arizona | 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"
] |
[
"H. P. Lovecraft",
"Marriage and New York"
] | C_e055448352484e27a10b71b3309430f7_0 | Who was HP Lovecraft's wife? | 1 | Who was HP Lovecraft's wife? | H. P. Lovecraft | Lovecraft's aunts disapproved of this relationship with Sonia. Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924, and relocated to her Brooklyn apartment at 793 Flatbush Avenue; she thought he needed to get out of Providence in order to flourish and was willing to support him financially. Greene, who had been married before, later said Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship. She attributed Lovecraft's passive nature to a stultifying upbringing by his mother. Lovecraft's weight increased to 90 kg (200 lb) on his wife's home cooking. He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends who urged him to submit stories to Weird Tales; editor Edwin Baird accepted many otherworldly 'Dream Cycle' Lovecraft stories for the ailing publication, though they were heavily criticized by a section of the readership. Established informally some years before Lovecraft arrived in New York, the core Kalem Club members were boys' adventure novelist Henry Everett McNeil; the lawyer and anarchist writer James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.; and the poet Reinhardt Kleiner. On New Year's Day of 1925, Sonia moved to Cleveland for a job opportunity, and Lovecraft left Flatbush for a small first-floor apartment on 169 Clinton Street "at the edge of Red Hook"--a location which came to discomfort him greatly. Later that year the Kalem Club's four regular attendees were joined by Lovecraft along with his protege Frank Belknap Long, bookseller George Willard Kirk, and Lovecraft's close friend Samuel Loveman. Loveman was Jewish, but was unaware of Lovecraft's nativist attitudes. Conversely, it has been suggested that Lovecraft, who disliked mention of sexual matters, was unaware that Loveman and some of his other friends were homosexual. CANNOTANSWER | Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924, | Howard Phillips Lovecraft (; August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of weird, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. Lovecraft is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England. After his father's institutionalization in 1893, he lived affluently until his family's wealth dissipated after the death of his grandfather. Lovecraft then lived with his mother, in reduced financial security, until her institutionalization in 1919. He began to write essays for the United Amateur Press Association and, in 1913, Lovecraft wrote a critical letter to a pulp magazine that ultimately led to his involvement in pulp fiction. He became active in the speculative fiction community and was published in several pulp magazines. Lovecraft moved to New York, marrying Sonia Greene in 1924, and later became the center of a wider group of authors known as the "Lovecraft Circle". They introduced him to Weird Tales, which would become his most prominent publisher. Lovecraft's time in New York took a toll on his mental state and financial conditions. He returned to Providence in 1926 and produced some of his most popular works, including "The Call of Cthulhu", At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, and The Shadow Out of Time. He would remain active as a writer until his death from intestinal cancer at the age of 46.
Lovecraft's literary corpus is based around the idea of cosmicism, which was simultaneously his personal philosophy and the main theme of his fiction. Cosmicism posits that humanity is an insignificant part of the cosmos, and could be swept away at any moment. He incorporated fantastic and science fiction elements into his stories, representing the perceived fragility of anthropocentrism. His works were largely set in a fictionalized version of New England. Civilizational decline also plays a major role in his works, as he believed that the West was in decline during his lifetime. Lovecraft's early political opinions were conservative and traditionalist; additionally, he held a number of racist views for much of his adult life. Following the Great Depression, Lovecraft became a democratic socialist, no longer believing a just aristocracy would make the world more fair.
Throughout his adult life, Lovecraft was never able to support himself from earnings as an author and editor. He was virtually unknown during his lifetime and was almost exclusively published in pulp magazines before his death. A scholarly revival of Lovecraft's work began in the 1970s, and he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors of supernatural horror fiction. Many direct adaptations and spiritual successors followed. Works inspired by Lovecraft, adaptations or original works, began to form the basis of the Cthulhu Mythos, which utilizes Lovecraft's characters, setting, and themes.
Biography
Early life and family tragedies
Lovecraft was born in his family home on August 20, 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the only child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft and Sarah Susan (née Phillips) Lovecraft. Susie's family was of substantial means at the time of their marriage, as her father, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, was involved in business ventures. In April 1893, after a psychotic episode in a Chicago hotel, Winfield was committed to Butler Hospital in Providence. His medical records state that he had been "doing and saying strange things at times" for a year before his commitment. The person who reported these symptoms is unknown. Winfield spent five years in Butler before dying in 1898. His death certificate listed the cause of death as general paresis, a term synonymous with late-stage syphilis. Throughout his life, Lovecraft maintained that his father fell into a paralytic state, due to insomnia and overwork, and remained that way until his death. It is not known whether Lovecraft was simply kept ignorant of his father's illness or whether his later statements were intentionally misleading.
After his father's institutionalization, Lovecraft resided in the family home with his mother, his maternal aunts Lillian and Annie, and his maternal grandparents Whipple and Robie. According to family friends, his mother, known as Susie, doted on the young Lovecraft excessively, pampering him and never letting him out of her sight. Lovecraft later recollected that his mother was "permanently stricken with grief" after his father's illness. Whipple became a father figure to Lovecraft in this time, Lovecraft noting that his grandfather became the "centre of my entire universe". Whipple, who often traveled to manage his business, maintained correspondence by letter with the young Lovecraft who, by the age of three, was already proficient at reading and writing.
He encouraged the young Lovecraft to have an appreciation of literature, especially classical literature and English poetry. In his old age, he helped raise the young H. P. Lovecraft and educated him not only in the classics, but also in original weird tales of "winged horrors" and "deep, low, moaning sounds" which he created for his grandchild's entertainment. The original sources of Phillips' weird tales are unidentified. Lovecraft himself guessed that they originated from Gothic novelists like Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, and Charles Maturin. It was during this period that Lovecraft was introduced to some of his earliest literary influences such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner illustrated by Gustave Doré, One Thousand and One Nights, Thomas Bulfinch's Age of Fable, and Ovid's Metamorphoses.
While there is no indication that Lovecraft was particularly close to his grandmother Robie, her death in 1896 had a profound effect on him. By his own account, it sent his family into "a gloom from which it never fully recovered". His mother and aunts wore black mourning dresses that "terrified" him. This is also time that Lovecraft, approximately five-and-a-half years old, started having nightmares that later would inform his fictional writings. Specifically, he began to have recurring nightmares of beings he referred to as "night-gaunts". He credited their appearance to the influence of Doré's illustrations, which would "whirl me through space at a sickening rate of speed, the while fretting & impelling me with their detestable tridents". Thirty years later, night-gaunts would appear in Lovecraft's fiction.
Lovecraft's earliest known literary works were written at the age of seven, and were poems restyling the Odyssey and other Greco-Roman mythological stories. Lovecraft would later write that during his childhood he was fixated on the Greco-Roman pantheon, and briefly accepted them as genuine expressions of divinity, foregoing his Christian upbringing. He recalled, at five years old, being told Santa Claus did not exist and retorted by asking why "God is not equally a myth?" At the age of eight, he took a keen interest in the sciences, particularly astronomy and chemistry. He also examined the anatomical books that were held in the family library, which taught him the specifics of human reproduction that were not yet explained to him. As a result, he found that it "virtually killed my interest in the subject".
In 1902, according to Lovecraft's later correspondence, astronomy became a guiding influence on his worldview. He began publishing the periodical Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy, using the hectograph printing method. Lovecraft went in and out of elementary school repeatedly, oftentimes with home tutors making up for the lost years, missing time due to health concerns that have not been determined. The written recollections of his peers described him as withdrawn but welcoming to those who shared his then-current fascination with astronomy, inviting them to look through his prized telescope.
Education and financial decline
By 1900, Whipple's various business concerns were suffering a downturn, which resulted in the slow reduction of his family's wealth. He was forced to let his family's hired servants go, leaving Lovecraft, Whipple, and Susie, being the only unmarried sister, alone in the family home. In the spring of 1904, Whipple's largest business venture suffered a catastrophic failure. Within months, he died at age 70 due to a stroke. After Whipple's death, Susie was unable to financially support the upkeep of the expansive family home on what remained of the Phillips' estate. Later that year, she was forced to move to a small duplex with her son.
Lovecraft called this time one of the darkest of his life, remarking in a 1934 letter that he saw no point in living anymore. Furthermore, he considered the possibility of committing suicide. His scientific curiosity and desire to know more about the world prevented him from doing so. In fall 1904, he entered high school. Much like his earlier school years, Lovecraft was periodically removed from school for long periods for what he termed "near breakdowns". He did say, though, that while having some conflicts with teachers, he enjoyed high school, becoming close with a small circle of friends. Lovecraft also performed well academically, excelling in particular at chemistry and physics. Aside from a pause in 1904, he also resumed publishing the Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy as well as starting the Scientific Gazette, which dealt mostly with chemistry. It was also during this period that Lovecraft produced the first of the fictional works that he would later be known for, namely "The Beast in the Cave" and "The Alchemist".
It was in 1908, prior to what would have been his high school graduation, that Lovecraft suffered another unidentified health crisis, though this instance was more severe than his prior illnesses. The exact circumstances and causes remain unknown. The only direct records are Lovecraft's own correspondence wherein he retrospectively described it variously as a "nervous collapse" and "a sort of breakdown", in one letter blaming it on the stress of high school despite his enjoying it. In another letter concerning the events of 1908, he notes, "I was and am prey to intense headaches, insomnia, and general nervous weakness which prevents my continuous application to any thing."
Though Lovecraft maintained that he was going to attend Brown University after high school, he never graduated and never attended school again. Whether Lovecraft suffered from a physical ailment, a mental one, or some combination thereof has never been determined. An account from a high school classmate described Lovecraft as exhibiting "terrible tics" and that at times "he'd be sitting in his seat and he'd suddenly up and jump". Harry Brobst, a psychology professor, examined the account and claimed that chorea minor was the probable cause of Lovecraft's childhood symptoms while noting that instances of chorea minor after adolescence are very rare. In his letters, Lovecraft acknowledged that he suffered from bouts of chorea as a child. Brobst further ventured that Lovecraft's 1908 breakdown was attributed to a "hysteroid seizure", a term that has become synonymous with atypical depression. In another letter concerning the events of 1908, Lovecraft stated that he "could hardly bear to see or speak to anyone, & liked to shut out the world by pulling down dark shades & using artificial light".
Earliest recognition
Few of Lovecraft and Susie's activities between late 1908 and 1913 were recorded. Lovecraft described the steady continuation of their financial decline highlighted by his uncle's failed business that cost Susie a large portion of their already dwindling wealth. One of Susie's friends, Clara Hess, recalled a visit during which Susie spoke continuously about Lovecraft being "so hideous that he hid from everyone and did not like to walk upon the streets where people could gaze on him". Despite Hess' protests to the contrary, Susie maintained this stance. For his part, Lovecraft said he found his mother to be "a positive marvel of consideration". A next-door neighbor later pointed out that what others in the neighborhood often assumed were loud, nocturnal quarrels between mother and son, were actually recitations of Shakespeare, an activity that seemed to delight mother and son.
During this period, Lovecraft revived his earlier scientific periodicals. He endeavored to commit himself to the study of organic chemistry, Susie buying the expensive glass chemistry assemblage he wanted. Lovecraft found his studies were stymied by the mathematics involved, which he found boring and would cause headaches that would incapacitate him for the remainder of the day. Lovecraft's first non-self-published poem appeared in a local newspaper in 1912. Called Providence in 2000 A.D., it envisioned a future where Americans of English descent were displaced by Irish, Italian, Portuguese, and Jewish immigrants. In this period he also wrote racist poetry, including "New-England Fallen" and "On the Creation of Niggers", but there is no indication that either were published during his lifetime.
In 1911, Lovecraft's letters to editors began appearing in pulp and weird-fiction magazines, most notably Argosy. A 1913 letter critical of Fred Jackson, one of Argosy'''s more prominent writers, started Lovecraft down a path that would define the remainder of his career as a writer. In the following letters, Lovecraft described Jackson's stories as being "trivial, effeminate, and, in places, coarse". Continuing, Lovecraft argued that Jackson's characters exhibit the "delicate passions and emotions proper to negroes and anthropoid apes". This sparked a nearly year-long feud in the magazine's letters section between the two writers and their respective supporters. Lovecraft's most prominent opponent was John Russell, who often replied in verse, and to whom Lovecraft felt compelled to reply because he respected Russell's writing skills. The most immediate effect of this feud was the recognition garnered from Edward F. Daas, then head editor of the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA). Daas invited Russell and Lovecraft to join the organization and both accepted, Lovecraft in April 1914.
Rejuvenation and tragedy
Lovecraft immersed himself in the world of amateur journalism for most of the following decade. During this period, he advocated for amateurism's superiority to commercialism. Lovecraft defined commercialism as writing for what he considered low-brow publications for pay. This was contrasted with his view of "professional publication", which was what he called writing what he considered respectable journals and publishers. He thought of amateur journalism as serving as practice for a professional career.
Lovecraft was appointed chairman of the Department of Public Criticism of the UAPA in late 1914. He used this position to advocate for what he saw as the superiority of archaic English language usage. Emblematic of the Anglophilic opinions he maintained throughout his life, he openly criticized other UAPA contributors for their "Americanisms" and "slang". Often, these criticisms were embedded in xenophobic and racist statements that the "national language" was being negatively changed by immigrants. In mid-1915, Lovecraft was elected vice-president of the UAPA. Two years later, he was elected president and appointed other board members who mostly shared his belief in the supremacy of British English over modern American English. Another significant event of this time was the beginning of World War I. Lovecraft published multiple criticisms of the American government and public's reluctance to join the war to protect England, which he viewed as America's ancestral homeland.
In 1916, Lovecraft published his first short story, "The Alchemist", in the main UAPA journal, which was a departure from his usual verse. Due to the encouragement of W. Paul Cook, another UAPA member and future lifelong friend, Lovecraft began writing and publishing more prose fiction. Soon afterwards, he wrote "The Tomb" and "Dagon". "The Tomb", by Lovecraft's own admission, was greatly influenced by the style and structure of Edgar Allan Poe's works. Meanwhile, "Dagon" is considered Lovecraft's first work that displays the concepts and themes that his writings would later become known for. Lovecraft published another short story, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" in 1919, which was his first science fiction story.
Lovecraft's term as president of the UAPA ended in 1918, and he returned to his former post as chairman of the Department of Public Criticism. In 1917, as Lovecraft related to Kleiner, Lovecraft made an aborted attempt to enlist in the United States Army. Though he passed the physical exam, he told Kleiner that his mother threatened to do anything, legal or otherwise, to prove that he was unfit for service. After his failed attempt to serve in World War I, he attempted to enroll in the Rhode Island National Guard, but his mother used her family connections to prevent it.
During the winter of 1918–1919, Susie, exhibiting the symptoms of a nervous breakdown, went to live with her elder sister, Lillian. The nature of Susie's illness is unclear, as her medical papers were later destroyed in a fire at Butler Hospital. Winfield Townley Scott, who was able to read the papers before the fire, described Susie as having suffered a psychological collapse. Neighbour and friend Clara Hess, interviewed in 1948, recalled instances of Susie describing "weird and fantastic creatures that rushed out from behind buildings and from corners at dark". In the same account, Hess described a time when they crossed paths in downtown Providence and Susie was unaware of where she was. In March 1919, she was committed to Butler Hospital, like her husband before her. Lovecraft's immediate reaction to Susie's commitment was visceral, writing to Kleiner that, "existence seems of little value", and that he wished "it might terminate". During Susie's time at Butler, Lovecraft periodically visited her and walked the large grounds with her.
Late 1919 saw Lovecraft become more outgoing. After a period of isolation, he began joining friends in trips to writer gatherings; the first being a talk in Boston presented by Lord Dunsany, whom Lovecraft had recently discovered and idolized. In early 1920, at an amateur writer convention, he met Frank Belknap Long, who would end up being Lovecraft's most influential and closest confidant for the remainder of his life. The influence of Dunsany is apparent in his 1919 output, which is part of what would be called Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, including "The White Ship" and "The Doom That Came to Sarnath". In early 1920, he wrote "The Cats of Ulthar" and "Celephaïs", which were also strongly influenced by Dunsany.
It was later in 1920 that Lovecraft began publishing the earliest Cthulhu Mythos stories. The Cthulhu Mythos, a term coined by later authors, encompasses Lovecraft's stories that share a commonality in the revelation of cosmic insignificance, initially realistic settings, and recurring entities and texts. The prose poem "Nyarlathotep" and the short story "The Crawling Chaos", in collaboration with Winifred Virginia Jackson, were written in late 1920. Following in early 1921 came "The Nameless City", the first story that falls definitively within the Cthulhu Mythos. In it is one of Lovecraft's most enduring phrases, a couplet recited by Abdul Alhazred; "That is not dead which can eternal lie; And with strange aeons even death may die." In the same year, he also wrote "The Outsider", which has become one of Lovecraft's most heavily analyzed, and differently interpreted, stories. It has been variously interpreted as being autobiographical, an allegory of the psyche, a parody of the afterlife, a commentary on humanity's place in the universe, and a critique of progress.
On May 24, 1921, Susie died in Butler Hospital, due to complications from an operation on her gall bladder five days earlier. Lovecraft's initial reaction, expressed in a letter written nine days after Susie's death, was a deep state of sadness that crippled him physically and emotionally. He again expressed a desire that his life might end. Lovecraft's later response was relief, as he had become able to live independently from his mother. His physical health also began to improve, although he was unaware of the exact cause. Despite Lovecraft's reaction, he continued to attend amateur journalist conventions. Lovecraft met his future wife, Sonia Greene, at one such convention in July.
Marriage and New York
Lovecraft's aunts disapproved of his relationship with Sonia. Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924, and relocated to her Brooklyn apartment at 793 Flatbush Avenue; she thought he needed to leave Providence to flourish and was willing to support him financially. Greene, who had been married before, later said Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship. She attributed Lovecraft's passive nature to a stultifying upbringing by his mother. Lovecraft's weight increased to on his wife's home cooking.
He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends who urged him to submit stories to Weird Tales. Its editor, Edwin Baird, accepted many of Lovecraft's stories for the ailing publication, including "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs", which was ghostwritten for Harry Houdini. Established informally some years before Lovecraft arrived in New York, the core Kalem Club members were boys' adventure novelist Henry Everett McNeil, the lawyer and anarchist writer James Ferdinand Morton Jr., and the poet Reinhardt Kleiner.
On January 1, 1925, Sonia moved from Flatbush to Cleveland in response to a job opportunity, and Lovecraft left for a small first-floor apartment on 169 Clinton Street "at the edge of Red Hook"—a location which came to discomfort him greatly. Later that year, the Kalem Club's four regular attendees were joined by Lovecraft along with his protégé Frank Belknap Long, bookseller George Willard Kirk, and Samuel Loveman. Loveman was Jewish, but he and Lovecraft became close friends in spite of the latter's nativist attitudes. By the 1930s, writer and publisher Herman Charles Koenig would be one of the last to become involved with the Kalem Club.
Not long after the marriage, Greene lost her business and her assets disappeared in a bank failure. Lovecraft made efforts to support his wife through regular jobs, but his lack of previous work experience meant he lacked proven marketable skills. The publisher of Weird Tales was attempting to make the loss-making magazine profitable and offered the job of editor to Lovecraft, who declined, citing his reluctance to relocate to Chicago on aesthetic grounds. Baird was succeeded by Farnsworth Wright, whose writing Lovecraft had criticized. Lovecraft's submissions were often rejected by Wright. This may have been partially due to censorship guidelines imposed in the aftermath of a Weird Tales story that hinted at necrophilia, although after Lovecraft's death, Wright accepted many of the stories he had originally rejected.
Sonia also became ill and immediately after recovering, relocated to Cincinnati, and then to Cleveland; her employment required constant travel. Added to his feelings of failure in a city with a large immigrant population, Lovecraft's single-room apartment was burgled, leaving him with only the clothes he was wearing. In August 1925, he wrote "The Horror at Red Hook" and "He", in the latter of which the narrator says "My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration [...] I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyze, and annihilate me." This was an expression of his despair at being in New York. It was at around this time he wrote the outline for "The Call of Cthulhu", with its theme of the insignificance of all humanity. During this time, Lovecraft wrote "Supernatural Horror in Literature" on the eponymous subject. It later became one of the most influential essays on the subject. With a weekly allowance Greene sent, Lovecraft moved to a working-class area of Brooklyn Heights, where he resided in a tiny apartment. He had lost approximately of body weight by 1926, when he left for Providence.
Return to Providence and death
Back in Providence, Lovecraft lived with his aunts in a "spacious brown Victorian wooden house" at 10 Barnes Street until 1933. He would then move to 66 Prospect Street, which would become his final home. The period beginning after his return to Providence contains some of his most prominent works, including "The Call of Cthulhu", The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and The Shadow over Innsmouth. The latter two stories are partially autobiographical, as scholars have argued that The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is about Lovecraft's return to Providence and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is, in part, about the city itself. The former story also represents a partial repudiation of Dunsany's influence, as Lovecraft had decided that his style did not come to him naturally. At this time, he frequently revised work for other authors and did a large amount of ghostwriting, including The Mound, "Winged Death", and "The Diary of Alonzo Typer". Client Harry Houdini was laudatory, and attempted to help Lovecraft by introducing him to the head of a newspaper syndicate. Plans for a further project were ended by Houdini's death in 1926.
In August 1930, Robert E. Howard wrote a letter to Weird Tales praising a then-recent reprint of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" and discussing some of the Gaelic references used within. Editor Farnsworth Wright forwarded the letter to Lovecraft, who responded positively to Howard, and soon the two writers were engaged in a vigorous correspondence that would last for the rest of Howard's life. Howard quickly became a member of the Lovecraft Circle, a group of writers and friends all linked through Lovecraft's voluminous correspondence, as he introduced his many like-minded friends to one another and encouraged them to share their stories, utilize each other's fictional creations, and help each other succeed in the field of pulp fiction.
Meanwhile, Lovecraft was increasingly producing work that brought him no remuneration. Affecting a calm indifference to the reception of his works, Lovecraft was in reality extremely sensitive to criticism and easily precipitated into withdrawal. He was known to give up trying to sell a story after it had been once rejected. Sometimes, as with The Shadow over Innsmouth, he wrote a story that might have been commercially viable but did not try to sell it. Lovecraft even ignored interested publishers. He failed to reply when one inquired about any novel Lovecraft might have ready: although he had completed such a work, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, it was never typed up. A few years after Lovecraft had moved to Providence, he and his wife Sonia Greene, having lived separately for so long, agreed to an amicable divorce. Greene moved to California in 1933 and remarried in 1936, unaware that Lovecraft, despite his assurances to the contrary, had never officially signed the final decree.
As a result of the Great Depression, he shifted towards democratic socialism, decrying both his prior political beliefs and the rising tide of fascism. He thought that socialism was a workable middle ground between what he saw as the destructive impulses of both the capitalists and the Marxists of his day. This was based in a general opposition to cultural upheaval, as well as support for an ordered society. Electorally, he supported Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he thought that the New Deal was not sufficiently leftist. Lovecraft's support for it was based in his view that no other set of reforms were possible at that time.
In late 1936, he witnessed the publication of The Shadow over Innsmouth as a paperback book. 400 copies were printed, and the work was advertised in Weird Tales and several fan magazines. However, Lovecraft was displeased, as this book was riddled with errors that required extensive editing. It sold slowly and only approximately 200 copies were bound. The remaining 200 copies were destroyed after the publisher went out of business for the next seven years. By this point, Lovecraft's literary career was reaching its end. Shortly after having written his last original short story, "The Haunter of the Dark", he stated that the hostile reception of At the Mountains of Madness had done "more than anything to end my effective fictional career". His declining psychological, and physical, state made it impossible for him to continue writing fiction.
On June 11, Robert E. Howard was informed that his chronically ill mother would not awaken from her coma. He walked out to his car and committed suicide with a pistol that he had stored there. His mother died shortly thereafter. This deeply affected Lovecraft, who consoled Howard's father through correspondence. Almost immediately after hearing about Howard's death, Lovecraft wrote a brief memoir titled "In Memoriam: Robert Ervin Howard", which he distributed to his correspondents. Meanwhile, Lovecraft's physical health was deteriorating. He was suffering from an affliction that he referred to as "grippe".
Due to his fear of doctors, Lovecraft was not examined until a month before his death. After seeing a doctor, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the small intestine. He remained hospitalized until he died. He lived in constant pain until his death on March 15, 1937, in Providence. In accordance with his lifelong scientific curiosity, he kept a diary of his illness until he was physically incapable of holding a pen. Lovecraft was listed along with his parents on the Phillips family monument. In 1977, fans erected a headstone in Swan Point Cemetery on which they inscribed his name, the dates of his birth and death, and the phrase "I AM PROVIDENCE"—a line from one of his personal letters.
Personal views
Politics
Lovecraft began his life as a Tory, which was likely the result of his conservative upbringing. His family supported the Republican Party for the entirety of his life. While it is unclear how consistently he voted, he voted for Herbert Hoover in the 1928 presidential election. Rhode Island as a whole remained politically conservative and Republican into the 1930s. Lovecraft himself was an anglophile who supported the British monarchy. He opposed democracy and thought that America should be governed by an aristocracy. This viewpoint emerged during his youth and lasted until the end of the 1920s. During World War I, his Anglophilia caused him to strongly support the entente against the Central Powers. Many of this earlier poems were devoted to then-current political subjects, and he published several political essays in his amateur journal, The Conservative. He was a teetotaler who supported the implementation of Prohibition, which was one of the few reforms that he supported during the early part of his life. While remaining a teetotaller, he later became convinced that Prohibition was ineffectual in the 1930s. His personal justification for his early political viewpoints was primarily based on tradition and aesthetics.
As a result of the Great Depression, Lovecraft reexamined his political views. Initially, he thought that affluent people would take on the characteristics of his ideal aristocracy and solve America's problems. When this did not occur, he became a democratic socialist. This shift was caused by his observation that the Depression was harming American society. It was also influenced by the increase in socialism's political capital during the 1930s. One of the main points of Lovecraft's socialism was its opposition to Soviet Marxism, as he thought that a Marxist revolution would bring about the destruction of American civilization. Lovecraft thought that an intellectual aristocracy needed to be formed to preserve America. His ideal political system is outlined in his essay "Some Repetitions on the Times". Lovecraft used this essay to echo the political proposals that had been made over the course of the last few decades. In this essay, he advocates governmental control of resource distribution, fewer working hours and a higher wage, and unemployment insurance and old age pensions. He also outlines the need for an oligarchy of intellectuals. In his view, power must be restricted to those who are sufficiently intelligent and educated. He frequently used the term "fascism" to describe this form of government, but, according to S. T. Joshi, it bears little resemblance to that ideology.
Lovecraft had varied views on the political figures of his day. He was an ardent supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He saw that Roosevelt was trying to steer a middle course between the conservatives and the revolutionaries, which he approved of. While he thought that Roosevelt should have been enacting more progressive policies, he came to the conclusion that the New Deal was the only realistic option for reform. He thought that voting for his opponents on the political left would be a wasted effort. Internationally, like many Americans, he initially expressed support for Adolf Hitler. More specifically, he thought that Hitler would preserve German culture. However, he thought that Hitler's racial policies should be based on culture rather than descent. There is evidence that, at the end of his life, Lovecraft began to oppose Hitler. According to Harry K. Brobst, Lovecraft's downstairs neighbor went to Germany and witnessed Jews being beaten. Lovecraft and his aunt were angered by this. His discussions of Hitler drop off after this point.
Atheism
Lovecraft was an atheist. His viewpoints on religion are outlined in his 1922 essay "A Confession of Unfaith". In this essay, he describes his shift away from the Protestantism of his parents to the atheism of his adulthood. Lovecraft was raised by a conservative Protestant family. He was introduced to the Bible and the mythos of Saint Nicholas when he was two. He passively accepted both of them. Over the course of the next few years, he was introduced to Grimms' Fairy Tales and One Thousand and One Nights, favoring the latter. In response, Lovecraft took on the identity of "Abdul Alhazred", a name he would later use for the author of the Necronomicon. According to this account, his first moment of skepticism occurred before his fifth birthday, when he questioned if God is a myth after learning that Santa Claus is not real. In 1896, he was introduced to Greco-Roman myths and became "a genuine pagan".
This came to an end in 1902, when Lovecraft was introduced to space. He later described this event as the most poignant in his life. In response to this discovery, Lovecraft took to studying astronomy and described his observations in the local newspaper. Before his thirteenth birthday, he had become convinced of humanity's impermanence. By the time he was seventeen, he had read detailed writings that agreed with his worldview. Lovecraft ceased writing positively about progress, instead developing his later cosmic philosophy. Despite his interests in science, he had an aversion to realistic literature, so he became interested in fantastical fiction. Lovecraft became pessimistic when he entered amateur journalism in 1914. The Great War seemed to confirm his viewpoints. He began to despise philosophical idealism. Lovecraft took to discussing and debating his pessimism with his peers, which allowed him to solidify his philosophy. His readings of Friedrich Nietzsche and H. L. Mencken, among other pessimistic writers, furthered this development. At the end of his essay, Lovecraft states that all he desired was oblivion. He was willing to cast aside any illusion that he may still have held.
Race
Race is the most controversial aspect of Lovecraft's legacy, expressed in many disparaging remarks against non-Anglo-Saxon races and cultures in his works. As he grew older, his original racial worldview became a classism or elitism which regarded the superior race to include all those self-ennobled through high culture. From the start, Lovecraft did not hold all white people in uniform high regard, but rather esteemed English people and those of English descent. In his early published essays, private letters and personal utterances, he argued for a strong color line to preserve race and culture. His arguments were supported using disparagements of various races in his journalism and letters, and allegorically in his fictional works that depict non-human races. This is evident in his portrayal of the Deep Ones in The Shadow over Innsmouth. Their interbreeding with humanity is framed as being a type of miscegenation that corrupts both the town of Innsmouth and the protagonist.
Initially, Lovecraft showed sympathy to minorities who adopted Western culture, even to the extent of marrying a Jewish woman he viewed as being "well assimilated". By the 1930s, Lovecraft's views on ethnicity and race had moderated. He supported ethnicities' preserving their native cultures; for example, he thought that "a real friend of civilisation wishes merely to make the Germans more German, the French more French, the Spaniards more Spanish, & so on". This represented a shift from his previous support for cultural assimilation. However, this did not represent a complete elimination of his racial prejudices. Scholars have argued that Lovecraft's racial attitudes were common in the society of his day, particularly in the New England in which he grew up.
Influences
His interest in weird fiction began in his childhood when his grandfather, who preferred Gothic stories, would tell him stories of his own design. Lovecraft's childhood home on Angell Street had a large library that contained classical literature, scientific works, and early weird fiction. At the age of five, Lovecraft enjoyed reading One Thousand and One Nights, and was reading Nathaniel Hawthorne a year later. He was also influenced by the travel literature of John Mandeville and Marco Polo. This led to his discovery of gaps in then-contemporary science, which prevented Lovecraft from committing suicide in response to the death of his grandfather and his family's declining financial situation during his adolescence. These travelogues may have also had an influence on how Lovecraft's later works describe their characters and locations. For example, there is a resemblance between the powers of the Tibetan enchanters in The Travels of Marco Polo and the powers unleashed on Sentinel Hill in "The Dunwich Horror".
One of Lovecraft's most significant literary influences was Edgar Allan Poe, whom he described as his "God of Fiction". Poe's fiction was introduced to Lovecraft when the latter was eight years old. His earlier works were significantly influenced by Poe's prose and writing style. He also made extensive use of Poe's unity of effect in his fiction. Furthermore, At the Mountains of Madness directly quotes Poe and was influenced by The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. One of the main themes of the two stories is to discuss the unreliable nature of language as a method of expressing meaning. In 1919, Lovecraft's discovery of the stories of Lord Dunsany moved his writing in a new direction, resulting in a series of fantasies. Throughout his life, Lovecraft referred to Dunsany as the author who had the greatest impact on his literary career. The initial result of this influence was the Dream Cycle, a series of fantasies that originally take place in prehistory, but later shift to a dreamworld setting. By 1930, Lovecraft decided that he would no longer write Dunsianian fantasies, arguing that the style did not come naturally to him. Additionally, he also read and cited Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood as influences in the 1920s.
Aside from horror authors, Lovecraft was significantly influenced by the Decadents, the Puritans, and the Aesthetic Movement. In "H. P. Lovecraft: New England Decadent", Barton Levi St. Armand, a professor emeritus of English and American studies at Brown University, has argued that these three influences combined to define Lovecraft as a writer. He traces this influence to both Lovecraft's stories and letters, noting that he actively cultivated the image of a New England gentleman in his letters. Meanwhile, his influence from the Decadents and the Aesthetic Movement stems from his readings of Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft's aesthetic worldview and fixation on decline stems from these readings. The idea of cosmic decline is described as having been Lovecraft's response to both the Aesthetic Movement and the 19th century Decadents. St. Armand describes it as being a combination of non-theological Puritan thought and the Decadent worldview. This is used as a division in his stories, particularly in "The Horror at Red Hook", "Pickman's Model", and "The Music of Erich Zann". The division between Puritanism and Decadence, St. Armand argues, represents a polarization between an artificial paradise and oneiriscopic visions of different worlds.
A non-literary inspiration came from then-contemporary scientific advances in biology, astronomy, geology, and physics. Lovecraft's study of science contributed to his view of the human race as insignificant, powerless, and doomed in a materialistic and mechanistic universe. Lovecraft was a keen amateur astronomer from his youth, often visiting the Ladd Observatory in Providence, and penning numerous astronomical articles for his personal journal and local newspapers. Lovecraft's materialist views led him to espouse his philosophical views through his fiction; these philosophical views came to be called cosmicism. Cosmicism took on a more pessimistic tone with his creation of what is now known as the Cthulhu Mythos; a fictional universe that contains alien deities and horrors. The term "Cthulhu Mythos" was likely coined by later writers after Lovecraft's death. In his letters, Lovecraft jokingly called his fictional mythology "Yog-Sothothery".
Dreams had a major role in Lovecraft's literary career. In 1991, as a result of his rising place in American literature, it was popularly thought that Lovecraft extensively transcribed his dreams when writing fiction. However, the majority of his stories are not transcribed dreams. Instead, many of them are directly influenced by dreams and dreamlike phenomena. In his letters, Lovecraft frequently compared his characters to dreamers. They are described as being as helpless as a real dreamer who is experiencing a nightmare. His stories also have dreamlike qualities. The Randolph Carter stories deconstruct the division between dreams and reality. The dreamlands in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath are a shared dreamworld that can be accessed by a sensitive dreamer. Meanwhile, in "The Silver Key", Lovecraft mentions the concept of "inward dreams", which implies the existence of outward dreams. Burleson compares this deconstruction to Carl Jung's argument that dreams are the source of archetypal myths. Lovecraft's way of writing fiction required both a level of realism and dreamlike elements. Citing Jung, Burleson argues that a writer may create realism by being inspired by dreams.
Themes
Cosmicism
The central theme of Lovecraft's corpus is cosmicism. Cosmicism is a literary philosophy that argues that humanity is an insignificant force in the universe. Despite appearing pessimistic, Lovecraft thought of himself being as being a cosmic indifferentist, which is expressed in his fiction. In it, human beings are often subject to powerful beings and other cosmic forces, but these forces are not so much malevolent as they are indifferent toward humanity. He believed in a meaningless, mechanical, and uncaring universe that human beings could never fully understand. There is no allowance for beliefs that could not be supported scientifically. Lovecraft first articulated this philosophy in 1921, but he did not fully incorporate it into his fiction until five years later. "Dagon", "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", and "The Temple" contain early depictions of this concept, but the majority of his early tales do not analyze the concept. "Nyarlathotep" interprets the collapse of human civilization as being a corollary to the collapse of the universe. "The Call of Cthulhu" represents an intensification of this theme. In it, Lovecraft introduces the idea of alien influences on humanity, which would come to dominate all subsequent works. In these works, Lovecraft expresses cosmicism through the usage of confirmation rather than revelation. Lovecraftian protagonists do not learn that they are insignificant. Instead, they already know it and have it confirmed to them through an event.
Decline of civilization
For much of his life, Lovecraft was fixated on the concepts of decline and decadence. More specifically, he thought that the West was in a state of terminal decline. Starting in the 1920s, Lovecraft became familiar with the work of the German conservative-revolutionary theorist Oswald Spengler, whose pessimistic thesis of the decadence of the modern West formed a crucial element in Lovecraft's overall anti-modern worldview. Spenglerian imagery of cyclical decay is a central theme in At the Mountains of Madness. S. T. Joshi, in H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West, places Spengler at the center of his discussion of Lovecraft's political and philosophical ideas. According to him, the idea of decline is the single idea that permeates and connects his personal philosophy. The main Spenglerian influence on Lovecraft would be his view that politics, economics, science, and art are all interdependent aspects of civilization. This realization led him to shed his personal ignorance of then-current political and economic developments after 1927. Lovecraft had developed his idea of Western decline independently, but Spengler gave it a clear framework.
Science
Lovecraft shifted supernatural horror away from its previous focus on human issues to a focus on cosmic ones. In this way, he merged the elements of supernatural fiction that he deemed to be scientifically viable with science fiction. This merge required an understanding of both supernatural horror and then-contemporary science. Lovecraft used this combined knowledge to create stories that extensively reference trends in scientific development. Beginning with "The Shunned House", Lovecraft increasingly incorporated elements of both Einsteinian science and his own personal materialism into his stories. This intensified with the writing of "The Call of Cthulhu", where he depicted alien influences on humanity. This trend would continue throughout the remainder of his literary career. "The Colour Out of Space" represents what scholars have called the peak of this trend. It portrays an alien lifeform whose otherness prevents it from being defined by then-contemporary science.
Another part of this effort was the repeated usage of mathematics in an effort to make his creatures and settings appear more alien. Tom Hull, a mathematician, regards this as enhancing his ability to invoke a sense of otherness and fear. He attributes this use of mathematics to Lovecraft's childhood interest in astronomy and his adulthood awareness of non-Euclidean geometry. Another reason for his use of mathematics was his reaction to the scientific developments of his day. These developments convinced him that humanity's primary means of understanding the world was no longer trustable. Lovecraft's usage of mathematics in his fiction serves to convert otherwise supernatural elements into things that have in-universe scientific explanations. "The Dreams in the Witch House" and The Shadow Out of Time both have elements of this. The former uses a witch and her familiar, while the latter uses the idea of mind transference. These elements are explained using scientific theories that were prevalent during Lovecraft's lifetime.
Lovecraft Country
Setting plays a major role in Lovecraft's fiction. Lovecraft Country, a fictionalized version of New England, serves as the central hub for his mythos. It represents the history, culture, and folklore of the region, as interpreted by Lovecraft. These attributes are exaggerated and altered to provide a suitable setting for his stories. The names of the locations in the region were directly influenced by the names of real locations in the region, which was done to increase their realism. Lovecraft's stories use their connections with New England to imbue themselves with the ability to instil fear. Lovecraft was primarily inspired by the cities and towns in Massachusetts. However, the specific location of Lovecraft Country is variable, as it moved according to Lovecraft's literary needs. Starting with areas that he thought were evocative, Lovecraft redefined and exaggerated them under fictional names. For example, Lovecraft based Arkham on the town of Oakham and expanded it to include a nearby landmark. Its location was moved, as Lovecraft decided that it would have been destroyed by the recently-built Quabbin Reservoir. This is alluded to in "The Colour Out of Space", as the "blasted heath" is submerged by the creation of a fictionalized version of the reservoir. Similarly, Lovecraft's other towns were based on other locations in Massachusetts. Innsmouth was based on Newburyport, and Dunwich was based on Greenwich. The vague locations of these towns also played into Lovecraft's desire to create a mood in his stories. In his view, a mood can only be evoked through reading.
Critical reception
Literary
Early efforts to revise an established literary view of Lovecraft as an author of 'pulp' were resisted by some eminent critics; in 1945, Edmund Wilson sneered: "the only real horror in most of these fictions is the horror of bad taste and bad art". However, Wilson praised Lovecraft's ability to write about his chosen field; he described him as having written about it "with much intelligence". According to L. Sprague de Camp, Wilson later improved his opinion of Lovecraft, citing a report of David Chavchavadze that Wilson had included a Lovecraftian reference in Little Blue Light: A Play in Three Acts. After Chavchavadze met with him to discuss this, Wilson revealed that he had been reading a copy of Lovecraft's correspondence. Two years before Wilson's critique, Lovecraft's works were reviewed by Winfield Townley Scott, the literary editor of The Providence Journal. He argued that Lovecraft was one of the most significant Rhode Island authors and that it was regrettable that he had received little attention from mainstream critics at the time. Mystery and Adventure columnist Will Cuppy of the New York Herald Tribune recommended to readers a volume of Lovecraft's stories in 1944, asserting that "the literature of horror and macabre fantasy belongs with mystery in its broader sense".
By 1957, Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction said that Lovecraft was comparable to Robert E. Howard, stating that "they appear more prolific than ever," noting L. Sprague de Camp, Björn Nyberg, and August Derleth's usage of their creations. Gale also said that "Lovecraft at his best could build a mood of horror unsurpassed; at his worst, he was laughable." In 1962, Colin Wilson, in his survey of anti-realist trends in fiction The Strength to Dream, cited Lovecraft as one of the pioneers of the "assault on rationality" and included him with M. R. James, H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, J. R. R. Tolkien and others as one of the builders of mythicised realities contending against what he considered the failing project of literary realism. Subsequently, Lovecraft began to acquire the status of a cult writer in the counterculture of the 1960s, and reprints of his work proliferated.
Michael Dirda, a reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement, has described Lovecraft as being a "visionary" who is "rightly regarded as second only to Edgar Allan Poe in the annals of American supernatural literature". According to him, Lovecraft's works prove that mankind cannot bear the weight of reality, as the true nature of reality cannot be understood by either science or history. In addition, Dirda praises Lovecraft's ability to create an uncanny atmosphere. This atmosphere is created through the feeling of wrongness that pervades the objects, places, and people in Lovecraft's works. He also comments favorably on Lovecraft's correspondence, and compares him to Horace Walpole. Particular attention is given to his correspondence with August Derleth and Robert E. Howard. The Derleth letters are called "delightful", while the Howard letters are described as being an ideological debate. Overall, Dirda believes that Lovecraft's letters are equal to, or better than, his fictional output.Los Angeles Review of Books reviewer Nick Mamatas has stated that Lovecraft was a particularly difficult author, rather than a bad one. He described Lovecraft as being "perfectly capable" in the fields of story logic, pacing, innovation, and generating quotable phrases. However, Lovecraft's difficulty made him ill-suited to the pulps; he was unable to compete with the popular recurring protagonists and damsel-in-distress stories. Furthermore, he compared a paragraph from The Shadow Out of Time to a paragraph from the introduction to The Economic Consequences of the Peace. In Mamatas' view, Lovecraft's quality is obscured by his difficulty, and his skill is what has allowed his following to outlive the followings of other then-prominent authors, such as Seabury Quinn and Kenneth Patchen.
In 2005, the Library of America published a volume of Lovecraft's works. This volume was reviewed by many publications, including The New York Times Book Review and The Wall Street Journal, and sold 25,000 copies within a month of release. The overall critical reception of the volume was mixed. Several scholars, including S. T. Joshi and Alison Sperling, have said that this confirms H. P. Lovecraft's place in the western canon. The editors of The Age of Lovecraft, Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, attributed the rise of mainstream popular and academic interest in Lovecraft to this volume, along with the Penguin Classics volumes and the Modern Library edition of At the Mountains of Madness. These volumes led to a proliferation of other volumes containing Lovecraft's works. According to the two authors, these volumes are part of a trend in Lovecraft's popular and academic reception: increased attention by one audience causes the other to also become more interested. Lovecraft's success is, in part, the result of his success.
Lovecraft's style has often been subject to criticism, but scholars such as S. T. Joshi have argued that Lovecraft consciously utilized a variety of literary devices to form a unique style of his own—these include prose-poetic rhythm, stream of consciousness, alliteration, and conscious archaism. According to Joyce Carol Oates, Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe have exerted a significant influence on later writers in the horror genre. Horror author Stephen King called Lovecraft "the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale". King stated in his semi-autobiographical non-fiction book Danse Macabre that Lovecraft was responsible for his own fascination with horror and the macabre and was the largest influence on his writing.
Philosophical
H. P. Lovecraft's writings have influenced the speculative realist philosophical movement during the early-twentieth-century. The four founders of the movement, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux, have cited Lovecraft as an inspiration for their worldviews. Graham Harman wrote a monograph, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy, about Lovecraft and philosophy. In it, he argues that Lovecraft was a "productionist" author. He describes Lovecraft as having been an author who was uniquely obsessed with gaps in human knowledge. He goes further and asserts that Lovecraft's personal philosophy as being in opposition to both idealism and David Hume. In his view, Lovecraft resembles Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, and Edmund Husserl in his division of objects into different parts that do not exhaust the potential meanings of the whole. The anti-idealism of Lovecraft is represented through his commentary on the inability of language to describe his horrors. Harman also credits Lovecraft with inspiring parts of his own articulation of object-oriented ontology. According to Lovecraft scholar Alison Sperling, this philosophical interpretation of Lovecraft's fiction has caused other philosophers in Harmon's tradition to write about Lovecraft. These philosophers seek to remove human perception and human life from the foundations of ethics. These scholars have used Lovecraft's works as the central example of their worldview. They base this usage in Lovecraft's arguments against anthropocentrism and the ability of the human mind to truly understand the universe. They have also played a role in Lovecraft's improving literary reputation by focusing on his interpretation of ontology, which gives him a central position in Anthropocene studies.
Legacy
Lovecraft was relatively unknown during his lifetime. While his stories appeared in prominent pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, not many people knew his name. He did, however, correspond regularly with other contemporary writers such as Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth, who became his friends, even though he never met them in person. This group became known as the "Lovecraft Circle", since their writings freely borrowed Lovecraft's motifs, with his encouragement. He borrowed from them as well. For example, he made use of Clark Ashton Smith's Tsathoggua in The Mound.
After Lovecraft's death, the Lovecraft Circle carried on. August Derleth founded Arkham House with Donald Wandrei to preserve Lovecraft's works and keep them in print. He added to and expanded on Lovecraft's vision, not without controversy. While Lovecraft considered his pantheon of alien gods a mere plot device, Derleth created an entire cosmology, complete with a war between the good Elder Gods and the evil Outer Gods, such as Cthulhu and his ilk. The forces of good were supposed to have won, locking Cthulhu and others beneath the earth, the ocean, and elsewhere. Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos stories went on to associate different gods with the traditional four elements of fire, air, earth and water, which did not line up with Lovecraft's original vision of his mythos. However, Derleth's ownership of Arkham House gave him a position of authority in Lovecraftiana that would not dissipate until his death, and through the efforts of Lovecraft scholars in the 1970s.
Lovecraft's works have influenced many writers and other creators. Stephen King has cited Lovecraft as a major influence on his works. As a child in the 1960s, he came across a volume of Lovecraft's works which inspired him to write his fiction. He goes on to argue that all works in the horror genre that were written after Lovecraft were influenced by him. In the field of comics, Alan Moore has also described Lovecraft as having been a formative influence on his graphic novels. Film director John Carpenter's films include direct references and quotations of Lovecraft's fiction, in addition to their use of a Lovecraftian aesthetic and themes. Guillermo del Toro has been similarly influenced by Lovecraft's corpus.
The first World Fantasy Awards were held in Providence in 1975. The theme was "The Lovecraft Circle". Until 2015, winners were presented with an elongated bust of Lovecraft that was designed by cartoonist Gahan Wilson, nicknamed the "Howard". In November 2015 it was announced that the World Fantasy Award trophy would no longer be modeled on H. P. Lovecraft in response to the author's views on race. After the World Fantasy Award dropped their connection to Lovecraft, The Atlantic commented that "In the end, Lovecraft still wins—people who've never read a page of his work will still know who Cthulhu is for years to come, and his legacy lives on in the work of Stephen King, Guillermo del Toro, and Neil Gaiman."
In 2016, Lovecraft was inducted into the Museum of Pop Culture's Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Three years later, Lovecraft and the other mythos authors were posthumously awarded the 1945 Retro-Hugo Award for Best Series for their contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos.
Lovecraft studies
Starting in the early 1970s, a body of scholarly work began to emerge around Lovecraft's life and works. Referred to as Lovecraft studies, its proponents sought to establish Lovecraft as a significant author in the American literary canon. This can be traced to Derleth's preservation and dissemination of Lovecraft's fiction, non-fiction, and letters through Arkham House. Joshi credits the development of the field to this process. However, it was marred by low quality editions and misinterpretations of Lovecraft's worldview. After Derleth's death in 1971, the scholarship entered a new phase. There was a push to create a book-length biography of Lovecraft. L. Sprague de Camp, a science fiction scholar, wrote the first major one in 1975. This biography was criticized by early Lovecraft scholars for its lack of scholarly merit and its lack of sympathy for its subject. Despite this, it played a significant role in Lovecraft's literary rise. It exposed Lovecraft to the mainstream of American literary criticism. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a division in the field between the "Derlethian traditionalists" who wished to interpret Lovecraft through the lens of fantasy literature and the newer scholars who wished to place greater attention on the entirety of his corpus.
The 1980s and 1990s saw a further proliferation of the field. The 1990 H. P. Lovecraft Centennial Conference and the republishing of older essays in An Epicure in the Terrible represented the publishing of many basic studies that would be used as a base for then-future studies. The 1990 centennial also saw the installation of the "H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Plaque" in a garden adjoining John Hay Library, that features a portrait by silhouettist E. J. Perry. Following this, in 1996, S. T. Joshi wrote his own biography of Lovecraft. This biography was met with positive reviews and became the main biography in the field. It has since been superseded by his expanded edition of the book, I am Providence in 2010.
Lovecraft's improving literary reputation has caused his works to receive increased attention by both classics publishers and scholarly fans. His works have been published by several different series of literary classics. Penguin Classics published three volumes of Lovecraft's works between 1999 and 2004. These volumes were edited by S. T. Joshi. Barnes & Noble would publish their own volume of Lovecraft's complete fiction in 2008. The Library of America published a volume of Lovecraft's works in 2005. The publishing of these volumes represented a reversal of the traditional judgment that Lovecraft was not part of the Western canon. Meanwhile, the biannual NecronomiCon Providence convention was first held in 2013. Its purpose is to serve as a fan and scholarly convention that discusses both Lovecraft and the wider field of weird fiction. It is organized by the Lovecraft Arts and Sciences organization and is held on the weekend of Lovecraft's birth. That July, the Providence City Council designated the "H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Square" and installed a commemorative sign at the intersection of Angell and Prospect streets, near the author's former residences.
Music
Lovecraft's fictional Mythos has influenced a number of musicians, particularly in rock and heavy metal music. This began in the 1960s with the formation of the psychedelic rock band H. P. Lovecraft, who released the albums H. P. Lovecraft and H. P. Lovecraft II in 1967 and 1968 respectively. They broke up afterwards, but later songs were released. This included "The White Ship" and "At the Mountains of Madness", both titled after Lovecraft stories. Extreme metal has also been influenced by Lovecraft. This has expressed itself in both the names of bands and the contents of their albums. This began in 1970 with the release of Black Sabbath's first album, Black Sabbath, which contained a song titled Behind the Wall of Sleep, deriving its name from the 1919 story "Beyond the Wall of Sleep." Heavy metal band Metallica was also inspired by Lovecraft. They recorded a song inspired by "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Call of Ktulu", and a song based on The Shadow over Innsmouth titled "The Thing That Should Not Be". These songs contain direct quotations of Lovecraft's works. Joseph Norman, a speculative scholar, has argued that there are similarities between the music described in Lovecraft's fiction and the aesthetics and atmosphere of Black Metal. He argues that this is evident through the "animalistic" qualities of Black metal vocals. The usage of occult elements is also cited as a thematic commonality. In terms of atmosphere, he asserts that both Lovecraft's works and extreme metal place heavy focus on creating a strong negative mood.
Games
Lovecraft has also influenced gaming, despite having personally disliked games during his lifetime. Chaosium's tabletop role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, released in 1981 and currently in its seventh major edition, was one of the first games to draw heavily from Lovecraft. It includes a Lovecraft-inspired insanity mechanic, which allowed for player characters to go insane from contact with cosmic horrors. This mechanic would go on to make appearance in subsequent tabletop and video games. 1987 saw the release of another Lovecraftian board game, Arkham Horror, which was published by Fantasy Flight Games. Though few subsequent Lovecraftian board games were released annually from 1987 to 2014, the years after 2014 saw a rapid increase in the number of Lovecraftian board games. According to Christina Silva, this revival may have been influenced by the entry of Lovecraft's work into the public domain and a revival of interest in board games. Few video games are direct adaptations of Lovecraft's works, but many video games have been inspired or heavily influenced by Lovecraft. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, a Lovecraftian first-person video game, was released in 2005. It is loose adaptation of The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Shadow Out of Time, and "The Thing on the Doorstep" that uses noir themes. These adaptations focus more on Lovecraft's monsters and gamification than they do on his themes, which represents a break from Lovecraft's core theme of human insignificance.
Religion and occultism
Several contemporary religions have been influenced by Lovecraft's works. Kenneth Grant, the founder of the Typhonian Order, incorporated Lovecraft's Mythos into his ritual and occult system. Grant combined his interest in Lovecraft's fiction with his adherence to Aleister Crowley's Thelema. The Typhonian Order considers Lovecraftian entities to be symbols through which people may interact with something inhuman. Grant also argued that Crowley himself was influenced by Lovecraft's writings, particularly in the naming of characters in The Book of the Law. Similarly, The Satanic Rituals, co-written by Anton LaVey and Michael A. Aquino, includes the "Ceremony of the Nine Angles", which is a ritual that was influenced by the descriptions in "The Dreams in the Witch House". It contains invocations of several of Lovecraft's fictional gods.
There have been several books that have claimed to be an authentic edition of Lovecraft's Necronomicon. The Simon Necronomicon is one such example. It was written by an unknown figure who identified themselves as "Simon". Peter Levenda, an occult author who has written about the Necronomicon, claims that he and "Simon" came across a hidden Greek translation of the grimoire while looking through a collection of antiquities at a New York bookstore during the 1960s or 1970s. This book was claimed to have borne the seal of the Necronomicon. Levenda went on to claim that Lovecraft had access to this purported scroll. A textual analysis has determined that the contents of this book were derived from multiple documents that discuss Mesopotamian myth and magic. The finding of a magical text by monks is also a common theme in the history of grimoires. It has been suggested that Lavenda is the true author of the Simon Necronomicon.
Correspondence
Although Lovecraft is known mostly for his works of weird fiction, the bulk of his writing consists of voluminous letters about a variety of topics, from weird fiction and art criticism to politics and history. Lovecraft biographers L. Sprague de Camp and S. T. Joshi have estimated that Lovecraft wrote 100,000 letters in his lifetime, a fifth of which are believed to survive. S. T. Joshi suggested in 1996 that it would have been impossible to publish the entirety of Lovecraft's letters due to their length and the sheer number of them. These letters were directed at fellow writers and members of the amateur press. His involvement in the latter was what caused him to begin writing them. According to Joshi, the most important sets of letters were those written to Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith, and James F. Morton. He attributes this importance to the contents of these letters. With Long, Lovecraft argued in support and in opposition to many of Long's viewpoints. The letters to Clark Ashton Smith are characterized by their focus on weird fiction. Lovecraft and Morton debated many scholarly subjects in their letters, resulting in what Joshi has called the "single greatest correspondence Lovecraft ever wrote."
Copyright and other legal issues
Despite several claims to the contrary, there is currently no evidence that any company or individual owns the copyright to any of Lovecraft's works, and it is generally accepted that it has passed into the public domain. Lovecraft had specified that R. H. Barlow would serve as the executor of his literary estate, but these instructions were not incorporated into his will. Nevertheless, his surviving aunt carried out his expressed wishes, and Barlow was given control of Lovecraft's literary estate upon his death. Barlow deposited the bulk of the papers, including the voluminous correspondence, in the John Hay Library, and attempted to organize and maintain Lovecraft's other writings. Lovecraft protégé August Derleth, an older and more established writer than Barlow, vied for control of the literary estate. He and Donald Wandrei, a fellow protégé and co-owner of Arkham House, falsely claimed that Derleth was the true literary executor. Barlow capitulated, and later committed suicide in 1951. This gave Derleth and Wandrei complete control over Lovecraft's corpus.
On October 9, 1947, Derleth purchased all rights to the stories that were published in Weird Tales. However, since April 1926 at the latest, Lovecraft had reserved all second printing rights to stories published in Weird Tales. Therefore, Weird Tales only owned the rights to at most six of Lovecraft's tales. If Derleth had legally obtained the copyrights to these tales, there is no evidence that they were renewed before the rights expired. Following Derleth's death in 1971, Donald Wandrei sued his estate to challenge Derleth's will, which stated that he only held the copyrights and royalties to Lovecraft's works that were published under both his and Derleth's names. Arkham House's lawyer, Forrest D. Hartmann, argued that the rights to Lovecraft's works were never renewed. Wandrei won the case, but Arkham House's actions regarding copyright have damaged their ability to claim ownership of them.
In H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, S. T. Joshi concludes that Derleth's claims are "almost certainly fictitious" and argues that most of Lovecraft's works that were published in the amateur press are likely in the public domain. The copyright for Lovecraft's works would have been inherited by the only surviving heir named in his 1912 will, his aunt Annie Gamwell. When she died in 1941, the copyrights passed to her remaining descendants, Ethel Phillips Morrish and Edna Lewis. They signed a document, sometimes referred to as the Morrish-Lewis gift, permitting Arkham House to republish Lovecraft's works while retaining their ownership of the copyrights. Searches of the Library of Congress have failed to find any evidence that these copyrights were renewed after the 28-year period, making it likely that these works are in the public domain. However, the Lovecraft literary estate, reconstituted in 1998 under Robert C. Harrall, has claimed that they own the rights. Joshi has withdrawn his support for his conclusion, and now supports the estate's copyright claims.
Bibliography
See also
:Category:H. P. Lovecraft scholars
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
The H. P. Lovecraft Archive
The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society
The Lovecraft Arts & Sciences Council, a non-profit educational organization
H. P. Lovecraft at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction''
Journals
Lovecraft Annual
Lovecraft Studies
Crypt of Cthulhu
Library collections
H. P. Lovecraft Collection in the Special Collections at the John Hay Library (Brown University)
H. P. Lovecraft Collection in the Distinctive Collections of Falvey Memorial Library (Villanova University)
Online editions
1890 births
1937 deaths
20th-century American essayists
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Burials at Swan Point Cemetery
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Writers of Gothic fiction | true | [
"HP Lovecraft's The Tomb is a 2005 American horror film directed by Ulli Lommel and starring Victoria Ullmann, Christian Behm, Gerard Griesbaum, and Michael Barbour. It is supposedly based on H.P. Lovecraft's 1917 story, \"The Tomb\". \nHowever, the plot of the film is completely unrelated to the Lovecraft short story. The film was compared to the 2004 movie, Saw, and the series was mentioned on the box art. The film is also known simply as The Tomb, but the title on the DVD case is HP Lovecraft's The Tomb. However, on the film itself, the title is given as \"H.P. Lovecraft The Tomb\", with no apostrophe or 's'.\n\nPlot\nTara (Victoria Ullmann) and Billy (Christian Behm) awake in a dark basement or warehouse, bloodied and covered with wounds. As they explore the empty surroundings, they find other wounded people who die in horrible ways at the hands of \"The Puppetmaster,\" a sinister villain who plays a deadly game with them in which there will be only one survivor. H.P. Lovecraft is mentioned several times during the course of the film by some characters, and the 'Puppetmaster' is referred to as 'Charles Dexter Ward' and one of his victims as 'Pickman' (a reference to Lovecraft's story Pickman's Model). However these passing references to Lovecraftian characters (and a quote from one of Lovecraft's stories about going \"beyond ye spheres\") are largely irrelevant to the serial killer plot played out on screen.\n\nFilming\nProduction of HP Lovecraft's The Tomb took place during August 2005 in Marina Del Rey, California, at a warehouse on Princeton Drive that has since been demolished. The scenes at the \"Palm Desert Motel\" were shot on an indoor set at the same warehouse. Exteriors were shot in the high desert near Palmdale, California.\n\nCo-executive producer Jeff Frentzen is wearing the black gloves of the killer throughout the film.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nMovie trailer\n\n2007 direct-to-video films\n2007 horror films\nFilms directed by Ulli Lommel\n2007 films\nFilms shot in California\nFilms scored by Robert J. Walsh",
"H. P. Lovecraft is the debut album by the American psychedelic rock band H. P. Lovecraft. It was released in October 1967 by Philips Records.\n\nBackground\nThe album blended psychedelic and folk rock influences and was marked by the haunting, eerie ambiance of the band's music, which itself was often inspired by the literary works of horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, after whom the band had named themselves. Although most of the album comprises interpretations of traditional and contemporary folk songs, it also features the self-penned compositions \"That's How Much I Love You, Baby (More or Less)\", \"The Time Machine\", and arguably the band's best known song, \"The White Ship\". The traditional song \"Wayfaring Stranger\" was released as a single just ahead of the album in September 1967 and \"The White Ship\" was issued shortly after the album appeared, although neither single reached the charts. Like its attendant singles, H. P. Lovecraft was also somewhat commercially unsuccessful and failed to reach the Billboard Top LPs chart or the UK Albums Chart, although it did sell reasonably well over time.\n\nRecording and contents\nRecording sessions for the album took place in mid-1967 at Universal Recording in Chicago, with the band's manager George Badonsky Record producer and Jerry DeClerk engineering. Progress on the album was very rapid, with the band recording many of the songs virtually live in the studio, although horns, woodwind instruments, and a nine-piece orchestra were overdubbed onto the tracks after completion of the initial sessions. The album is highlighted by the vaguely sinister ambiance of the band's music and by the oddly striking harmonies that resulted from the juxtoposition of guitarist and ex-folk singer George Edwards' folk-influenced singing and keyboardist Dave Michaels' classically trained, operatic phrasing.\n\nThe ten songs included on H. P. Lovecraft exhibit a wide range of styles, encompassing elements of jazz on \"That's How Much I Love You, Baby (More or Less)\", folk music on \"Wayfaring Stranger\", Gregorian chant on \"Gloria Patria\", vaudeville psychedelia on \"The Time Machine\", and contemporary singer-songwriter material on \"The Drifter\", \"Let's Get Together\", \"That's The Bag I'm In\", and \"Country Boy & Bleeker Street\". In addition, the laid-back, druggy ambiance of the cover of Randy Newman's \"I've Been Wrong Before\" serves to give an indication of the musical direction that the band would follow on their second album, H. P. Lovecraft II.\n\nThe album's centerpiece is the song \"The White Ship\", which was directly inspired by author H. P. Lovecraft's short story \"The White Ship\". Written by Edwards, Michaels, and the band's lead guitarist Tony Cavallari, the six-and-a-half-minute opus made use of baroque-style harpsichord, droning feedback, somber harmonies, and the chiming of an 1811 ship's bell. The song was released in an edited form as a single, shortly after its appearance on the album, but it failed to reach the Billboard Hot 100. In addition, the full-length album version of \"The White Ship\" went on to become something of an underground FM radio favorite in America.\n\nRe-releases\nAlthough the H. P. Lovecraft album was largely overlooked at the time of its release and had gone out of print by the early 1970s, its reputation has continued to grow over the years. A revival in interest in the band and their music began in the late 1980s, with Edsel Records reissuing the album and its follow-up together on the At the Mountains of Madness compilation in 1988. In 1997 both albums were re-released by Britonic Records as 'This is HP Lovecraft / HP Lovecraft II'. The album was again reissued in 2000, along with its follow-up H. P. Lovecraft II, on the Collectors' Choice Music CD Two Classic Albums from H. P. Lovecraft: H. P. Lovecraft/H. P. Lovecraft II. In addition, all ten songs that make up the H. P. Lovecraft album were included on the Rev-Ola Records compilation Dreams in the Witch House: The Complete Philips Recordings.\n\nTrack listing\n\nSide 1\n\"Wayfaring Stranger\" (traditional, arranged by George Edwards) – 2:35\n\"Let's Get Together\" (Chet Powers) – 4:35\n\"I've Been Wrong Before\" (Randy Newman) – 2:46\n\"The Drifter\" (Travis Edmonson) – 4:11\n\"That's The Bag I'm In\" (Fred Neil) – 1:46\n\nSide 2\n\"The White Ship\" (George Edwards, Dave Michaels, Tony Cavallari) – 6:33\n\"Country Boy & Bleeker Street\" (Fred Neil) – 2:35\n\"The Time Machine\" (George Edwards, Dave Michaels) – 2:05\n\"That's How Much I Love You, Baby (More or Less)\" (George Edwards, Dave Michaels, Tony Cavallari) – 3:55\n\"Gloria Patria\" (traditional, arranged by George Edwards, Dave Michaels) – 0:27\n\nPersonnel\n\nH. P. Lovecraft\n George Edwards – vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, guitarrón, bass\n Dave Michaels – vocals, organ, piano, harpsichord, clarinet, recorder\n Jerry McGeorge – bass, vocals\n Tony Cavallari – lead guitar, vocals\n Michael Tegza – drums, percussion, timpani, vocals\n\nAdditional musicians\n Bill Traut – bells, percussion\n Len Druss – piccolo flute, English horn, saxophones\n Jack Henningbaum, Paul Tervelt – French horn\n Bill Traub – reeds\n Herb Weiss, Ralph Craig – trombone\n Clyde Bachand – tuba\n Eddie Higgins – vibraphone, horn arrangements\n\nTechnical\n George Badonsky – record producer\n Jerry DeClerk – engineer\n John Cabalka – design\n Mike Stone – photography\n\nReferences\n\n1967 debut albums\nPhilips Records albums\nH. P. Lovecraft (band) albums"
] |
[
"H. P. Lovecraft",
"Marriage and New York",
"Who was HP Lovecraft's wife?",
"Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924,"
] | C_e055448352484e27a10b71b3309430f7_0 | What was their relationship like? | 2 | What was H.P. Lovecraft relationship like with Lovecraft's wife? | H. P. Lovecraft | Lovecraft's aunts disapproved of this relationship with Sonia. Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924, and relocated to her Brooklyn apartment at 793 Flatbush Avenue; she thought he needed to get out of Providence in order to flourish and was willing to support him financially. Greene, who had been married before, later said Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship. She attributed Lovecraft's passive nature to a stultifying upbringing by his mother. Lovecraft's weight increased to 90 kg (200 lb) on his wife's home cooking. He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends who urged him to submit stories to Weird Tales; editor Edwin Baird accepted many otherworldly 'Dream Cycle' Lovecraft stories for the ailing publication, though they were heavily criticized by a section of the readership. Established informally some years before Lovecraft arrived in New York, the core Kalem Club members were boys' adventure novelist Henry Everett McNeil; the lawyer and anarchist writer James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.; and the poet Reinhardt Kleiner. On New Year's Day of 1925, Sonia moved to Cleveland for a job opportunity, and Lovecraft left Flatbush for a small first-floor apartment on 169 Clinton Street "at the edge of Red Hook"--a location which came to discomfort him greatly. Later that year the Kalem Club's four regular attendees were joined by Lovecraft along with his protege Frank Belknap Long, bookseller George Willard Kirk, and Lovecraft's close friend Samuel Loveman. Loveman was Jewish, but was unaware of Lovecraft's nativist attitudes. Conversely, it has been suggested that Lovecraft, who disliked mention of sexual matters, was unaware that Loveman and some of his other friends were homosexual. CANNOTANSWER | Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship. | Howard Phillips Lovecraft (; August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of weird, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. Lovecraft is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England. After his father's institutionalization in 1893, he lived affluently until his family's wealth dissipated after the death of his grandfather. Lovecraft then lived with his mother, in reduced financial security, until her institutionalization in 1919. He began to write essays for the United Amateur Press Association and, in 1913, Lovecraft wrote a critical letter to a pulp magazine that ultimately led to his involvement in pulp fiction. He became active in the speculative fiction community and was published in several pulp magazines. Lovecraft moved to New York, marrying Sonia Greene in 1924, and later became the center of a wider group of authors known as the "Lovecraft Circle". They introduced him to Weird Tales, which would become his most prominent publisher. Lovecraft's time in New York took a toll on his mental state and financial conditions. He returned to Providence in 1926 and produced some of his most popular works, including "The Call of Cthulhu", At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, and The Shadow Out of Time. He would remain active as a writer until his death from intestinal cancer at the age of 46.
Lovecraft's literary corpus is based around the idea of cosmicism, which was simultaneously his personal philosophy and the main theme of his fiction. Cosmicism posits that humanity is an insignificant part of the cosmos, and could be swept away at any moment. He incorporated fantastic and science fiction elements into his stories, representing the perceived fragility of anthropocentrism. His works were largely set in a fictionalized version of New England. Civilizational decline also plays a major role in his works, as he believed that the West was in decline during his lifetime. Lovecraft's early political opinions were conservative and traditionalist; additionally, he held a number of racist views for much of his adult life. Following the Great Depression, Lovecraft became a democratic socialist, no longer believing a just aristocracy would make the world more fair.
Throughout his adult life, Lovecraft was never able to support himself from earnings as an author and editor. He was virtually unknown during his lifetime and was almost exclusively published in pulp magazines before his death. A scholarly revival of Lovecraft's work began in the 1970s, and he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors of supernatural horror fiction. Many direct adaptations and spiritual successors followed. Works inspired by Lovecraft, adaptations or original works, began to form the basis of the Cthulhu Mythos, which utilizes Lovecraft's characters, setting, and themes.
Biography
Early life and family tragedies
Lovecraft was born in his family home on August 20, 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the only child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft and Sarah Susan (née Phillips) Lovecraft. Susie's family was of substantial means at the time of their marriage, as her father, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, was involved in business ventures. In April 1893, after a psychotic episode in a Chicago hotel, Winfield was committed to Butler Hospital in Providence. His medical records state that he had been "doing and saying strange things at times" for a year before his commitment. The person who reported these symptoms is unknown. Winfield spent five years in Butler before dying in 1898. His death certificate listed the cause of death as general paresis, a term synonymous with late-stage syphilis. Throughout his life, Lovecraft maintained that his father fell into a paralytic state, due to insomnia and overwork, and remained that way until his death. It is not known whether Lovecraft was simply kept ignorant of his father's illness or whether his later statements were intentionally misleading.
After his father's institutionalization, Lovecraft resided in the family home with his mother, his maternal aunts Lillian and Annie, and his maternal grandparents Whipple and Robie. According to family friends, his mother, known as Susie, doted on the young Lovecraft excessively, pampering him and never letting him out of her sight. Lovecraft later recollected that his mother was "permanently stricken with grief" after his father's illness. Whipple became a father figure to Lovecraft in this time, Lovecraft noting that his grandfather became the "centre of my entire universe". Whipple, who often traveled to manage his business, maintained correspondence by letter with the young Lovecraft who, by the age of three, was already proficient at reading and writing.
He encouraged the young Lovecraft to have an appreciation of literature, especially classical literature and English poetry. In his old age, he helped raise the young H. P. Lovecraft and educated him not only in the classics, but also in original weird tales of "winged horrors" and "deep, low, moaning sounds" which he created for his grandchild's entertainment. The original sources of Phillips' weird tales are unidentified. Lovecraft himself guessed that they originated from Gothic novelists like Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, and Charles Maturin. It was during this period that Lovecraft was introduced to some of his earliest literary influences such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner illustrated by Gustave Doré, One Thousand and One Nights, Thomas Bulfinch's Age of Fable, and Ovid's Metamorphoses.
While there is no indication that Lovecraft was particularly close to his grandmother Robie, her death in 1896 had a profound effect on him. By his own account, it sent his family into "a gloom from which it never fully recovered". His mother and aunts wore black mourning dresses that "terrified" him. This is also time that Lovecraft, approximately five-and-a-half years old, started having nightmares that later would inform his fictional writings. Specifically, he began to have recurring nightmares of beings he referred to as "night-gaunts". He credited their appearance to the influence of Doré's illustrations, which would "whirl me through space at a sickening rate of speed, the while fretting & impelling me with their detestable tridents". Thirty years later, night-gaunts would appear in Lovecraft's fiction.
Lovecraft's earliest known literary works were written at the age of seven, and were poems restyling the Odyssey and other Greco-Roman mythological stories. Lovecraft would later write that during his childhood he was fixated on the Greco-Roman pantheon, and briefly accepted them as genuine expressions of divinity, foregoing his Christian upbringing. He recalled, at five years old, being told Santa Claus did not exist and retorted by asking why "God is not equally a myth?" At the age of eight, he took a keen interest in the sciences, particularly astronomy and chemistry. He also examined the anatomical books that were held in the family library, which taught him the specifics of human reproduction that were not yet explained to him. As a result, he found that it "virtually killed my interest in the subject".
In 1902, according to Lovecraft's later correspondence, astronomy became a guiding influence on his worldview. He began publishing the periodical Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy, using the hectograph printing method. Lovecraft went in and out of elementary school repeatedly, oftentimes with home tutors making up for the lost years, missing time due to health concerns that have not been determined. The written recollections of his peers described him as withdrawn but welcoming to those who shared his then-current fascination with astronomy, inviting them to look through his prized telescope.
Education and financial decline
By 1900, Whipple's various business concerns were suffering a downturn, which resulted in the slow reduction of his family's wealth. He was forced to let his family's hired servants go, leaving Lovecraft, Whipple, and Susie, being the only unmarried sister, alone in the family home. In the spring of 1904, Whipple's largest business venture suffered a catastrophic failure. Within months, he died at age 70 due to a stroke. After Whipple's death, Susie was unable to financially support the upkeep of the expansive family home on what remained of the Phillips' estate. Later that year, she was forced to move to a small duplex with her son.
Lovecraft called this time one of the darkest of his life, remarking in a 1934 letter that he saw no point in living anymore. Furthermore, he considered the possibility of committing suicide. His scientific curiosity and desire to know more about the world prevented him from doing so. In fall 1904, he entered high school. Much like his earlier school years, Lovecraft was periodically removed from school for long periods for what he termed "near breakdowns". He did say, though, that while having some conflicts with teachers, he enjoyed high school, becoming close with a small circle of friends. Lovecraft also performed well academically, excelling in particular at chemistry and physics. Aside from a pause in 1904, he also resumed publishing the Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy as well as starting the Scientific Gazette, which dealt mostly with chemistry. It was also during this period that Lovecraft produced the first of the fictional works that he would later be known for, namely "The Beast in the Cave" and "The Alchemist".
It was in 1908, prior to what would have been his high school graduation, that Lovecraft suffered another unidentified health crisis, though this instance was more severe than his prior illnesses. The exact circumstances and causes remain unknown. The only direct records are Lovecraft's own correspondence wherein he retrospectively described it variously as a "nervous collapse" and "a sort of breakdown", in one letter blaming it on the stress of high school despite his enjoying it. In another letter concerning the events of 1908, he notes, "I was and am prey to intense headaches, insomnia, and general nervous weakness which prevents my continuous application to any thing."
Though Lovecraft maintained that he was going to attend Brown University after high school, he never graduated and never attended school again. Whether Lovecraft suffered from a physical ailment, a mental one, or some combination thereof has never been determined. An account from a high school classmate described Lovecraft as exhibiting "terrible tics" and that at times "he'd be sitting in his seat and he'd suddenly up and jump". Harry Brobst, a psychology professor, examined the account and claimed that chorea minor was the probable cause of Lovecraft's childhood symptoms while noting that instances of chorea minor after adolescence are very rare. In his letters, Lovecraft acknowledged that he suffered from bouts of chorea as a child. Brobst further ventured that Lovecraft's 1908 breakdown was attributed to a "hysteroid seizure", a term that has become synonymous with atypical depression. In another letter concerning the events of 1908, Lovecraft stated that he "could hardly bear to see or speak to anyone, & liked to shut out the world by pulling down dark shades & using artificial light".
Earliest recognition
Few of Lovecraft and Susie's activities between late 1908 and 1913 were recorded. Lovecraft described the steady continuation of their financial decline highlighted by his uncle's failed business that cost Susie a large portion of their already dwindling wealth. One of Susie's friends, Clara Hess, recalled a visit during which Susie spoke continuously about Lovecraft being "so hideous that he hid from everyone and did not like to walk upon the streets where people could gaze on him". Despite Hess' protests to the contrary, Susie maintained this stance. For his part, Lovecraft said he found his mother to be "a positive marvel of consideration". A next-door neighbor later pointed out that what others in the neighborhood often assumed were loud, nocturnal quarrels between mother and son, were actually recitations of Shakespeare, an activity that seemed to delight mother and son.
During this period, Lovecraft revived his earlier scientific periodicals. He endeavored to commit himself to the study of organic chemistry, Susie buying the expensive glass chemistry assemblage he wanted. Lovecraft found his studies were stymied by the mathematics involved, which he found boring and would cause headaches that would incapacitate him for the remainder of the day. Lovecraft's first non-self-published poem appeared in a local newspaper in 1912. Called Providence in 2000 A.D., it envisioned a future where Americans of English descent were displaced by Irish, Italian, Portuguese, and Jewish immigrants. In this period he also wrote racist poetry, including "New-England Fallen" and "On the Creation of Niggers", but there is no indication that either were published during his lifetime.
In 1911, Lovecraft's letters to editors began appearing in pulp and weird-fiction magazines, most notably Argosy. A 1913 letter critical of Fred Jackson, one of Argosy'''s more prominent writers, started Lovecraft down a path that would define the remainder of his career as a writer. In the following letters, Lovecraft described Jackson's stories as being "trivial, effeminate, and, in places, coarse". Continuing, Lovecraft argued that Jackson's characters exhibit the "delicate passions and emotions proper to negroes and anthropoid apes". This sparked a nearly year-long feud in the magazine's letters section between the two writers and their respective supporters. Lovecraft's most prominent opponent was John Russell, who often replied in verse, and to whom Lovecraft felt compelled to reply because he respected Russell's writing skills. The most immediate effect of this feud was the recognition garnered from Edward F. Daas, then head editor of the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA). Daas invited Russell and Lovecraft to join the organization and both accepted, Lovecraft in April 1914.
Rejuvenation and tragedy
Lovecraft immersed himself in the world of amateur journalism for most of the following decade. During this period, he advocated for amateurism's superiority to commercialism. Lovecraft defined commercialism as writing for what he considered low-brow publications for pay. This was contrasted with his view of "professional publication", which was what he called writing what he considered respectable journals and publishers. He thought of amateur journalism as serving as practice for a professional career.
Lovecraft was appointed chairman of the Department of Public Criticism of the UAPA in late 1914. He used this position to advocate for what he saw as the superiority of archaic English language usage. Emblematic of the Anglophilic opinions he maintained throughout his life, he openly criticized other UAPA contributors for their "Americanisms" and "slang". Often, these criticisms were embedded in xenophobic and racist statements that the "national language" was being negatively changed by immigrants. In mid-1915, Lovecraft was elected vice-president of the UAPA. Two years later, he was elected president and appointed other board members who mostly shared his belief in the supremacy of British English over modern American English. Another significant event of this time was the beginning of World War I. Lovecraft published multiple criticisms of the American government and public's reluctance to join the war to protect England, which he viewed as America's ancestral homeland.
In 1916, Lovecraft published his first short story, "The Alchemist", in the main UAPA journal, which was a departure from his usual verse. Due to the encouragement of W. Paul Cook, another UAPA member and future lifelong friend, Lovecraft began writing and publishing more prose fiction. Soon afterwards, he wrote "The Tomb" and "Dagon". "The Tomb", by Lovecraft's own admission, was greatly influenced by the style and structure of Edgar Allan Poe's works. Meanwhile, "Dagon" is considered Lovecraft's first work that displays the concepts and themes that his writings would later become known for. Lovecraft published another short story, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" in 1919, which was his first science fiction story.
Lovecraft's term as president of the UAPA ended in 1918, and he returned to his former post as chairman of the Department of Public Criticism. In 1917, as Lovecraft related to Kleiner, Lovecraft made an aborted attempt to enlist in the United States Army. Though he passed the physical exam, he told Kleiner that his mother threatened to do anything, legal or otherwise, to prove that he was unfit for service. After his failed attempt to serve in World War I, he attempted to enroll in the Rhode Island National Guard, but his mother used her family connections to prevent it.
During the winter of 1918–1919, Susie, exhibiting the symptoms of a nervous breakdown, went to live with her elder sister, Lillian. The nature of Susie's illness is unclear, as her medical papers were later destroyed in a fire at Butler Hospital. Winfield Townley Scott, who was able to read the papers before the fire, described Susie as having suffered a psychological collapse. Neighbour and friend Clara Hess, interviewed in 1948, recalled instances of Susie describing "weird and fantastic creatures that rushed out from behind buildings and from corners at dark". In the same account, Hess described a time when they crossed paths in downtown Providence and Susie was unaware of where she was. In March 1919, she was committed to Butler Hospital, like her husband before her. Lovecraft's immediate reaction to Susie's commitment was visceral, writing to Kleiner that, "existence seems of little value", and that he wished "it might terminate". During Susie's time at Butler, Lovecraft periodically visited her and walked the large grounds with her.
Late 1919 saw Lovecraft become more outgoing. After a period of isolation, he began joining friends in trips to writer gatherings; the first being a talk in Boston presented by Lord Dunsany, whom Lovecraft had recently discovered and idolized. In early 1920, at an amateur writer convention, he met Frank Belknap Long, who would end up being Lovecraft's most influential and closest confidant for the remainder of his life. The influence of Dunsany is apparent in his 1919 output, which is part of what would be called Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, including "The White Ship" and "The Doom That Came to Sarnath". In early 1920, he wrote "The Cats of Ulthar" and "Celephaïs", which were also strongly influenced by Dunsany.
It was later in 1920 that Lovecraft began publishing the earliest Cthulhu Mythos stories. The Cthulhu Mythos, a term coined by later authors, encompasses Lovecraft's stories that share a commonality in the revelation of cosmic insignificance, initially realistic settings, and recurring entities and texts. The prose poem "Nyarlathotep" and the short story "The Crawling Chaos", in collaboration with Winifred Virginia Jackson, were written in late 1920. Following in early 1921 came "The Nameless City", the first story that falls definitively within the Cthulhu Mythos. In it is one of Lovecraft's most enduring phrases, a couplet recited by Abdul Alhazred; "That is not dead which can eternal lie; And with strange aeons even death may die." In the same year, he also wrote "The Outsider", which has become one of Lovecraft's most heavily analyzed, and differently interpreted, stories. It has been variously interpreted as being autobiographical, an allegory of the psyche, a parody of the afterlife, a commentary on humanity's place in the universe, and a critique of progress.
On May 24, 1921, Susie died in Butler Hospital, due to complications from an operation on her gall bladder five days earlier. Lovecraft's initial reaction, expressed in a letter written nine days after Susie's death, was a deep state of sadness that crippled him physically and emotionally. He again expressed a desire that his life might end. Lovecraft's later response was relief, as he had become able to live independently from his mother. His physical health also began to improve, although he was unaware of the exact cause. Despite Lovecraft's reaction, he continued to attend amateur journalist conventions. Lovecraft met his future wife, Sonia Greene, at one such convention in July.
Marriage and New York
Lovecraft's aunts disapproved of his relationship with Sonia. Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924, and relocated to her Brooklyn apartment at 793 Flatbush Avenue; she thought he needed to leave Providence to flourish and was willing to support him financially. Greene, who had been married before, later said Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship. She attributed Lovecraft's passive nature to a stultifying upbringing by his mother. Lovecraft's weight increased to on his wife's home cooking.
He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends who urged him to submit stories to Weird Tales. Its editor, Edwin Baird, accepted many of Lovecraft's stories for the ailing publication, including "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs", which was ghostwritten for Harry Houdini. Established informally some years before Lovecraft arrived in New York, the core Kalem Club members were boys' adventure novelist Henry Everett McNeil, the lawyer and anarchist writer James Ferdinand Morton Jr., and the poet Reinhardt Kleiner.
On January 1, 1925, Sonia moved from Flatbush to Cleveland in response to a job opportunity, and Lovecraft left for a small first-floor apartment on 169 Clinton Street "at the edge of Red Hook"—a location which came to discomfort him greatly. Later that year, the Kalem Club's four regular attendees were joined by Lovecraft along with his protégé Frank Belknap Long, bookseller George Willard Kirk, and Samuel Loveman. Loveman was Jewish, but he and Lovecraft became close friends in spite of the latter's nativist attitudes. By the 1930s, writer and publisher Herman Charles Koenig would be one of the last to become involved with the Kalem Club.
Not long after the marriage, Greene lost her business and her assets disappeared in a bank failure. Lovecraft made efforts to support his wife through regular jobs, but his lack of previous work experience meant he lacked proven marketable skills. The publisher of Weird Tales was attempting to make the loss-making magazine profitable and offered the job of editor to Lovecraft, who declined, citing his reluctance to relocate to Chicago on aesthetic grounds. Baird was succeeded by Farnsworth Wright, whose writing Lovecraft had criticized. Lovecraft's submissions were often rejected by Wright. This may have been partially due to censorship guidelines imposed in the aftermath of a Weird Tales story that hinted at necrophilia, although after Lovecraft's death, Wright accepted many of the stories he had originally rejected.
Sonia also became ill and immediately after recovering, relocated to Cincinnati, and then to Cleveland; her employment required constant travel. Added to his feelings of failure in a city with a large immigrant population, Lovecraft's single-room apartment was burgled, leaving him with only the clothes he was wearing. In August 1925, he wrote "The Horror at Red Hook" and "He", in the latter of which the narrator says "My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration [...] I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyze, and annihilate me." This was an expression of his despair at being in New York. It was at around this time he wrote the outline for "The Call of Cthulhu", with its theme of the insignificance of all humanity. During this time, Lovecraft wrote "Supernatural Horror in Literature" on the eponymous subject. It later became one of the most influential essays on the subject. With a weekly allowance Greene sent, Lovecraft moved to a working-class area of Brooklyn Heights, where he resided in a tiny apartment. He had lost approximately of body weight by 1926, when he left for Providence.
Return to Providence and death
Back in Providence, Lovecraft lived with his aunts in a "spacious brown Victorian wooden house" at 10 Barnes Street until 1933. He would then move to 66 Prospect Street, which would become his final home. The period beginning after his return to Providence contains some of his most prominent works, including "The Call of Cthulhu", The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and The Shadow over Innsmouth. The latter two stories are partially autobiographical, as scholars have argued that The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is about Lovecraft's return to Providence and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is, in part, about the city itself. The former story also represents a partial repudiation of Dunsany's influence, as Lovecraft had decided that his style did not come to him naturally. At this time, he frequently revised work for other authors and did a large amount of ghostwriting, including The Mound, "Winged Death", and "The Diary of Alonzo Typer". Client Harry Houdini was laudatory, and attempted to help Lovecraft by introducing him to the head of a newspaper syndicate. Plans for a further project were ended by Houdini's death in 1926.
In August 1930, Robert E. Howard wrote a letter to Weird Tales praising a then-recent reprint of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" and discussing some of the Gaelic references used within. Editor Farnsworth Wright forwarded the letter to Lovecraft, who responded positively to Howard, and soon the two writers were engaged in a vigorous correspondence that would last for the rest of Howard's life. Howard quickly became a member of the Lovecraft Circle, a group of writers and friends all linked through Lovecraft's voluminous correspondence, as he introduced his many like-minded friends to one another and encouraged them to share their stories, utilize each other's fictional creations, and help each other succeed in the field of pulp fiction.
Meanwhile, Lovecraft was increasingly producing work that brought him no remuneration. Affecting a calm indifference to the reception of his works, Lovecraft was in reality extremely sensitive to criticism and easily precipitated into withdrawal. He was known to give up trying to sell a story after it had been once rejected. Sometimes, as with The Shadow over Innsmouth, he wrote a story that might have been commercially viable but did not try to sell it. Lovecraft even ignored interested publishers. He failed to reply when one inquired about any novel Lovecraft might have ready: although he had completed such a work, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, it was never typed up. A few years after Lovecraft had moved to Providence, he and his wife Sonia Greene, having lived separately for so long, agreed to an amicable divorce. Greene moved to California in 1933 and remarried in 1936, unaware that Lovecraft, despite his assurances to the contrary, had never officially signed the final decree.
As a result of the Great Depression, he shifted towards democratic socialism, decrying both his prior political beliefs and the rising tide of fascism. He thought that socialism was a workable middle ground between what he saw as the destructive impulses of both the capitalists and the Marxists of his day. This was based in a general opposition to cultural upheaval, as well as support for an ordered society. Electorally, he supported Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he thought that the New Deal was not sufficiently leftist. Lovecraft's support for it was based in his view that no other set of reforms were possible at that time.
In late 1936, he witnessed the publication of The Shadow over Innsmouth as a paperback book. 400 copies were printed, and the work was advertised in Weird Tales and several fan magazines. However, Lovecraft was displeased, as this book was riddled with errors that required extensive editing. It sold slowly and only approximately 200 copies were bound. The remaining 200 copies were destroyed after the publisher went out of business for the next seven years. By this point, Lovecraft's literary career was reaching its end. Shortly after having written his last original short story, "The Haunter of the Dark", he stated that the hostile reception of At the Mountains of Madness had done "more than anything to end my effective fictional career". His declining psychological, and physical, state made it impossible for him to continue writing fiction.
On June 11, Robert E. Howard was informed that his chronically ill mother would not awaken from her coma. He walked out to his car and committed suicide with a pistol that he had stored there. His mother died shortly thereafter. This deeply affected Lovecraft, who consoled Howard's father through correspondence. Almost immediately after hearing about Howard's death, Lovecraft wrote a brief memoir titled "In Memoriam: Robert Ervin Howard", which he distributed to his correspondents. Meanwhile, Lovecraft's physical health was deteriorating. He was suffering from an affliction that he referred to as "grippe".
Due to his fear of doctors, Lovecraft was not examined until a month before his death. After seeing a doctor, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the small intestine. He remained hospitalized until he died. He lived in constant pain until his death on March 15, 1937, in Providence. In accordance with his lifelong scientific curiosity, he kept a diary of his illness until he was physically incapable of holding a pen. Lovecraft was listed along with his parents on the Phillips family monument. In 1977, fans erected a headstone in Swan Point Cemetery on which they inscribed his name, the dates of his birth and death, and the phrase "I AM PROVIDENCE"—a line from one of his personal letters.
Personal views
Politics
Lovecraft began his life as a Tory, which was likely the result of his conservative upbringing. His family supported the Republican Party for the entirety of his life. While it is unclear how consistently he voted, he voted for Herbert Hoover in the 1928 presidential election. Rhode Island as a whole remained politically conservative and Republican into the 1930s. Lovecraft himself was an anglophile who supported the British monarchy. He opposed democracy and thought that America should be governed by an aristocracy. This viewpoint emerged during his youth and lasted until the end of the 1920s. During World War I, his Anglophilia caused him to strongly support the entente against the Central Powers. Many of this earlier poems were devoted to then-current political subjects, and he published several political essays in his amateur journal, The Conservative. He was a teetotaler who supported the implementation of Prohibition, which was one of the few reforms that he supported during the early part of his life. While remaining a teetotaller, he later became convinced that Prohibition was ineffectual in the 1930s. His personal justification for his early political viewpoints was primarily based on tradition and aesthetics.
As a result of the Great Depression, Lovecraft reexamined his political views. Initially, he thought that affluent people would take on the characteristics of his ideal aristocracy and solve America's problems. When this did not occur, he became a democratic socialist. This shift was caused by his observation that the Depression was harming American society. It was also influenced by the increase in socialism's political capital during the 1930s. One of the main points of Lovecraft's socialism was its opposition to Soviet Marxism, as he thought that a Marxist revolution would bring about the destruction of American civilization. Lovecraft thought that an intellectual aristocracy needed to be formed to preserve America. His ideal political system is outlined in his essay "Some Repetitions on the Times". Lovecraft used this essay to echo the political proposals that had been made over the course of the last few decades. In this essay, he advocates governmental control of resource distribution, fewer working hours and a higher wage, and unemployment insurance and old age pensions. He also outlines the need for an oligarchy of intellectuals. In his view, power must be restricted to those who are sufficiently intelligent and educated. He frequently used the term "fascism" to describe this form of government, but, according to S. T. Joshi, it bears little resemblance to that ideology.
Lovecraft had varied views on the political figures of his day. He was an ardent supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He saw that Roosevelt was trying to steer a middle course between the conservatives and the revolutionaries, which he approved of. While he thought that Roosevelt should have been enacting more progressive policies, he came to the conclusion that the New Deal was the only realistic option for reform. He thought that voting for his opponents on the political left would be a wasted effort. Internationally, like many Americans, he initially expressed support for Adolf Hitler. More specifically, he thought that Hitler would preserve German culture. However, he thought that Hitler's racial policies should be based on culture rather than descent. There is evidence that, at the end of his life, Lovecraft began to oppose Hitler. According to Harry K. Brobst, Lovecraft's downstairs neighbor went to Germany and witnessed Jews being beaten. Lovecraft and his aunt were angered by this. His discussions of Hitler drop off after this point.
Atheism
Lovecraft was an atheist. His viewpoints on religion are outlined in his 1922 essay "A Confession of Unfaith". In this essay, he describes his shift away from the Protestantism of his parents to the atheism of his adulthood. Lovecraft was raised by a conservative Protestant family. He was introduced to the Bible and the mythos of Saint Nicholas when he was two. He passively accepted both of them. Over the course of the next few years, he was introduced to Grimms' Fairy Tales and One Thousand and One Nights, favoring the latter. In response, Lovecraft took on the identity of "Abdul Alhazred", a name he would later use for the author of the Necronomicon. According to this account, his first moment of skepticism occurred before his fifth birthday, when he questioned if God is a myth after learning that Santa Claus is not real. In 1896, he was introduced to Greco-Roman myths and became "a genuine pagan".
This came to an end in 1902, when Lovecraft was introduced to space. He later described this event as the most poignant in his life. In response to this discovery, Lovecraft took to studying astronomy and described his observations in the local newspaper. Before his thirteenth birthday, he had become convinced of humanity's impermanence. By the time he was seventeen, he had read detailed writings that agreed with his worldview. Lovecraft ceased writing positively about progress, instead developing his later cosmic philosophy. Despite his interests in science, he had an aversion to realistic literature, so he became interested in fantastical fiction. Lovecraft became pessimistic when he entered amateur journalism in 1914. The Great War seemed to confirm his viewpoints. He began to despise philosophical idealism. Lovecraft took to discussing and debating his pessimism with his peers, which allowed him to solidify his philosophy. His readings of Friedrich Nietzsche and H. L. Mencken, among other pessimistic writers, furthered this development. At the end of his essay, Lovecraft states that all he desired was oblivion. He was willing to cast aside any illusion that he may still have held.
Race
Race is the most controversial aspect of Lovecraft's legacy, expressed in many disparaging remarks against non-Anglo-Saxon races and cultures in his works. As he grew older, his original racial worldview became a classism or elitism which regarded the superior race to include all those self-ennobled through high culture. From the start, Lovecraft did not hold all white people in uniform high regard, but rather esteemed English people and those of English descent. In his early published essays, private letters and personal utterances, he argued for a strong color line to preserve race and culture. His arguments were supported using disparagements of various races in his journalism and letters, and allegorically in his fictional works that depict non-human races. This is evident in his portrayal of the Deep Ones in The Shadow over Innsmouth. Their interbreeding with humanity is framed as being a type of miscegenation that corrupts both the town of Innsmouth and the protagonist.
Initially, Lovecraft showed sympathy to minorities who adopted Western culture, even to the extent of marrying a Jewish woman he viewed as being "well assimilated". By the 1930s, Lovecraft's views on ethnicity and race had moderated. He supported ethnicities' preserving their native cultures; for example, he thought that "a real friend of civilisation wishes merely to make the Germans more German, the French more French, the Spaniards more Spanish, & so on". This represented a shift from his previous support for cultural assimilation. However, this did not represent a complete elimination of his racial prejudices. Scholars have argued that Lovecraft's racial attitudes were common in the society of his day, particularly in the New England in which he grew up.
Influences
His interest in weird fiction began in his childhood when his grandfather, who preferred Gothic stories, would tell him stories of his own design. Lovecraft's childhood home on Angell Street had a large library that contained classical literature, scientific works, and early weird fiction. At the age of five, Lovecraft enjoyed reading One Thousand and One Nights, and was reading Nathaniel Hawthorne a year later. He was also influenced by the travel literature of John Mandeville and Marco Polo. This led to his discovery of gaps in then-contemporary science, which prevented Lovecraft from committing suicide in response to the death of his grandfather and his family's declining financial situation during his adolescence. These travelogues may have also had an influence on how Lovecraft's later works describe their characters and locations. For example, there is a resemblance between the powers of the Tibetan enchanters in The Travels of Marco Polo and the powers unleashed on Sentinel Hill in "The Dunwich Horror".
One of Lovecraft's most significant literary influences was Edgar Allan Poe, whom he described as his "God of Fiction". Poe's fiction was introduced to Lovecraft when the latter was eight years old. His earlier works were significantly influenced by Poe's prose and writing style. He also made extensive use of Poe's unity of effect in his fiction. Furthermore, At the Mountains of Madness directly quotes Poe and was influenced by The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. One of the main themes of the two stories is to discuss the unreliable nature of language as a method of expressing meaning. In 1919, Lovecraft's discovery of the stories of Lord Dunsany moved his writing in a new direction, resulting in a series of fantasies. Throughout his life, Lovecraft referred to Dunsany as the author who had the greatest impact on his literary career. The initial result of this influence was the Dream Cycle, a series of fantasies that originally take place in prehistory, but later shift to a dreamworld setting. By 1930, Lovecraft decided that he would no longer write Dunsianian fantasies, arguing that the style did not come naturally to him. Additionally, he also read and cited Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood as influences in the 1920s.
Aside from horror authors, Lovecraft was significantly influenced by the Decadents, the Puritans, and the Aesthetic Movement. In "H. P. Lovecraft: New England Decadent", Barton Levi St. Armand, a professor emeritus of English and American studies at Brown University, has argued that these three influences combined to define Lovecraft as a writer. He traces this influence to both Lovecraft's stories and letters, noting that he actively cultivated the image of a New England gentleman in his letters. Meanwhile, his influence from the Decadents and the Aesthetic Movement stems from his readings of Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft's aesthetic worldview and fixation on decline stems from these readings. The idea of cosmic decline is described as having been Lovecraft's response to both the Aesthetic Movement and the 19th century Decadents. St. Armand describes it as being a combination of non-theological Puritan thought and the Decadent worldview. This is used as a division in his stories, particularly in "The Horror at Red Hook", "Pickman's Model", and "The Music of Erich Zann". The division between Puritanism and Decadence, St. Armand argues, represents a polarization between an artificial paradise and oneiriscopic visions of different worlds.
A non-literary inspiration came from then-contemporary scientific advances in biology, astronomy, geology, and physics. Lovecraft's study of science contributed to his view of the human race as insignificant, powerless, and doomed in a materialistic and mechanistic universe. Lovecraft was a keen amateur astronomer from his youth, often visiting the Ladd Observatory in Providence, and penning numerous astronomical articles for his personal journal and local newspapers. Lovecraft's materialist views led him to espouse his philosophical views through his fiction; these philosophical views came to be called cosmicism. Cosmicism took on a more pessimistic tone with his creation of what is now known as the Cthulhu Mythos; a fictional universe that contains alien deities and horrors. The term "Cthulhu Mythos" was likely coined by later writers after Lovecraft's death. In his letters, Lovecraft jokingly called his fictional mythology "Yog-Sothothery".
Dreams had a major role in Lovecraft's literary career. In 1991, as a result of his rising place in American literature, it was popularly thought that Lovecraft extensively transcribed his dreams when writing fiction. However, the majority of his stories are not transcribed dreams. Instead, many of them are directly influenced by dreams and dreamlike phenomena. In his letters, Lovecraft frequently compared his characters to dreamers. They are described as being as helpless as a real dreamer who is experiencing a nightmare. His stories also have dreamlike qualities. The Randolph Carter stories deconstruct the division between dreams and reality. The dreamlands in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath are a shared dreamworld that can be accessed by a sensitive dreamer. Meanwhile, in "The Silver Key", Lovecraft mentions the concept of "inward dreams", which implies the existence of outward dreams. Burleson compares this deconstruction to Carl Jung's argument that dreams are the source of archetypal myths. Lovecraft's way of writing fiction required both a level of realism and dreamlike elements. Citing Jung, Burleson argues that a writer may create realism by being inspired by dreams.
Themes
Cosmicism
The central theme of Lovecraft's corpus is cosmicism. Cosmicism is a literary philosophy that argues that humanity is an insignificant force in the universe. Despite appearing pessimistic, Lovecraft thought of himself being as being a cosmic indifferentist, which is expressed in his fiction. In it, human beings are often subject to powerful beings and other cosmic forces, but these forces are not so much malevolent as they are indifferent toward humanity. He believed in a meaningless, mechanical, and uncaring universe that human beings could never fully understand. There is no allowance for beliefs that could not be supported scientifically. Lovecraft first articulated this philosophy in 1921, but he did not fully incorporate it into his fiction until five years later. "Dagon", "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", and "The Temple" contain early depictions of this concept, but the majority of his early tales do not analyze the concept. "Nyarlathotep" interprets the collapse of human civilization as being a corollary to the collapse of the universe. "The Call of Cthulhu" represents an intensification of this theme. In it, Lovecraft introduces the idea of alien influences on humanity, which would come to dominate all subsequent works. In these works, Lovecraft expresses cosmicism through the usage of confirmation rather than revelation. Lovecraftian protagonists do not learn that they are insignificant. Instead, they already know it and have it confirmed to them through an event.
Decline of civilization
For much of his life, Lovecraft was fixated on the concepts of decline and decadence. More specifically, he thought that the West was in a state of terminal decline. Starting in the 1920s, Lovecraft became familiar with the work of the German conservative-revolutionary theorist Oswald Spengler, whose pessimistic thesis of the decadence of the modern West formed a crucial element in Lovecraft's overall anti-modern worldview. Spenglerian imagery of cyclical decay is a central theme in At the Mountains of Madness. S. T. Joshi, in H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West, places Spengler at the center of his discussion of Lovecraft's political and philosophical ideas. According to him, the idea of decline is the single idea that permeates and connects his personal philosophy. The main Spenglerian influence on Lovecraft would be his view that politics, economics, science, and art are all interdependent aspects of civilization. This realization led him to shed his personal ignorance of then-current political and economic developments after 1927. Lovecraft had developed his idea of Western decline independently, but Spengler gave it a clear framework.
Science
Lovecraft shifted supernatural horror away from its previous focus on human issues to a focus on cosmic ones. In this way, he merged the elements of supernatural fiction that he deemed to be scientifically viable with science fiction. This merge required an understanding of both supernatural horror and then-contemporary science. Lovecraft used this combined knowledge to create stories that extensively reference trends in scientific development. Beginning with "The Shunned House", Lovecraft increasingly incorporated elements of both Einsteinian science and his own personal materialism into his stories. This intensified with the writing of "The Call of Cthulhu", where he depicted alien influences on humanity. This trend would continue throughout the remainder of his literary career. "The Colour Out of Space" represents what scholars have called the peak of this trend. It portrays an alien lifeform whose otherness prevents it from being defined by then-contemporary science.
Another part of this effort was the repeated usage of mathematics in an effort to make his creatures and settings appear more alien. Tom Hull, a mathematician, regards this as enhancing his ability to invoke a sense of otherness and fear. He attributes this use of mathematics to Lovecraft's childhood interest in astronomy and his adulthood awareness of non-Euclidean geometry. Another reason for his use of mathematics was his reaction to the scientific developments of his day. These developments convinced him that humanity's primary means of understanding the world was no longer trustable. Lovecraft's usage of mathematics in his fiction serves to convert otherwise supernatural elements into things that have in-universe scientific explanations. "The Dreams in the Witch House" and The Shadow Out of Time both have elements of this. The former uses a witch and her familiar, while the latter uses the idea of mind transference. These elements are explained using scientific theories that were prevalent during Lovecraft's lifetime.
Lovecraft Country
Setting plays a major role in Lovecraft's fiction. Lovecraft Country, a fictionalized version of New England, serves as the central hub for his mythos. It represents the history, culture, and folklore of the region, as interpreted by Lovecraft. These attributes are exaggerated and altered to provide a suitable setting for his stories. The names of the locations in the region were directly influenced by the names of real locations in the region, which was done to increase their realism. Lovecraft's stories use their connections with New England to imbue themselves with the ability to instil fear. Lovecraft was primarily inspired by the cities and towns in Massachusetts. However, the specific location of Lovecraft Country is variable, as it moved according to Lovecraft's literary needs. Starting with areas that he thought were evocative, Lovecraft redefined and exaggerated them under fictional names. For example, Lovecraft based Arkham on the town of Oakham and expanded it to include a nearby landmark. Its location was moved, as Lovecraft decided that it would have been destroyed by the recently-built Quabbin Reservoir. This is alluded to in "The Colour Out of Space", as the "blasted heath" is submerged by the creation of a fictionalized version of the reservoir. Similarly, Lovecraft's other towns were based on other locations in Massachusetts. Innsmouth was based on Newburyport, and Dunwich was based on Greenwich. The vague locations of these towns also played into Lovecraft's desire to create a mood in his stories. In his view, a mood can only be evoked through reading.
Critical reception
Literary
Early efforts to revise an established literary view of Lovecraft as an author of 'pulp' were resisted by some eminent critics; in 1945, Edmund Wilson sneered: "the only real horror in most of these fictions is the horror of bad taste and bad art". However, Wilson praised Lovecraft's ability to write about his chosen field; he described him as having written about it "with much intelligence". According to L. Sprague de Camp, Wilson later improved his opinion of Lovecraft, citing a report of David Chavchavadze that Wilson had included a Lovecraftian reference in Little Blue Light: A Play in Three Acts. After Chavchavadze met with him to discuss this, Wilson revealed that he had been reading a copy of Lovecraft's correspondence. Two years before Wilson's critique, Lovecraft's works were reviewed by Winfield Townley Scott, the literary editor of The Providence Journal. He argued that Lovecraft was one of the most significant Rhode Island authors and that it was regrettable that he had received little attention from mainstream critics at the time. Mystery and Adventure columnist Will Cuppy of the New York Herald Tribune recommended to readers a volume of Lovecraft's stories in 1944, asserting that "the literature of horror and macabre fantasy belongs with mystery in its broader sense".
By 1957, Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction said that Lovecraft was comparable to Robert E. Howard, stating that "they appear more prolific than ever," noting L. Sprague de Camp, Björn Nyberg, and August Derleth's usage of their creations. Gale also said that "Lovecraft at his best could build a mood of horror unsurpassed; at his worst, he was laughable." In 1962, Colin Wilson, in his survey of anti-realist trends in fiction The Strength to Dream, cited Lovecraft as one of the pioneers of the "assault on rationality" and included him with M. R. James, H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, J. R. R. Tolkien and others as one of the builders of mythicised realities contending against what he considered the failing project of literary realism. Subsequently, Lovecraft began to acquire the status of a cult writer in the counterculture of the 1960s, and reprints of his work proliferated.
Michael Dirda, a reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement, has described Lovecraft as being a "visionary" who is "rightly regarded as second only to Edgar Allan Poe in the annals of American supernatural literature". According to him, Lovecraft's works prove that mankind cannot bear the weight of reality, as the true nature of reality cannot be understood by either science or history. In addition, Dirda praises Lovecraft's ability to create an uncanny atmosphere. This atmosphere is created through the feeling of wrongness that pervades the objects, places, and people in Lovecraft's works. He also comments favorably on Lovecraft's correspondence, and compares him to Horace Walpole. Particular attention is given to his correspondence with August Derleth and Robert E. Howard. The Derleth letters are called "delightful", while the Howard letters are described as being an ideological debate. Overall, Dirda believes that Lovecraft's letters are equal to, or better than, his fictional output.Los Angeles Review of Books reviewer Nick Mamatas has stated that Lovecraft was a particularly difficult author, rather than a bad one. He described Lovecraft as being "perfectly capable" in the fields of story logic, pacing, innovation, and generating quotable phrases. However, Lovecraft's difficulty made him ill-suited to the pulps; he was unable to compete with the popular recurring protagonists and damsel-in-distress stories. Furthermore, he compared a paragraph from The Shadow Out of Time to a paragraph from the introduction to The Economic Consequences of the Peace. In Mamatas' view, Lovecraft's quality is obscured by his difficulty, and his skill is what has allowed his following to outlive the followings of other then-prominent authors, such as Seabury Quinn and Kenneth Patchen.
In 2005, the Library of America published a volume of Lovecraft's works. This volume was reviewed by many publications, including The New York Times Book Review and The Wall Street Journal, and sold 25,000 copies within a month of release. The overall critical reception of the volume was mixed. Several scholars, including S. T. Joshi and Alison Sperling, have said that this confirms H. P. Lovecraft's place in the western canon. The editors of The Age of Lovecraft, Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, attributed the rise of mainstream popular and academic interest in Lovecraft to this volume, along with the Penguin Classics volumes and the Modern Library edition of At the Mountains of Madness. These volumes led to a proliferation of other volumes containing Lovecraft's works. According to the two authors, these volumes are part of a trend in Lovecraft's popular and academic reception: increased attention by one audience causes the other to also become more interested. Lovecraft's success is, in part, the result of his success.
Lovecraft's style has often been subject to criticism, but scholars such as S. T. Joshi have argued that Lovecraft consciously utilized a variety of literary devices to form a unique style of his own—these include prose-poetic rhythm, stream of consciousness, alliteration, and conscious archaism. According to Joyce Carol Oates, Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe have exerted a significant influence on later writers in the horror genre. Horror author Stephen King called Lovecraft "the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale". King stated in his semi-autobiographical non-fiction book Danse Macabre that Lovecraft was responsible for his own fascination with horror and the macabre and was the largest influence on his writing.
Philosophical
H. P. Lovecraft's writings have influenced the speculative realist philosophical movement during the early-twentieth-century. The four founders of the movement, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux, have cited Lovecraft as an inspiration for their worldviews. Graham Harman wrote a monograph, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy, about Lovecraft and philosophy. In it, he argues that Lovecraft was a "productionist" author. He describes Lovecraft as having been an author who was uniquely obsessed with gaps in human knowledge. He goes further and asserts that Lovecraft's personal philosophy as being in opposition to both idealism and David Hume. In his view, Lovecraft resembles Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, and Edmund Husserl in his division of objects into different parts that do not exhaust the potential meanings of the whole. The anti-idealism of Lovecraft is represented through his commentary on the inability of language to describe his horrors. Harman also credits Lovecraft with inspiring parts of his own articulation of object-oriented ontology. According to Lovecraft scholar Alison Sperling, this philosophical interpretation of Lovecraft's fiction has caused other philosophers in Harmon's tradition to write about Lovecraft. These philosophers seek to remove human perception and human life from the foundations of ethics. These scholars have used Lovecraft's works as the central example of their worldview. They base this usage in Lovecraft's arguments against anthropocentrism and the ability of the human mind to truly understand the universe. They have also played a role in Lovecraft's improving literary reputation by focusing on his interpretation of ontology, which gives him a central position in Anthropocene studies.
Legacy
Lovecraft was relatively unknown during his lifetime. While his stories appeared in prominent pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, not many people knew his name. He did, however, correspond regularly with other contemporary writers such as Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth, who became his friends, even though he never met them in person. This group became known as the "Lovecraft Circle", since their writings freely borrowed Lovecraft's motifs, with his encouragement. He borrowed from them as well. For example, he made use of Clark Ashton Smith's Tsathoggua in The Mound.
After Lovecraft's death, the Lovecraft Circle carried on. August Derleth founded Arkham House with Donald Wandrei to preserve Lovecraft's works and keep them in print. He added to and expanded on Lovecraft's vision, not without controversy. While Lovecraft considered his pantheon of alien gods a mere plot device, Derleth created an entire cosmology, complete with a war between the good Elder Gods and the evil Outer Gods, such as Cthulhu and his ilk. The forces of good were supposed to have won, locking Cthulhu and others beneath the earth, the ocean, and elsewhere. Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos stories went on to associate different gods with the traditional four elements of fire, air, earth and water, which did not line up with Lovecraft's original vision of his mythos. However, Derleth's ownership of Arkham House gave him a position of authority in Lovecraftiana that would not dissipate until his death, and through the efforts of Lovecraft scholars in the 1970s.
Lovecraft's works have influenced many writers and other creators. Stephen King has cited Lovecraft as a major influence on his works. As a child in the 1960s, he came across a volume of Lovecraft's works which inspired him to write his fiction. He goes on to argue that all works in the horror genre that were written after Lovecraft were influenced by him. In the field of comics, Alan Moore has also described Lovecraft as having been a formative influence on his graphic novels. Film director John Carpenter's films include direct references and quotations of Lovecraft's fiction, in addition to their use of a Lovecraftian aesthetic and themes. Guillermo del Toro has been similarly influenced by Lovecraft's corpus.
The first World Fantasy Awards were held in Providence in 1975. The theme was "The Lovecraft Circle". Until 2015, winners were presented with an elongated bust of Lovecraft that was designed by cartoonist Gahan Wilson, nicknamed the "Howard". In November 2015 it was announced that the World Fantasy Award trophy would no longer be modeled on H. P. Lovecraft in response to the author's views on race. After the World Fantasy Award dropped their connection to Lovecraft, The Atlantic commented that "In the end, Lovecraft still wins—people who've never read a page of his work will still know who Cthulhu is for years to come, and his legacy lives on in the work of Stephen King, Guillermo del Toro, and Neil Gaiman."
In 2016, Lovecraft was inducted into the Museum of Pop Culture's Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Three years later, Lovecraft and the other mythos authors were posthumously awarded the 1945 Retro-Hugo Award for Best Series for their contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos.
Lovecraft studies
Starting in the early 1970s, a body of scholarly work began to emerge around Lovecraft's life and works. Referred to as Lovecraft studies, its proponents sought to establish Lovecraft as a significant author in the American literary canon. This can be traced to Derleth's preservation and dissemination of Lovecraft's fiction, non-fiction, and letters through Arkham House. Joshi credits the development of the field to this process. However, it was marred by low quality editions and misinterpretations of Lovecraft's worldview. After Derleth's death in 1971, the scholarship entered a new phase. There was a push to create a book-length biography of Lovecraft. L. Sprague de Camp, a science fiction scholar, wrote the first major one in 1975. This biography was criticized by early Lovecraft scholars for its lack of scholarly merit and its lack of sympathy for its subject. Despite this, it played a significant role in Lovecraft's literary rise. It exposed Lovecraft to the mainstream of American literary criticism. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a division in the field between the "Derlethian traditionalists" who wished to interpret Lovecraft through the lens of fantasy literature and the newer scholars who wished to place greater attention on the entirety of his corpus.
The 1980s and 1990s saw a further proliferation of the field. The 1990 H. P. Lovecraft Centennial Conference and the republishing of older essays in An Epicure in the Terrible represented the publishing of many basic studies that would be used as a base for then-future studies. The 1990 centennial also saw the installation of the "H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Plaque" in a garden adjoining John Hay Library, that features a portrait by silhouettist E. J. Perry. Following this, in 1996, S. T. Joshi wrote his own biography of Lovecraft. This biography was met with positive reviews and became the main biography in the field. It has since been superseded by his expanded edition of the book, I am Providence in 2010.
Lovecraft's improving literary reputation has caused his works to receive increased attention by both classics publishers and scholarly fans. His works have been published by several different series of literary classics. Penguin Classics published three volumes of Lovecraft's works between 1999 and 2004. These volumes were edited by S. T. Joshi. Barnes & Noble would publish their own volume of Lovecraft's complete fiction in 2008. The Library of America published a volume of Lovecraft's works in 2005. The publishing of these volumes represented a reversal of the traditional judgment that Lovecraft was not part of the Western canon. Meanwhile, the biannual NecronomiCon Providence convention was first held in 2013. Its purpose is to serve as a fan and scholarly convention that discusses both Lovecraft and the wider field of weird fiction. It is organized by the Lovecraft Arts and Sciences organization and is held on the weekend of Lovecraft's birth. That July, the Providence City Council designated the "H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Square" and installed a commemorative sign at the intersection of Angell and Prospect streets, near the author's former residences.
Music
Lovecraft's fictional Mythos has influenced a number of musicians, particularly in rock and heavy metal music. This began in the 1960s with the formation of the psychedelic rock band H. P. Lovecraft, who released the albums H. P. Lovecraft and H. P. Lovecraft II in 1967 and 1968 respectively. They broke up afterwards, but later songs were released. This included "The White Ship" and "At the Mountains of Madness", both titled after Lovecraft stories. Extreme metal has also been influenced by Lovecraft. This has expressed itself in both the names of bands and the contents of their albums. This began in 1970 with the release of Black Sabbath's first album, Black Sabbath, which contained a song titled Behind the Wall of Sleep, deriving its name from the 1919 story "Beyond the Wall of Sleep." Heavy metal band Metallica was also inspired by Lovecraft. They recorded a song inspired by "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Call of Ktulu", and a song based on The Shadow over Innsmouth titled "The Thing That Should Not Be". These songs contain direct quotations of Lovecraft's works. Joseph Norman, a speculative scholar, has argued that there are similarities between the music described in Lovecraft's fiction and the aesthetics and atmosphere of Black Metal. He argues that this is evident through the "animalistic" qualities of Black metal vocals. The usage of occult elements is also cited as a thematic commonality. In terms of atmosphere, he asserts that both Lovecraft's works and extreme metal place heavy focus on creating a strong negative mood.
Games
Lovecraft has also influenced gaming, despite having personally disliked games during his lifetime. Chaosium's tabletop role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, released in 1981 and currently in its seventh major edition, was one of the first games to draw heavily from Lovecraft. It includes a Lovecraft-inspired insanity mechanic, which allowed for player characters to go insane from contact with cosmic horrors. This mechanic would go on to make appearance in subsequent tabletop and video games. 1987 saw the release of another Lovecraftian board game, Arkham Horror, which was published by Fantasy Flight Games. Though few subsequent Lovecraftian board games were released annually from 1987 to 2014, the years after 2014 saw a rapid increase in the number of Lovecraftian board games. According to Christina Silva, this revival may have been influenced by the entry of Lovecraft's work into the public domain and a revival of interest in board games. Few video games are direct adaptations of Lovecraft's works, but many video games have been inspired or heavily influenced by Lovecraft. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, a Lovecraftian first-person video game, was released in 2005. It is loose adaptation of The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Shadow Out of Time, and "The Thing on the Doorstep" that uses noir themes. These adaptations focus more on Lovecraft's monsters and gamification than they do on his themes, which represents a break from Lovecraft's core theme of human insignificance.
Religion and occultism
Several contemporary religions have been influenced by Lovecraft's works. Kenneth Grant, the founder of the Typhonian Order, incorporated Lovecraft's Mythos into his ritual and occult system. Grant combined his interest in Lovecraft's fiction with his adherence to Aleister Crowley's Thelema. The Typhonian Order considers Lovecraftian entities to be symbols through which people may interact with something inhuman. Grant also argued that Crowley himself was influenced by Lovecraft's writings, particularly in the naming of characters in The Book of the Law. Similarly, The Satanic Rituals, co-written by Anton LaVey and Michael A. Aquino, includes the "Ceremony of the Nine Angles", which is a ritual that was influenced by the descriptions in "The Dreams in the Witch House". It contains invocations of several of Lovecraft's fictional gods.
There have been several books that have claimed to be an authentic edition of Lovecraft's Necronomicon. The Simon Necronomicon is one such example. It was written by an unknown figure who identified themselves as "Simon". Peter Levenda, an occult author who has written about the Necronomicon, claims that he and "Simon" came across a hidden Greek translation of the grimoire while looking through a collection of antiquities at a New York bookstore during the 1960s or 1970s. This book was claimed to have borne the seal of the Necronomicon. Levenda went on to claim that Lovecraft had access to this purported scroll. A textual analysis has determined that the contents of this book were derived from multiple documents that discuss Mesopotamian myth and magic. The finding of a magical text by monks is also a common theme in the history of grimoires. It has been suggested that Lavenda is the true author of the Simon Necronomicon.
Correspondence
Although Lovecraft is known mostly for his works of weird fiction, the bulk of his writing consists of voluminous letters about a variety of topics, from weird fiction and art criticism to politics and history. Lovecraft biographers L. Sprague de Camp and S. T. Joshi have estimated that Lovecraft wrote 100,000 letters in his lifetime, a fifth of which are believed to survive. S. T. Joshi suggested in 1996 that it would have been impossible to publish the entirety of Lovecraft's letters due to their length and the sheer number of them. These letters were directed at fellow writers and members of the amateur press. His involvement in the latter was what caused him to begin writing them. According to Joshi, the most important sets of letters were those written to Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith, and James F. Morton. He attributes this importance to the contents of these letters. With Long, Lovecraft argued in support and in opposition to many of Long's viewpoints. The letters to Clark Ashton Smith are characterized by their focus on weird fiction. Lovecraft and Morton debated many scholarly subjects in their letters, resulting in what Joshi has called the "single greatest correspondence Lovecraft ever wrote."
Copyright and other legal issues
Despite several claims to the contrary, there is currently no evidence that any company or individual owns the copyright to any of Lovecraft's works, and it is generally accepted that it has passed into the public domain. Lovecraft had specified that R. H. Barlow would serve as the executor of his literary estate, but these instructions were not incorporated into his will. Nevertheless, his surviving aunt carried out his expressed wishes, and Barlow was given control of Lovecraft's literary estate upon his death. Barlow deposited the bulk of the papers, including the voluminous correspondence, in the John Hay Library, and attempted to organize and maintain Lovecraft's other writings. Lovecraft protégé August Derleth, an older and more established writer than Barlow, vied for control of the literary estate. He and Donald Wandrei, a fellow protégé and co-owner of Arkham House, falsely claimed that Derleth was the true literary executor. Barlow capitulated, and later committed suicide in 1951. This gave Derleth and Wandrei complete control over Lovecraft's corpus.
On October 9, 1947, Derleth purchased all rights to the stories that were published in Weird Tales. However, since April 1926 at the latest, Lovecraft had reserved all second printing rights to stories published in Weird Tales. Therefore, Weird Tales only owned the rights to at most six of Lovecraft's tales. If Derleth had legally obtained the copyrights to these tales, there is no evidence that they were renewed before the rights expired. Following Derleth's death in 1971, Donald Wandrei sued his estate to challenge Derleth's will, which stated that he only held the copyrights and royalties to Lovecraft's works that were published under both his and Derleth's names. Arkham House's lawyer, Forrest D. Hartmann, argued that the rights to Lovecraft's works were never renewed. Wandrei won the case, but Arkham House's actions regarding copyright have damaged their ability to claim ownership of them.
In H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, S. T. Joshi concludes that Derleth's claims are "almost certainly fictitious" and argues that most of Lovecraft's works that were published in the amateur press are likely in the public domain. The copyright for Lovecraft's works would have been inherited by the only surviving heir named in his 1912 will, his aunt Annie Gamwell. When she died in 1941, the copyrights passed to her remaining descendants, Ethel Phillips Morrish and Edna Lewis. They signed a document, sometimes referred to as the Morrish-Lewis gift, permitting Arkham House to republish Lovecraft's works while retaining their ownership of the copyrights. Searches of the Library of Congress have failed to find any evidence that these copyrights were renewed after the 28-year period, making it likely that these works are in the public domain. However, the Lovecraft literary estate, reconstituted in 1998 under Robert C. Harrall, has claimed that they own the rights. Joshi has withdrawn his support for his conclusion, and now supports the estate's copyright claims.
Bibliography
See also
:Category:H. P. Lovecraft scholars
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
The H. P. Lovecraft Archive
The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society
The Lovecraft Arts & Sciences Council, a non-profit educational organization
H. P. Lovecraft at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction''
Journals
Lovecraft Annual
Lovecraft Studies
Crypt of Cthulhu
Library collections
H. P. Lovecraft Collection in the Special Collections at the John Hay Library (Brown University)
H. P. Lovecraft Collection in the Distinctive Collections of Falvey Memorial Library (Villanova University)
Online editions
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Writers of Gothic fiction | true | [
"\"Like Gold\" is a song by Australian singer-songwriter Vance Joy. It was released on 3 November 2017 as the second single from Joy's album Nation of Two (2018).\n\nVance wrote \"Like Gold\" after coming off the road at the start of 2016. Joy said: \"It started with a simple melody I was humming and the idea of looking back at a relationship.\"\n\nIn February 2018, Joy said: \"I play a different rhythm from anything I've played before. I really like what the producer Phil Ek did with this song with big spacious drums and I like the way it sounds full of life. It's about a love that you're kind of reflecting on and the fire's gone out but there was some really good times in there.\"\n\n\"Like Gold\" was certified gold in Australia in 2019.\n\nReception\nAl Newstead from ABC called the song a \"slower heart-on-sleeve ballad\", saying: \"Between hypnotic plucking and gentle prose, he captures the embers of a relationship that \"used to roar like an open fire\". Emmy Mack from Music Feeds called the song a \"rollicking folk toe-tapper [which] sounds like it was custom-made for group campfire singalong.\"\n\nCharts\n\nCertifications\n\nReferences\n\n2017 singles\n2016 songs\nVance Joy songs\nSongs written by Dan Wilson (musician)\nSongs written by Vance Joy",
"In re Petition for Naturalization of Horst Nemetz was a 1981 naturalization case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, involving whether a petitioner for naturalization, who admitted to committing sodomy—at that time illegal in Virginia, his state of residence—could be denied naturalization on the ground that he was not of good moral character, when the same activity was not prohibited in other U.S. states.\n\nHorst Nemetz was admitted into the United States lawfully in 1967. During the 10 years he had been living in the US, in Virginia, he lived with a male “roommate”. During his trial it became known that the two were part of a monogamous homosexual relationship. One of the requirements for Naturalization was to prove that you were of good moral character. This fact brought into question for the courts whether Nemetz was in fact of good moral character. The first trial was with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia who denied Therefore, Nemetz admitting to the relationship with his roommate caused for speculation in illegal activity and being of bad moral character.\n\nOriginal petition for Naturalization\nNemetz petitioned for naturalization in 1980 and was at first denied naturalization based being a person of bad moral character. Nemetz admitted to his relationship with his roommate and explained that all of their sexual activities took place within their home. The following is part of the questioning that occurred: \nQ: Mr. Nemetz, are you now or have you ever been a homosexual? \nA: I’m now. \nQ: Have you ever had sexual relations with your roommate? \nA: Well we have a relationship. I like him. \nQ: Have you ever had sexual relationships with him?\nA: What do you mean sexual relationships? \nQ: Intimate relationships. Getting into Sexual aspects.\nQ: Either yes or no.\nA: Yes. \n…\nQ: So what you’re saying is that your relationship in the United States has been with one individual. Is that correct? \nA: Yes. \nQ: And no others? \nA: That’s right. Yeah. \nQ: And in your lifetime that is the only individual you’ve had a relationship of this type with?\n\nAppeals case\nNemetz took the appeals case to a higher court, The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, who looked at the case logically by setting aside the possible Sodomy, which was still illegal in Virginia at the time. The previous court felt that even the possibility of Sodomy occurring proved that Nemetz wasn't of good character. Nemetz proved that any interaction between himself and his roommate happened in the privacy of their own home and was not a threat to the public. Their conclusion was that since Sodomy was not illegal unanimously across the country there was nothing to hold Nemetz back from achieving naturalization. The reasoning for this was that naturalization requires national law therefore federal law must be used for the case.\n\nReferences\n\n1981 in case law"
] |
[
"H. P. Lovecraft",
"Marriage and New York",
"Who was HP Lovecraft's wife?",
"Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924,",
"What was their relationship like?",
"Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship."
] | C_e055448352484e27a10b71b3309430f7_0 | What activities was H.P. Lovecraft and his wife involved in within New York? | 3 | What activities was H.P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft's wife involved in within New York? | H. P. Lovecraft | Lovecraft's aunts disapproved of this relationship with Sonia. Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924, and relocated to her Brooklyn apartment at 793 Flatbush Avenue; she thought he needed to get out of Providence in order to flourish and was willing to support him financially. Greene, who had been married before, later said Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship. She attributed Lovecraft's passive nature to a stultifying upbringing by his mother. Lovecraft's weight increased to 90 kg (200 lb) on his wife's home cooking. He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends who urged him to submit stories to Weird Tales; editor Edwin Baird accepted many otherworldly 'Dream Cycle' Lovecraft stories for the ailing publication, though they were heavily criticized by a section of the readership. Established informally some years before Lovecraft arrived in New York, the core Kalem Club members were boys' adventure novelist Henry Everett McNeil; the lawyer and anarchist writer James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.; and the poet Reinhardt Kleiner. On New Year's Day of 1925, Sonia moved to Cleveland for a job opportunity, and Lovecraft left Flatbush for a small first-floor apartment on 169 Clinton Street "at the edge of Red Hook"--a location which came to discomfort him greatly. Later that year the Kalem Club's four regular attendees were joined by Lovecraft along with his protege Frank Belknap Long, bookseller George Willard Kirk, and Lovecraft's close friend Samuel Loveman. Loveman was Jewish, but was unaware of Lovecraft's nativist attitudes. Conversely, it has been suggested that Lovecraft, who disliked mention of sexual matters, was unaware that Loveman and some of his other friends were homosexual. CANNOTANSWER | He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends | Howard Phillips Lovecraft (; August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of weird, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. Lovecraft is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England. After his father's institutionalization in 1893, he lived affluently until his family's wealth dissipated after the death of his grandfather. Lovecraft then lived with his mother, in reduced financial security, until her institutionalization in 1919. He began to write essays for the United Amateur Press Association and, in 1913, Lovecraft wrote a critical letter to a pulp magazine that ultimately led to his involvement in pulp fiction. He became active in the speculative fiction community and was published in several pulp magazines. Lovecraft moved to New York, marrying Sonia Greene in 1924, and later became the center of a wider group of authors known as the "Lovecraft Circle". They introduced him to Weird Tales, which would become his most prominent publisher. Lovecraft's time in New York took a toll on his mental state and financial conditions. He returned to Providence in 1926 and produced some of his most popular works, including "The Call of Cthulhu", At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, and The Shadow Out of Time. He would remain active as a writer until his death from intestinal cancer at the age of 46.
Lovecraft's literary corpus is based around the idea of cosmicism, which was simultaneously his personal philosophy and the main theme of his fiction. Cosmicism posits that humanity is an insignificant part of the cosmos, and could be swept away at any moment. He incorporated fantastic and science fiction elements into his stories, representing the perceived fragility of anthropocentrism. His works were largely set in a fictionalized version of New England. Civilizational decline also plays a major role in his works, as he believed that the West was in decline during his lifetime. Lovecraft's early political opinions were conservative and traditionalist; additionally, he held a number of racist views for much of his adult life. Following the Great Depression, Lovecraft became a democratic socialist, no longer believing a just aristocracy would make the world more fair.
Throughout his adult life, Lovecraft was never able to support himself from earnings as an author and editor. He was virtually unknown during his lifetime and was almost exclusively published in pulp magazines before his death. A scholarly revival of Lovecraft's work began in the 1970s, and he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors of supernatural horror fiction. Many direct adaptations and spiritual successors followed. Works inspired by Lovecraft, adaptations or original works, began to form the basis of the Cthulhu Mythos, which utilizes Lovecraft's characters, setting, and themes.
Biography
Early life and family tragedies
Lovecraft was born in his family home on August 20, 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the only child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft and Sarah Susan (née Phillips) Lovecraft. Susie's family was of substantial means at the time of their marriage, as her father, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, was involved in business ventures. In April 1893, after a psychotic episode in a Chicago hotel, Winfield was committed to Butler Hospital in Providence. His medical records state that he had been "doing and saying strange things at times" for a year before his commitment. The person who reported these symptoms is unknown. Winfield spent five years in Butler before dying in 1898. His death certificate listed the cause of death as general paresis, a term synonymous with late-stage syphilis. Throughout his life, Lovecraft maintained that his father fell into a paralytic state, due to insomnia and overwork, and remained that way until his death. It is not known whether Lovecraft was simply kept ignorant of his father's illness or whether his later statements were intentionally misleading.
After his father's institutionalization, Lovecraft resided in the family home with his mother, his maternal aunts Lillian and Annie, and his maternal grandparents Whipple and Robie. According to family friends, his mother, known as Susie, doted on the young Lovecraft excessively, pampering him and never letting him out of her sight. Lovecraft later recollected that his mother was "permanently stricken with grief" after his father's illness. Whipple became a father figure to Lovecraft in this time, Lovecraft noting that his grandfather became the "centre of my entire universe". Whipple, who often traveled to manage his business, maintained correspondence by letter with the young Lovecraft who, by the age of three, was already proficient at reading and writing.
He encouraged the young Lovecraft to have an appreciation of literature, especially classical literature and English poetry. In his old age, he helped raise the young H. P. Lovecraft and educated him not only in the classics, but also in original weird tales of "winged horrors" and "deep, low, moaning sounds" which he created for his grandchild's entertainment. The original sources of Phillips' weird tales are unidentified. Lovecraft himself guessed that they originated from Gothic novelists like Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, and Charles Maturin. It was during this period that Lovecraft was introduced to some of his earliest literary influences such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner illustrated by Gustave Doré, One Thousand and One Nights, Thomas Bulfinch's Age of Fable, and Ovid's Metamorphoses.
While there is no indication that Lovecraft was particularly close to his grandmother Robie, her death in 1896 had a profound effect on him. By his own account, it sent his family into "a gloom from which it never fully recovered". His mother and aunts wore black mourning dresses that "terrified" him. This is also time that Lovecraft, approximately five-and-a-half years old, started having nightmares that later would inform his fictional writings. Specifically, he began to have recurring nightmares of beings he referred to as "night-gaunts". He credited their appearance to the influence of Doré's illustrations, which would "whirl me through space at a sickening rate of speed, the while fretting & impelling me with their detestable tridents". Thirty years later, night-gaunts would appear in Lovecraft's fiction.
Lovecraft's earliest known literary works were written at the age of seven, and were poems restyling the Odyssey and other Greco-Roman mythological stories. Lovecraft would later write that during his childhood he was fixated on the Greco-Roman pantheon, and briefly accepted them as genuine expressions of divinity, foregoing his Christian upbringing. He recalled, at five years old, being told Santa Claus did not exist and retorted by asking why "God is not equally a myth?" At the age of eight, he took a keen interest in the sciences, particularly astronomy and chemistry. He also examined the anatomical books that were held in the family library, which taught him the specifics of human reproduction that were not yet explained to him. As a result, he found that it "virtually killed my interest in the subject".
In 1902, according to Lovecraft's later correspondence, astronomy became a guiding influence on his worldview. He began publishing the periodical Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy, using the hectograph printing method. Lovecraft went in and out of elementary school repeatedly, oftentimes with home tutors making up for the lost years, missing time due to health concerns that have not been determined. The written recollections of his peers described him as withdrawn but welcoming to those who shared his then-current fascination with astronomy, inviting them to look through his prized telescope.
Education and financial decline
By 1900, Whipple's various business concerns were suffering a downturn, which resulted in the slow reduction of his family's wealth. He was forced to let his family's hired servants go, leaving Lovecraft, Whipple, and Susie, being the only unmarried sister, alone in the family home. In the spring of 1904, Whipple's largest business venture suffered a catastrophic failure. Within months, he died at age 70 due to a stroke. After Whipple's death, Susie was unable to financially support the upkeep of the expansive family home on what remained of the Phillips' estate. Later that year, she was forced to move to a small duplex with her son.
Lovecraft called this time one of the darkest of his life, remarking in a 1934 letter that he saw no point in living anymore. Furthermore, he considered the possibility of committing suicide. His scientific curiosity and desire to know more about the world prevented him from doing so. In fall 1904, he entered high school. Much like his earlier school years, Lovecraft was periodically removed from school for long periods for what he termed "near breakdowns". He did say, though, that while having some conflicts with teachers, he enjoyed high school, becoming close with a small circle of friends. Lovecraft also performed well academically, excelling in particular at chemistry and physics. Aside from a pause in 1904, he also resumed publishing the Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy as well as starting the Scientific Gazette, which dealt mostly with chemistry. It was also during this period that Lovecraft produced the first of the fictional works that he would later be known for, namely "The Beast in the Cave" and "The Alchemist".
It was in 1908, prior to what would have been his high school graduation, that Lovecraft suffered another unidentified health crisis, though this instance was more severe than his prior illnesses. The exact circumstances and causes remain unknown. The only direct records are Lovecraft's own correspondence wherein he retrospectively described it variously as a "nervous collapse" and "a sort of breakdown", in one letter blaming it on the stress of high school despite his enjoying it. In another letter concerning the events of 1908, he notes, "I was and am prey to intense headaches, insomnia, and general nervous weakness which prevents my continuous application to any thing."
Though Lovecraft maintained that he was going to attend Brown University after high school, he never graduated and never attended school again. Whether Lovecraft suffered from a physical ailment, a mental one, or some combination thereof has never been determined. An account from a high school classmate described Lovecraft as exhibiting "terrible tics" and that at times "he'd be sitting in his seat and he'd suddenly up and jump". Harry Brobst, a psychology professor, examined the account and claimed that chorea minor was the probable cause of Lovecraft's childhood symptoms while noting that instances of chorea minor after adolescence are very rare. In his letters, Lovecraft acknowledged that he suffered from bouts of chorea as a child. Brobst further ventured that Lovecraft's 1908 breakdown was attributed to a "hysteroid seizure", a term that has become synonymous with atypical depression. In another letter concerning the events of 1908, Lovecraft stated that he "could hardly bear to see or speak to anyone, & liked to shut out the world by pulling down dark shades & using artificial light".
Earliest recognition
Few of Lovecraft and Susie's activities between late 1908 and 1913 were recorded. Lovecraft described the steady continuation of their financial decline highlighted by his uncle's failed business that cost Susie a large portion of their already dwindling wealth. One of Susie's friends, Clara Hess, recalled a visit during which Susie spoke continuously about Lovecraft being "so hideous that he hid from everyone and did not like to walk upon the streets where people could gaze on him". Despite Hess' protests to the contrary, Susie maintained this stance. For his part, Lovecraft said he found his mother to be "a positive marvel of consideration". A next-door neighbor later pointed out that what others in the neighborhood often assumed were loud, nocturnal quarrels between mother and son, were actually recitations of Shakespeare, an activity that seemed to delight mother and son.
During this period, Lovecraft revived his earlier scientific periodicals. He endeavored to commit himself to the study of organic chemistry, Susie buying the expensive glass chemistry assemblage he wanted. Lovecraft found his studies were stymied by the mathematics involved, which he found boring and would cause headaches that would incapacitate him for the remainder of the day. Lovecraft's first non-self-published poem appeared in a local newspaper in 1912. Called Providence in 2000 A.D., it envisioned a future where Americans of English descent were displaced by Irish, Italian, Portuguese, and Jewish immigrants. In this period he also wrote racist poetry, including "New-England Fallen" and "On the Creation of Niggers", but there is no indication that either were published during his lifetime.
In 1911, Lovecraft's letters to editors began appearing in pulp and weird-fiction magazines, most notably Argosy. A 1913 letter critical of Fred Jackson, one of Argosy'''s more prominent writers, started Lovecraft down a path that would define the remainder of his career as a writer. In the following letters, Lovecraft described Jackson's stories as being "trivial, effeminate, and, in places, coarse". Continuing, Lovecraft argued that Jackson's characters exhibit the "delicate passions and emotions proper to negroes and anthropoid apes". This sparked a nearly year-long feud in the magazine's letters section between the two writers and their respective supporters. Lovecraft's most prominent opponent was John Russell, who often replied in verse, and to whom Lovecraft felt compelled to reply because he respected Russell's writing skills. The most immediate effect of this feud was the recognition garnered from Edward F. Daas, then head editor of the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA). Daas invited Russell and Lovecraft to join the organization and both accepted, Lovecraft in April 1914.
Rejuvenation and tragedy
Lovecraft immersed himself in the world of amateur journalism for most of the following decade. During this period, he advocated for amateurism's superiority to commercialism. Lovecraft defined commercialism as writing for what he considered low-brow publications for pay. This was contrasted with his view of "professional publication", which was what he called writing what he considered respectable journals and publishers. He thought of amateur journalism as serving as practice for a professional career.
Lovecraft was appointed chairman of the Department of Public Criticism of the UAPA in late 1914. He used this position to advocate for what he saw as the superiority of archaic English language usage. Emblematic of the Anglophilic opinions he maintained throughout his life, he openly criticized other UAPA contributors for their "Americanisms" and "slang". Often, these criticisms were embedded in xenophobic and racist statements that the "national language" was being negatively changed by immigrants. In mid-1915, Lovecraft was elected vice-president of the UAPA. Two years later, he was elected president and appointed other board members who mostly shared his belief in the supremacy of British English over modern American English. Another significant event of this time was the beginning of World War I. Lovecraft published multiple criticisms of the American government and public's reluctance to join the war to protect England, which he viewed as America's ancestral homeland.
In 1916, Lovecraft published his first short story, "The Alchemist", in the main UAPA journal, which was a departure from his usual verse. Due to the encouragement of W. Paul Cook, another UAPA member and future lifelong friend, Lovecraft began writing and publishing more prose fiction. Soon afterwards, he wrote "The Tomb" and "Dagon". "The Tomb", by Lovecraft's own admission, was greatly influenced by the style and structure of Edgar Allan Poe's works. Meanwhile, "Dagon" is considered Lovecraft's first work that displays the concepts and themes that his writings would later become known for. Lovecraft published another short story, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" in 1919, which was his first science fiction story.
Lovecraft's term as president of the UAPA ended in 1918, and he returned to his former post as chairman of the Department of Public Criticism. In 1917, as Lovecraft related to Kleiner, Lovecraft made an aborted attempt to enlist in the United States Army. Though he passed the physical exam, he told Kleiner that his mother threatened to do anything, legal or otherwise, to prove that he was unfit for service. After his failed attempt to serve in World War I, he attempted to enroll in the Rhode Island National Guard, but his mother used her family connections to prevent it.
During the winter of 1918–1919, Susie, exhibiting the symptoms of a nervous breakdown, went to live with her elder sister, Lillian. The nature of Susie's illness is unclear, as her medical papers were later destroyed in a fire at Butler Hospital. Winfield Townley Scott, who was able to read the papers before the fire, described Susie as having suffered a psychological collapse. Neighbour and friend Clara Hess, interviewed in 1948, recalled instances of Susie describing "weird and fantastic creatures that rushed out from behind buildings and from corners at dark". In the same account, Hess described a time when they crossed paths in downtown Providence and Susie was unaware of where she was. In March 1919, she was committed to Butler Hospital, like her husband before her. Lovecraft's immediate reaction to Susie's commitment was visceral, writing to Kleiner that, "existence seems of little value", and that he wished "it might terminate". During Susie's time at Butler, Lovecraft periodically visited her and walked the large grounds with her.
Late 1919 saw Lovecraft become more outgoing. After a period of isolation, he began joining friends in trips to writer gatherings; the first being a talk in Boston presented by Lord Dunsany, whom Lovecraft had recently discovered and idolized. In early 1920, at an amateur writer convention, he met Frank Belknap Long, who would end up being Lovecraft's most influential and closest confidant for the remainder of his life. The influence of Dunsany is apparent in his 1919 output, which is part of what would be called Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, including "The White Ship" and "The Doom That Came to Sarnath". In early 1920, he wrote "The Cats of Ulthar" and "Celephaïs", which were also strongly influenced by Dunsany.
It was later in 1920 that Lovecraft began publishing the earliest Cthulhu Mythos stories. The Cthulhu Mythos, a term coined by later authors, encompasses Lovecraft's stories that share a commonality in the revelation of cosmic insignificance, initially realistic settings, and recurring entities and texts. The prose poem "Nyarlathotep" and the short story "The Crawling Chaos", in collaboration with Winifred Virginia Jackson, were written in late 1920. Following in early 1921 came "The Nameless City", the first story that falls definitively within the Cthulhu Mythos. In it is one of Lovecraft's most enduring phrases, a couplet recited by Abdul Alhazred; "That is not dead which can eternal lie; And with strange aeons even death may die." In the same year, he also wrote "The Outsider", which has become one of Lovecraft's most heavily analyzed, and differently interpreted, stories. It has been variously interpreted as being autobiographical, an allegory of the psyche, a parody of the afterlife, a commentary on humanity's place in the universe, and a critique of progress.
On May 24, 1921, Susie died in Butler Hospital, due to complications from an operation on her gall bladder five days earlier. Lovecraft's initial reaction, expressed in a letter written nine days after Susie's death, was a deep state of sadness that crippled him physically and emotionally. He again expressed a desire that his life might end. Lovecraft's later response was relief, as he had become able to live independently from his mother. His physical health also began to improve, although he was unaware of the exact cause. Despite Lovecraft's reaction, he continued to attend amateur journalist conventions. Lovecraft met his future wife, Sonia Greene, at one such convention in July.
Marriage and New York
Lovecraft's aunts disapproved of his relationship with Sonia. Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924, and relocated to her Brooklyn apartment at 793 Flatbush Avenue; she thought he needed to leave Providence to flourish and was willing to support him financially. Greene, who had been married before, later said Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship. She attributed Lovecraft's passive nature to a stultifying upbringing by his mother. Lovecraft's weight increased to on his wife's home cooking.
He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends who urged him to submit stories to Weird Tales. Its editor, Edwin Baird, accepted many of Lovecraft's stories for the ailing publication, including "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs", which was ghostwritten for Harry Houdini. Established informally some years before Lovecraft arrived in New York, the core Kalem Club members were boys' adventure novelist Henry Everett McNeil, the lawyer and anarchist writer James Ferdinand Morton Jr., and the poet Reinhardt Kleiner.
On January 1, 1925, Sonia moved from Flatbush to Cleveland in response to a job opportunity, and Lovecraft left for a small first-floor apartment on 169 Clinton Street "at the edge of Red Hook"—a location which came to discomfort him greatly. Later that year, the Kalem Club's four regular attendees were joined by Lovecraft along with his protégé Frank Belknap Long, bookseller George Willard Kirk, and Samuel Loveman. Loveman was Jewish, but he and Lovecraft became close friends in spite of the latter's nativist attitudes. By the 1930s, writer and publisher Herman Charles Koenig would be one of the last to become involved with the Kalem Club.
Not long after the marriage, Greene lost her business and her assets disappeared in a bank failure. Lovecraft made efforts to support his wife through regular jobs, but his lack of previous work experience meant he lacked proven marketable skills. The publisher of Weird Tales was attempting to make the loss-making magazine profitable and offered the job of editor to Lovecraft, who declined, citing his reluctance to relocate to Chicago on aesthetic grounds. Baird was succeeded by Farnsworth Wright, whose writing Lovecraft had criticized. Lovecraft's submissions were often rejected by Wright. This may have been partially due to censorship guidelines imposed in the aftermath of a Weird Tales story that hinted at necrophilia, although after Lovecraft's death, Wright accepted many of the stories he had originally rejected.
Sonia also became ill and immediately after recovering, relocated to Cincinnati, and then to Cleveland; her employment required constant travel. Added to his feelings of failure in a city with a large immigrant population, Lovecraft's single-room apartment was burgled, leaving him with only the clothes he was wearing. In August 1925, he wrote "The Horror at Red Hook" and "He", in the latter of which the narrator says "My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration [...] I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyze, and annihilate me." This was an expression of his despair at being in New York. It was at around this time he wrote the outline for "The Call of Cthulhu", with its theme of the insignificance of all humanity. During this time, Lovecraft wrote "Supernatural Horror in Literature" on the eponymous subject. It later became one of the most influential essays on the subject. With a weekly allowance Greene sent, Lovecraft moved to a working-class area of Brooklyn Heights, where he resided in a tiny apartment. He had lost approximately of body weight by 1926, when he left for Providence.
Return to Providence and death
Back in Providence, Lovecraft lived with his aunts in a "spacious brown Victorian wooden house" at 10 Barnes Street until 1933. He would then move to 66 Prospect Street, which would become his final home. The period beginning after his return to Providence contains some of his most prominent works, including "The Call of Cthulhu", The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and The Shadow over Innsmouth. The latter two stories are partially autobiographical, as scholars have argued that The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is about Lovecraft's return to Providence and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is, in part, about the city itself. The former story also represents a partial repudiation of Dunsany's influence, as Lovecraft had decided that his style did not come to him naturally. At this time, he frequently revised work for other authors and did a large amount of ghostwriting, including The Mound, "Winged Death", and "The Diary of Alonzo Typer". Client Harry Houdini was laudatory, and attempted to help Lovecraft by introducing him to the head of a newspaper syndicate. Plans for a further project were ended by Houdini's death in 1926.
In August 1930, Robert E. Howard wrote a letter to Weird Tales praising a then-recent reprint of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" and discussing some of the Gaelic references used within. Editor Farnsworth Wright forwarded the letter to Lovecraft, who responded positively to Howard, and soon the two writers were engaged in a vigorous correspondence that would last for the rest of Howard's life. Howard quickly became a member of the Lovecraft Circle, a group of writers and friends all linked through Lovecraft's voluminous correspondence, as he introduced his many like-minded friends to one another and encouraged them to share their stories, utilize each other's fictional creations, and help each other succeed in the field of pulp fiction.
Meanwhile, Lovecraft was increasingly producing work that brought him no remuneration. Affecting a calm indifference to the reception of his works, Lovecraft was in reality extremely sensitive to criticism and easily precipitated into withdrawal. He was known to give up trying to sell a story after it had been once rejected. Sometimes, as with The Shadow over Innsmouth, he wrote a story that might have been commercially viable but did not try to sell it. Lovecraft even ignored interested publishers. He failed to reply when one inquired about any novel Lovecraft might have ready: although he had completed such a work, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, it was never typed up. A few years after Lovecraft had moved to Providence, he and his wife Sonia Greene, having lived separately for so long, agreed to an amicable divorce. Greene moved to California in 1933 and remarried in 1936, unaware that Lovecraft, despite his assurances to the contrary, had never officially signed the final decree.
As a result of the Great Depression, he shifted towards democratic socialism, decrying both his prior political beliefs and the rising tide of fascism. He thought that socialism was a workable middle ground between what he saw as the destructive impulses of both the capitalists and the Marxists of his day. This was based in a general opposition to cultural upheaval, as well as support for an ordered society. Electorally, he supported Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he thought that the New Deal was not sufficiently leftist. Lovecraft's support for it was based in his view that no other set of reforms were possible at that time.
In late 1936, he witnessed the publication of The Shadow over Innsmouth as a paperback book. 400 copies were printed, and the work was advertised in Weird Tales and several fan magazines. However, Lovecraft was displeased, as this book was riddled with errors that required extensive editing. It sold slowly and only approximately 200 copies were bound. The remaining 200 copies were destroyed after the publisher went out of business for the next seven years. By this point, Lovecraft's literary career was reaching its end. Shortly after having written his last original short story, "The Haunter of the Dark", he stated that the hostile reception of At the Mountains of Madness had done "more than anything to end my effective fictional career". His declining psychological, and physical, state made it impossible for him to continue writing fiction.
On June 11, Robert E. Howard was informed that his chronically ill mother would not awaken from her coma. He walked out to his car and committed suicide with a pistol that he had stored there. His mother died shortly thereafter. This deeply affected Lovecraft, who consoled Howard's father through correspondence. Almost immediately after hearing about Howard's death, Lovecraft wrote a brief memoir titled "In Memoriam: Robert Ervin Howard", which he distributed to his correspondents. Meanwhile, Lovecraft's physical health was deteriorating. He was suffering from an affliction that he referred to as "grippe".
Due to his fear of doctors, Lovecraft was not examined until a month before his death. After seeing a doctor, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the small intestine. He remained hospitalized until he died. He lived in constant pain until his death on March 15, 1937, in Providence. In accordance with his lifelong scientific curiosity, he kept a diary of his illness until he was physically incapable of holding a pen. Lovecraft was listed along with his parents on the Phillips family monument. In 1977, fans erected a headstone in Swan Point Cemetery on which they inscribed his name, the dates of his birth and death, and the phrase "I AM PROVIDENCE"—a line from one of his personal letters.
Personal views
Politics
Lovecraft began his life as a Tory, which was likely the result of his conservative upbringing. His family supported the Republican Party for the entirety of his life. While it is unclear how consistently he voted, he voted for Herbert Hoover in the 1928 presidential election. Rhode Island as a whole remained politically conservative and Republican into the 1930s. Lovecraft himself was an anglophile who supported the British monarchy. He opposed democracy and thought that America should be governed by an aristocracy. This viewpoint emerged during his youth and lasted until the end of the 1920s. During World War I, his Anglophilia caused him to strongly support the entente against the Central Powers. Many of this earlier poems were devoted to then-current political subjects, and he published several political essays in his amateur journal, The Conservative. He was a teetotaler who supported the implementation of Prohibition, which was one of the few reforms that he supported during the early part of his life. While remaining a teetotaller, he later became convinced that Prohibition was ineffectual in the 1930s. His personal justification for his early political viewpoints was primarily based on tradition and aesthetics.
As a result of the Great Depression, Lovecraft reexamined his political views. Initially, he thought that affluent people would take on the characteristics of his ideal aristocracy and solve America's problems. When this did not occur, he became a democratic socialist. This shift was caused by his observation that the Depression was harming American society. It was also influenced by the increase in socialism's political capital during the 1930s. One of the main points of Lovecraft's socialism was its opposition to Soviet Marxism, as he thought that a Marxist revolution would bring about the destruction of American civilization. Lovecraft thought that an intellectual aristocracy needed to be formed to preserve America. His ideal political system is outlined in his essay "Some Repetitions on the Times". Lovecraft used this essay to echo the political proposals that had been made over the course of the last few decades. In this essay, he advocates governmental control of resource distribution, fewer working hours and a higher wage, and unemployment insurance and old age pensions. He also outlines the need for an oligarchy of intellectuals. In his view, power must be restricted to those who are sufficiently intelligent and educated. He frequently used the term "fascism" to describe this form of government, but, according to S. T. Joshi, it bears little resemblance to that ideology.
Lovecraft had varied views on the political figures of his day. He was an ardent supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He saw that Roosevelt was trying to steer a middle course between the conservatives and the revolutionaries, which he approved of. While he thought that Roosevelt should have been enacting more progressive policies, he came to the conclusion that the New Deal was the only realistic option for reform. He thought that voting for his opponents on the political left would be a wasted effort. Internationally, like many Americans, he initially expressed support for Adolf Hitler. More specifically, he thought that Hitler would preserve German culture. However, he thought that Hitler's racial policies should be based on culture rather than descent. There is evidence that, at the end of his life, Lovecraft began to oppose Hitler. According to Harry K. Brobst, Lovecraft's downstairs neighbor went to Germany and witnessed Jews being beaten. Lovecraft and his aunt were angered by this. His discussions of Hitler drop off after this point.
Atheism
Lovecraft was an atheist. His viewpoints on religion are outlined in his 1922 essay "A Confession of Unfaith". In this essay, he describes his shift away from the Protestantism of his parents to the atheism of his adulthood. Lovecraft was raised by a conservative Protestant family. He was introduced to the Bible and the mythos of Saint Nicholas when he was two. He passively accepted both of them. Over the course of the next few years, he was introduced to Grimms' Fairy Tales and One Thousand and One Nights, favoring the latter. In response, Lovecraft took on the identity of "Abdul Alhazred", a name he would later use for the author of the Necronomicon. According to this account, his first moment of skepticism occurred before his fifth birthday, when he questioned if God is a myth after learning that Santa Claus is not real. In 1896, he was introduced to Greco-Roman myths and became "a genuine pagan".
This came to an end in 1902, when Lovecraft was introduced to space. He later described this event as the most poignant in his life. In response to this discovery, Lovecraft took to studying astronomy and described his observations in the local newspaper. Before his thirteenth birthday, he had become convinced of humanity's impermanence. By the time he was seventeen, he had read detailed writings that agreed with his worldview. Lovecraft ceased writing positively about progress, instead developing his later cosmic philosophy. Despite his interests in science, he had an aversion to realistic literature, so he became interested in fantastical fiction. Lovecraft became pessimistic when he entered amateur journalism in 1914. The Great War seemed to confirm his viewpoints. He began to despise philosophical idealism. Lovecraft took to discussing and debating his pessimism with his peers, which allowed him to solidify his philosophy. His readings of Friedrich Nietzsche and H. L. Mencken, among other pessimistic writers, furthered this development. At the end of his essay, Lovecraft states that all he desired was oblivion. He was willing to cast aside any illusion that he may still have held.
Race
Race is the most controversial aspect of Lovecraft's legacy, expressed in many disparaging remarks against non-Anglo-Saxon races and cultures in his works. As he grew older, his original racial worldview became a classism or elitism which regarded the superior race to include all those self-ennobled through high culture. From the start, Lovecraft did not hold all white people in uniform high regard, but rather esteemed English people and those of English descent. In his early published essays, private letters and personal utterances, he argued for a strong color line to preserve race and culture. His arguments were supported using disparagements of various races in his journalism and letters, and allegorically in his fictional works that depict non-human races. This is evident in his portrayal of the Deep Ones in The Shadow over Innsmouth. Their interbreeding with humanity is framed as being a type of miscegenation that corrupts both the town of Innsmouth and the protagonist.
Initially, Lovecraft showed sympathy to minorities who adopted Western culture, even to the extent of marrying a Jewish woman he viewed as being "well assimilated". By the 1930s, Lovecraft's views on ethnicity and race had moderated. He supported ethnicities' preserving their native cultures; for example, he thought that "a real friend of civilisation wishes merely to make the Germans more German, the French more French, the Spaniards more Spanish, & so on". This represented a shift from his previous support for cultural assimilation. However, this did not represent a complete elimination of his racial prejudices. Scholars have argued that Lovecraft's racial attitudes were common in the society of his day, particularly in the New England in which he grew up.
Influences
His interest in weird fiction began in his childhood when his grandfather, who preferred Gothic stories, would tell him stories of his own design. Lovecraft's childhood home on Angell Street had a large library that contained classical literature, scientific works, and early weird fiction. At the age of five, Lovecraft enjoyed reading One Thousand and One Nights, and was reading Nathaniel Hawthorne a year later. He was also influenced by the travel literature of John Mandeville and Marco Polo. This led to his discovery of gaps in then-contemporary science, which prevented Lovecraft from committing suicide in response to the death of his grandfather and his family's declining financial situation during his adolescence. These travelogues may have also had an influence on how Lovecraft's later works describe their characters and locations. For example, there is a resemblance between the powers of the Tibetan enchanters in The Travels of Marco Polo and the powers unleashed on Sentinel Hill in "The Dunwich Horror".
One of Lovecraft's most significant literary influences was Edgar Allan Poe, whom he described as his "God of Fiction". Poe's fiction was introduced to Lovecraft when the latter was eight years old. His earlier works were significantly influenced by Poe's prose and writing style. He also made extensive use of Poe's unity of effect in his fiction. Furthermore, At the Mountains of Madness directly quotes Poe and was influenced by The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. One of the main themes of the two stories is to discuss the unreliable nature of language as a method of expressing meaning. In 1919, Lovecraft's discovery of the stories of Lord Dunsany moved his writing in a new direction, resulting in a series of fantasies. Throughout his life, Lovecraft referred to Dunsany as the author who had the greatest impact on his literary career. The initial result of this influence was the Dream Cycle, a series of fantasies that originally take place in prehistory, but later shift to a dreamworld setting. By 1930, Lovecraft decided that he would no longer write Dunsianian fantasies, arguing that the style did not come naturally to him. Additionally, he also read and cited Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood as influences in the 1920s.
Aside from horror authors, Lovecraft was significantly influenced by the Decadents, the Puritans, and the Aesthetic Movement. In "H. P. Lovecraft: New England Decadent", Barton Levi St. Armand, a professor emeritus of English and American studies at Brown University, has argued that these three influences combined to define Lovecraft as a writer. He traces this influence to both Lovecraft's stories and letters, noting that he actively cultivated the image of a New England gentleman in his letters. Meanwhile, his influence from the Decadents and the Aesthetic Movement stems from his readings of Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft's aesthetic worldview and fixation on decline stems from these readings. The idea of cosmic decline is described as having been Lovecraft's response to both the Aesthetic Movement and the 19th century Decadents. St. Armand describes it as being a combination of non-theological Puritan thought and the Decadent worldview. This is used as a division in his stories, particularly in "The Horror at Red Hook", "Pickman's Model", and "The Music of Erich Zann". The division between Puritanism and Decadence, St. Armand argues, represents a polarization between an artificial paradise and oneiriscopic visions of different worlds.
A non-literary inspiration came from then-contemporary scientific advances in biology, astronomy, geology, and physics. Lovecraft's study of science contributed to his view of the human race as insignificant, powerless, and doomed in a materialistic and mechanistic universe. Lovecraft was a keen amateur astronomer from his youth, often visiting the Ladd Observatory in Providence, and penning numerous astronomical articles for his personal journal and local newspapers. Lovecraft's materialist views led him to espouse his philosophical views through his fiction; these philosophical views came to be called cosmicism. Cosmicism took on a more pessimistic tone with his creation of what is now known as the Cthulhu Mythos; a fictional universe that contains alien deities and horrors. The term "Cthulhu Mythos" was likely coined by later writers after Lovecraft's death. In his letters, Lovecraft jokingly called his fictional mythology "Yog-Sothothery".
Dreams had a major role in Lovecraft's literary career. In 1991, as a result of his rising place in American literature, it was popularly thought that Lovecraft extensively transcribed his dreams when writing fiction. However, the majority of his stories are not transcribed dreams. Instead, many of them are directly influenced by dreams and dreamlike phenomena. In his letters, Lovecraft frequently compared his characters to dreamers. They are described as being as helpless as a real dreamer who is experiencing a nightmare. His stories also have dreamlike qualities. The Randolph Carter stories deconstruct the division between dreams and reality. The dreamlands in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath are a shared dreamworld that can be accessed by a sensitive dreamer. Meanwhile, in "The Silver Key", Lovecraft mentions the concept of "inward dreams", which implies the existence of outward dreams. Burleson compares this deconstruction to Carl Jung's argument that dreams are the source of archetypal myths. Lovecraft's way of writing fiction required both a level of realism and dreamlike elements. Citing Jung, Burleson argues that a writer may create realism by being inspired by dreams.
Themes
Cosmicism
The central theme of Lovecraft's corpus is cosmicism. Cosmicism is a literary philosophy that argues that humanity is an insignificant force in the universe. Despite appearing pessimistic, Lovecraft thought of himself being as being a cosmic indifferentist, which is expressed in his fiction. In it, human beings are often subject to powerful beings and other cosmic forces, but these forces are not so much malevolent as they are indifferent toward humanity. He believed in a meaningless, mechanical, and uncaring universe that human beings could never fully understand. There is no allowance for beliefs that could not be supported scientifically. Lovecraft first articulated this philosophy in 1921, but he did not fully incorporate it into his fiction until five years later. "Dagon", "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", and "The Temple" contain early depictions of this concept, but the majority of his early tales do not analyze the concept. "Nyarlathotep" interprets the collapse of human civilization as being a corollary to the collapse of the universe. "The Call of Cthulhu" represents an intensification of this theme. In it, Lovecraft introduces the idea of alien influences on humanity, which would come to dominate all subsequent works. In these works, Lovecraft expresses cosmicism through the usage of confirmation rather than revelation. Lovecraftian protagonists do not learn that they are insignificant. Instead, they already know it and have it confirmed to them through an event.
Decline of civilization
For much of his life, Lovecraft was fixated on the concepts of decline and decadence. More specifically, he thought that the West was in a state of terminal decline. Starting in the 1920s, Lovecraft became familiar with the work of the German conservative-revolutionary theorist Oswald Spengler, whose pessimistic thesis of the decadence of the modern West formed a crucial element in Lovecraft's overall anti-modern worldview. Spenglerian imagery of cyclical decay is a central theme in At the Mountains of Madness. S. T. Joshi, in H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West, places Spengler at the center of his discussion of Lovecraft's political and philosophical ideas. According to him, the idea of decline is the single idea that permeates and connects his personal philosophy. The main Spenglerian influence on Lovecraft would be his view that politics, economics, science, and art are all interdependent aspects of civilization. This realization led him to shed his personal ignorance of then-current political and economic developments after 1927. Lovecraft had developed his idea of Western decline independently, but Spengler gave it a clear framework.
Science
Lovecraft shifted supernatural horror away from its previous focus on human issues to a focus on cosmic ones. In this way, he merged the elements of supernatural fiction that he deemed to be scientifically viable with science fiction. This merge required an understanding of both supernatural horror and then-contemporary science. Lovecraft used this combined knowledge to create stories that extensively reference trends in scientific development. Beginning with "The Shunned House", Lovecraft increasingly incorporated elements of both Einsteinian science and his own personal materialism into his stories. This intensified with the writing of "The Call of Cthulhu", where he depicted alien influences on humanity. This trend would continue throughout the remainder of his literary career. "The Colour Out of Space" represents what scholars have called the peak of this trend. It portrays an alien lifeform whose otherness prevents it from being defined by then-contemporary science.
Another part of this effort was the repeated usage of mathematics in an effort to make his creatures and settings appear more alien. Tom Hull, a mathematician, regards this as enhancing his ability to invoke a sense of otherness and fear. He attributes this use of mathematics to Lovecraft's childhood interest in astronomy and his adulthood awareness of non-Euclidean geometry. Another reason for his use of mathematics was his reaction to the scientific developments of his day. These developments convinced him that humanity's primary means of understanding the world was no longer trustable. Lovecraft's usage of mathematics in his fiction serves to convert otherwise supernatural elements into things that have in-universe scientific explanations. "The Dreams in the Witch House" and The Shadow Out of Time both have elements of this. The former uses a witch and her familiar, while the latter uses the idea of mind transference. These elements are explained using scientific theories that were prevalent during Lovecraft's lifetime.
Lovecraft Country
Setting plays a major role in Lovecraft's fiction. Lovecraft Country, a fictionalized version of New England, serves as the central hub for his mythos. It represents the history, culture, and folklore of the region, as interpreted by Lovecraft. These attributes are exaggerated and altered to provide a suitable setting for his stories. The names of the locations in the region were directly influenced by the names of real locations in the region, which was done to increase their realism. Lovecraft's stories use their connections with New England to imbue themselves with the ability to instil fear. Lovecraft was primarily inspired by the cities and towns in Massachusetts. However, the specific location of Lovecraft Country is variable, as it moved according to Lovecraft's literary needs. Starting with areas that he thought were evocative, Lovecraft redefined and exaggerated them under fictional names. For example, Lovecraft based Arkham on the town of Oakham and expanded it to include a nearby landmark. Its location was moved, as Lovecraft decided that it would have been destroyed by the recently-built Quabbin Reservoir. This is alluded to in "The Colour Out of Space", as the "blasted heath" is submerged by the creation of a fictionalized version of the reservoir. Similarly, Lovecraft's other towns were based on other locations in Massachusetts. Innsmouth was based on Newburyport, and Dunwich was based on Greenwich. The vague locations of these towns also played into Lovecraft's desire to create a mood in his stories. In his view, a mood can only be evoked through reading.
Critical reception
Literary
Early efforts to revise an established literary view of Lovecraft as an author of 'pulp' were resisted by some eminent critics; in 1945, Edmund Wilson sneered: "the only real horror in most of these fictions is the horror of bad taste and bad art". However, Wilson praised Lovecraft's ability to write about his chosen field; he described him as having written about it "with much intelligence". According to L. Sprague de Camp, Wilson later improved his opinion of Lovecraft, citing a report of David Chavchavadze that Wilson had included a Lovecraftian reference in Little Blue Light: A Play in Three Acts. After Chavchavadze met with him to discuss this, Wilson revealed that he had been reading a copy of Lovecraft's correspondence. Two years before Wilson's critique, Lovecraft's works were reviewed by Winfield Townley Scott, the literary editor of The Providence Journal. He argued that Lovecraft was one of the most significant Rhode Island authors and that it was regrettable that he had received little attention from mainstream critics at the time. Mystery and Adventure columnist Will Cuppy of the New York Herald Tribune recommended to readers a volume of Lovecraft's stories in 1944, asserting that "the literature of horror and macabre fantasy belongs with mystery in its broader sense".
By 1957, Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction said that Lovecraft was comparable to Robert E. Howard, stating that "they appear more prolific than ever," noting L. Sprague de Camp, Björn Nyberg, and August Derleth's usage of their creations. Gale also said that "Lovecraft at his best could build a mood of horror unsurpassed; at his worst, he was laughable." In 1962, Colin Wilson, in his survey of anti-realist trends in fiction The Strength to Dream, cited Lovecraft as one of the pioneers of the "assault on rationality" and included him with M. R. James, H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, J. R. R. Tolkien and others as one of the builders of mythicised realities contending against what he considered the failing project of literary realism. Subsequently, Lovecraft began to acquire the status of a cult writer in the counterculture of the 1960s, and reprints of his work proliferated.
Michael Dirda, a reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement, has described Lovecraft as being a "visionary" who is "rightly regarded as second only to Edgar Allan Poe in the annals of American supernatural literature". According to him, Lovecraft's works prove that mankind cannot bear the weight of reality, as the true nature of reality cannot be understood by either science or history. In addition, Dirda praises Lovecraft's ability to create an uncanny atmosphere. This atmosphere is created through the feeling of wrongness that pervades the objects, places, and people in Lovecraft's works. He also comments favorably on Lovecraft's correspondence, and compares him to Horace Walpole. Particular attention is given to his correspondence with August Derleth and Robert E. Howard. The Derleth letters are called "delightful", while the Howard letters are described as being an ideological debate. Overall, Dirda believes that Lovecraft's letters are equal to, or better than, his fictional output.Los Angeles Review of Books reviewer Nick Mamatas has stated that Lovecraft was a particularly difficult author, rather than a bad one. He described Lovecraft as being "perfectly capable" in the fields of story logic, pacing, innovation, and generating quotable phrases. However, Lovecraft's difficulty made him ill-suited to the pulps; he was unable to compete with the popular recurring protagonists and damsel-in-distress stories. Furthermore, he compared a paragraph from The Shadow Out of Time to a paragraph from the introduction to The Economic Consequences of the Peace. In Mamatas' view, Lovecraft's quality is obscured by his difficulty, and his skill is what has allowed his following to outlive the followings of other then-prominent authors, such as Seabury Quinn and Kenneth Patchen.
In 2005, the Library of America published a volume of Lovecraft's works. This volume was reviewed by many publications, including The New York Times Book Review and The Wall Street Journal, and sold 25,000 copies within a month of release. The overall critical reception of the volume was mixed. Several scholars, including S. T. Joshi and Alison Sperling, have said that this confirms H. P. Lovecraft's place in the western canon. The editors of The Age of Lovecraft, Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, attributed the rise of mainstream popular and academic interest in Lovecraft to this volume, along with the Penguin Classics volumes and the Modern Library edition of At the Mountains of Madness. These volumes led to a proliferation of other volumes containing Lovecraft's works. According to the two authors, these volumes are part of a trend in Lovecraft's popular and academic reception: increased attention by one audience causes the other to also become more interested. Lovecraft's success is, in part, the result of his success.
Lovecraft's style has often been subject to criticism, but scholars such as S. T. Joshi have argued that Lovecraft consciously utilized a variety of literary devices to form a unique style of his own—these include prose-poetic rhythm, stream of consciousness, alliteration, and conscious archaism. According to Joyce Carol Oates, Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe have exerted a significant influence on later writers in the horror genre. Horror author Stephen King called Lovecraft "the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale". King stated in his semi-autobiographical non-fiction book Danse Macabre that Lovecraft was responsible for his own fascination with horror and the macabre and was the largest influence on his writing.
Philosophical
H. P. Lovecraft's writings have influenced the speculative realist philosophical movement during the early-twentieth-century. The four founders of the movement, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux, have cited Lovecraft as an inspiration for their worldviews. Graham Harman wrote a monograph, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy, about Lovecraft and philosophy. In it, he argues that Lovecraft was a "productionist" author. He describes Lovecraft as having been an author who was uniquely obsessed with gaps in human knowledge. He goes further and asserts that Lovecraft's personal philosophy as being in opposition to both idealism and David Hume. In his view, Lovecraft resembles Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, and Edmund Husserl in his division of objects into different parts that do not exhaust the potential meanings of the whole. The anti-idealism of Lovecraft is represented through his commentary on the inability of language to describe his horrors. Harman also credits Lovecraft with inspiring parts of his own articulation of object-oriented ontology. According to Lovecraft scholar Alison Sperling, this philosophical interpretation of Lovecraft's fiction has caused other philosophers in Harmon's tradition to write about Lovecraft. These philosophers seek to remove human perception and human life from the foundations of ethics. These scholars have used Lovecraft's works as the central example of their worldview. They base this usage in Lovecraft's arguments against anthropocentrism and the ability of the human mind to truly understand the universe. They have also played a role in Lovecraft's improving literary reputation by focusing on his interpretation of ontology, which gives him a central position in Anthropocene studies.
Legacy
Lovecraft was relatively unknown during his lifetime. While his stories appeared in prominent pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, not many people knew his name. He did, however, correspond regularly with other contemporary writers such as Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth, who became his friends, even though he never met them in person. This group became known as the "Lovecraft Circle", since their writings freely borrowed Lovecraft's motifs, with his encouragement. He borrowed from them as well. For example, he made use of Clark Ashton Smith's Tsathoggua in The Mound.
After Lovecraft's death, the Lovecraft Circle carried on. August Derleth founded Arkham House with Donald Wandrei to preserve Lovecraft's works and keep them in print. He added to and expanded on Lovecraft's vision, not without controversy. While Lovecraft considered his pantheon of alien gods a mere plot device, Derleth created an entire cosmology, complete with a war between the good Elder Gods and the evil Outer Gods, such as Cthulhu and his ilk. The forces of good were supposed to have won, locking Cthulhu and others beneath the earth, the ocean, and elsewhere. Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos stories went on to associate different gods with the traditional four elements of fire, air, earth and water, which did not line up with Lovecraft's original vision of his mythos. However, Derleth's ownership of Arkham House gave him a position of authority in Lovecraftiana that would not dissipate until his death, and through the efforts of Lovecraft scholars in the 1970s.
Lovecraft's works have influenced many writers and other creators. Stephen King has cited Lovecraft as a major influence on his works. As a child in the 1960s, he came across a volume of Lovecraft's works which inspired him to write his fiction. He goes on to argue that all works in the horror genre that were written after Lovecraft were influenced by him. In the field of comics, Alan Moore has also described Lovecraft as having been a formative influence on his graphic novels. Film director John Carpenter's films include direct references and quotations of Lovecraft's fiction, in addition to their use of a Lovecraftian aesthetic and themes. Guillermo del Toro has been similarly influenced by Lovecraft's corpus.
The first World Fantasy Awards were held in Providence in 1975. The theme was "The Lovecraft Circle". Until 2015, winners were presented with an elongated bust of Lovecraft that was designed by cartoonist Gahan Wilson, nicknamed the "Howard". In November 2015 it was announced that the World Fantasy Award trophy would no longer be modeled on H. P. Lovecraft in response to the author's views on race. After the World Fantasy Award dropped their connection to Lovecraft, The Atlantic commented that "In the end, Lovecraft still wins—people who've never read a page of his work will still know who Cthulhu is for years to come, and his legacy lives on in the work of Stephen King, Guillermo del Toro, and Neil Gaiman."
In 2016, Lovecraft was inducted into the Museum of Pop Culture's Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Three years later, Lovecraft and the other mythos authors were posthumously awarded the 1945 Retro-Hugo Award for Best Series for their contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos.
Lovecraft studies
Starting in the early 1970s, a body of scholarly work began to emerge around Lovecraft's life and works. Referred to as Lovecraft studies, its proponents sought to establish Lovecraft as a significant author in the American literary canon. This can be traced to Derleth's preservation and dissemination of Lovecraft's fiction, non-fiction, and letters through Arkham House. Joshi credits the development of the field to this process. However, it was marred by low quality editions and misinterpretations of Lovecraft's worldview. After Derleth's death in 1971, the scholarship entered a new phase. There was a push to create a book-length biography of Lovecraft. L. Sprague de Camp, a science fiction scholar, wrote the first major one in 1975. This biography was criticized by early Lovecraft scholars for its lack of scholarly merit and its lack of sympathy for its subject. Despite this, it played a significant role in Lovecraft's literary rise. It exposed Lovecraft to the mainstream of American literary criticism. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a division in the field between the "Derlethian traditionalists" who wished to interpret Lovecraft through the lens of fantasy literature and the newer scholars who wished to place greater attention on the entirety of his corpus.
The 1980s and 1990s saw a further proliferation of the field. The 1990 H. P. Lovecraft Centennial Conference and the republishing of older essays in An Epicure in the Terrible represented the publishing of many basic studies that would be used as a base for then-future studies. The 1990 centennial also saw the installation of the "H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Plaque" in a garden adjoining John Hay Library, that features a portrait by silhouettist E. J. Perry. Following this, in 1996, S. T. Joshi wrote his own biography of Lovecraft. This biography was met with positive reviews and became the main biography in the field. It has since been superseded by his expanded edition of the book, I am Providence in 2010.
Lovecraft's improving literary reputation has caused his works to receive increased attention by both classics publishers and scholarly fans. His works have been published by several different series of literary classics. Penguin Classics published three volumes of Lovecraft's works between 1999 and 2004. These volumes were edited by S. T. Joshi. Barnes & Noble would publish their own volume of Lovecraft's complete fiction in 2008. The Library of America published a volume of Lovecraft's works in 2005. The publishing of these volumes represented a reversal of the traditional judgment that Lovecraft was not part of the Western canon. Meanwhile, the biannual NecronomiCon Providence convention was first held in 2013. Its purpose is to serve as a fan and scholarly convention that discusses both Lovecraft and the wider field of weird fiction. It is organized by the Lovecraft Arts and Sciences organization and is held on the weekend of Lovecraft's birth. That July, the Providence City Council designated the "H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Square" and installed a commemorative sign at the intersection of Angell and Prospect streets, near the author's former residences.
Music
Lovecraft's fictional Mythos has influenced a number of musicians, particularly in rock and heavy metal music. This began in the 1960s with the formation of the psychedelic rock band H. P. Lovecraft, who released the albums H. P. Lovecraft and H. P. Lovecraft II in 1967 and 1968 respectively. They broke up afterwards, but later songs were released. This included "The White Ship" and "At the Mountains of Madness", both titled after Lovecraft stories. Extreme metal has also been influenced by Lovecraft. This has expressed itself in both the names of bands and the contents of their albums. This began in 1970 with the release of Black Sabbath's first album, Black Sabbath, which contained a song titled Behind the Wall of Sleep, deriving its name from the 1919 story "Beyond the Wall of Sleep." Heavy metal band Metallica was also inspired by Lovecraft. They recorded a song inspired by "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Call of Ktulu", and a song based on The Shadow over Innsmouth titled "The Thing That Should Not Be". These songs contain direct quotations of Lovecraft's works. Joseph Norman, a speculative scholar, has argued that there are similarities between the music described in Lovecraft's fiction and the aesthetics and atmosphere of Black Metal. He argues that this is evident through the "animalistic" qualities of Black metal vocals. The usage of occult elements is also cited as a thematic commonality. In terms of atmosphere, he asserts that both Lovecraft's works and extreme metal place heavy focus on creating a strong negative mood.
Games
Lovecraft has also influenced gaming, despite having personally disliked games during his lifetime. Chaosium's tabletop role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, released in 1981 and currently in its seventh major edition, was one of the first games to draw heavily from Lovecraft. It includes a Lovecraft-inspired insanity mechanic, which allowed for player characters to go insane from contact with cosmic horrors. This mechanic would go on to make appearance in subsequent tabletop and video games. 1987 saw the release of another Lovecraftian board game, Arkham Horror, which was published by Fantasy Flight Games. Though few subsequent Lovecraftian board games were released annually from 1987 to 2014, the years after 2014 saw a rapid increase in the number of Lovecraftian board games. According to Christina Silva, this revival may have been influenced by the entry of Lovecraft's work into the public domain and a revival of interest in board games. Few video games are direct adaptations of Lovecraft's works, but many video games have been inspired or heavily influenced by Lovecraft. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, a Lovecraftian first-person video game, was released in 2005. It is loose adaptation of The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Shadow Out of Time, and "The Thing on the Doorstep" that uses noir themes. These adaptations focus more on Lovecraft's monsters and gamification than they do on his themes, which represents a break from Lovecraft's core theme of human insignificance.
Religion and occultism
Several contemporary religions have been influenced by Lovecraft's works. Kenneth Grant, the founder of the Typhonian Order, incorporated Lovecraft's Mythos into his ritual and occult system. Grant combined his interest in Lovecraft's fiction with his adherence to Aleister Crowley's Thelema. The Typhonian Order considers Lovecraftian entities to be symbols through which people may interact with something inhuman. Grant also argued that Crowley himself was influenced by Lovecraft's writings, particularly in the naming of characters in The Book of the Law. Similarly, The Satanic Rituals, co-written by Anton LaVey and Michael A. Aquino, includes the "Ceremony of the Nine Angles", which is a ritual that was influenced by the descriptions in "The Dreams in the Witch House". It contains invocations of several of Lovecraft's fictional gods.
There have been several books that have claimed to be an authentic edition of Lovecraft's Necronomicon. The Simon Necronomicon is one such example. It was written by an unknown figure who identified themselves as "Simon". Peter Levenda, an occult author who has written about the Necronomicon, claims that he and "Simon" came across a hidden Greek translation of the grimoire while looking through a collection of antiquities at a New York bookstore during the 1960s or 1970s. This book was claimed to have borne the seal of the Necronomicon. Levenda went on to claim that Lovecraft had access to this purported scroll. A textual analysis has determined that the contents of this book were derived from multiple documents that discuss Mesopotamian myth and magic. The finding of a magical text by monks is also a common theme in the history of grimoires. It has been suggested that Lavenda is the true author of the Simon Necronomicon.
Correspondence
Although Lovecraft is known mostly for his works of weird fiction, the bulk of his writing consists of voluminous letters about a variety of topics, from weird fiction and art criticism to politics and history. Lovecraft biographers L. Sprague de Camp and S. T. Joshi have estimated that Lovecraft wrote 100,000 letters in his lifetime, a fifth of which are believed to survive. S. T. Joshi suggested in 1996 that it would have been impossible to publish the entirety of Lovecraft's letters due to their length and the sheer number of them. These letters were directed at fellow writers and members of the amateur press. His involvement in the latter was what caused him to begin writing them. According to Joshi, the most important sets of letters were those written to Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith, and James F. Morton. He attributes this importance to the contents of these letters. With Long, Lovecraft argued in support and in opposition to many of Long's viewpoints. The letters to Clark Ashton Smith are characterized by their focus on weird fiction. Lovecraft and Morton debated many scholarly subjects in their letters, resulting in what Joshi has called the "single greatest correspondence Lovecraft ever wrote."
Copyright and other legal issues
Despite several claims to the contrary, there is currently no evidence that any company or individual owns the copyright to any of Lovecraft's works, and it is generally accepted that it has passed into the public domain. Lovecraft had specified that R. H. Barlow would serve as the executor of his literary estate, but these instructions were not incorporated into his will. Nevertheless, his surviving aunt carried out his expressed wishes, and Barlow was given control of Lovecraft's literary estate upon his death. Barlow deposited the bulk of the papers, including the voluminous correspondence, in the John Hay Library, and attempted to organize and maintain Lovecraft's other writings. Lovecraft protégé August Derleth, an older and more established writer than Barlow, vied for control of the literary estate. He and Donald Wandrei, a fellow protégé and co-owner of Arkham House, falsely claimed that Derleth was the true literary executor. Barlow capitulated, and later committed suicide in 1951. This gave Derleth and Wandrei complete control over Lovecraft's corpus.
On October 9, 1947, Derleth purchased all rights to the stories that were published in Weird Tales. However, since April 1926 at the latest, Lovecraft had reserved all second printing rights to stories published in Weird Tales. Therefore, Weird Tales only owned the rights to at most six of Lovecraft's tales. If Derleth had legally obtained the copyrights to these tales, there is no evidence that they were renewed before the rights expired. Following Derleth's death in 1971, Donald Wandrei sued his estate to challenge Derleth's will, which stated that he only held the copyrights and royalties to Lovecraft's works that were published under both his and Derleth's names. Arkham House's lawyer, Forrest D. Hartmann, argued that the rights to Lovecraft's works were never renewed. Wandrei won the case, but Arkham House's actions regarding copyright have damaged their ability to claim ownership of them.
In H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, S. T. Joshi concludes that Derleth's claims are "almost certainly fictitious" and argues that most of Lovecraft's works that were published in the amateur press are likely in the public domain. The copyright for Lovecraft's works would have been inherited by the only surviving heir named in his 1912 will, his aunt Annie Gamwell. When she died in 1941, the copyrights passed to her remaining descendants, Ethel Phillips Morrish and Edna Lewis. They signed a document, sometimes referred to as the Morrish-Lewis gift, permitting Arkham House to republish Lovecraft's works while retaining their ownership of the copyrights. Searches of the Library of Congress have failed to find any evidence that these copyrights were renewed after the 28-year period, making it likely that these works are in the public domain. However, the Lovecraft literary estate, reconstituted in 1998 under Robert C. Harrall, has claimed that they own the rights. Joshi has withdrawn his support for his conclusion, and now supports the estate's copyright claims.
Bibliography
See also
:Category:H. P. Lovecraft scholars
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
The H. P. Lovecraft Archive
The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society
The Lovecraft Arts & Sciences Council, a non-profit educational organization
H. P. Lovecraft at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction''
Journals
Lovecraft Annual
Lovecraft Studies
Crypt of Cthulhu
Library collections
H. P. Lovecraft Collection in the Special Collections at the John Hay Library (Brown University)
H. P. Lovecraft Collection in the Distinctive Collections of Falvey Memorial Library (Villanova University)
Online editions
1890 births
1937 deaths
20th-century American essayists
20th-century American journalists
American male journalists
20th-century American male writers
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American agnostics
American alternative journalists
American atheists
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American horror writers
American letter writers
American literary critics
American magazine editors
American male essayists
American male non-fiction writers
American male novelists
American male poets
American people of English descent
American science fiction writers
American social commentators
American speculative fiction critics
Burials at Swan Point Cemetery
Critics of religions
Cthulhu Mythos writers
Deaths from cancer in Rhode Island
Deaths from colorectal cancer
Deaths from small intestine cancer
Ghostwriters
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People from Flatbush, Brooklyn
People from Red Hook, Brooklyn
Philosophical pessimists
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Pulp fiction writers
Re-Animator (film series)
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Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
Science fiction critics
Weird fiction writers
Writers from Providence, Rhode Island
Writers of Gothic fiction | true | [
"H. P. Lovecraft: A Life is a biography of H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) by S. T. Joshi, first published by Necronomicon Press in 1996. The original one-volume edition was reissued in 2004, with a new afterword by Joshi.\n\nA new revised/uncut edition (as I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft) (2 vols) has been issued in 2010 (Hippocampus Press); this restores 150,000 words cut for space reasons from the original edition, and is also thoroughly revised and updated in regard to new information on Lovecraft that has come to light since 1996.\n\nThe book largely supplants earlier efforts such as L. Sprague de Camp's Lovecraft: A Biography (1975). According to his website, Joshi regards this book his most notable achievement to date, followed by his The Weird Tale.\n\nReception\nWhen first published in 1996, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life was regarded as a \"meticulously researched\"\nbiography of Lovecraft, taking account of all currently known facts about Lovecraft's life and work. It was met with critical praise; it elicited favorable comments from the horror author Ramsey Campbell and literary critic Harold Bloom, and received a long and favorable review in The New York Review of Books from author Joyce Carol Oates, who called it \"the definitive biography\".\n\nAwards\nH.P. Lovecraft: A Life was awarded the 1997 Bram Stoker Award for Best Non-Fiction from the Horror Writers Association.\n\nNotes\n\n1996 non-fiction books\nAmerican biographies\nBooks by S. T. Joshi\nWorks about H. P. Lovecraft\nBiographies about writers",
"\"Supernatural Horror in Literature\" is a 28,000 word essay by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, surveying the development and achievements of horror fiction as the field stood in the 1920s and 30s. The essay was researched and written between November 1925 and May 1927, first published in August 1927, and then revised and expanded during 1933–1934.\n\nThe essay\nLovecraft's essay ranges widely, but he first examines the beginnings of weird fiction in the early gothic novel. As a guide for what to read in the early gothic he relied partly on Edith Birkhead's 1921 historical survey The Tale of Terror, and he was also able to draw on the expertise of the great many experts and collectors in his circle. The bulk of the essay was written in New York City giving Lovecraft easy access to the resources of the city's great public libraries and also to the collections of his friends, and thus he was able to read widely and obtain obscure and rare works. His survey then proceeds to outline the development of the supernatural and the weird in the work of major writers such as Ambrose Bierce, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft names as the four \"modern masters\" of horror: Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M. R. James, and Arthur Machen. In addition to these masters, Lovecraft attempts to make the essay an encompassing survey, and thus he mentions or notes many others in passing.\n\nPublication history\nThe text was first published in August 1927 in the one-issue magazine The Recluse, and copies were widely circulated. It was then partly published in revised serial form in The Fantasy Fan in 1933–35. The full revised text first became easily available to the public in The Outsider and Others (1939).\n\nCritical reception\nAn H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia terms the work \"HPL's most significant literary essay and one of the finest historical analyses of horror literature.\" \nAfter the first publication the critic Edmund Wilson, who was not an admirer of Lovecraft's fiction, praised the recent essay as a \"really able piece of work... he had read comprehensively in this field—he was strong on the Gothic novelists—and writes about it with much intelligence\". David G. Hartwell has called \"Supernatural Horror in Literature\" \"the most important essay on horror literature\".\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n\"Supernatural Horror in Literature\"—eText at the H. P. Lovecraft Archive\n\"A Map on Chalkboards\" – An imagemap following the chapters of the essay (containing its entire text)\n\n1927 essays\n1927 non-fiction books\nAmerican essays\nEssays by H. P. Lovecraft\nNon-fiction books by H. P. Lovecraft\nEssays about literature\nWorks about horror fiction"
] |
[
"H. P. Lovecraft",
"Marriage and New York",
"Who was HP Lovecraft's wife?",
"Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924,",
"What was their relationship like?",
"Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship.",
"What activities was H.P. Lovecraft and his wife involved in within New York?",
"He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends"
] | C_e055448352484e27a10b71b3309430f7_0 | Did he do any writing during this period? | 4 | Did H.P. Lovecraft do any writing during his time in New York? | H. P. Lovecraft | Lovecraft's aunts disapproved of this relationship with Sonia. Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924, and relocated to her Brooklyn apartment at 793 Flatbush Avenue; she thought he needed to get out of Providence in order to flourish and was willing to support him financially. Greene, who had been married before, later said Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship. She attributed Lovecraft's passive nature to a stultifying upbringing by his mother. Lovecraft's weight increased to 90 kg (200 lb) on his wife's home cooking. He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends who urged him to submit stories to Weird Tales; editor Edwin Baird accepted many otherworldly 'Dream Cycle' Lovecraft stories for the ailing publication, though they were heavily criticized by a section of the readership. Established informally some years before Lovecraft arrived in New York, the core Kalem Club members were boys' adventure novelist Henry Everett McNeil; the lawyer and anarchist writer James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.; and the poet Reinhardt Kleiner. On New Year's Day of 1925, Sonia moved to Cleveland for a job opportunity, and Lovecraft left Flatbush for a small first-floor apartment on 169 Clinton Street "at the edge of Red Hook"--a location which came to discomfort him greatly. Later that year the Kalem Club's four regular attendees were joined by Lovecraft along with his protege Frank Belknap Long, bookseller George Willard Kirk, and Lovecraft's close friend Samuel Loveman. Loveman was Jewish, but was unaware of Lovecraft's nativist attitudes. Conversely, it has been suggested that Lovecraft, who disliked mention of sexual matters, was unaware that Loveman and some of his other friends were homosexual. CANNOTANSWER | Edwin Baird accepted many otherworldly 'Dream Cycle' Lovecraft stories for the ailing publication, though they were heavily criticized by a section of the readership. | Howard Phillips Lovecraft (; August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of weird, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. Lovecraft is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England. After his father's institutionalization in 1893, he lived affluently until his family's wealth dissipated after the death of his grandfather. Lovecraft then lived with his mother, in reduced financial security, until her institutionalization in 1919. He began to write essays for the United Amateur Press Association and, in 1913, Lovecraft wrote a critical letter to a pulp magazine that ultimately led to his involvement in pulp fiction. He became active in the speculative fiction community and was published in several pulp magazines. Lovecraft moved to New York, marrying Sonia Greene in 1924, and later became the center of a wider group of authors known as the "Lovecraft Circle". They introduced him to Weird Tales, which would become his most prominent publisher. Lovecraft's time in New York took a toll on his mental state and financial conditions. He returned to Providence in 1926 and produced some of his most popular works, including "The Call of Cthulhu", At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, and The Shadow Out of Time. He would remain active as a writer until his death from intestinal cancer at the age of 46.
Lovecraft's literary corpus is based around the idea of cosmicism, which was simultaneously his personal philosophy and the main theme of his fiction. Cosmicism posits that humanity is an insignificant part of the cosmos, and could be swept away at any moment. He incorporated fantastic and science fiction elements into his stories, representing the perceived fragility of anthropocentrism. His works were largely set in a fictionalized version of New England. Civilizational decline also plays a major role in his works, as he believed that the West was in decline during his lifetime. Lovecraft's early political opinions were conservative and traditionalist; additionally, he held a number of racist views for much of his adult life. Following the Great Depression, Lovecraft became a democratic socialist, no longer believing a just aristocracy would make the world more fair.
Throughout his adult life, Lovecraft was never able to support himself from earnings as an author and editor. He was virtually unknown during his lifetime and was almost exclusively published in pulp magazines before his death. A scholarly revival of Lovecraft's work began in the 1970s, and he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors of supernatural horror fiction. Many direct adaptations and spiritual successors followed. Works inspired by Lovecraft, adaptations or original works, began to form the basis of the Cthulhu Mythos, which utilizes Lovecraft's characters, setting, and themes.
Biography
Early life and family tragedies
Lovecraft was born in his family home on August 20, 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the only child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft and Sarah Susan (née Phillips) Lovecraft. Susie's family was of substantial means at the time of their marriage, as her father, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, was involved in business ventures. In April 1893, after a psychotic episode in a Chicago hotel, Winfield was committed to Butler Hospital in Providence. His medical records state that he had been "doing and saying strange things at times" for a year before his commitment. The person who reported these symptoms is unknown. Winfield spent five years in Butler before dying in 1898. His death certificate listed the cause of death as general paresis, a term synonymous with late-stage syphilis. Throughout his life, Lovecraft maintained that his father fell into a paralytic state, due to insomnia and overwork, and remained that way until his death. It is not known whether Lovecraft was simply kept ignorant of his father's illness or whether his later statements were intentionally misleading.
After his father's institutionalization, Lovecraft resided in the family home with his mother, his maternal aunts Lillian and Annie, and his maternal grandparents Whipple and Robie. According to family friends, his mother, known as Susie, doted on the young Lovecraft excessively, pampering him and never letting him out of her sight. Lovecraft later recollected that his mother was "permanently stricken with grief" after his father's illness. Whipple became a father figure to Lovecraft in this time, Lovecraft noting that his grandfather became the "centre of my entire universe". Whipple, who often traveled to manage his business, maintained correspondence by letter with the young Lovecraft who, by the age of three, was already proficient at reading and writing.
He encouraged the young Lovecraft to have an appreciation of literature, especially classical literature and English poetry. In his old age, he helped raise the young H. P. Lovecraft and educated him not only in the classics, but also in original weird tales of "winged horrors" and "deep, low, moaning sounds" which he created for his grandchild's entertainment. The original sources of Phillips' weird tales are unidentified. Lovecraft himself guessed that they originated from Gothic novelists like Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, and Charles Maturin. It was during this period that Lovecraft was introduced to some of his earliest literary influences such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner illustrated by Gustave Doré, One Thousand and One Nights, Thomas Bulfinch's Age of Fable, and Ovid's Metamorphoses.
While there is no indication that Lovecraft was particularly close to his grandmother Robie, her death in 1896 had a profound effect on him. By his own account, it sent his family into "a gloom from which it never fully recovered". His mother and aunts wore black mourning dresses that "terrified" him. This is also time that Lovecraft, approximately five-and-a-half years old, started having nightmares that later would inform his fictional writings. Specifically, he began to have recurring nightmares of beings he referred to as "night-gaunts". He credited their appearance to the influence of Doré's illustrations, which would "whirl me through space at a sickening rate of speed, the while fretting & impelling me with their detestable tridents". Thirty years later, night-gaunts would appear in Lovecraft's fiction.
Lovecraft's earliest known literary works were written at the age of seven, and were poems restyling the Odyssey and other Greco-Roman mythological stories. Lovecraft would later write that during his childhood he was fixated on the Greco-Roman pantheon, and briefly accepted them as genuine expressions of divinity, foregoing his Christian upbringing. He recalled, at five years old, being told Santa Claus did not exist and retorted by asking why "God is not equally a myth?" At the age of eight, he took a keen interest in the sciences, particularly astronomy and chemistry. He also examined the anatomical books that were held in the family library, which taught him the specifics of human reproduction that were not yet explained to him. As a result, he found that it "virtually killed my interest in the subject".
In 1902, according to Lovecraft's later correspondence, astronomy became a guiding influence on his worldview. He began publishing the periodical Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy, using the hectograph printing method. Lovecraft went in and out of elementary school repeatedly, oftentimes with home tutors making up for the lost years, missing time due to health concerns that have not been determined. The written recollections of his peers described him as withdrawn but welcoming to those who shared his then-current fascination with astronomy, inviting them to look through his prized telescope.
Education and financial decline
By 1900, Whipple's various business concerns were suffering a downturn, which resulted in the slow reduction of his family's wealth. He was forced to let his family's hired servants go, leaving Lovecraft, Whipple, and Susie, being the only unmarried sister, alone in the family home. In the spring of 1904, Whipple's largest business venture suffered a catastrophic failure. Within months, he died at age 70 due to a stroke. After Whipple's death, Susie was unable to financially support the upkeep of the expansive family home on what remained of the Phillips' estate. Later that year, she was forced to move to a small duplex with her son.
Lovecraft called this time one of the darkest of his life, remarking in a 1934 letter that he saw no point in living anymore. Furthermore, he considered the possibility of committing suicide. His scientific curiosity and desire to know more about the world prevented him from doing so. In fall 1904, he entered high school. Much like his earlier school years, Lovecraft was periodically removed from school for long periods for what he termed "near breakdowns". He did say, though, that while having some conflicts with teachers, he enjoyed high school, becoming close with a small circle of friends. Lovecraft also performed well academically, excelling in particular at chemistry and physics. Aside from a pause in 1904, he also resumed publishing the Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy as well as starting the Scientific Gazette, which dealt mostly with chemistry. It was also during this period that Lovecraft produced the first of the fictional works that he would later be known for, namely "The Beast in the Cave" and "The Alchemist".
It was in 1908, prior to what would have been his high school graduation, that Lovecraft suffered another unidentified health crisis, though this instance was more severe than his prior illnesses. The exact circumstances and causes remain unknown. The only direct records are Lovecraft's own correspondence wherein he retrospectively described it variously as a "nervous collapse" and "a sort of breakdown", in one letter blaming it on the stress of high school despite his enjoying it. In another letter concerning the events of 1908, he notes, "I was and am prey to intense headaches, insomnia, and general nervous weakness which prevents my continuous application to any thing."
Though Lovecraft maintained that he was going to attend Brown University after high school, he never graduated and never attended school again. Whether Lovecraft suffered from a physical ailment, a mental one, or some combination thereof has never been determined. An account from a high school classmate described Lovecraft as exhibiting "terrible tics" and that at times "he'd be sitting in his seat and he'd suddenly up and jump". Harry Brobst, a psychology professor, examined the account and claimed that chorea minor was the probable cause of Lovecraft's childhood symptoms while noting that instances of chorea minor after adolescence are very rare. In his letters, Lovecraft acknowledged that he suffered from bouts of chorea as a child. Brobst further ventured that Lovecraft's 1908 breakdown was attributed to a "hysteroid seizure", a term that has become synonymous with atypical depression. In another letter concerning the events of 1908, Lovecraft stated that he "could hardly bear to see or speak to anyone, & liked to shut out the world by pulling down dark shades & using artificial light".
Earliest recognition
Few of Lovecraft and Susie's activities between late 1908 and 1913 were recorded. Lovecraft described the steady continuation of their financial decline highlighted by his uncle's failed business that cost Susie a large portion of their already dwindling wealth. One of Susie's friends, Clara Hess, recalled a visit during which Susie spoke continuously about Lovecraft being "so hideous that he hid from everyone and did not like to walk upon the streets where people could gaze on him". Despite Hess' protests to the contrary, Susie maintained this stance. For his part, Lovecraft said he found his mother to be "a positive marvel of consideration". A next-door neighbor later pointed out that what others in the neighborhood often assumed were loud, nocturnal quarrels between mother and son, were actually recitations of Shakespeare, an activity that seemed to delight mother and son.
During this period, Lovecraft revived his earlier scientific periodicals. He endeavored to commit himself to the study of organic chemistry, Susie buying the expensive glass chemistry assemblage he wanted. Lovecraft found his studies were stymied by the mathematics involved, which he found boring and would cause headaches that would incapacitate him for the remainder of the day. Lovecraft's first non-self-published poem appeared in a local newspaper in 1912. Called Providence in 2000 A.D., it envisioned a future where Americans of English descent were displaced by Irish, Italian, Portuguese, and Jewish immigrants. In this period he also wrote racist poetry, including "New-England Fallen" and "On the Creation of Niggers", but there is no indication that either were published during his lifetime.
In 1911, Lovecraft's letters to editors began appearing in pulp and weird-fiction magazines, most notably Argosy. A 1913 letter critical of Fred Jackson, one of Argosy'''s more prominent writers, started Lovecraft down a path that would define the remainder of his career as a writer. In the following letters, Lovecraft described Jackson's stories as being "trivial, effeminate, and, in places, coarse". Continuing, Lovecraft argued that Jackson's characters exhibit the "delicate passions and emotions proper to negroes and anthropoid apes". This sparked a nearly year-long feud in the magazine's letters section between the two writers and their respective supporters. Lovecraft's most prominent opponent was John Russell, who often replied in verse, and to whom Lovecraft felt compelled to reply because he respected Russell's writing skills. The most immediate effect of this feud was the recognition garnered from Edward F. Daas, then head editor of the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA). Daas invited Russell and Lovecraft to join the organization and both accepted, Lovecraft in April 1914.
Rejuvenation and tragedy
Lovecraft immersed himself in the world of amateur journalism for most of the following decade. During this period, he advocated for amateurism's superiority to commercialism. Lovecraft defined commercialism as writing for what he considered low-brow publications for pay. This was contrasted with his view of "professional publication", which was what he called writing what he considered respectable journals and publishers. He thought of amateur journalism as serving as practice for a professional career.
Lovecraft was appointed chairman of the Department of Public Criticism of the UAPA in late 1914. He used this position to advocate for what he saw as the superiority of archaic English language usage. Emblematic of the Anglophilic opinions he maintained throughout his life, he openly criticized other UAPA contributors for their "Americanisms" and "slang". Often, these criticisms were embedded in xenophobic and racist statements that the "national language" was being negatively changed by immigrants. In mid-1915, Lovecraft was elected vice-president of the UAPA. Two years later, he was elected president and appointed other board members who mostly shared his belief in the supremacy of British English over modern American English. Another significant event of this time was the beginning of World War I. Lovecraft published multiple criticisms of the American government and public's reluctance to join the war to protect England, which he viewed as America's ancestral homeland.
In 1916, Lovecraft published his first short story, "The Alchemist", in the main UAPA journal, which was a departure from his usual verse. Due to the encouragement of W. Paul Cook, another UAPA member and future lifelong friend, Lovecraft began writing and publishing more prose fiction. Soon afterwards, he wrote "The Tomb" and "Dagon". "The Tomb", by Lovecraft's own admission, was greatly influenced by the style and structure of Edgar Allan Poe's works. Meanwhile, "Dagon" is considered Lovecraft's first work that displays the concepts and themes that his writings would later become known for. Lovecraft published another short story, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" in 1919, which was his first science fiction story.
Lovecraft's term as president of the UAPA ended in 1918, and he returned to his former post as chairman of the Department of Public Criticism. In 1917, as Lovecraft related to Kleiner, Lovecraft made an aborted attempt to enlist in the United States Army. Though he passed the physical exam, he told Kleiner that his mother threatened to do anything, legal or otherwise, to prove that he was unfit for service. After his failed attempt to serve in World War I, he attempted to enroll in the Rhode Island National Guard, but his mother used her family connections to prevent it.
During the winter of 1918–1919, Susie, exhibiting the symptoms of a nervous breakdown, went to live with her elder sister, Lillian. The nature of Susie's illness is unclear, as her medical papers were later destroyed in a fire at Butler Hospital. Winfield Townley Scott, who was able to read the papers before the fire, described Susie as having suffered a psychological collapse. Neighbour and friend Clara Hess, interviewed in 1948, recalled instances of Susie describing "weird and fantastic creatures that rushed out from behind buildings and from corners at dark". In the same account, Hess described a time when they crossed paths in downtown Providence and Susie was unaware of where she was. In March 1919, she was committed to Butler Hospital, like her husband before her. Lovecraft's immediate reaction to Susie's commitment was visceral, writing to Kleiner that, "existence seems of little value", and that he wished "it might terminate". During Susie's time at Butler, Lovecraft periodically visited her and walked the large grounds with her.
Late 1919 saw Lovecraft become more outgoing. After a period of isolation, he began joining friends in trips to writer gatherings; the first being a talk in Boston presented by Lord Dunsany, whom Lovecraft had recently discovered and idolized. In early 1920, at an amateur writer convention, he met Frank Belknap Long, who would end up being Lovecraft's most influential and closest confidant for the remainder of his life. The influence of Dunsany is apparent in his 1919 output, which is part of what would be called Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, including "The White Ship" and "The Doom That Came to Sarnath". In early 1920, he wrote "The Cats of Ulthar" and "Celephaïs", which were also strongly influenced by Dunsany.
It was later in 1920 that Lovecraft began publishing the earliest Cthulhu Mythos stories. The Cthulhu Mythos, a term coined by later authors, encompasses Lovecraft's stories that share a commonality in the revelation of cosmic insignificance, initially realistic settings, and recurring entities and texts. The prose poem "Nyarlathotep" and the short story "The Crawling Chaos", in collaboration with Winifred Virginia Jackson, were written in late 1920. Following in early 1921 came "The Nameless City", the first story that falls definitively within the Cthulhu Mythos. In it is one of Lovecraft's most enduring phrases, a couplet recited by Abdul Alhazred; "That is not dead which can eternal lie; And with strange aeons even death may die." In the same year, he also wrote "The Outsider", which has become one of Lovecraft's most heavily analyzed, and differently interpreted, stories. It has been variously interpreted as being autobiographical, an allegory of the psyche, a parody of the afterlife, a commentary on humanity's place in the universe, and a critique of progress.
On May 24, 1921, Susie died in Butler Hospital, due to complications from an operation on her gall bladder five days earlier. Lovecraft's initial reaction, expressed in a letter written nine days after Susie's death, was a deep state of sadness that crippled him physically and emotionally. He again expressed a desire that his life might end. Lovecraft's later response was relief, as he had become able to live independently from his mother. His physical health also began to improve, although he was unaware of the exact cause. Despite Lovecraft's reaction, he continued to attend amateur journalist conventions. Lovecraft met his future wife, Sonia Greene, at one such convention in July.
Marriage and New York
Lovecraft's aunts disapproved of his relationship with Sonia. Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924, and relocated to her Brooklyn apartment at 793 Flatbush Avenue; she thought he needed to leave Providence to flourish and was willing to support him financially. Greene, who had been married before, later said Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship. She attributed Lovecraft's passive nature to a stultifying upbringing by his mother. Lovecraft's weight increased to on his wife's home cooking.
He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends who urged him to submit stories to Weird Tales. Its editor, Edwin Baird, accepted many of Lovecraft's stories for the ailing publication, including "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs", which was ghostwritten for Harry Houdini. Established informally some years before Lovecraft arrived in New York, the core Kalem Club members were boys' adventure novelist Henry Everett McNeil, the lawyer and anarchist writer James Ferdinand Morton Jr., and the poet Reinhardt Kleiner.
On January 1, 1925, Sonia moved from Flatbush to Cleveland in response to a job opportunity, and Lovecraft left for a small first-floor apartment on 169 Clinton Street "at the edge of Red Hook"—a location which came to discomfort him greatly. Later that year, the Kalem Club's four regular attendees were joined by Lovecraft along with his protégé Frank Belknap Long, bookseller George Willard Kirk, and Samuel Loveman. Loveman was Jewish, but he and Lovecraft became close friends in spite of the latter's nativist attitudes. By the 1930s, writer and publisher Herman Charles Koenig would be one of the last to become involved with the Kalem Club.
Not long after the marriage, Greene lost her business and her assets disappeared in a bank failure. Lovecraft made efforts to support his wife through regular jobs, but his lack of previous work experience meant he lacked proven marketable skills. The publisher of Weird Tales was attempting to make the loss-making magazine profitable and offered the job of editor to Lovecraft, who declined, citing his reluctance to relocate to Chicago on aesthetic grounds. Baird was succeeded by Farnsworth Wright, whose writing Lovecraft had criticized. Lovecraft's submissions were often rejected by Wright. This may have been partially due to censorship guidelines imposed in the aftermath of a Weird Tales story that hinted at necrophilia, although after Lovecraft's death, Wright accepted many of the stories he had originally rejected.
Sonia also became ill and immediately after recovering, relocated to Cincinnati, and then to Cleveland; her employment required constant travel. Added to his feelings of failure in a city with a large immigrant population, Lovecraft's single-room apartment was burgled, leaving him with only the clothes he was wearing. In August 1925, he wrote "The Horror at Red Hook" and "He", in the latter of which the narrator says "My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration [...] I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyze, and annihilate me." This was an expression of his despair at being in New York. It was at around this time he wrote the outline for "The Call of Cthulhu", with its theme of the insignificance of all humanity. During this time, Lovecraft wrote "Supernatural Horror in Literature" on the eponymous subject. It later became one of the most influential essays on the subject. With a weekly allowance Greene sent, Lovecraft moved to a working-class area of Brooklyn Heights, where he resided in a tiny apartment. He had lost approximately of body weight by 1926, when he left for Providence.
Return to Providence and death
Back in Providence, Lovecraft lived with his aunts in a "spacious brown Victorian wooden house" at 10 Barnes Street until 1933. He would then move to 66 Prospect Street, which would become his final home. The period beginning after his return to Providence contains some of his most prominent works, including "The Call of Cthulhu", The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and The Shadow over Innsmouth. The latter two stories are partially autobiographical, as scholars have argued that The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is about Lovecraft's return to Providence and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is, in part, about the city itself. The former story also represents a partial repudiation of Dunsany's influence, as Lovecraft had decided that his style did not come to him naturally. At this time, he frequently revised work for other authors and did a large amount of ghostwriting, including The Mound, "Winged Death", and "The Diary of Alonzo Typer". Client Harry Houdini was laudatory, and attempted to help Lovecraft by introducing him to the head of a newspaper syndicate. Plans for a further project were ended by Houdini's death in 1926.
In August 1930, Robert E. Howard wrote a letter to Weird Tales praising a then-recent reprint of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" and discussing some of the Gaelic references used within. Editor Farnsworth Wright forwarded the letter to Lovecraft, who responded positively to Howard, and soon the two writers were engaged in a vigorous correspondence that would last for the rest of Howard's life. Howard quickly became a member of the Lovecraft Circle, a group of writers and friends all linked through Lovecraft's voluminous correspondence, as he introduced his many like-minded friends to one another and encouraged them to share their stories, utilize each other's fictional creations, and help each other succeed in the field of pulp fiction.
Meanwhile, Lovecraft was increasingly producing work that brought him no remuneration. Affecting a calm indifference to the reception of his works, Lovecraft was in reality extremely sensitive to criticism and easily precipitated into withdrawal. He was known to give up trying to sell a story after it had been once rejected. Sometimes, as with The Shadow over Innsmouth, he wrote a story that might have been commercially viable but did not try to sell it. Lovecraft even ignored interested publishers. He failed to reply when one inquired about any novel Lovecraft might have ready: although he had completed such a work, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, it was never typed up. A few years after Lovecraft had moved to Providence, he and his wife Sonia Greene, having lived separately for so long, agreed to an amicable divorce. Greene moved to California in 1933 and remarried in 1936, unaware that Lovecraft, despite his assurances to the contrary, had never officially signed the final decree.
As a result of the Great Depression, he shifted towards democratic socialism, decrying both his prior political beliefs and the rising tide of fascism. He thought that socialism was a workable middle ground between what he saw as the destructive impulses of both the capitalists and the Marxists of his day. This was based in a general opposition to cultural upheaval, as well as support for an ordered society. Electorally, he supported Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he thought that the New Deal was not sufficiently leftist. Lovecraft's support for it was based in his view that no other set of reforms were possible at that time.
In late 1936, he witnessed the publication of The Shadow over Innsmouth as a paperback book. 400 copies were printed, and the work was advertised in Weird Tales and several fan magazines. However, Lovecraft was displeased, as this book was riddled with errors that required extensive editing. It sold slowly and only approximately 200 copies were bound. The remaining 200 copies were destroyed after the publisher went out of business for the next seven years. By this point, Lovecraft's literary career was reaching its end. Shortly after having written his last original short story, "The Haunter of the Dark", he stated that the hostile reception of At the Mountains of Madness had done "more than anything to end my effective fictional career". His declining psychological, and physical, state made it impossible for him to continue writing fiction.
On June 11, Robert E. Howard was informed that his chronically ill mother would not awaken from her coma. He walked out to his car and committed suicide with a pistol that he had stored there. His mother died shortly thereafter. This deeply affected Lovecraft, who consoled Howard's father through correspondence. Almost immediately after hearing about Howard's death, Lovecraft wrote a brief memoir titled "In Memoriam: Robert Ervin Howard", which he distributed to his correspondents. Meanwhile, Lovecraft's physical health was deteriorating. He was suffering from an affliction that he referred to as "grippe".
Due to his fear of doctors, Lovecraft was not examined until a month before his death. After seeing a doctor, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the small intestine. He remained hospitalized until he died. He lived in constant pain until his death on March 15, 1937, in Providence. In accordance with his lifelong scientific curiosity, he kept a diary of his illness until he was physically incapable of holding a pen. Lovecraft was listed along with his parents on the Phillips family monument. In 1977, fans erected a headstone in Swan Point Cemetery on which they inscribed his name, the dates of his birth and death, and the phrase "I AM PROVIDENCE"—a line from one of his personal letters.
Personal views
Politics
Lovecraft began his life as a Tory, which was likely the result of his conservative upbringing. His family supported the Republican Party for the entirety of his life. While it is unclear how consistently he voted, he voted for Herbert Hoover in the 1928 presidential election. Rhode Island as a whole remained politically conservative and Republican into the 1930s. Lovecraft himself was an anglophile who supported the British monarchy. He opposed democracy and thought that America should be governed by an aristocracy. This viewpoint emerged during his youth and lasted until the end of the 1920s. During World War I, his Anglophilia caused him to strongly support the entente against the Central Powers. Many of this earlier poems were devoted to then-current political subjects, and he published several political essays in his amateur journal, The Conservative. He was a teetotaler who supported the implementation of Prohibition, which was one of the few reforms that he supported during the early part of his life. While remaining a teetotaller, he later became convinced that Prohibition was ineffectual in the 1930s. His personal justification for his early political viewpoints was primarily based on tradition and aesthetics.
As a result of the Great Depression, Lovecraft reexamined his political views. Initially, he thought that affluent people would take on the characteristics of his ideal aristocracy and solve America's problems. When this did not occur, he became a democratic socialist. This shift was caused by his observation that the Depression was harming American society. It was also influenced by the increase in socialism's political capital during the 1930s. One of the main points of Lovecraft's socialism was its opposition to Soviet Marxism, as he thought that a Marxist revolution would bring about the destruction of American civilization. Lovecraft thought that an intellectual aristocracy needed to be formed to preserve America. His ideal political system is outlined in his essay "Some Repetitions on the Times". Lovecraft used this essay to echo the political proposals that had been made over the course of the last few decades. In this essay, he advocates governmental control of resource distribution, fewer working hours and a higher wage, and unemployment insurance and old age pensions. He also outlines the need for an oligarchy of intellectuals. In his view, power must be restricted to those who are sufficiently intelligent and educated. He frequently used the term "fascism" to describe this form of government, but, according to S. T. Joshi, it bears little resemblance to that ideology.
Lovecraft had varied views on the political figures of his day. He was an ardent supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He saw that Roosevelt was trying to steer a middle course between the conservatives and the revolutionaries, which he approved of. While he thought that Roosevelt should have been enacting more progressive policies, he came to the conclusion that the New Deal was the only realistic option for reform. He thought that voting for his opponents on the political left would be a wasted effort. Internationally, like many Americans, he initially expressed support for Adolf Hitler. More specifically, he thought that Hitler would preserve German culture. However, he thought that Hitler's racial policies should be based on culture rather than descent. There is evidence that, at the end of his life, Lovecraft began to oppose Hitler. According to Harry K. Brobst, Lovecraft's downstairs neighbor went to Germany and witnessed Jews being beaten. Lovecraft and his aunt were angered by this. His discussions of Hitler drop off after this point.
Atheism
Lovecraft was an atheist. His viewpoints on religion are outlined in his 1922 essay "A Confession of Unfaith". In this essay, he describes his shift away from the Protestantism of his parents to the atheism of his adulthood. Lovecraft was raised by a conservative Protestant family. He was introduced to the Bible and the mythos of Saint Nicholas when he was two. He passively accepted both of them. Over the course of the next few years, he was introduced to Grimms' Fairy Tales and One Thousand and One Nights, favoring the latter. In response, Lovecraft took on the identity of "Abdul Alhazred", a name he would later use for the author of the Necronomicon. According to this account, his first moment of skepticism occurred before his fifth birthday, when he questioned if God is a myth after learning that Santa Claus is not real. In 1896, he was introduced to Greco-Roman myths and became "a genuine pagan".
This came to an end in 1902, when Lovecraft was introduced to space. He later described this event as the most poignant in his life. In response to this discovery, Lovecraft took to studying astronomy and described his observations in the local newspaper. Before his thirteenth birthday, he had become convinced of humanity's impermanence. By the time he was seventeen, he had read detailed writings that agreed with his worldview. Lovecraft ceased writing positively about progress, instead developing his later cosmic philosophy. Despite his interests in science, he had an aversion to realistic literature, so he became interested in fantastical fiction. Lovecraft became pessimistic when he entered amateur journalism in 1914. The Great War seemed to confirm his viewpoints. He began to despise philosophical idealism. Lovecraft took to discussing and debating his pessimism with his peers, which allowed him to solidify his philosophy. His readings of Friedrich Nietzsche and H. L. Mencken, among other pessimistic writers, furthered this development. At the end of his essay, Lovecraft states that all he desired was oblivion. He was willing to cast aside any illusion that he may still have held.
Race
Race is the most controversial aspect of Lovecraft's legacy, expressed in many disparaging remarks against non-Anglo-Saxon races and cultures in his works. As he grew older, his original racial worldview became a classism or elitism which regarded the superior race to include all those self-ennobled through high culture. From the start, Lovecraft did not hold all white people in uniform high regard, but rather esteemed English people and those of English descent. In his early published essays, private letters and personal utterances, he argued for a strong color line to preserve race and culture. His arguments were supported using disparagements of various races in his journalism and letters, and allegorically in his fictional works that depict non-human races. This is evident in his portrayal of the Deep Ones in The Shadow over Innsmouth. Their interbreeding with humanity is framed as being a type of miscegenation that corrupts both the town of Innsmouth and the protagonist.
Initially, Lovecraft showed sympathy to minorities who adopted Western culture, even to the extent of marrying a Jewish woman he viewed as being "well assimilated". By the 1930s, Lovecraft's views on ethnicity and race had moderated. He supported ethnicities' preserving their native cultures; for example, he thought that "a real friend of civilisation wishes merely to make the Germans more German, the French more French, the Spaniards more Spanish, & so on". This represented a shift from his previous support for cultural assimilation. However, this did not represent a complete elimination of his racial prejudices. Scholars have argued that Lovecraft's racial attitudes were common in the society of his day, particularly in the New England in which he grew up.
Influences
His interest in weird fiction began in his childhood when his grandfather, who preferred Gothic stories, would tell him stories of his own design. Lovecraft's childhood home on Angell Street had a large library that contained classical literature, scientific works, and early weird fiction. At the age of five, Lovecraft enjoyed reading One Thousand and One Nights, and was reading Nathaniel Hawthorne a year later. He was also influenced by the travel literature of John Mandeville and Marco Polo. This led to his discovery of gaps in then-contemporary science, which prevented Lovecraft from committing suicide in response to the death of his grandfather and his family's declining financial situation during his adolescence. These travelogues may have also had an influence on how Lovecraft's later works describe their characters and locations. For example, there is a resemblance between the powers of the Tibetan enchanters in The Travels of Marco Polo and the powers unleashed on Sentinel Hill in "The Dunwich Horror".
One of Lovecraft's most significant literary influences was Edgar Allan Poe, whom he described as his "God of Fiction". Poe's fiction was introduced to Lovecraft when the latter was eight years old. His earlier works were significantly influenced by Poe's prose and writing style. He also made extensive use of Poe's unity of effect in his fiction. Furthermore, At the Mountains of Madness directly quotes Poe and was influenced by The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. One of the main themes of the two stories is to discuss the unreliable nature of language as a method of expressing meaning. In 1919, Lovecraft's discovery of the stories of Lord Dunsany moved his writing in a new direction, resulting in a series of fantasies. Throughout his life, Lovecraft referred to Dunsany as the author who had the greatest impact on his literary career. The initial result of this influence was the Dream Cycle, a series of fantasies that originally take place in prehistory, but later shift to a dreamworld setting. By 1930, Lovecraft decided that he would no longer write Dunsianian fantasies, arguing that the style did not come naturally to him. Additionally, he also read and cited Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood as influences in the 1920s.
Aside from horror authors, Lovecraft was significantly influenced by the Decadents, the Puritans, and the Aesthetic Movement. In "H. P. Lovecraft: New England Decadent", Barton Levi St. Armand, a professor emeritus of English and American studies at Brown University, has argued that these three influences combined to define Lovecraft as a writer. He traces this influence to both Lovecraft's stories and letters, noting that he actively cultivated the image of a New England gentleman in his letters. Meanwhile, his influence from the Decadents and the Aesthetic Movement stems from his readings of Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft's aesthetic worldview and fixation on decline stems from these readings. The idea of cosmic decline is described as having been Lovecraft's response to both the Aesthetic Movement and the 19th century Decadents. St. Armand describes it as being a combination of non-theological Puritan thought and the Decadent worldview. This is used as a division in his stories, particularly in "The Horror at Red Hook", "Pickman's Model", and "The Music of Erich Zann". The division between Puritanism and Decadence, St. Armand argues, represents a polarization between an artificial paradise and oneiriscopic visions of different worlds.
A non-literary inspiration came from then-contemporary scientific advances in biology, astronomy, geology, and physics. Lovecraft's study of science contributed to his view of the human race as insignificant, powerless, and doomed in a materialistic and mechanistic universe. Lovecraft was a keen amateur astronomer from his youth, often visiting the Ladd Observatory in Providence, and penning numerous astronomical articles for his personal journal and local newspapers. Lovecraft's materialist views led him to espouse his philosophical views through his fiction; these philosophical views came to be called cosmicism. Cosmicism took on a more pessimistic tone with his creation of what is now known as the Cthulhu Mythos; a fictional universe that contains alien deities and horrors. The term "Cthulhu Mythos" was likely coined by later writers after Lovecraft's death. In his letters, Lovecraft jokingly called his fictional mythology "Yog-Sothothery".
Dreams had a major role in Lovecraft's literary career. In 1991, as a result of his rising place in American literature, it was popularly thought that Lovecraft extensively transcribed his dreams when writing fiction. However, the majority of his stories are not transcribed dreams. Instead, many of them are directly influenced by dreams and dreamlike phenomena. In his letters, Lovecraft frequently compared his characters to dreamers. They are described as being as helpless as a real dreamer who is experiencing a nightmare. His stories also have dreamlike qualities. The Randolph Carter stories deconstruct the division between dreams and reality. The dreamlands in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath are a shared dreamworld that can be accessed by a sensitive dreamer. Meanwhile, in "The Silver Key", Lovecraft mentions the concept of "inward dreams", which implies the existence of outward dreams. Burleson compares this deconstruction to Carl Jung's argument that dreams are the source of archetypal myths. Lovecraft's way of writing fiction required both a level of realism and dreamlike elements. Citing Jung, Burleson argues that a writer may create realism by being inspired by dreams.
Themes
Cosmicism
The central theme of Lovecraft's corpus is cosmicism. Cosmicism is a literary philosophy that argues that humanity is an insignificant force in the universe. Despite appearing pessimistic, Lovecraft thought of himself being as being a cosmic indifferentist, which is expressed in his fiction. In it, human beings are often subject to powerful beings and other cosmic forces, but these forces are not so much malevolent as they are indifferent toward humanity. He believed in a meaningless, mechanical, and uncaring universe that human beings could never fully understand. There is no allowance for beliefs that could not be supported scientifically. Lovecraft first articulated this philosophy in 1921, but he did not fully incorporate it into his fiction until five years later. "Dagon", "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", and "The Temple" contain early depictions of this concept, but the majority of his early tales do not analyze the concept. "Nyarlathotep" interprets the collapse of human civilization as being a corollary to the collapse of the universe. "The Call of Cthulhu" represents an intensification of this theme. In it, Lovecraft introduces the idea of alien influences on humanity, which would come to dominate all subsequent works. In these works, Lovecraft expresses cosmicism through the usage of confirmation rather than revelation. Lovecraftian protagonists do not learn that they are insignificant. Instead, they already know it and have it confirmed to them through an event.
Decline of civilization
For much of his life, Lovecraft was fixated on the concepts of decline and decadence. More specifically, he thought that the West was in a state of terminal decline. Starting in the 1920s, Lovecraft became familiar with the work of the German conservative-revolutionary theorist Oswald Spengler, whose pessimistic thesis of the decadence of the modern West formed a crucial element in Lovecraft's overall anti-modern worldview. Spenglerian imagery of cyclical decay is a central theme in At the Mountains of Madness. S. T. Joshi, in H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West, places Spengler at the center of his discussion of Lovecraft's political and philosophical ideas. According to him, the idea of decline is the single idea that permeates and connects his personal philosophy. The main Spenglerian influence on Lovecraft would be his view that politics, economics, science, and art are all interdependent aspects of civilization. This realization led him to shed his personal ignorance of then-current political and economic developments after 1927. Lovecraft had developed his idea of Western decline independently, but Spengler gave it a clear framework.
Science
Lovecraft shifted supernatural horror away from its previous focus on human issues to a focus on cosmic ones. In this way, he merged the elements of supernatural fiction that he deemed to be scientifically viable with science fiction. This merge required an understanding of both supernatural horror and then-contemporary science. Lovecraft used this combined knowledge to create stories that extensively reference trends in scientific development. Beginning with "The Shunned House", Lovecraft increasingly incorporated elements of both Einsteinian science and his own personal materialism into his stories. This intensified with the writing of "The Call of Cthulhu", where he depicted alien influences on humanity. This trend would continue throughout the remainder of his literary career. "The Colour Out of Space" represents what scholars have called the peak of this trend. It portrays an alien lifeform whose otherness prevents it from being defined by then-contemporary science.
Another part of this effort was the repeated usage of mathematics in an effort to make his creatures and settings appear more alien. Tom Hull, a mathematician, regards this as enhancing his ability to invoke a sense of otherness and fear. He attributes this use of mathematics to Lovecraft's childhood interest in astronomy and his adulthood awareness of non-Euclidean geometry. Another reason for his use of mathematics was his reaction to the scientific developments of his day. These developments convinced him that humanity's primary means of understanding the world was no longer trustable. Lovecraft's usage of mathematics in his fiction serves to convert otherwise supernatural elements into things that have in-universe scientific explanations. "The Dreams in the Witch House" and The Shadow Out of Time both have elements of this. The former uses a witch and her familiar, while the latter uses the idea of mind transference. These elements are explained using scientific theories that were prevalent during Lovecraft's lifetime.
Lovecraft Country
Setting plays a major role in Lovecraft's fiction. Lovecraft Country, a fictionalized version of New England, serves as the central hub for his mythos. It represents the history, culture, and folklore of the region, as interpreted by Lovecraft. These attributes are exaggerated and altered to provide a suitable setting for his stories. The names of the locations in the region were directly influenced by the names of real locations in the region, which was done to increase their realism. Lovecraft's stories use their connections with New England to imbue themselves with the ability to instil fear. Lovecraft was primarily inspired by the cities and towns in Massachusetts. However, the specific location of Lovecraft Country is variable, as it moved according to Lovecraft's literary needs. Starting with areas that he thought were evocative, Lovecraft redefined and exaggerated them under fictional names. For example, Lovecraft based Arkham on the town of Oakham and expanded it to include a nearby landmark. Its location was moved, as Lovecraft decided that it would have been destroyed by the recently-built Quabbin Reservoir. This is alluded to in "The Colour Out of Space", as the "blasted heath" is submerged by the creation of a fictionalized version of the reservoir. Similarly, Lovecraft's other towns were based on other locations in Massachusetts. Innsmouth was based on Newburyport, and Dunwich was based on Greenwich. The vague locations of these towns also played into Lovecraft's desire to create a mood in his stories. In his view, a mood can only be evoked through reading.
Critical reception
Literary
Early efforts to revise an established literary view of Lovecraft as an author of 'pulp' were resisted by some eminent critics; in 1945, Edmund Wilson sneered: "the only real horror in most of these fictions is the horror of bad taste and bad art". However, Wilson praised Lovecraft's ability to write about his chosen field; he described him as having written about it "with much intelligence". According to L. Sprague de Camp, Wilson later improved his opinion of Lovecraft, citing a report of David Chavchavadze that Wilson had included a Lovecraftian reference in Little Blue Light: A Play in Three Acts. After Chavchavadze met with him to discuss this, Wilson revealed that he had been reading a copy of Lovecraft's correspondence. Two years before Wilson's critique, Lovecraft's works were reviewed by Winfield Townley Scott, the literary editor of The Providence Journal. He argued that Lovecraft was one of the most significant Rhode Island authors and that it was regrettable that he had received little attention from mainstream critics at the time. Mystery and Adventure columnist Will Cuppy of the New York Herald Tribune recommended to readers a volume of Lovecraft's stories in 1944, asserting that "the literature of horror and macabre fantasy belongs with mystery in its broader sense".
By 1957, Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction said that Lovecraft was comparable to Robert E. Howard, stating that "they appear more prolific than ever," noting L. Sprague de Camp, Björn Nyberg, and August Derleth's usage of their creations. Gale also said that "Lovecraft at his best could build a mood of horror unsurpassed; at his worst, he was laughable." In 1962, Colin Wilson, in his survey of anti-realist trends in fiction The Strength to Dream, cited Lovecraft as one of the pioneers of the "assault on rationality" and included him with M. R. James, H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, J. R. R. Tolkien and others as one of the builders of mythicised realities contending against what he considered the failing project of literary realism. Subsequently, Lovecraft began to acquire the status of a cult writer in the counterculture of the 1960s, and reprints of his work proliferated.
Michael Dirda, a reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement, has described Lovecraft as being a "visionary" who is "rightly regarded as second only to Edgar Allan Poe in the annals of American supernatural literature". According to him, Lovecraft's works prove that mankind cannot bear the weight of reality, as the true nature of reality cannot be understood by either science or history. In addition, Dirda praises Lovecraft's ability to create an uncanny atmosphere. This atmosphere is created through the feeling of wrongness that pervades the objects, places, and people in Lovecraft's works. He also comments favorably on Lovecraft's correspondence, and compares him to Horace Walpole. Particular attention is given to his correspondence with August Derleth and Robert E. Howard. The Derleth letters are called "delightful", while the Howard letters are described as being an ideological debate. Overall, Dirda believes that Lovecraft's letters are equal to, or better than, his fictional output.Los Angeles Review of Books reviewer Nick Mamatas has stated that Lovecraft was a particularly difficult author, rather than a bad one. He described Lovecraft as being "perfectly capable" in the fields of story logic, pacing, innovation, and generating quotable phrases. However, Lovecraft's difficulty made him ill-suited to the pulps; he was unable to compete with the popular recurring protagonists and damsel-in-distress stories. Furthermore, he compared a paragraph from The Shadow Out of Time to a paragraph from the introduction to The Economic Consequences of the Peace. In Mamatas' view, Lovecraft's quality is obscured by his difficulty, and his skill is what has allowed his following to outlive the followings of other then-prominent authors, such as Seabury Quinn and Kenneth Patchen.
In 2005, the Library of America published a volume of Lovecraft's works. This volume was reviewed by many publications, including The New York Times Book Review and The Wall Street Journal, and sold 25,000 copies within a month of release. The overall critical reception of the volume was mixed. Several scholars, including S. T. Joshi and Alison Sperling, have said that this confirms H. P. Lovecraft's place in the western canon. The editors of The Age of Lovecraft, Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, attributed the rise of mainstream popular and academic interest in Lovecraft to this volume, along with the Penguin Classics volumes and the Modern Library edition of At the Mountains of Madness. These volumes led to a proliferation of other volumes containing Lovecraft's works. According to the two authors, these volumes are part of a trend in Lovecraft's popular and academic reception: increased attention by one audience causes the other to also become more interested. Lovecraft's success is, in part, the result of his success.
Lovecraft's style has often been subject to criticism, but scholars such as S. T. Joshi have argued that Lovecraft consciously utilized a variety of literary devices to form a unique style of his own—these include prose-poetic rhythm, stream of consciousness, alliteration, and conscious archaism. According to Joyce Carol Oates, Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe have exerted a significant influence on later writers in the horror genre. Horror author Stephen King called Lovecraft "the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale". King stated in his semi-autobiographical non-fiction book Danse Macabre that Lovecraft was responsible for his own fascination with horror and the macabre and was the largest influence on his writing.
Philosophical
H. P. Lovecraft's writings have influenced the speculative realist philosophical movement during the early-twentieth-century. The four founders of the movement, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux, have cited Lovecraft as an inspiration for their worldviews. Graham Harman wrote a monograph, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy, about Lovecraft and philosophy. In it, he argues that Lovecraft was a "productionist" author. He describes Lovecraft as having been an author who was uniquely obsessed with gaps in human knowledge. He goes further and asserts that Lovecraft's personal philosophy as being in opposition to both idealism and David Hume. In his view, Lovecraft resembles Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, and Edmund Husserl in his division of objects into different parts that do not exhaust the potential meanings of the whole. The anti-idealism of Lovecraft is represented through his commentary on the inability of language to describe his horrors. Harman also credits Lovecraft with inspiring parts of his own articulation of object-oriented ontology. According to Lovecraft scholar Alison Sperling, this philosophical interpretation of Lovecraft's fiction has caused other philosophers in Harmon's tradition to write about Lovecraft. These philosophers seek to remove human perception and human life from the foundations of ethics. These scholars have used Lovecraft's works as the central example of their worldview. They base this usage in Lovecraft's arguments against anthropocentrism and the ability of the human mind to truly understand the universe. They have also played a role in Lovecraft's improving literary reputation by focusing on his interpretation of ontology, which gives him a central position in Anthropocene studies.
Legacy
Lovecraft was relatively unknown during his lifetime. While his stories appeared in prominent pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, not many people knew his name. He did, however, correspond regularly with other contemporary writers such as Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth, who became his friends, even though he never met them in person. This group became known as the "Lovecraft Circle", since their writings freely borrowed Lovecraft's motifs, with his encouragement. He borrowed from them as well. For example, he made use of Clark Ashton Smith's Tsathoggua in The Mound.
After Lovecraft's death, the Lovecraft Circle carried on. August Derleth founded Arkham House with Donald Wandrei to preserve Lovecraft's works and keep them in print. He added to and expanded on Lovecraft's vision, not without controversy. While Lovecraft considered his pantheon of alien gods a mere plot device, Derleth created an entire cosmology, complete with a war between the good Elder Gods and the evil Outer Gods, such as Cthulhu and his ilk. The forces of good were supposed to have won, locking Cthulhu and others beneath the earth, the ocean, and elsewhere. Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos stories went on to associate different gods with the traditional four elements of fire, air, earth and water, which did not line up with Lovecraft's original vision of his mythos. However, Derleth's ownership of Arkham House gave him a position of authority in Lovecraftiana that would not dissipate until his death, and through the efforts of Lovecraft scholars in the 1970s.
Lovecraft's works have influenced many writers and other creators. Stephen King has cited Lovecraft as a major influence on his works. As a child in the 1960s, he came across a volume of Lovecraft's works which inspired him to write his fiction. He goes on to argue that all works in the horror genre that were written after Lovecraft were influenced by him. In the field of comics, Alan Moore has also described Lovecraft as having been a formative influence on his graphic novels. Film director John Carpenter's films include direct references and quotations of Lovecraft's fiction, in addition to their use of a Lovecraftian aesthetic and themes. Guillermo del Toro has been similarly influenced by Lovecraft's corpus.
The first World Fantasy Awards were held in Providence in 1975. The theme was "The Lovecraft Circle". Until 2015, winners were presented with an elongated bust of Lovecraft that was designed by cartoonist Gahan Wilson, nicknamed the "Howard". In November 2015 it was announced that the World Fantasy Award trophy would no longer be modeled on H. P. Lovecraft in response to the author's views on race. After the World Fantasy Award dropped their connection to Lovecraft, The Atlantic commented that "In the end, Lovecraft still wins—people who've never read a page of his work will still know who Cthulhu is for years to come, and his legacy lives on in the work of Stephen King, Guillermo del Toro, and Neil Gaiman."
In 2016, Lovecraft was inducted into the Museum of Pop Culture's Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Three years later, Lovecraft and the other mythos authors were posthumously awarded the 1945 Retro-Hugo Award for Best Series for their contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos.
Lovecraft studies
Starting in the early 1970s, a body of scholarly work began to emerge around Lovecraft's life and works. Referred to as Lovecraft studies, its proponents sought to establish Lovecraft as a significant author in the American literary canon. This can be traced to Derleth's preservation and dissemination of Lovecraft's fiction, non-fiction, and letters through Arkham House. Joshi credits the development of the field to this process. However, it was marred by low quality editions and misinterpretations of Lovecraft's worldview. After Derleth's death in 1971, the scholarship entered a new phase. There was a push to create a book-length biography of Lovecraft. L. Sprague de Camp, a science fiction scholar, wrote the first major one in 1975. This biography was criticized by early Lovecraft scholars for its lack of scholarly merit and its lack of sympathy for its subject. Despite this, it played a significant role in Lovecraft's literary rise. It exposed Lovecraft to the mainstream of American literary criticism. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a division in the field between the "Derlethian traditionalists" who wished to interpret Lovecraft through the lens of fantasy literature and the newer scholars who wished to place greater attention on the entirety of his corpus.
The 1980s and 1990s saw a further proliferation of the field. The 1990 H. P. Lovecraft Centennial Conference and the republishing of older essays in An Epicure in the Terrible represented the publishing of many basic studies that would be used as a base for then-future studies. The 1990 centennial also saw the installation of the "H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Plaque" in a garden adjoining John Hay Library, that features a portrait by silhouettist E. J. Perry. Following this, in 1996, S. T. Joshi wrote his own biography of Lovecraft. This biography was met with positive reviews and became the main biography in the field. It has since been superseded by his expanded edition of the book, I am Providence in 2010.
Lovecraft's improving literary reputation has caused his works to receive increased attention by both classics publishers and scholarly fans. His works have been published by several different series of literary classics. Penguin Classics published three volumes of Lovecraft's works between 1999 and 2004. These volumes were edited by S. T. Joshi. Barnes & Noble would publish their own volume of Lovecraft's complete fiction in 2008. The Library of America published a volume of Lovecraft's works in 2005. The publishing of these volumes represented a reversal of the traditional judgment that Lovecraft was not part of the Western canon. Meanwhile, the biannual NecronomiCon Providence convention was first held in 2013. Its purpose is to serve as a fan and scholarly convention that discusses both Lovecraft and the wider field of weird fiction. It is organized by the Lovecraft Arts and Sciences organization and is held on the weekend of Lovecraft's birth. That July, the Providence City Council designated the "H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Square" and installed a commemorative sign at the intersection of Angell and Prospect streets, near the author's former residences.
Music
Lovecraft's fictional Mythos has influenced a number of musicians, particularly in rock and heavy metal music. This began in the 1960s with the formation of the psychedelic rock band H. P. Lovecraft, who released the albums H. P. Lovecraft and H. P. Lovecraft II in 1967 and 1968 respectively. They broke up afterwards, but later songs were released. This included "The White Ship" and "At the Mountains of Madness", both titled after Lovecraft stories. Extreme metal has also been influenced by Lovecraft. This has expressed itself in both the names of bands and the contents of their albums. This began in 1970 with the release of Black Sabbath's first album, Black Sabbath, which contained a song titled Behind the Wall of Sleep, deriving its name from the 1919 story "Beyond the Wall of Sleep." Heavy metal band Metallica was also inspired by Lovecraft. They recorded a song inspired by "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Call of Ktulu", and a song based on The Shadow over Innsmouth titled "The Thing That Should Not Be". These songs contain direct quotations of Lovecraft's works. Joseph Norman, a speculative scholar, has argued that there are similarities between the music described in Lovecraft's fiction and the aesthetics and atmosphere of Black Metal. He argues that this is evident through the "animalistic" qualities of Black metal vocals. The usage of occult elements is also cited as a thematic commonality. In terms of atmosphere, he asserts that both Lovecraft's works and extreme metal place heavy focus on creating a strong negative mood.
Games
Lovecraft has also influenced gaming, despite having personally disliked games during his lifetime. Chaosium's tabletop role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, released in 1981 and currently in its seventh major edition, was one of the first games to draw heavily from Lovecraft. It includes a Lovecraft-inspired insanity mechanic, which allowed for player characters to go insane from contact with cosmic horrors. This mechanic would go on to make appearance in subsequent tabletop and video games. 1987 saw the release of another Lovecraftian board game, Arkham Horror, which was published by Fantasy Flight Games. Though few subsequent Lovecraftian board games were released annually from 1987 to 2014, the years after 2014 saw a rapid increase in the number of Lovecraftian board games. According to Christina Silva, this revival may have been influenced by the entry of Lovecraft's work into the public domain and a revival of interest in board games. Few video games are direct adaptations of Lovecraft's works, but many video games have been inspired or heavily influenced by Lovecraft. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, a Lovecraftian first-person video game, was released in 2005. It is loose adaptation of The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Shadow Out of Time, and "The Thing on the Doorstep" that uses noir themes. These adaptations focus more on Lovecraft's monsters and gamification than they do on his themes, which represents a break from Lovecraft's core theme of human insignificance.
Religion and occultism
Several contemporary religions have been influenced by Lovecraft's works. Kenneth Grant, the founder of the Typhonian Order, incorporated Lovecraft's Mythos into his ritual and occult system. Grant combined his interest in Lovecraft's fiction with his adherence to Aleister Crowley's Thelema. The Typhonian Order considers Lovecraftian entities to be symbols through which people may interact with something inhuman. Grant also argued that Crowley himself was influenced by Lovecraft's writings, particularly in the naming of characters in The Book of the Law. Similarly, The Satanic Rituals, co-written by Anton LaVey and Michael A. Aquino, includes the "Ceremony of the Nine Angles", which is a ritual that was influenced by the descriptions in "The Dreams in the Witch House". It contains invocations of several of Lovecraft's fictional gods.
There have been several books that have claimed to be an authentic edition of Lovecraft's Necronomicon. The Simon Necronomicon is one such example. It was written by an unknown figure who identified themselves as "Simon". Peter Levenda, an occult author who has written about the Necronomicon, claims that he and "Simon" came across a hidden Greek translation of the grimoire while looking through a collection of antiquities at a New York bookstore during the 1960s or 1970s. This book was claimed to have borne the seal of the Necronomicon. Levenda went on to claim that Lovecraft had access to this purported scroll. A textual analysis has determined that the contents of this book were derived from multiple documents that discuss Mesopotamian myth and magic. The finding of a magical text by monks is also a common theme in the history of grimoires. It has been suggested that Lavenda is the true author of the Simon Necronomicon.
Correspondence
Although Lovecraft is known mostly for his works of weird fiction, the bulk of his writing consists of voluminous letters about a variety of topics, from weird fiction and art criticism to politics and history. Lovecraft biographers L. Sprague de Camp and S. T. Joshi have estimated that Lovecraft wrote 100,000 letters in his lifetime, a fifth of which are believed to survive. S. T. Joshi suggested in 1996 that it would have been impossible to publish the entirety of Lovecraft's letters due to their length and the sheer number of them. These letters were directed at fellow writers and members of the amateur press. His involvement in the latter was what caused him to begin writing them. According to Joshi, the most important sets of letters were those written to Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith, and James F. Morton. He attributes this importance to the contents of these letters. With Long, Lovecraft argued in support and in opposition to many of Long's viewpoints. The letters to Clark Ashton Smith are characterized by their focus on weird fiction. Lovecraft and Morton debated many scholarly subjects in their letters, resulting in what Joshi has called the "single greatest correspondence Lovecraft ever wrote."
Copyright and other legal issues
Despite several claims to the contrary, there is currently no evidence that any company or individual owns the copyright to any of Lovecraft's works, and it is generally accepted that it has passed into the public domain. Lovecraft had specified that R. H. Barlow would serve as the executor of his literary estate, but these instructions were not incorporated into his will. Nevertheless, his surviving aunt carried out his expressed wishes, and Barlow was given control of Lovecraft's literary estate upon his death. Barlow deposited the bulk of the papers, including the voluminous correspondence, in the John Hay Library, and attempted to organize and maintain Lovecraft's other writings. Lovecraft protégé August Derleth, an older and more established writer than Barlow, vied for control of the literary estate. He and Donald Wandrei, a fellow protégé and co-owner of Arkham House, falsely claimed that Derleth was the true literary executor. Barlow capitulated, and later committed suicide in 1951. This gave Derleth and Wandrei complete control over Lovecraft's corpus.
On October 9, 1947, Derleth purchased all rights to the stories that were published in Weird Tales. However, since April 1926 at the latest, Lovecraft had reserved all second printing rights to stories published in Weird Tales. Therefore, Weird Tales only owned the rights to at most six of Lovecraft's tales. If Derleth had legally obtained the copyrights to these tales, there is no evidence that they were renewed before the rights expired. Following Derleth's death in 1971, Donald Wandrei sued his estate to challenge Derleth's will, which stated that he only held the copyrights and royalties to Lovecraft's works that were published under both his and Derleth's names. Arkham House's lawyer, Forrest D. Hartmann, argued that the rights to Lovecraft's works were never renewed. Wandrei won the case, but Arkham House's actions regarding copyright have damaged their ability to claim ownership of them.
In H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, S. T. Joshi concludes that Derleth's claims are "almost certainly fictitious" and argues that most of Lovecraft's works that were published in the amateur press are likely in the public domain. The copyright for Lovecraft's works would have been inherited by the only surviving heir named in his 1912 will, his aunt Annie Gamwell. When she died in 1941, the copyrights passed to her remaining descendants, Ethel Phillips Morrish and Edna Lewis. They signed a document, sometimes referred to as the Morrish-Lewis gift, permitting Arkham House to republish Lovecraft's works while retaining their ownership of the copyrights. Searches of the Library of Congress have failed to find any evidence that these copyrights were renewed after the 28-year period, making it likely that these works are in the public domain. However, the Lovecraft literary estate, reconstituted in 1998 under Robert C. Harrall, has claimed that they own the rights. Joshi has withdrawn his support for his conclusion, and now supports the estate's copyright claims.
Bibliography
See also
:Category:H. P. Lovecraft scholars
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
The H. P. Lovecraft Archive
The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society
The Lovecraft Arts & Sciences Council, a non-profit educational organization
H. P. Lovecraft at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction''
Journals
Lovecraft Annual
Lovecraft Studies
Crypt of Cthulhu
Library collections
H. P. Lovecraft Collection in the Special Collections at the John Hay Library (Brown University)
H. P. Lovecraft Collection in the Distinctive Collections of Falvey Memorial Library (Villanova University)
Online editions
1890 births
1937 deaths
20th-century American essayists
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American letter writers
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American people of English descent
American science fiction writers
American social commentators
American speculative fiction critics
Burials at Swan Point Cemetery
Critics of religions
Cthulhu Mythos writers
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Deaths from colorectal cancer
Deaths from small intestine cancer
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Literary circles
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Writers from Providence, Rhode Island
Writers of Gothic fiction | false | [
"Natsume Sōseki wrote many poems in Classical Chinese (kanshi) during his career. He began writing Chinese in school, and continued throughout his life, but became especially prolific just before his death. His kanshi are well-regarded critically – in fact considered the best of the Meiji period – but are not as popular as his novels.\n\nBeginnings \nNatsume Sōseki first took up Chinese studies, specifically the composition of kanshi (poetry in Classical Chinese), in school.\n\nLater works \nSōseki considered himself an amateur kanshi poet, and ignored the practices of the professional poets of his day. He included some Chinese poetry in his early novel Kusamakura, and he had continued to compose them throughout his life, but his most significant works come from the last months of his life, during the writing of Light and Darkness. He also composed haiku during this period, but he is considered a minor haiku poet while his kanshi have been widely praised. While writing Light and Darkness, he wrote the novel in the morning and kanshi in the afternoon, supposedly to keep himself oriented during the \"vulgarizing\" experience of writing the novel.\n\nHis Chinese verse often did not meet the standard tonal patterns of classical Chinese verse, and his rhyming were sometimes wrong.\n\nReception \nSōseki's Chinese verse has been widely praised. Historically, Chinese poetry written by Japanese had been an exercise in following the rules of Chinese prosody but lacked poetic grace associated with the best poets from China; Sōseki's poems, on the other hand, are admired even by Chinese critics who dismiss traditional Japanese kanshi.\n\nLiterary critic and historian Donald Keene called him \"[probably] [t]he best kanshi poet of the Meiji era\". He also noted that while Sōseki's kanshi are not as popular in contemporary Japan as his novels, this probably has more to do with the orientation of Japanese society since Sōseki's death in 1916 than with the actual literary value of the poems and novels in relation to each other.\n\nReferences\n\nWorks cited\n\nFurther reading\n\nExternal links \n \n\nKanshi\nKanshi (poetry)",
"Graphism refers to the \"expression of thought in material symbols\". Graphism began some 30,000 years BC, not as a photographic representation of reality but as an abstraction that was geared toward magical-religious matters. Early graphism then was a form of writing that constitutes a 'symbolic transposition, not copying of reality'.\n\nThe birth of graphism\nThe earliest traces of graphism date back to 30,000 years BC at the end of the Mousterian period and the Chatelperronian period toward 35,000 BC. While it can be claimed that language merely represents a logical development of the vocal signals of the animal world, nothing comparable to the writing and reading of symbols existed before the dawn of homo sapiens. While motor function determines expression in the techniques and language of all anthropoids, reflection determines graphism in the figurative language of the most recent anthropoids.\n\nIt has been hypothesized that graphism first appeared in the form of tight curves or series of lines engraved in bone or stone. However, there has been no substantial proof to support this hypothesis, with the only comparison being the Australian tjurunga, stone or wood tablets engraved with abstract designs (spirals, straight lines, and clusters of dots) that represented objects of religious significance. The first forms of graphism that allow one to hazardly identify an animal, did not appear until around 30,000 B.C. Prehistoric art records are very numerous, and statistical processing has allowed us to unravel the general meaning of what they represented. The earliest known paintings do not represent a hunt or a family scene, but are graphic building blocks without any associated description. All these early forms therefore suggests that figurative art was directly linked with language and was, in the broadest sense, much closer to writing than to what we understand by a work of art. It was symbolic transposition, not copying of reality, that is to say that graphism did not begin start by reproducing reality in a slavishly photographic manner, but with abstraction.\n\nThe discovery of prehistoric art in the late 19th century raised the issue of a \"naive\" state, an art by which humans supposedly represented what they saw as a result of an aesthetic triggering effect. It was soon realized near the beginning of the 20th century that this view was mistaken, and that magical-religious concerns were responsible for the figurative art of the Cenozoic Era, as indeed for almost all art except in a few rare \"hunting tallies\" etched on bone during the Paleolithic period.\n\nSee also \n Graphism thesis\n\nReferences\n\nWriting\nMousterian"
] |
[
"H. P. Lovecraft",
"Marriage and New York",
"Who was HP Lovecraft's wife?",
"Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924,",
"What was their relationship like?",
"Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship.",
"What activities was H.P. Lovecraft and his wife involved in within New York?",
"He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends",
"Did he do any writing during this period?",
"Edwin Baird accepted many otherworldly 'Dream Cycle' Lovecraft stories for the ailing publication, though they were heavily criticized by a section of the readership."
] | C_e055448352484e27a10b71b3309430f7_0 | Who was Edwin Baird? | 5 | Who was Edwin Baird? | H. P. Lovecraft | Lovecraft's aunts disapproved of this relationship with Sonia. Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924, and relocated to her Brooklyn apartment at 793 Flatbush Avenue; she thought he needed to get out of Providence in order to flourish and was willing to support him financially. Greene, who had been married before, later said Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship. She attributed Lovecraft's passive nature to a stultifying upbringing by his mother. Lovecraft's weight increased to 90 kg (200 lb) on his wife's home cooking. He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends who urged him to submit stories to Weird Tales; editor Edwin Baird accepted many otherworldly 'Dream Cycle' Lovecraft stories for the ailing publication, though they were heavily criticized by a section of the readership. Established informally some years before Lovecraft arrived in New York, the core Kalem Club members were boys' adventure novelist Henry Everett McNeil; the lawyer and anarchist writer James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.; and the poet Reinhardt Kleiner. On New Year's Day of 1925, Sonia moved to Cleveland for a job opportunity, and Lovecraft left Flatbush for a small first-floor apartment on 169 Clinton Street "at the edge of Red Hook"--a location which came to discomfort him greatly. Later that year the Kalem Club's four regular attendees were joined by Lovecraft along with his protege Frank Belknap Long, bookseller George Willard Kirk, and Lovecraft's close friend Samuel Loveman. Loveman was Jewish, but was unaware of Lovecraft's nativist attitudes. Conversely, it has been suggested that Lovecraft, who disliked mention of sexual matters, was unaware that Loveman and some of his other friends were homosexual. CANNOTANSWER | editor Edwin Baird | Howard Phillips Lovecraft (; August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of weird, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. Lovecraft is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England. After his father's institutionalization in 1893, he lived affluently until his family's wealth dissipated after the death of his grandfather. Lovecraft then lived with his mother, in reduced financial security, until her institutionalization in 1919. He began to write essays for the United Amateur Press Association and, in 1913, Lovecraft wrote a critical letter to a pulp magazine that ultimately led to his involvement in pulp fiction. He became active in the speculative fiction community and was published in several pulp magazines. Lovecraft moved to New York, marrying Sonia Greene in 1924, and later became the center of a wider group of authors known as the "Lovecraft Circle". They introduced him to Weird Tales, which would become his most prominent publisher. Lovecraft's time in New York took a toll on his mental state and financial conditions. He returned to Providence in 1926 and produced some of his most popular works, including "The Call of Cthulhu", At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, and The Shadow Out of Time. He would remain active as a writer until his death from intestinal cancer at the age of 46.
Lovecraft's literary corpus is based around the idea of cosmicism, which was simultaneously his personal philosophy and the main theme of his fiction. Cosmicism posits that humanity is an insignificant part of the cosmos, and could be swept away at any moment. He incorporated fantastic and science fiction elements into his stories, representing the perceived fragility of anthropocentrism. His works were largely set in a fictionalized version of New England. Civilizational decline also plays a major role in his works, as he believed that the West was in decline during his lifetime. Lovecraft's early political opinions were conservative and traditionalist; additionally, he held a number of racist views for much of his adult life. Following the Great Depression, Lovecraft became a democratic socialist, no longer believing a just aristocracy would make the world more fair.
Throughout his adult life, Lovecraft was never able to support himself from earnings as an author and editor. He was virtually unknown during his lifetime and was almost exclusively published in pulp magazines before his death. A scholarly revival of Lovecraft's work began in the 1970s, and he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors of supernatural horror fiction. Many direct adaptations and spiritual successors followed. Works inspired by Lovecraft, adaptations or original works, began to form the basis of the Cthulhu Mythos, which utilizes Lovecraft's characters, setting, and themes.
Biography
Early life and family tragedies
Lovecraft was born in his family home on August 20, 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the only child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft and Sarah Susan (née Phillips) Lovecraft. Susie's family was of substantial means at the time of their marriage, as her father, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, was involved in business ventures. In April 1893, after a psychotic episode in a Chicago hotel, Winfield was committed to Butler Hospital in Providence. His medical records state that he had been "doing and saying strange things at times" for a year before his commitment. The person who reported these symptoms is unknown. Winfield spent five years in Butler before dying in 1898. His death certificate listed the cause of death as general paresis, a term synonymous with late-stage syphilis. Throughout his life, Lovecraft maintained that his father fell into a paralytic state, due to insomnia and overwork, and remained that way until his death. It is not known whether Lovecraft was simply kept ignorant of his father's illness or whether his later statements were intentionally misleading.
After his father's institutionalization, Lovecraft resided in the family home with his mother, his maternal aunts Lillian and Annie, and his maternal grandparents Whipple and Robie. According to family friends, his mother, known as Susie, doted on the young Lovecraft excessively, pampering him and never letting him out of her sight. Lovecraft later recollected that his mother was "permanently stricken with grief" after his father's illness. Whipple became a father figure to Lovecraft in this time, Lovecraft noting that his grandfather became the "centre of my entire universe". Whipple, who often traveled to manage his business, maintained correspondence by letter with the young Lovecraft who, by the age of three, was already proficient at reading and writing.
He encouraged the young Lovecraft to have an appreciation of literature, especially classical literature and English poetry. In his old age, he helped raise the young H. P. Lovecraft and educated him not only in the classics, but also in original weird tales of "winged horrors" and "deep, low, moaning sounds" which he created for his grandchild's entertainment. The original sources of Phillips' weird tales are unidentified. Lovecraft himself guessed that they originated from Gothic novelists like Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, and Charles Maturin. It was during this period that Lovecraft was introduced to some of his earliest literary influences such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner illustrated by Gustave Doré, One Thousand and One Nights, Thomas Bulfinch's Age of Fable, and Ovid's Metamorphoses.
While there is no indication that Lovecraft was particularly close to his grandmother Robie, her death in 1896 had a profound effect on him. By his own account, it sent his family into "a gloom from which it never fully recovered". His mother and aunts wore black mourning dresses that "terrified" him. This is also time that Lovecraft, approximately five-and-a-half years old, started having nightmares that later would inform his fictional writings. Specifically, he began to have recurring nightmares of beings he referred to as "night-gaunts". He credited their appearance to the influence of Doré's illustrations, which would "whirl me through space at a sickening rate of speed, the while fretting & impelling me with their detestable tridents". Thirty years later, night-gaunts would appear in Lovecraft's fiction.
Lovecraft's earliest known literary works were written at the age of seven, and were poems restyling the Odyssey and other Greco-Roman mythological stories. Lovecraft would later write that during his childhood he was fixated on the Greco-Roman pantheon, and briefly accepted them as genuine expressions of divinity, foregoing his Christian upbringing. He recalled, at five years old, being told Santa Claus did not exist and retorted by asking why "God is not equally a myth?" At the age of eight, he took a keen interest in the sciences, particularly astronomy and chemistry. He also examined the anatomical books that were held in the family library, which taught him the specifics of human reproduction that were not yet explained to him. As a result, he found that it "virtually killed my interest in the subject".
In 1902, according to Lovecraft's later correspondence, astronomy became a guiding influence on his worldview. He began publishing the periodical Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy, using the hectograph printing method. Lovecraft went in and out of elementary school repeatedly, oftentimes with home tutors making up for the lost years, missing time due to health concerns that have not been determined. The written recollections of his peers described him as withdrawn but welcoming to those who shared his then-current fascination with astronomy, inviting them to look through his prized telescope.
Education and financial decline
By 1900, Whipple's various business concerns were suffering a downturn, which resulted in the slow reduction of his family's wealth. He was forced to let his family's hired servants go, leaving Lovecraft, Whipple, and Susie, being the only unmarried sister, alone in the family home. In the spring of 1904, Whipple's largest business venture suffered a catastrophic failure. Within months, he died at age 70 due to a stroke. After Whipple's death, Susie was unable to financially support the upkeep of the expansive family home on what remained of the Phillips' estate. Later that year, she was forced to move to a small duplex with her son.
Lovecraft called this time one of the darkest of his life, remarking in a 1934 letter that he saw no point in living anymore. Furthermore, he considered the possibility of committing suicide. His scientific curiosity and desire to know more about the world prevented him from doing so. In fall 1904, he entered high school. Much like his earlier school years, Lovecraft was periodically removed from school for long periods for what he termed "near breakdowns". He did say, though, that while having some conflicts with teachers, he enjoyed high school, becoming close with a small circle of friends. Lovecraft also performed well academically, excelling in particular at chemistry and physics. Aside from a pause in 1904, he also resumed publishing the Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy as well as starting the Scientific Gazette, which dealt mostly with chemistry. It was also during this period that Lovecraft produced the first of the fictional works that he would later be known for, namely "The Beast in the Cave" and "The Alchemist".
It was in 1908, prior to what would have been his high school graduation, that Lovecraft suffered another unidentified health crisis, though this instance was more severe than his prior illnesses. The exact circumstances and causes remain unknown. The only direct records are Lovecraft's own correspondence wherein he retrospectively described it variously as a "nervous collapse" and "a sort of breakdown", in one letter blaming it on the stress of high school despite his enjoying it. In another letter concerning the events of 1908, he notes, "I was and am prey to intense headaches, insomnia, and general nervous weakness which prevents my continuous application to any thing."
Though Lovecraft maintained that he was going to attend Brown University after high school, he never graduated and never attended school again. Whether Lovecraft suffered from a physical ailment, a mental one, or some combination thereof has never been determined. An account from a high school classmate described Lovecraft as exhibiting "terrible tics" and that at times "he'd be sitting in his seat and he'd suddenly up and jump". Harry Brobst, a psychology professor, examined the account and claimed that chorea minor was the probable cause of Lovecraft's childhood symptoms while noting that instances of chorea minor after adolescence are very rare. In his letters, Lovecraft acknowledged that he suffered from bouts of chorea as a child. Brobst further ventured that Lovecraft's 1908 breakdown was attributed to a "hysteroid seizure", a term that has become synonymous with atypical depression. In another letter concerning the events of 1908, Lovecraft stated that he "could hardly bear to see or speak to anyone, & liked to shut out the world by pulling down dark shades & using artificial light".
Earliest recognition
Few of Lovecraft and Susie's activities between late 1908 and 1913 were recorded. Lovecraft described the steady continuation of their financial decline highlighted by his uncle's failed business that cost Susie a large portion of their already dwindling wealth. One of Susie's friends, Clara Hess, recalled a visit during which Susie spoke continuously about Lovecraft being "so hideous that he hid from everyone and did not like to walk upon the streets where people could gaze on him". Despite Hess' protests to the contrary, Susie maintained this stance. For his part, Lovecraft said he found his mother to be "a positive marvel of consideration". A next-door neighbor later pointed out that what others in the neighborhood often assumed were loud, nocturnal quarrels between mother and son, were actually recitations of Shakespeare, an activity that seemed to delight mother and son.
During this period, Lovecraft revived his earlier scientific periodicals. He endeavored to commit himself to the study of organic chemistry, Susie buying the expensive glass chemistry assemblage he wanted. Lovecraft found his studies were stymied by the mathematics involved, which he found boring and would cause headaches that would incapacitate him for the remainder of the day. Lovecraft's first non-self-published poem appeared in a local newspaper in 1912. Called Providence in 2000 A.D., it envisioned a future where Americans of English descent were displaced by Irish, Italian, Portuguese, and Jewish immigrants. In this period he also wrote racist poetry, including "New-England Fallen" and "On the Creation of Niggers", but there is no indication that either were published during his lifetime.
In 1911, Lovecraft's letters to editors began appearing in pulp and weird-fiction magazines, most notably Argosy. A 1913 letter critical of Fred Jackson, one of Argosy'''s more prominent writers, started Lovecraft down a path that would define the remainder of his career as a writer. In the following letters, Lovecraft described Jackson's stories as being "trivial, effeminate, and, in places, coarse". Continuing, Lovecraft argued that Jackson's characters exhibit the "delicate passions and emotions proper to negroes and anthropoid apes". This sparked a nearly year-long feud in the magazine's letters section between the two writers and their respective supporters. Lovecraft's most prominent opponent was John Russell, who often replied in verse, and to whom Lovecraft felt compelled to reply because he respected Russell's writing skills. The most immediate effect of this feud was the recognition garnered from Edward F. Daas, then head editor of the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA). Daas invited Russell and Lovecraft to join the organization and both accepted, Lovecraft in April 1914.
Rejuvenation and tragedy
Lovecraft immersed himself in the world of amateur journalism for most of the following decade. During this period, he advocated for amateurism's superiority to commercialism. Lovecraft defined commercialism as writing for what he considered low-brow publications for pay. This was contrasted with his view of "professional publication", which was what he called writing what he considered respectable journals and publishers. He thought of amateur journalism as serving as practice for a professional career.
Lovecraft was appointed chairman of the Department of Public Criticism of the UAPA in late 1914. He used this position to advocate for what he saw as the superiority of archaic English language usage. Emblematic of the Anglophilic opinions he maintained throughout his life, he openly criticized other UAPA contributors for their "Americanisms" and "slang". Often, these criticisms were embedded in xenophobic and racist statements that the "national language" was being negatively changed by immigrants. In mid-1915, Lovecraft was elected vice-president of the UAPA. Two years later, he was elected president and appointed other board members who mostly shared his belief in the supremacy of British English over modern American English. Another significant event of this time was the beginning of World War I. Lovecraft published multiple criticisms of the American government and public's reluctance to join the war to protect England, which he viewed as America's ancestral homeland.
In 1916, Lovecraft published his first short story, "The Alchemist", in the main UAPA journal, which was a departure from his usual verse. Due to the encouragement of W. Paul Cook, another UAPA member and future lifelong friend, Lovecraft began writing and publishing more prose fiction. Soon afterwards, he wrote "The Tomb" and "Dagon". "The Tomb", by Lovecraft's own admission, was greatly influenced by the style and structure of Edgar Allan Poe's works. Meanwhile, "Dagon" is considered Lovecraft's first work that displays the concepts and themes that his writings would later become known for. Lovecraft published another short story, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" in 1919, which was his first science fiction story.
Lovecraft's term as president of the UAPA ended in 1918, and he returned to his former post as chairman of the Department of Public Criticism. In 1917, as Lovecraft related to Kleiner, Lovecraft made an aborted attempt to enlist in the United States Army. Though he passed the physical exam, he told Kleiner that his mother threatened to do anything, legal or otherwise, to prove that he was unfit for service. After his failed attempt to serve in World War I, he attempted to enroll in the Rhode Island National Guard, but his mother used her family connections to prevent it.
During the winter of 1918–1919, Susie, exhibiting the symptoms of a nervous breakdown, went to live with her elder sister, Lillian. The nature of Susie's illness is unclear, as her medical papers were later destroyed in a fire at Butler Hospital. Winfield Townley Scott, who was able to read the papers before the fire, described Susie as having suffered a psychological collapse. Neighbour and friend Clara Hess, interviewed in 1948, recalled instances of Susie describing "weird and fantastic creatures that rushed out from behind buildings and from corners at dark". In the same account, Hess described a time when they crossed paths in downtown Providence and Susie was unaware of where she was. In March 1919, she was committed to Butler Hospital, like her husband before her. Lovecraft's immediate reaction to Susie's commitment was visceral, writing to Kleiner that, "existence seems of little value", and that he wished "it might terminate". During Susie's time at Butler, Lovecraft periodically visited her and walked the large grounds with her.
Late 1919 saw Lovecraft become more outgoing. After a period of isolation, he began joining friends in trips to writer gatherings; the first being a talk in Boston presented by Lord Dunsany, whom Lovecraft had recently discovered and idolized. In early 1920, at an amateur writer convention, he met Frank Belknap Long, who would end up being Lovecraft's most influential and closest confidant for the remainder of his life. The influence of Dunsany is apparent in his 1919 output, which is part of what would be called Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, including "The White Ship" and "The Doom That Came to Sarnath". In early 1920, he wrote "The Cats of Ulthar" and "Celephaïs", which were also strongly influenced by Dunsany.
It was later in 1920 that Lovecraft began publishing the earliest Cthulhu Mythos stories. The Cthulhu Mythos, a term coined by later authors, encompasses Lovecraft's stories that share a commonality in the revelation of cosmic insignificance, initially realistic settings, and recurring entities and texts. The prose poem "Nyarlathotep" and the short story "The Crawling Chaos", in collaboration with Winifred Virginia Jackson, were written in late 1920. Following in early 1921 came "The Nameless City", the first story that falls definitively within the Cthulhu Mythos. In it is one of Lovecraft's most enduring phrases, a couplet recited by Abdul Alhazred; "That is not dead which can eternal lie; And with strange aeons even death may die." In the same year, he also wrote "The Outsider", which has become one of Lovecraft's most heavily analyzed, and differently interpreted, stories. It has been variously interpreted as being autobiographical, an allegory of the psyche, a parody of the afterlife, a commentary on humanity's place in the universe, and a critique of progress.
On May 24, 1921, Susie died in Butler Hospital, due to complications from an operation on her gall bladder five days earlier. Lovecraft's initial reaction, expressed in a letter written nine days after Susie's death, was a deep state of sadness that crippled him physically and emotionally. He again expressed a desire that his life might end. Lovecraft's later response was relief, as he had become able to live independently from his mother. His physical health also began to improve, although he was unaware of the exact cause. Despite Lovecraft's reaction, he continued to attend amateur journalist conventions. Lovecraft met his future wife, Sonia Greene, at one such convention in July.
Marriage and New York
Lovecraft's aunts disapproved of his relationship with Sonia. Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924, and relocated to her Brooklyn apartment at 793 Flatbush Avenue; she thought he needed to leave Providence to flourish and was willing to support him financially. Greene, who had been married before, later said Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship. She attributed Lovecraft's passive nature to a stultifying upbringing by his mother. Lovecraft's weight increased to on his wife's home cooking.
He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends who urged him to submit stories to Weird Tales. Its editor, Edwin Baird, accepted many of Lovecraft's stories for the ailing publication, including "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs", which was ghostwritten for Harry Houdini. Established informally some years before Lovecraft arrived in New York, the core Kalem Club members were boys' adventure novelist Henry Everett McNeil, the lawyer and anarchist writer James Ferdinand Morton Jr., and the poet Reinhardt Kleiner.
On January 1, 1925, Sonia moved from Flatbush to Cleveland in response to a job opportunity, and Lovecraft left for a small first-floor apartment on 169 Clinton Street "at the edge of Red Hook"—a location which came to discomfort him greatly. Later that year, the Kalem Club's four regular attendees were joined by Lovecraft along with his protégé Frank Belknap Long, bookseller George Willard Kirk, and Samuel Loveman. Loveman was Jewish, but he and Lovecraft became close friends in spite of the latter's nativist attitudes. By the 1930s, writer and publisher Herman Charles Koenig would be one of the last to become involved with the Kalem Club.
Not long after the marriage, Greene lost her business and her assets disappeared in a bank failure. Lovecraft made efforts to support his wife through regular jobs, but his lack of previous work experience meant he lacked proven marketable skills. The publisher of Weird Tales was attempting to make the loss-making magazine profitable and offered the job of editor to Lovecraft, who declined, citing his reluctance to relocate to Chicago on aesthetic grounds. Baird was succeeded by Farnsworth Wright, whose writing Lovecraft had criticized. Lovecraft's submissions were often rejected by Wright. This may have been partially due to censorship guidelines imposed in the aftermath of a Weird Tales story that hinted at necrophilia, although after Lovecraft's death, Wright accepted many of the stories he had originally rejected.
Sonia also became ill and immediately after recovering, relocated to Cincinnati, and then to Cleveland; her employment required constant travel. Added to his feelings of failure in a city with a large immigrant population, Lovecraft's single-room apartment was burgled, leaving him with only the clothes he was wearing. In August 1925, he wrote "The Horror at Red Hook" and "He", in the latter of which the narrator says "My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration [...] I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyze, and annihilate me." This was an expression of his despair at being in New York. It was at around this time he wrote the outline for "The Call of Cthulhu", with its theme of the insignificance of all humanity. During this time, Lovecraft wrote "Supernatural Horror in Literature" on the eponymous subject. It later became one of the most influential essays on the subject. With a weekly allowance Greene sent, Lovecraft moved to a working-class area of Brooklyn Heights, where he resided in a tiny apartment. He had lost approximately of body weight by 1926, when he left for Providence.
Return to Providence and death
Back in Providence, Lovecraft lived with his aunts in a "spacious brown Victorian wooden house" at 10 Barnes Street until 1933. He would then move to 66 Prospect Street, which would become his final home. The period beginning after his return to Providence contains some of his most prominent works, including "The Call of Cthulhu", The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and The Shadow over Innsmouth. The latter two stories are partially autobiographical, as scholars have argued that The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is about Lovecraft's return to Providence and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is, in part, about the city itself. The former story also represents a partial repudiation of Dunsany's influence, as Lovecraft had decided that his style did not come to him naturally. At this time, he frequently revised work for other authors and did a large amount of ghostwriting, including The Mound, "Winged Death", and "The Diary of Alonzo Typer". Client Harry Houdini was laudatory, and attempted to help Lovecraft by introducing him to the head of a newspaper syndicate. Plans for a further project were ended by Houdini's death in 1926.
In August 1930, Robert E. Howard wrote a letter to Weird Tales praising a then-recent reprint of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" and discussing some of the Gaelic references used within. Editor Farnsworth Wright forwarded the letter to Lovecraft, who responded positively to Howard, and soon the two writers were engaged in a vigorous correspondence that would last for the rest of Howard's life. Howard quickly became a member of the Lovecraft Circle, a group of writers and friends all linked through Lovecraft's voluminous correspondence, as he introduced his many like-minded friends to one another and encouraged them to share their stories, utilize each other's fictional creations, and help each other succeed in the field of pulp fiction.
Meanwhile, Lovecraft was increasingly producing work that brought him no remuneration. Affecting a calm indifference to the reception of his works, Lovecraft was in reality extremely sensitive to criticism and easily precipitated into withdrawal. He was known to give up trying to sell a story after it had been once rejected. Sometimes, as with The Shadow over Innsmouth, he wrote a story that might have been commercially viable but did not try to sell it. Lovecraft even ignored interested publishers. He failed to reply when one inquired about any novel Lovecraft might have ready: although he had completed such a work, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, it was never typed up. A few years after Lovecraft had moved to Providence, he and his wife Sonia Greene, having lived separately for so long, agreed to an amicable divorce. Greene moved to California in 1933 and remarried in 1936, unaware that Lovecraft, despite his assurances to the contrary, had never officially signed the final decree.
As a result of the Great Depression, he shifted towards democratic socialism, decrying both his prior political beliefs and the rising tide of fascism. He thought that socialism was a workable middle ground between what he saw as the destructive impulses of both the capitalists and the Marxists of his day. This was based in a general opposition to cultural upheaval, as well as support for an ordered society. Electorally, he supported Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he thought that the New Deal was not sufficiently leftist. Lovecraft's support for it was based in his view that no other set of reforms were possible at that time.
In late 1936, he witnessed the publication of The Shadow over Innsmouth as a paperback book. 400 copies were printed, and the work was advertised in Weird Tales and several fan magazines. However, Lovecraft was displeased, as this book was riddled with errors that required extensive editing. It sold slowly and only approximately 200 copies were bound. The remaining 200 copies were destroyed after the publisher went out of business for the next seven years. By this point, Lovecraft's literary career was reaching its end. Shortly after having written his last original short story, "The Haunter of the Dark", he stated that the hostile reception of At the Mountains of Madness had done "more than anything to end my effective fictional career". His declining psychological, and physical, state made it impossible for him to continue writing fiction.
On June 11, Robert E. Howard was informed that his chronically ill mother would not awaken from her coma. He walked out to his car and committed suicide with a pistol that he had stored there. His mother died shortly thereafter. This deeply affected Lovecraft, who consoled Howard's father through correspondence. Almost immediately after hearing about Howard's death, Lovecraft wrote a brief memoir titled "In Memoriam: Robert Ervin Howard", which he distributed to his correspondents. Meanwhile, Lovecraft's physical health was deteriorating. He was suffering from an affliction that he referred to as "grippe".
Due to his fear of doctors, Lovecraft was not examined until a month before his death. After seeing a doctor, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the small intestine. He remained hospitalized until he died. He lived in constant pain until his death on March 15, 1937, in Providence. In accordance with his lifelong scientific curiosity, he kept a diary of his illness until he was physically incapable of holding a pen. Lovecraft was listed along with his parents on the Phillips family monument. In 1977, fans erected a headstone in Swan Point Cemetery on which they inscribed his name, the dates of his birth and death, and the phrase "I AM PROVIDENCE"—a line from one of his personal letters.
Personal views
Politics
Lovecraft began his life as a Tory, which was likely the result of his conservative upbringing. His family supported the Republican Party for the entirety of his life. While it is unclear how consistently he voted, he voted for Herbert Hoover in the 1928 presidential election. Rhode Island as a whole remained politically conservative and Republican into the 1930s. Lovecraft himself was an anglophile who supported the British monarchy. He opposed democracy and thought that America should be governed by an aristocracy. This viewpoint emerged during his youth and lasted until the end of the 1920s. During World War I, his Anglophilia caused him to strongly support the entente against the Central Powers. Many of this earlier poems were devoted to then-current political subjects, and he published several political essays in his amateur journal, The Conservative. He was a teetotaler who supported the implementation of Prohibition, which was one of the few reforms that he supported during the early part of his life. While remaining a teetotaller, he later became convinced that Prohibition was ineffectual in the 1930s. His personal justification for his early political viewpoints was primarily based on tradition and aesthetics.
As a result of the Great Depression, Lovecraft reexamined his political views. Initially, he thought that affluent people would take on the characteristics of his ideal aristocracy and solve America's problems. When this did not occur, he became a democratic socialist. This shift was caused by his observation that the Depression was harming American society. It was also influenced by the increase in socialism's political capital during the 1930s. One of the main points of Lovecraft's socialism was its opposition to Soviet Marxism, as he thought that a Marxist revolution would bring about the destruction of American civilization. Lovecraft thought that an intellectual aristocracy needed to be formed to preserve America. His ideal political system is outlined in his essay "Some Repetitions on the Times". Lovecraft used this essay to echo the political proposals that had been made over the course of the last few decades. In this essay, he advocates governmental control of resource distribution, fewer working hours and a higher wage, and unemployment insurance and old age pensions. He also outlines the need for an oligarchy of intellectuals. In his view, power must be restricted to those who are sufficiently intelligent and educated. He frequently used the term "fascism" to describe this form of government, but, according to S. T. Joshi, it bears little resemblance to that ideology.
Lovecraft had varied views on the political figures of his day. He was an ardent supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He saw that Roosevelt was trying to steer a middle course between the conservatives and the revolutionaries, which he approved of. While he thought that Roosevelt should have been enacting more progressive policies, he came to the conclusion that the New Deal was the only realistic option for reform. He thought that voting for his opponents on the political left would be a wasted effort. Internationally, like many Americans, he initially expressed support for Adolf Hitler. More specifically, he thought that Hitler would preserve German culture. However, he thought that Hitler's racial policies should be based on culture rather than descent. There is evidence that, at the end of his life, Lovecraft began to oppose Hitler. According to Harry K. Brobst, Lovecraft's downstairs neighbor went to Germany and witnessed Jews being beaten. Lovecraft and his aunt were angered by this. His discussions of Hitler drop off after this point.
Atheism
Lovecraft was an atheist. His viewpoints on religion are outlined in his 1922 essay "A Confession of Unfaith". In this essay, he describes his shift away from the Protestantism of his parents to the atheism of his adulthood. Lovecraft was raised by a conservative Protestant family. He was introduced to the Bible and the mythos of Saint Nicholas when he was two. He passively accepted both of them. Over the course of the next few years, he was introduced to Grimms' Fairy Tales and One Thousand and One Nights, favoring the latter. In response, Lovecraft took on the identity of "Abdul Alhazred", a name he would later use for the author of the Necronomicon. According to this account, his first moment of skepticism occurred before his fifth birthday, when he questioned if God is a myth after learning that Santa Claus is not real. In 1896, he was introduced to Greco-Roman myths and became "a genuine pagan".
This came to an end in 1902, when Lovecraft was introduced to space. He later described this event as the most poignant in his life. In response to this discovery, Lovecraft took to studying astronomy and described his observations in the local newspaper. Before his thirteenth birthday, he had become convinced of humanity's impermanence. By the time he was seventeen, he had read detailed writings that agreed with his worldview. Lovecraft ceased writing positively about progress, instead developing his later cosmic philosophy. Despite his interests in science, he had an aversion to realistic literature, so he became interested in fantastical fiction. Lovecraft became pessimistic when he entered amateur journalism in 1914. The Great War seemed to confirm his viewpoints. He began to despise philosophical idealism. Lovecraft took to discussing and debating his pessimism with his peers, which allowed him to solidify his philosophy. His readings of Friedrich Nietzsche and H. L. Mencken, among other pessimistic writers, furthered this development. At the end of his essay, Lovecraft states that all he desired was oblivion. He was willing to cast aside any illusion that he may still have held.
Race
Race is the most controversial aspect of Lovecraft's legacy, expressed in many disparaging remarks against non-Anglo-Saxon races and cultures in his works. As he grew older, his original racial worldview became a classism or elitism which regarded the superior race to include all those self-ennobled through high culture. From the start, Lovecraft did not hold all white people in uniform high regard, but rather esteemed English people and those of English descent. In his early published essays, private letters and personal utterances, he argued for a strong color line to preserve race and culture. His arguments were supported using disparagements of various races in his journalism and letters, and allegorically in his fictional works that depict non-human races. This is evident in his portrayal of the Deep Ones in The Shadow over Innsmouth. Their interbreeding with humanity is framed as being a type of miscegenation that corrupts both the town of Innsmouth and the protagonist.
Initially, Lovecraft showed sympathy to minorities who adopted Western culture, even to the extent of marrying a Jewish woman he viewed as being "well assimilated". By the 1930s, Lovecraft's views on ethnicity and race had moderated. He supported ethnicities' preserving their native cultures; for example, he thought that "a real friend of civilisation wishes merely to make the Germans more German, the French more French, the Spaniards more Spanish, & so on". This represented a shift from his previous support for cultural assimilation. However, this did not represent a complete elimination of his racial prejudices. Scholars have argued that Lovecraft's racial attitudes were common in the society of his day, particularly in the New England in which he grew up.
Influences
His interest in weird fiction began in his childhood when his grandfather, who preferred Gothic stories, would tell him stories of his own design. Lovecraft's childhood home on Angell Street had a large library that contained classical literature, scientific works, and early weird fiction. At the age of five, Lovecraft enjoyed reading One Thousand and One Nights, and was reading Nathaniel Hawthorne a year later. He was also influenced by the travel literature of John Mandeville and Marco Polo. This led to his discovery of gaps in then-contemporary science, which prevented Lovecraft from committing suicide in response to the death of his grandfather and his family's declining financial situation during his adolescence. These travelogues may have also had an influence on how Lovecraft's later works describe their characters and locations. For example, there is a resemblance between the powers of the Tibetan enchanters in The Travels of Marco Polo and the powers unleashed on Sentinel Hill in "The Dunwich Horror".
One of Lovecraft's most significant literary influences was Edgar Allan Poe, whom he described as his "God of Fiction". Poe's fiction was introduced to Lovecraft when the latter was eight years old. His earlier works were significantly influenced by Poe's prose and writing style. He also made extensive use of Poe's unity of effect in his fiction. Furthermore, At the Mountains of Madness directly quotes Poe and was influenced by The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. One of the main themes of the two stories is to discuss the unreliable nature of language as a method of expressing meaning. In 1919, Lovecraft's discovery of the stories of Lord Dunsany moved his writing in a new direction, resulting in a series of fantasies. Throughout his life, Lovecraft referred to Dunsany as the author who had the greatest impact on his literary career. The initial result of this influence was the Dream Cycle, a series of fantasies that originally take place in prehistory, but later shift to a dreamworld setting. By 1930, Lovecraft decided that he would no longer write Dunsianian fantasies, arguing that the style did not come naturally to him. Additionally, he also read and cited Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood as influences in the 1920s.
Aside from horror authors, Lovecraft was significantly influenced by the Decadents, the Puritans, and the Aesthetic Movement. In "H. P. Lovecraft: New England Decadent", Barton Levi St. Armand, a professor emeritus of English and American studies at Brown University, has argued that these three influences combined to define Lovecraft as a writer. He traces this influence to both Lovecraft's stories and letters, noting that he actively cultivated the image of a New England gentleman in his letters. Meanwhile, his influence from the Decadents and the Aesthetic Movement stems from his readings of Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft's aesthetic worldview and fixation on decline stems from these readings. The idea of cosmic decline is described as having been Lovecraft's response to both the Aesthetic Movement and the 19th century Decadents. St. Armand describes it as being a combination of non-theological Puritan thought and the Decadent worldview. This is used as a division in his stories, particularly in "The Horror at Red Hook", "Pickman's Model", and "The Music of Erich Zann". The division between Puritanism and Decadence, St. Armand argues, represents a polarization between an artificial paradise and oneiriscopic visions of different worlds.
A non-literary inspiration came from then-contemporary scientific advances in biology, astronomy, geology, and physics. Lovecraft's study of science contributed to his view of the human race as insignificant, powerless, and doomed in a materialistic and mechanistic universe. Lovecraft was a keen amateur astronomer from his youth, often visiting the Ladd Observatory in Providence, and penning numerous astronomical articles for his personal journal and local newspapers. Lovecraft's materialist views led him to espouse his philosophical views through his fiction; these philosophical views came to be called cosmicism. Cosmicism took on a more pessimistic tone with his creation of what is now known as the Cthulhu Mythos; a fictional universe that contains alien deities and horrors. The term "Cthulhu Mythos" was likely coined by later writers after Lovecraft's death. In his letters, Lovecraft jokingly called his fictional mythology "Yog-Sothothery".
Dreams had a major role in Lovecraft's literary career. In 1991, as a result of his rising place in American literature, it was popularly thought that Lovecraft extensively transcribed his dreams when writing fiction. However, the majority of his stories are not transcribed dreams. Instead, many of them are directly influenced by dreams and dreamlike phenomena. In his letters, Lovecraft frequently compared his characters to dreamers. They are described as being as helpless as a real dreamer who is experiencing a nightmare. His stories also have dreamlike qualities. The Randolph Carter stories deconstruct the division between dreams and reality. The dreamlands in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath are a shared dreamworld that can be accessed by a sensitive dreamer. Meanwhile, in "The Silver Key", Lovecraft mentions the concept of "inward dreams", which implies the existence of outward dreams. Burleson compares this deconstruction to Carl Jung's argument that dreams are the source of archetypal myths. Lovecraft's way of writing fiction required both a level of realism and dreamlike elements. Citing Jung, Burleson argues that a writer may create realism by being inspired by dreams.
Themes
Cosmicism
The central theme of Lovecraft's corpus is cosmicism. Cosmicism is a literary philosophy that argues that humanity is an insignificant force in the universe. Despite appearing pessimistic, Lovecraft thought of himself being as being a cosmic indifferentist, which is expressed in his fiction. In it, human beings are often subject to powerful beings and other cosmic forces, but these forces are not so much malevolent as they are indifferent toward humanity. He believed in a meaningless, mechanical, and uncaring universe that human beings could never fully understand. There is no allowance for beliefs that could not be supported scientifically. Lovecraft first articulated this philosophy in 1921, but he did not fully incorporate it into his fiction until five years later. "Dagon", "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", and "The Temple" contain early depictions of this concept, but the majority of his early tales do not analyze the concept. "Nyarlathotep" interprets the collapse of human civilization as being a corollary to the collapse of the universe. "The Call of Cthulhu" represents an intensification of this theme. In it, Lovecraft introduces the idea of alien influences on humanity, which would come to dominate all subsequent works. In these works, Lovecraft expresses cosmicism through the usage of confirmation rather than revelation. Lovecraftian protagonists do not learn that they are insignificant. Instead, they already know it and have it confirmed to them through an event.
Decline of civilization
For much of his life, Lovecraft was fixated on the concepts of decline and decadence. More specifically, he thought that the West was in a state of terminal decline. Starting in the 1920s, Lovecraft became familiar with the work of the German conservative-revolutionary theorist Oswald Spengler, whose pessimistic thesis of the decadence of the modern West formed a crucial element in Lovecraft's overall anti-modern worldview. Spenglerian imagery of cyclical decay is a central theme in At the Mountains of Madness. S. T. Joshi, in H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West, places Spengler at the center of his discussion of Lovecraft's political and philosophical ideas. According to him, the idea of decline is the single idea that permeates and connects his personal philosophy. The main Spenglerian influence on Lovecraft would be his view that politics, economics, science, and art are all interdependent aspects of civilization. This realization led him to shed his personal ignorance of then-current political and economic developments after 1927. Lovecraft had developed his idea of Western decline independently, but Spengler gave it a clear framework.
Science
Lovecraft shifted supernatural horror away from its previous focus on human issues to a focus on cosmic ones. In this way, he merged the elements of supernatural fiction that he deemed to be scientifically viable with science fiction. This merge required an understanding of both supernatural horror and then-contemporary science. Lovecraft used this combined knowledge to create stories that extensively reference trends in scientific development. Beginning with "The Shunned House", Lovecraft increasingly incorporated elements of both Einsteinian science and his own personal materialism into his stories. This intensified with the writing of "The Call of Cthulhu", where he depicted alien influences on humanity. This trend would continue throughout the remainder of his literary career. "The Colour Out of Space" represents what scholars have called the peak of this trend. It portrays an alien lifeform whose otherness prevents it from being defined by then-contemporary science.
Another part of this effort was the repeated usage of mathematics in an effort to make his creatures and settings appear more alien. Tom Hull, a mathematician, regards this as enhancing his ability to invoke a sense of otherness and fear. He attributes this use of mathematics to Lovecraft's childhood interest in astronomy and his adulthood awareness of non-Euclidean geometry. Another reason for his use of mathematics was his reaction to the scientific developments of his day. These developments convinced him that humanity's primary means of understanding the world was no longer trustable. Lovecraft's usage of mathematics in his fiction serves to convert otherwise supernatural elements into things that have in-universe scientific explanations. "The Dreams in the Witch House" and The Shadow Out of Time both have elements of this. The former uses a witch and her familiar, while the latter uses the idea of mind transference. These elements are explained using scientific theories that were prevalent during Lovecraft's lifetime.
Lovecraft Country
Setting plays a major role in Lovecraft's fiction. Lovecraft Country, a fictionalized version of New England, serves as the central hub for his mythos. It represents the history, culture, and folklore of the region, as interpreted by Lovecraft. These attributes are exaggerated and altered to provide a suitable setting for his stories. The names of the locations in the region were directly influenced by the names of real locations in the region, which was done to increase their realism. Lovecraft's stories use their connections with New England to imbue themselves with the ability to instil fear. Lovecraft was primarily inspired by the cities and towns in Massachusetts. However, the specific location of Lovecraft Country is variable, as it moved according to Lovecraft's literary needs. Starting with areas that he thought were evocative, Lovecraft redefined and exaggerated them under fictional names. For example, Lovecraft based Arkham on the town of Oakham and expanded it to include a nearby landmark. Its location was moved, as Lovecraft decided that it would have been destroyed by the recently-built Quabbin Reservoir. This is alluded to in "The Colour Out of Space", as the "blasted heath" is submerged by the creation of a fictionalized version of the reservoir. Similarly, Lovecraft's other towns were based on other locations in Massachusetts. Innsmouth was based on Newburyport, and Dunwich was based on Greenwich. The vague locations of these towns also played into Lovecraft's desire to create a mood in his stories. In his view, a mood can only be evoked through reading.
Critical reception
Literary
Early efforts to revise an established literary view of Lovecraft as an author of 'pulp' were resisted by some eminent critics; in 1945, Edmund Wilson sneered: "the only real horror in most of these fictions is the horror of bad taste and bad art". However, Wilson praised Lovecraft's ability to write about his chosen field; he described him as having written about it "with much intelligence". According to L. Sprague de Camp, Wilson later improved his opinion of Lovecraft, citing a report of David Chavchavadze that Wilson had included a Lovecraftian reference in Little Blue Light: A Play in Three Acts. After Chavchavadze met with him to discuss this, Wilson revealed that he had been reading a copy of Lovecraft's correspondence. Two years before Wilson's critique, Lovecraft's works were reviewed by Winfield Townley Scott, the literary editor of The Providence Journal. He argued that Lovecraft was one of the most significant Rhode Island authors and that it was regrettable that he had received little attention from mainstream critics at the time. Mystery and Adventure columnist Will Cuppy of the New York Herald Tribune recommended to readers a volume of Lovecraft's stories in 1944, asserting that "the literature of horror and macabre fantasy belongs with mystery in its broader sense".
By 1957, Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction said that Lovecraft was comparable to Robert E. Howard, stating that "they appear more prolific than ever," noting L. Sprague de Camp, Björn Nyberg, and August Derleth's usage of their creations. Gale also said that "Lovecraft at his best could build a mood of horror unsurpassed; at his worst, he was laughable." In 1962, Colin Wilson, in his survey of anti-realist trends in fiction The Strength to Dream, cited Lovecraft as one of the pioneers of the "assault on rationality" and included him with M. R. James, H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, J. R. R. Tolkien and others as one of the builders of mythicised realities contending against what he considered the failing project of literary realism. Subsequently, Lovecraft began to acquire the status of a cult writer in the counterculture of the 1960s, and reprints of his work proliferated.
Michael Dirda, a reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement, has described Lovecraft as being a "visionary" who is "rightly regarded as second only to Edgar Allan Poe in the annals of American supernatural literature". According to him, Lovecraft's works prove that mankind cannot bear the weight of reality, as the true nature of reality cannot be understood by either science or history. In addition, Dirda praises Lovecraft's ability to create an uncanny atmosphere. This atmosphere is created through the feeling of wrongness that pervades the objects, places, and people in Lovecraft's works. He also comments favorably on Lovecraft's correspondence, and compares him to Horace Walpole. Particular attention is given to his correspondence with August Derleth and Robert E. Howard. The Derleth letters are called "delightful", while the Howard letters are described as being an ideological debate. Overall, Dirda believes that Lovecraft's letters are equal to, or better than, his fictional output.Los Angeles Review of Books reviewer Nick Mamatas has stated that Lovecraft was a particularly difficult author, rather than a bad one. He described Lovecraft as being "perfectly capable" in the fields of story logic, pacing, innovation, and generating quotable phrases. However, Lovecraft's difficulty made him ill-suited to the pulps; he was unable to compete with the popular recurring protagonists and damsel-in-distress stories. Furthermore, he compared a paragraph from The Shadow Out of Time to a paragraph from the introduction to The Economic Consequences of the Peace. In Mamatas' view, Lovecraft's quality is obscured by his difficulty, and his skill is what has allowed his following to outlive the followings of other then-prominent authors, such as Seabury Quinn and Kenneth Patchen.
In 2005, the Library of America published a volume of Lovecraft's works. This volume was reviewed by many publications, including The New York Times Book Review and The Wall Street Journal, and sold 25,000 copies within a month of release. The overall critical reception of the volume was mixed. Several scholars, including S. T. Joshi and Alison Sperling, have said that this confirms H. P. Lovecraft's place in the western canon. The editors of The Age of Lovecraft, Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, attributed the rise of mainstream popular and academic interest in Lovecraft to this volume, along with the Penguin Classics volumes and the Modern Library edition of At the Mountains of Madness. These volumes led to a proliferation of other volumes containing Lovecraft's works. According to the two authors, these volumes are part of a trend in Lovecraft's popular and academic reception: increased attention by one audience causes the other to also become more interested. Lovecraft's success is, in part, the result of his success.
Lovecraft's style has often been subject to criticism, but scholars such as S. T. Joshi have argued that Lovecraft consciously utilized a variety of literary devices to form a unique style of his own—these include prose-poetic rhythm, stream of consciousness, alliteration, and conscious archaism. According to Joyce Carol Oates, Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe have exerted a significant influence on later writers in the horror genre. Horror author Stephen King called Lovecraft "the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale". King stated in his semi-autobiographical non-fiction book Danse Macabre that Lovecraft was responsible for his own fascination with horror and the macabre and was the largest influence on his writing.
Philosophical
H. P. Lovecraft's writings have influenced the speculative realist philosophical movement during the early-twentieth-century. The four founders of the movement, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux, have cited Lovecraft as an inspiration for their worldviews. Graham Harman wrote a monograph, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy, about Lovecraft and philosophy. In it, he argues that Lovecraft was a "productionist" author. He describes Lovecraft as having been an author who was uniquely obsessed with gaps in human knowledge. He goes further and asserts that Lovecraft's personal philosophy as being in opposition to both idealism and David Hume. In his view, Lovecraft resembles Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, and Edmund Husserl in his division of objects into different parts that do not exhaust the potential meanings of the whole. The anti-idealism of Lovecraft is represented through his commentary on the inability of language to describe his horrors. Harman also credits Lovecraft with inspiring parts of his own articulation of object-oriented ontology. According to Lovecraft scholar Alison Sperling, this philosophical interpretation of Lovecraft's fiction has caused other philosophers in Harmon's tradition to write about Lovecraft. These philosophers seek to remove human perception and human life from the foundations of ethics. These scholars have used Lovecraft's works as the central example of their worldview. They base this usage in Lovecraft's arguments against anthropocentrism and the ability of the human mind to truly understand the universe. They have also played a role in Lovecraft's improving literary reputation by focusing on his interpretation of ontology, which gives him a central position in Anthropocene studies.
Legacy
Lovecraft was relatively unknown during his lifetime. While his stories appeared in prominent pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, not many people knew his name. He did, however, correspond regularly with other contemporary writers such as Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth, who became his friends, even though he never met them in person. This group became known as the "Lovecraft Circle", since their writings freely borrowed Lovecraft's motifs, with his encouragement. He borrowed from them as well. For example, he made use of Clark Ashton Smith's Tsathoggua in The Mound.
After Lovecraft's death, the Lovecraft Circle carried on. August Derleth founded Arkham House with Donald Wandrei to preserve Lovecraft's works and keep them in print. He added to and expanded on Lovecraft's vision, not without controversy. While Lovecraft considered his pantheon of alien gods a mere plot device, Derleth created an entire cosmology, complete with a war between the good Elder Gods and the evil Outer Gods, such as Cthulhu and his ilk. The forces of good were supposed to have won, locking Cthulhu and others beneath the earth, the ocean, and elsewhere. Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos stories went on to associate different gods with the traditional four elements of fire, air, earth and water, which did not line up with Lovecraft's original vision of his mythos. However, Derleth's ownership of Arkham House gave him a position of authority in Lovecraftiana that would not dissipate until his death, and through the efforts of Lovecraft scholars in the 1970s.
Lovecraft's works have influenced many writers and other creators. Stephen King has cited Lovecraft as a major influence on his works. As a child in the 1960s, he came across a volume of Lovecraft's works which inspired him to write his fiction. He goes on to argue that all works in the horror genre that were written after Lovecraft were influenced by him. In the field of comics, Alan Moore has also described Lovecraft as having been a formative influence on his graphic novels. Film director John Carpenter's films include direct references and quotations of Lovecraft's fiction, in addition to their use of a Lovecraftian aesthetic and themes. Guillermo del Toro has been similarly influenced by Lovecraft's corpus.
The first World Fantasy Awards were held in Providence in 1975. The theme was "The Lovecraft Circle". Until 2015, winners were presented with an elongated bust of Lovecraft that was designed by cartoonist Gahan Wilson, nicknamed the "Howard". In November 2015 it was announced that the World Fantasy Award trophy would no longer be modeled on H. P. Lovecraft in response to the author's views on race. After the World Fantasy Award dropped their connection to Lovecraft, The Atlantic commented that "In the end, Lovecraft still wins—people who've never read a page of his work will still know who Cthulhu is for years to come, and his legacy lives on in the work of Stephen King, Guillermo del Toro, and Neil Gaiman."
In 2016, Lovecraft was inducted into the Museum of Pop Culture's Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Three years later, Lovecraft and the other mythos authors were posthumously awarded the 1945 Retro-Hugo Award for Best Series for their contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos.
Lovecraft studies
Starting in the early 1970s, a body of scholarly work began to emerge around Lovecraft's life and works. Referred to as Lovecraft studies, its proponents sought to establish Lovecraft as a significant author in the American literary canon. This can be traced to Derleth's preservation and dissemination of Lovecraft's fiction, non-fiction, and letters through Arkham House. Joshi credits the development of the field to this process. However, it was marred by low quality editions and misinterpretations of Lovecraft's worldview. After Derleth's death in 1971, the scholarship entered a new phase. There was a push to create a book-length biography of Lovecraft. L. Sprague de Camp, a science fiction scholar, wrote the first major one in 1975. This biography was criticized by early Lovecraft scholars for its lack of scholarly merit and its lack of sympathy for its subject. Despite this, it played a significant role in Lovecraft's literary rise. It exposed Lovecraft to the mainstream of American literary criticism. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a division in the field between the "Derlethian traditionalists" who wished to interpret Lovecraft through the lens of fantasy literature and the newer scholars who wished to place greater attention on the entirety of his corpus.
The 1980s and 1990s saw a further proliferation of the field. The 1990 H. P. Lovecraft Centennial Conference and the republishing of older essays in An Epicure in the Terrible represented the publishing of many basic studies that would be used as a base for then-future studies. The 1990 centennial also saw the installation of the "H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Plaque" in a garden adjoining John Hay Library, that features a portrait by silhouettist E. J. Perry. Following this, in 1996, S. T. Joshi wrote his own biography of Lovecraft. This biography was met with positive reviews and became the main biography in the field. It has since been superseded by his expanded edition of the book, I am Providence in 2010.
Lovecraft's improving literary reputation has caused his works to receive increased attention by both classics publishers and scholarly fans. His works have been published by several different series of literary classics. Penguin Classics published three volumes of Lovecraft's works between 1999 and 2004. These volumes were edited by S. T. Joshi. Barnes & Noble would publish their own volume of Lovecraft's complete fiction in 2008. The Library of America published a volume of Lovecraft's works in 2005. The publishing of these volumes represented a reversal of the traditional judgment that Lovecraft was not part of the Western canon. Meanwhile, the biannual NecronomiCon Providence convention was first held in 2013. Its purpose is to serve as a fan and scholarly convention that discusses both Lovecraft and the wider field of weird fiction. It is organized by the Lovecraft Arts and Sciences organization and is held on the weekend of Lovecraft's birth. That July, the Providence City Council designated the "H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Square" and installed a commemorative sign at the intersection of Angell and Prospect streets, near the author's former residences.
Music
Lovecraft's fictional Mythos has influenced a number of musicians, particularly in rock and heavy metal music. This began in the 1960s with the formation of the psychedelic rock band H. P. Lovecraft, who released the albums H. P. Lovecraft and H. P. Lovecraft II in 1967 and 1968 respectively. They broke up afterwards, but later songs were released. This included "The White Ship" and "At the Mountains of Madness", both titled after Lovecraft stories. Extreme metal has also been influenced by Lovecraft. This has expressed itself in both the names of bands and the contents of their albums. This began in 1970 with the release of Black Sabbath's first album, Black Sabbath, which contained a song titled Behind the Wall of Sleep, deriving its name from the 1919 story "Beyond the Wall of Sleep." Heavy metal band Metallica was also inspired by Lovecraft. They recorded a song inspired by "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Call of Ktulu", and a song based on The Shadow over Innsmouth titled "The Thing That Should Not Be". These songs contain direct quotations of Lovecraft's works. Joseph Norman, a speculative scholar, has argued that there are similarities between the music described in Lovecraft's fiction and the aesthetics and atmosphere of Black Metal. He argues that this is evident through the "animalistic" qualities of Black metal vocals. The usage of occult elements is also cited as a thematic commonality. In terms of atmosphere, he asserts that both Lovecraft's works and extreme metal place heavy focus on creating a strong negative mood.
Games
Lovecraft has also influenced gaming, despite having personally disliked games during his lifetime. Chaosium's tabletop role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, released in 1981 and currently in its seventh major edition, was one of the first games to draw heavily from Lovecraft. It includes a Lovecraft-inspired insanity mechanic, which allowed for player characters to go insane from contact with cosmic horrors. This mechanic would go on to make appearance in subsequent tabletop and video games. 1987 saw the release of another Lovecraftian board game, Arkham Horror, which was published by Fantasy Flight Games. Though few subsequent Lovecraftian board games were released annually from 1987 to 2014, the years after 2014 saw a rapid increase in the number of Lovecraftian board games. According to Christina Silva, this revival may have been influenced by the entry of Lovecraft's work into the public domain and a revival of interest in board games. Few video games are direct adaptations of Lovecraft's works, but many video games have been inspired or heavily influenced by Lovecraft. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, a Lovecraftian first-person video game, was released in 2005. It is loose adaptation of The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Shadow Out of Time, and "The Thing on the Doorstep" that uses noir themes. These adaptations focus more on Lovecraft's monsters and gamification than they do on his themes, which represents a break from Lovecraft's core theme of human insignificance.
Religion and occultism
Several contemporary religions have been influenced by Lovecraft's works. Kenneth Grant, the founder of the Typhonian Order, incorporated Lovecraft's Mythos into his ritual and occult system. Grant combined his interest in Lovecraft's fiction with his adherence to Aleister Crowley's Thelema. The Typhonian Order considers Lovecraftian entities to be symbols through which people may interact with something inhuman. Grant also argued that Crowley himself was influenced by Lovecraft's writings, particularly in the naming of characters in The Book of the Law. Similarly, The Satanic Rituals, co-written by Anton LaVey and Michael A. Aquino, includes the "Ceremony of the Nine Angles", which is a ritual that was influenced by the descriptions in "The Dreams in the Witch House". It contains invocations of several of Lovecraft's fictional gods.
There have been several books that have claimed to be an authentic edition of Lovecraft's Necronomicon. The Simon Necronomicon is one such example. It was written by an unknown figure who identified themselves as "Simon". Peter Levenda, an occult author who has written about the Necronomicon, claims that he and "Simon" came across a hidden Greek translation of the grimoire while looking through a collection of antiquities at a New York bookstore during the 1960s or 1970s. This book was claimed to have borne the seal of the Necronomicon. Levenda went on to claim that Lovecraft had access to this purported scroll. A textual analysis has determined that the contents of this book were derived from multiple documents that discuss Mesopotamian myth and magic. The finding of a magical text by monks is also a common theme in the history of grimoires. It has been suggested that Lavenda is the true author of the Simon Necronomicon.
Correspondence
Although Lovecraft is known mostly for his works of weird fiction, the bulk of his writing consists of voluminous letters about a variety of topics, from weird fiction and art criticism to politics and history. Lovecraft biographers L. Sprague de Camp and S. T. Joshi have estimated that Lovecraft wrote 100,000 letters in his lifetime, a fifth of which are believed to survive. S. T. Joshi suggested in 1996 that it would have been impossible to publish the entirety of Lovecraft's letters due to their length and the sheer number of them. These letters were directed at fellow writers and members of the amateur press. His involvement in the latter was what caused him to begin writing them. According to Joshi, the most important sets of letters were those written to Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith, and James F. Morton. He attributes this importance to the contents of these letters. With Long, Lovecraft argued in support and in opposition to many of Long's viewpoints. The letters to Clark Ashton Smith are characterized by their focus on weird fiction. Lovecraft and Morton debated many scholarly subjects in their letters, resulting in what Joshi has called the "single greatest correspondence Lovecraft ever wrote."
Copyright and other legal issues
Despite several claims to the contrary, there is currently no evidence that any company or individual owns the copyright to any of Lovecraft's works, and it is generally accepted that it has passed into the public domain. Lovecraft had specified that R. H. Barlow would serve as the executor of his literary estate, but these instructions were not incorporated into his will. Nevertheless, his surviving aunt carried out his expressed wishes, and Barlow was given control of Lovecraft's literary estate upon his death. Barlow deposited the bulk of the papers, including the voluminous correspondence, in the John Hay Library, and attempted to organize and maintain Lovecraft's other writings. Lovecraft protégé August Derleth, an older and more established writer than Barlow, vied for control of the literary estate. He and Donald Wandrei, a fellow protégé and co-owner of Arkham House, falsely claimed that Derleth was the true literary executor. Barlow capitulated, and later committed suicide in 1951. This gave Derleth and Wandrei complete control over Lovecraft's corpus.
On October 9, 1947, Derleth purchased all rights to the stories that were published in Weird Tales. However, since April 1926 at the latest, Lovecraft had reserved all second printing rights to stories published in Weird Tales. Therefore, Weird Tales only owned the rights to at most six of Lovecraft's tales. If Derleth had legally obtained the copyrights to these tales, there is no evidence that they were renewed before the rights expired. Following Derleth's death in 1971, Donald Wandrei sued his estate to challenge Derleth's will, which stated that he only held the copyrights and royalties to Lovecraft's works that were published under both his and Derleth's names. Arkham House's lawyer, Forrest D. Hartmann, argued that the rights to Lovecraft's works were never renewed. Wandrei won the case, but Arkham House's actions regarding copyright have damaged their ability to claim ownership of them.
In H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, S. T. Joshi concludes that Derleth's claims are "almost certainly fictitious" and argues that most of Lovecraft's works that were published in the amateur press are likely in the public domain. The copyright for Lovecraft's works would have been inherited by the only surviving heir named in his 1912 will, his aunt Annie Gamwell. When she died in 1941, the copyrights passed to her remaining descendants, Ethel Phillips Morrish and Edna Lewis. They signed a document, sometimes referred to as the Morrish-Lewis gift, permitting Arkham House to republish Lovecraft's works while retaining their ownership of the copyrights. Searches of the Library of Congress have failed to find any evidence that these copyrights were renewed after the 28-year period, making it likely that these works are in the public domain. However, the Lovecraft literary estate, reconstituted in 1998 under Robert C. Harrall, has claimed that they own the rights. Joshi has withdrawn his support for his conclusion, and now supports the estate's copyright claims.
Bibliography
See also
:Category:H. P. Lovecraft scholars
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
The H. P. Lovecraft Archive
The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society
The Lovecraft Arts & Sciences Council, a non-profit educational organization
H. P. Lovecraft at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction''
Journals
Lovecraft Annual
Lovecraft Studies
Crypt of Cthulhu
Library collections
H. P. Lovecraft Collection in the Special Collections at the John Hay Library (Brown University)
H. P. Lovecraft Collection in the Distinctive Collections of Falvey Memorial Library (Villanova University)
Online editions
1890 births
1937 deaths
20th-century American essayists
20th-century American journalists
American male journalists
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American poets
20th-century American short story writers
American agnostics
American alternative journalists
American atheists
American fantasy writers
American horror writers
American letter writers
American literary critics
American magazine editors
American male essayists
American male non-fiction writers
American male novelists
American male poets
American people of English descent
American science fiction writers
American social commentators
American speculative fiction critics
Burials at Swan Point Cemetery
Critics of religions
Cthulhu Mythos writers
Deaths from cancer in Rhode Island
Deaths from colorectal cancer
Deaths from small intestine cancer
Ghostwriters
Hugo Award-winning writers
Literary circles
Materialists
Mythopoeic writers
People from Brooklyn Heights
People from Flatbush, Brooklyn
People from Red Hook, Brooklyn
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Pulp fiction writers
Re-Animator (film series)
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Writers from Providence, Rhode Island
Writers of Gothic fiction | false | [
"John Wallace Baird (; May 21, 1869 – February 2, 1919) was a Canadian psychologist. He was the 27th president of the American Psychological Association (1918). He was the first Canadian, and only the second non-American, to hold the office. He was also a founding editor of the Journal of Applied Psychology, and served in subordinate editorial capacities for Psychological Review, American Journal of Psychology, and the Journal of Educational Psychology. At his death in 1919, he was the designate to succeed Granville Stanley Hall as president of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.\n\nEarly life\nJohn W. Baird was born in Motherwell, Ontario, a farming town about 50 km. north of the city of London, Ontario. He was the eighth of twelve children. His oldest brother, Andrew Browning Baird (1855–1940) became a prominent Presbyterian minister in western Canada, serving as Moderator of the church in 1916, and was involved in the creation of the United Church of Canada in the 1925.\n\nJohn Baird suffered from chronic health conditions from early in life and, so, did not complete his secondary schooling until the age of 19. Only five years later did he travel to the University of Toronto to begin an undergraduate degree in philosophy. There, he fell under the influence of the director of the experimental psychology laboratory, August Kirschmann, who had just arrived in Toronto after serving as assistant to the man widely regarded as the founder of experimental psychology, Wilhelm Wundt, in Leipzig, Germany. Baird graduated with a second class degree in 1897, writing his senior research project on the anomalous color vision of a fellow student, R. J. Richardson (Baird & Richardson, 1900).\n\nGraduate training\n\nAfter spending an additional year in Toronto working in Kirschmann's laboratory, Baird traveled to Europe for graduate study. He spent several months each at the University of Edinburgh and at the University of Leipzig (where he was briefly a student of Wundt's). In 1899, however, he moved to the U.S. to begin his graduate studies anew at the University of Wisconsin under the supervision of Joseph Jastrow. Two years later, still without a PhD, Baird transferred to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York where he studied under the famed structuralist psychologist, Edward Bradford Titchener. Here Baird found his stride, completing his PhD in just a year (1902). His dissertation was on the impact of visual accommodation and convergence on depth perception. It was published in the American Journal of Psychology (Baird, 1903). He remained at Cornell for two more years, one as Titchener's research assistant and one as a research fellow of the recently founded Carnegie Institution. These were among Baird's most productive years as a researcher (Baird, 1905). In 1904 he was elected to membership in the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science. In addition, the strong relationship Baird formed with Titchener during this time deeply influenced the rest of his career.\n\nAcademic career\n\nBaird worked as an instructor in psychology at Johns Hopkins University, under the direction of the child psychologist and evolutionist James Mark Baldwin from 1904 to 1906. He was then hired to a position at the University of Illinois which, after a year, became an assistant professorship. The Illinois psychology department was headed by an educational psychologist, Stephen S. Colvin. It was here that Baird's research interests began to spread from the \"pure\" experimental psychology that was advocated by Titchener into areas of applied psychology (Baird, 1906, 1908).\n\nIn 1909, Baird was called to direct the storied psychology laboratory at Clark University. Clark's president, the prominent psychologist G. Stanley Hall, wanted Baird to replace Hall's long-time ally, Edmund C. Sanford, who was being promoted to the presidency of the new undergraduate college at Clark. Baird had just become a cooperating editor of the newly founded Journal of Educational Psychology, and Hall put him to work as executive editor of his own American Journal of Psychology. Baird spent much of 1912 touring the psychology laboratories of Germany, France, Switzerland, and England in order to bring the latest developments back to the Clark laboratory. He also translated Ernst Meumann's Psychology of Learning (Meumann, 1913). Baird underwent surgery in 1913 to correct a urinary tract condition, which forced him to spend several months in hospital.\n\nIn 1914, Baird married Barbara Morrison Sparks, the daughter of a physician in St. Marys, Ontario. In 1916 Baird was elected to membership in the venerable American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The duties of being laboratory director prevented Baird from conducting much original research during this period, but he was able to co-edit and contribute a chapter on perfect pitch to a Festschrift celebrating Titchener's 25th year at Cornell (Baird, 1917a). He also contributed a chapter (Baird, 1917b) to another Festschrift in honor of the retirement of Cornell philosophy professor James Edwin Creighton, who had been the founding president of the American Philosophical Association (and was a fellow Canadian). Also in 1917, Hall, Baird, and another Clark professor named Ludwig R. Geissler collectively founded a new periodical, the Journal of Applied Psychology. Baird published an article based on research he had conducted into the optimal type-font to be used in telephone books in the first volume (Baird, 1917c).\n\nAround 1917 Baird became aware that Hall was grooming him to succeed both Hall and Sanford as president of a newly unified Clark College and Clark University upon their joint retirement in 1920. In 1918, during World War I, Baird was elected president of the American Psychological Association. During his term he was called to Washington D.C. to serve as Vice-Chair of the National Research Council's Psychological Committee, a position in which he developed a program for the assessment and rehabilitation of injured soldiers returning from the war.\n\nIllness and death\n\nIn November 1918, Baird became seriously ill and entered Johns Hopkins Hospital in nearby Baltimore, Maryland. Although it is not clear what his medical problem was (it may have been a recurrence of the renal condition that had periodically afflicted him since his youth), he underwent three surgeries over the next few months. He died of unspecified post-surgical complications on February 2, 1919 at the age of 49. He was buried in St. Marys, Ontario, near his family home of Motherwell, Ontario.\n\nSelected publications\nBaird, J. W. (1903). The influence of accommodation and convergence on the perception of depth. American Journal of Psychology, 14, 150–200.\nBaird, J. W. (1905). The color sensitivity of the peripheral retina. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution. \nBaird, J. W. (1906). The contraction of the color zones in hysteria and in neurasthenia. Psychological Bulletin, 3, 249–254.\nBaird, J. W. (1908). The problems of color-blindness. Psychological Bulletin , 5 (9), 294–300.\nBaird, J. W. (1917a). Memory for absolute pitch. In W. B. Pillsbury, & J. W. Baird, Studies in Psychology: Titchener Commemorative Volume (pp. 43–78). Worcester, MA: Wilson.\nBaird, J. W. (1917b). The role of intent in mental functioning. In G. H. Sabine (Ed.), Philosophical essays in honor of James Edwin Creighton (pp. 307–317). New York: Macmillan. \nBaird, J. W. (1917c). The legibility of a telephone directory. Journal of Applied Psychology , 1 (1), 30–37.\nBaird, J. W. & Richardson, R. J. (1900). A case of abnormal colour sense, examined with special reference to the space threshold of colours. University of Toronto Studies, Psychological Series, 1, 86–96.\nMeumann, E. (1913). The psychology of learning: An experimental investigation of the economy and technique of memory (J. W. Baird, trans.). New York, NY: Appleton & Company.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nClark University faculty\n1869 births\n1919 deaths\nCanadian psychologists\nPresidents of the American Psychological Association\nUniversity of Toronto alumni",
"Edwin Baird (; 1886 – September 27, 1954) was the first editor of Weird Tales, the pioneering pulp magazine that specialized in horror fiction, as well as Detective Tales, later re-titled Real Detective Tales.\n\nCareer\nBaird, hired by Weird Tales publisher J. C. Henneberger, put out the magazine's premiere issue, dated March 1923. Over the course of the next year, Baird published some of the magazine's most famous writers, including H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Seabury Quinn.\n\nBaird—in marked contrast to his successor—accepted everything that Lovecraft submitted to the magazine, including \"The Hound\", \"Arthur Jermyn\", \"The Statement of Randolph Carter\", \"The Cats of Ulthar\", \"Dagon\", \"The Picture in the House\", \"The Rats in the Walls\", \"Hypnos\" and \"Imprisoned with the Pharaohs\". He did, however, insist that Lovecraft retype his first submissions using double spacing, causing the author to remark, \"I am not certain whether or not I should bother.\"\n\nUnder Baird's editorship, Weird Tales lost a considerable amount of money—estimated at $51,000. After the April 1924 issue, Henneberger fired him and offered his job to Lovecraft. When Lovecraft declined, the publisher made Farnsworth Wright, until then Baird's assistant, the editor of Weird Tales, a position he held until 1940.\n\nBaird remained as editor of another of Henneberger's titles, Detective Tales. In this post, he rejected Lovecraft's \"The Shunned House\" in July 1925. Detective Tales was sold off, and Baird remained editor when it retitled as Real Detective Tales.\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n Lin Carter, Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos.\n S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia.\n\nAmerican magazine editors\nHorror fiction\nH. P. Lovecraft\n1886 births\n1957 deaths\nWeird Tales editors\nAmerican male non-fiction writers"
] |
[
"H. P. Lovecraft",
"Marriage and New York",
"Who was HP Lovecraft's wife?",
"Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924,",
"What was their relationship like?",
"Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship.",
"What activities was H.P. Lovecraft and his wife involved in within New York?",
"He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends",
"Did he do any writing during this period?",
"Edwin Baird accepted many otherworldly 'Dream Cycle' Lovecraft stories for the ailing publication, though they were heavily criticized by a section of the readership.",
"Who was Edwin Baird?",
"editor Edwin Baird"
] | C_e055448352484e27a10b71b3309430f7_0 | What was his wife's occupation? | 6 | What was H.P. Lovecraft's wife's occupation? | H. P. Lovecraft | Lovecraft's aunts disapproved of this relationship with Sonia. Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924, and relocated to her Brooklyn apartment at 793 Flatbush Avenue; she thought he needed to get out of Providence in order to flourish and was willing to support him financially. Greene, who had been married before, later said Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship. She attributed Lovecraft's passive nature to a stultifying upbringing by his mother. Lovecraft's weight increased to 90 kg (200 lb) on his wife's home cooking. He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends who urged him to submit stories to Weird Tales; editor Edwin Baird accepted many otherworldly 'Dream Cycle' Lovecraft stories for the ailing publication, though they were heavily criticized by a section of the readership. Established informally some years before Lovecraft arrived in New York, the core Kalem Club members were boys' adventure novelist Henry Everett McNeil; the lawyer and anarchist writer James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.; and the poet Reinhardt Kleiner. On New Year's Day of 1925, Sonia moved to Cleveland for a job opportunity, and Lovecraft left Flatbush for a small first-floor apartment on 169 Clinton Street "at the edge of Red Hook"--a location which came to discomfort him greatly. Later that year the Kalem Club's four regular attendees were joined by Lovecraft along with his protege Frank Belknap Long, bookseller George Willard Kirk, and Lovecraft's close friend Samuel Loveman. Loveman was Jewish, but was unaware of Lovecraft's nativist attitudes. Conversely, it has been suggested that Lovecraft, who disliked mention of sexual matters, was unaware that Loveman and some of his other friends were homosexual. CANNOTANSWER | On New Year's Day of 1925, Sonia moved to Cleveland for a job opportunity, | Howard Phillips Lovecraft (; August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of weird, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. Lovecraft is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England. After his father's institutionalization in 1893, he lived affluently until his family's wealth dissipated after the death of his grandfather. Lovecraft then lived with his mother, in reduced financial security, until her institutionalization in 1919. He began to write essays for the United Amateur Press Association and, in 1913, Lovecraft wrote a critical letter to a pulp magazine that ultimately led to his involvement in pulp fiction. He became active in the speculative fiction community and was published in several pulp magazines. Lovecraft moved to New York, marrying Sonia Greene in 1924, and later became the center of a wider group of authors known as the "Lovecraft Circle". They introduced him to Weird Tales, which would become his most prominent publisher. Lovecraft's time in New York took a toll on his mental state and financial conditions. He returned to Providence in 1926 and produced some of his most popular works, including "The Call of Cthulhu", At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, and The Shadow Out of Time. He would remain active as a writer until his death from intestinal cancer at the age of 46.
Lovecraft's literary corpus is based around the idea of cosmicism, which was simultaneously his personal philosophy and the main theme of his fiction. Cosmicism posits that humanity is an insignificant part of the cosmos, and could be swept away at any moment. He incorporated fantastic and science fiction elements into his stories, representing the perceived fragility of anthropocentrism. His works were largely set in a fictionalized version of New England. Civilizational decline also plays a major role in his works, as he believed that the West was in decline during his lifetime. Lovecraft's early political opinions were conservative and traditionalist; additionally, he held a number of racist views for much of his adult life. Following the Great Depression, Lovecraft became a democratic socialist, no longer believing a just aristocracy would make the world more fair.
Throughout his adult life, Lovecraft was never able to support himself from earnings as an author and editor. He was virtually unknown during his lifetime and was almost exclusively published in pulp magazines before his death. A scholarly revival of Lovecraft's work began in the 1970s, and he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors of supernatural horror fiction. Many direct adaptations and spiritual successors followed. Works inspired by Lovecraft, adaptations or original works, began to form the basis of the Cthulhu Mythos, which utilizes Lovecraft's characters, setting, and themes.
Biography
Early life and family tragedies
Lovecraft was born in his family home on August 20, 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the only child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft and Sarah Susan (née Phillips) Lovecraft. Susie's family was of substantial means at the time of their marriage, as her father, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, was involved in business ventures. In April 1893, after a psychotic episode in a Chicago hotel, Winfield was committed to Butler Hospital in Providence. His medical records state that he had been "doing and saying strange things at times" for a year before his commitment. The person who reported these symptoms is unknown. Winfield spent five years in Butler before dying in 1898. His death certificate listed the cause of death as general paresis, a term synonymous with late-stage syphilis. Throughout his life, Lovecraft maintained that his father fell into a paralytic state, due to insomnia and overwork, and remained that way until his death. It is not known whether Lovecraft was simply kept ignorant of his father's illness or whether his later statements were intentionally misleading.
After his father's institutionalization, Lovecraft resided in the family home with his mother, his maternal aunts Lillian and Annie, and his maternal grandparents Whipple and Robie. According to family friends, his mother, known as Susie, doted on the young Lovecraft excessively, pampering him and never letting him out of her sight. Lovecraft later recollected that his mother was "permanently stricken with grief" after his father's illness. Whipple became a father figure to Lovecraft in this time, Lovecraft noting that his grandfather became the "centre of my entire universe". Whipple, who often traveled to manage his business, maintained correspondence by letter with the young Lovecraft who, by the age of three, was already proficient at reading and writing.
He encouraged the young Lovecraft to have an appreciation of literature, especially classical literature and English poetry. In his old age, he helped raise the young H. P. Lovecraft and educated him not only in the classics, but also in original weird tales of "winged horrors" and "deep, low, moaning sounds" which he created for his grandchild's entertainment. The original sources of Phillips' weird tales are unidentified. Lovecraft himself guessed that they originated from Gothic novelists like Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, and Charles Maturin. It was during this period that Lovecraft was introduced to some of his earliest literary influences such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner illustrated by Gustave Doré, One Thousand and One Nights, Thomas Bulfinch's Age of Fable, and Ovid's Metamorphoses.
While there is no indication that Lovecraft was particularly close to his grandmother Robie, her death in 1896 had a profound effect on him. By his own account, it sent his family into "a gloom from which it never fully recovered". His mother and aunts wore black mourning dresses that "terrified" him. This is also time that Lovecraft, approximately five-and-a-half years old, started having nightmares that later would inform his fictional writings. Specifically, he began to have recurring nightmares of beings he referred to as "night-gaunts". He credited their appearance to the influence of Doré's illustrations, which would "whirl me through space at a sickening rate of speed, the while fretting & impelling me with their detestable tridents". Thirty years later, night-gaunts would appear in Lovecraft's fiction.
Lovecraft's earliest known literary works were written at the age of seven, and were poems restyling the Odyssey and other Greco-Roman mythological stories. Lovecraft would later write that during his childhood he was fixated on the Greco-Roman pantheon, and briefly accepted them as genuine expressions of divinity, foregoing his Christian upbringing. He recalled, at five years old, being told Santa Claus did not exist and retorted by asking why "God is not equally a myth?" At the age of eight, he took a keen interest in the sciences, particularly astronomy and chemistry. He also examined the anatomical books that were held in the family library, which taught him the specifics of human reproduction that were not yet explained to him. As a result, he found that it "virtually killed my interest in the subject".
In 1902, according to Lovecraft's later correspondence, astronomy became a guiding influence on his worldview. He began publishing the periodical Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy, using the hectograph printing method. Lovecraft went in and out of elementary school repeatedly, oftentimes with home tutors making up for the lost years, missing time due to health concerns that have not been determined. The written recollections of his peers described him as withdrawn but welcoming to those who shared his then-current fascination with astronomy, inviting them to look through his prized telescope.
Education and financial decline
By 1900, Whipple's various business concerns were suffering a downturn, which resulted in the slow reduction of his family's wealth. He was forced to let his family's hired servants go, leaving Lovecraft, Whipple, and Susie, being the only unmarried sister, alone in the family home. In the spring of 1904, Whipple's largest business venture suffered a catastrophic failure. Within months, he died at age 70 due to a stroke. After Whipple's death, Susie was unable to financially support the upkeep of the expansive family home on what remained of the Phillips' estate. Later that year, she was forced to move to a small duplex with her son.
Lovecraft called this time one of the darkest of his life, remarking in a 1934 letter that he saw no point in living anymore. Furthermore, he considered the possibility of committing suicide. His scientific curiosity and desire to know more about the world prevented him from doing so. In fall 1904, he entered high school. Much like his earlier school years, Lovecraft was periodically removed from school for long periods for what he termed "near breakdowns". He did say, though, that while having some conflicts with teachers, he enjoyed high school, becoming close with a small circle of friends. Lovecraft also performed well academically, excelling in particular at chemistry and physics. Aside from a pause in 1904, he also resumed publishing the Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy as well as starting the Scientific Gazette, which dealt mostly with chemistry. It was also during this period that Lovecraft produced the first of the fictional works that he would later be known for, namely "The Beast in the Cave" and "The Alchemist".
It was in 1908, prior to what would have been his high school graduation, that Lovecraft suffered another unidentified health crisis, though this instance was more severe than his prior illnesses. The exact circumstances and causes remain unknown. The only direct records are Lovecraft's own correspondence wherein he retrospectively described it variously as a "nervous collapse" and "a sort of breakdown", in one letter blaming it on the stress of high school despite his enjoying it. In another letter concerning the events of 1908, he notes, "I was and am prey to intense headaches, insomnia, and general nervous weakness which prevents my continuous application to any thing."
Though Lovecraft maintained that he was going to attend Brown University after high school, he never graduated and never attended school again. Whether Lovecraft suffered from a physical ailment, a mental one, or some combination thereof has never been determined. An account from a high school classmate described Lovecraft as exhibiting "terrible tics" and that at times "he'd be sitting in his seat and he'd suddenly up and jump". Harry Brobst, a psychology professor, examined the account and claimed that chorea minor was the probable cause of Lovecraft's childhood symptoms while noting that instances of chorea minor after adolescence are very rare. In his letters, Lovecraft acknowledged that he suffered from bouts of chorea as a child. Brobst further ventured that Lovecraft's 1908 breakdown was attributed to a "hysteroid seizure", a term that has become synonymous with atypical depression. In another letter concerning the events of 1908, Lovecraft stated that he "could hardly bear to see or speak to anyone, & liked to shut out the world by pulling down dark shades & using artificial light".
Earliest recognition
Few of Lovecraft and Susie's activities between late 1908 and 1913 were recorded. Lovecraft described the steady continuation of their financial decline highlighted by his uncle's failed business that cost Susie a large portion of their already dwindling wealth. One of Susie's friends, Clara Hess, recalled a visit during which Susie spoke continuously about Lovecraft being "so hideous that he hid from everyone and did not like to walk upon the streets where people could gaze on him". Despite Hess' protests to the contrary, Susie maintained this stance. For his part, Lovecraft said he found his mother to be "a positive marvel of consideration". A next-door neighbor later pointed out that what others in the neighborhood often assumed were loud, nocturnal quarrels between mother and son, were actually recitations of Shakespeare, an activity that seemed to delight mother and son.
During this period, Lovecraft revived his earlier scientific periodicals. He endeavored to commit himself to the study of organic chemistry, Susie buying the expensive glass chemistry assemblage he wanted. Lovecraft found his studies were stymied by the mathematics involved, which he found boring and would cause headaches that would incapacitate him for the remainder of the day. Lovecraft's first non-self-published poem appeared in a local newspaper in 1912. Called Providence in 2000 A.D., it envisioned a future where Americans of English descent were displaced by Irish, Italian, Portuguese, and Jewish immigrants. In this period he also wrote racist poetry, including "New-England Fallen" and "On the Creation of Niggers", but there is no indication that either were published during his lifetime.
In 1911, Lovecraft's letters to editors began appearing in pulp and weird-fiction magazines, most notably Argosy. A 1913 letter critical of Fred Jackson, one of Argosy'''s more prominent writers, started Lovecraft down a path that would define the remainder of his career as a writer. In the following letters, Lovecraft described Jackson's stories as being "trivial, effeminate, and, in places, coarse". Continuing, Lovecraft argued that Jackson's characters exhibit the "delicate passions and emotions proper to negroes and anthropoid apes". This sparked a nearly year-long feud in the magazine's letters section between the two writers and their respective supporters. Lovecraft's most prominent opponent was John Russell, who often replied in verse, and to whom Lovecraft felt compelled to reply because he respected Russell's writing skills. The most immediate effect of this feud was the recognition garnered from Edward F. Daas, then head editor of the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA). Daas invited Russell and Lovecraft to join the organization and both accepted, Lovecraft in April 1914.
Rejuvenation and tragedy
Lovecraft immersed himself in the world of amateur journalism for most of the following decade. During this period, he advocated for amateurism's superiority to commercialism. Lovecraft defined commercialism as writing for what he considered low-brow publications for pay. This was contrasted with his view of "professional publication", which was what he called writing what he considered respectable journals and publishers. He thought of amateur journalism as serving as practice for a professional career.
Lovecraft was appointed chairman of the Department of Public Criticism of the UAPA in late 1914. He used this position to advocate for what he saw as the superiority of archaic English language usage. Emblematic of the Anglophilic opinions he maintained throughout his life, he openly criticized other UAPA contributors for their "Americanisms" and "slang". Often, these criticisms were embedded in xenophobic and racist statements that the "national language" was being negatively changed by immigrants. In mid-1915, Lovecraft was elected vice-president of the UAPA. Two years later, he was elected president and appointed other board members who mostly shared his belief in the supremacy of British English over modern American English. Another significant event of this time was the beginning of World War I. Lovecraft published multiple criticisms of the American government and public's reluctance to join the war to protect England, which he viewed as America's ancestral homeland.
In 1916, Lovecraft published his first short story, "The Alchemist", in the main UAPA journal, which was a departure from his usual verse. Due to the encouragement of W. Paul Cook, another UAPA member and future lifelong friend, Lovecraft began writing and publishing more prose fiction. Soon afterwards, he wrote "The Tomb" and "Dagon". "The Tomb", by Lovecraft's own admission, was greatly influenced by the style and structure of Edgar Allan Poe's works. Meanwhile, "Dagon" is considered Lovecraft's first work that displays the concepts and themes that his writings would later become known for. Lovecraft published another short story, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" in 1919, which was his first science fiction story.
Lovecraft's term as president of the UAPA ended in 1918, and he returned to his former post as chairman of the Department of Public Criticism. In 1917, as Lovecraft related to Kleiner, Lovecraft made an aborted attempt to enlist in the United States Army. Though he passed the physical exam, he told Kleiner that his mother threatened to do anything, legal or otherwise, to prove that he was unfit for service. After his failed attempt to serve in World War I, he attempted to enroll in the Rhode Island National Guard, but his mother used her family connections to prevent it.
During the winter of 1918–1919, Susie, exhibiting the symptoms of a nervous breakdown, went to live with her elder sister, Lillian. The nature of Susie's illness is unclear, as her medical papers were later destroyed in a fire at Butler Hospital. Winfield Townley Scott, who was able to read the papers before the fire, described Susie as having suffered a psychological collapse. Neighbour and friend Clara Hess, interviewed in 1948, recalled instances of Susie describing "weird and fantastic creatures that rushed out from behind buildings and from corners at dark". In the same account, Hess described a time when they crossed paths in downtown Providence and Susie was unaware of where she was. In March 1919, she was committed to Butler Hospital, like her husband before her. Lovecraft's immediate reaction to Susie's commitment was visceral, writing to Kleiner that, "existence seems of little value", and that he wished "it might terminate". During Susie's time at Butler, Lovecraft periodically visited her and walked the large grounds with her.
Late 1919 saw Lovecraft become more outgoing. After a period of isolation, he began joining friends in trips to writer gatherings; the first being a talk in Boston presented by Lord Dunsany, whom Lovecraft had recently discovered and idolized. In early 1920, at an amateur writer convention, he met Frank Belknap Long, who would end up being Lovecraft's most influential and closest confidant for the remainder of his life. The influence of Dunsany is apparent in his 1919 output, which is part of what would be called Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, including "The White Ship" and "The Doom That Came to Sarnath". In early 1920, he wrote "The Cats of Ulthar" and "Celephaïs", which were also strongly influenced by Dunsany.
It was later in 1920 that Lovecraft began publishing the earliest Cthulhu Mythos stories. The Cthulhu Mythos, a term coined by later authors, encompasses Lovecraft's stories that share a commonality in the revelation of cosmic insignificance, initially realistic settings, and recurring entities and texts. The prose poem "Nyarlathotep" and the short story "The Crawling Chaos", in collaboration with Winifred Virginia Jackson, were written in late 1920. Following in early 1921 came "The Nameless City", the first story that falls definitively within the Cthulhu Mythos. In it is one of Lovecraft's most enduring phrases, a couplet recited by Abdul Alhazred; "That is not dead which can eternal lie; And with strange aeons even death may die." In the same year, he also wrote "The Outsider", which has become one of Lovecraft's most heavily analyzed, and differently interpreted, stories. It has been variously interpreted as being autobiographical, an allegory of the psyche, a parody of the afterlife, a commentary on humanity's place in the universe, and a critique of progress.
On May 24, 1921, Susie died in Butler Hospital, due to complications from an operation on her gall bladder five days earlier. Lovecraft's initial reaction, expressed in a letter written nine days after Susie's death, was a deep state of sadness that crippled him physically and emotionally. He again expressed a desire that his life might end. Lovecraft's later response was relief, as he had become able to live independently from his mother. His physical health also began to improve, although he was unaware of the exact cause. Despite Lovecraft's reaction, he continued to attend amateur journalist conventions. Lovecraft met his future wife, Sonia Greene, at one such convention in July.
Marriage and New York
Lovecraft's aunts disapproved of his relationship with Sonia. Lovecraft and Greene married on March 3, 1924, and relocated to her Brooklyn apartment at 793 Flatbush Avenue; she thought he needed to leave Providence to flourish and was willing to support him financially. Greene, who had been married before, later said Lovecraft had performed satisfactorily as a lover, though she had to take the initiative in all aspects of the relationship. She attributed Lovecraft's passive nature to a stultifying upbringing by his mother. Lovecraft's weight increased to on his wife's home cooking.
He was enthralled by New York, and, in what was informally dubbed the Kalem Club, he acquired a group of encouraging intellectual and literary friends who urged him to submit stories to Weird Tales. Its editor, Edwin Baird, accepted many of Lovecraft's stories for the ailing publication, including "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs", which was ghostwritten for Harry Houdini. Established informally some years before Lovecraft arrived in New York, the core Kalem Club members were boys' adventure novelist Henry Everett McNeil, the lawyer and anarchist writer James Ferdinand Morton Jr., and the poet Reinhardt Kleiner.
On January 1, 1925, Sonia moved from Flatbush to Cleveland in response to a job opportunity, and Lovecraft left for a small first-floor apartment on 169 Clinton Street "at the edge of Red Hook"—a location which came to discomfort him greatly. Later that year, the Kalem Club's four regular attendees were joined by Lovecraft along with his protégé Frank Belknap Long, bookseller George Willard Kirk, and Samuel Loveman. Loveman was Jewish, but he and Lovecraft became close friends in spite of the latter's nativist attitudes. By the 1930s, writer and publisher Herman Charles Koenig would be one of the last to become involved with the Kalem Club.
Not long after the marriage, Greene lost her business and her assets disappeared in a bank failure. Lovecraft made efforts to support his wife through regular jobs, but his lack of previous work experience meant he lacked proven marketable skills. The publisher of Weird Tales was attempting to make the loss-making magazine profitable and offered the job of editor to Lovecraft, who declined, citing his reluctance to relocate to Chicago on aesthetic grounds. Baird was succeeded by Farnsworth Wright, whose writing Lovecraft had criticized. Lovecraft's submissions were often rejected by Wright. This may have been partially due to censorship guidelines imposed in the aftermath of a Weird Tales story that hinted at necrophilia, although after Lovecraft's death, Wright accepted many of the stories he had originally rejected.
Sonia also became ill and immediately after recovering, relocated to Cincinnati, and then to Cleveland; her employment required constant travel. Added to his feelings of failure in a city with a large immigrant population, Lovecraft's single-room apartment was burgled, leaving him with only the clothes he was wearing. In August 1925, he wrote "The Horror at Red Hook" and "He", in the latter of which the narrator says "My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration [...] I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyze, and annihilate me." This was an expression of his despair at being in New York. It was at around this time he wrote the outline for "The Call of Cthulhu", with its theme of the insignificance of all humanity. During this time, Lovecraft wrote "Supernatural Horror in Literature" on the eponymous subject. It later became one of the most influential essays on the subject. With a weekly allowance Greene sent, Lovecraft moved to a working-class area of Brooklyn Heights, where he resided in a tiny apartment. He had lost approximately of body weight by 1926, when he left for Providence.
Return to Providence and death
Back in Providence, Lovecraft lived with his aunts in a "spacious brown Victorian wooden house" at 10 Barnes Street until 1933. He would then move to 66 Prospect Street, which would become his final home. The period beginning after his return to Providence contains some of his most prominent works, including "The Call of Cthulhu", The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and The Shadow over Innsmouth. The latter two stories are partially autobiographical, as scholars have argued that The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is about Lovecraft's return to Providence and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is, in part, about the city itself. The former story also represents a partial repudiation of Dunsany's influence, as Lovecraft had decided that his style did not come to him naturally. At this time, he frequently revised work for other authors and did a large amount of ghostwriting, including The Mound, "Winged Death", and "The Diary of Alonzo Typer". Client Harry Houdini was laudatory, and attempted to help Lovecraft by introducing him to the head of a newspaper syndicate. Plans for a further project were ended by Houdini's death in 1926.
In August 1930, Robert E. Howard wrote a letter to Weird Tales praising a then-recent reprint of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" and discussing some of the Gaelic references used within. Editor Farnsworth Wright forwarded the letter to Lovecraft, who responded positively to Howard, and soon the two writers were engaged in a vigorous correspondence that would last for the rest of Howard's life. Howard quickly became a member of the Lovecraft Circle, a group of writers and friends all linked through Lovecraft's voluminous correspondence, as he introduced his many like-minded friends to one another and encouraged them to share their stories, utilize each other's fictional creations, and help each other succeed in the field of pulp fiction.
Meanwhile, Lovecraft was increasingly producing work that brought him no remuneration. Affecting a calm indifference to the reception of his works, Lovecraft was in reality extremely sensitive to criticism and easily precipitated into withdrawal. He was known to give up trying to sell a story after it had been once rejected. Sometimes, as with The Shadow over Innsmouth, he wrote a story that might have been commercially viable but did not try to sell it. Lovecraft even ignored interested publishers. He failed to reply when one inquired about any novel Lovecraft might have ready: although he had completed such a work, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, it was never typed up. A few years after Lovecraft had moved to Providence, he and his wife Sonia Greene, having lived separately for so long, agreed to an amicable divorce. Greene moved to California in 1933 and remarried in 1936, unaware that Lovecraft, despite his assurances to the contrary, had never officially signed the final decree.
As a result of the Great Depression, he shifted towards democratic socialism, decrying both his prior political beliefs and the rising tide of fascism. He thought that socialism was a workable middle ground between what he saw as the destructive impulses of both the capitalists and the Marxists of his day. This was based in a general opposition to cultural upheaval, as well as support for an ordered society. Electorally, he supported Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he thought that the New Deal was not sufficiently leftist. Lovecraft's support for it was based in his view that no other set of reforms were possible at that time.
In late 1936, he witnessed the publication of The Shadow over Innsmouth as a paperback book. 400 copies were printed, and the work was advertised in Weird Tales and several fan magazines. However, Lovecraft was displeased, as this book was riddled with errors that required extensive editing. It sold slowly and only approximately 200 copies were bound. The remaining 200 copies were destroyed after the publisher went out of business for the next seven years. By this point, Lovecraft's literary career was reaching its end. Shortly after having written his last original short story, "The Haunter of the Dark", he stated that the hostile reception of At the Mountains of Madness had done "more than anything to end my effective fictional career". His declining psychological, and physical, state made it impossible for him to continue writing fiction.
On June 11, Robert E. Howard was informed that his chronically ill mother would not awaken from her coma. He walked out to his car and committed suicide with a pistol that he had stored there. His mother died shortly thereafter. This deeply affected Lovecraft, who consoled Howard's father through correspondence. Almost immediately after hearing about Howard's death, Lovecraft wrote a brief memoir titled "In Memoriam: Robert Ervin Howard", which he distributed to his correspondents. Meanwhile, Lovecraft's physical health was deteriorating. He was suffering from an affliction that he referred to as "grippe".
Due to his fear of doctors, Lovecraft was not examined until a month before his death. After seeing a doctor, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the small intestine. He remained hospitalized until he died. He lived in constant pain until his death on March 15, 1937, in Providence. In accordance with his lifelong scientific curiosity, he kept a diary of his illness until he was physically incapable of holding a pen. Lovecraft was listed along with his parents on the Phillips family monument. In 1977, fans erected a headstone in Swan Point Cemetery on which they inscribed his name, the dates of his birth and death, and the phrase "I AM PROVIDENCE"—a line from one of his personal letters.
Personal views
Politics
Lovecraft began his life as a Tory, which was likely the result of his conservative upbringing. His family supported the Republican Party for the entirety of his life. While it is unclear how consistently he voted, he voted for Herbert Hoover in the 1928 presidential election. Rhode Island as a whole remained politically conservative and Republican into the 1930s. Lovecraft himself was an anglophile who supported the British monarchy. He opposed democracy and thought that America should be governed by an aristocracy. This viewpoint emerged during his youth and lasted until the end of the 1920s. During World War I, his Anglophilia caused him to strongly support the entente against the Central Powers. Many of this earlier poems were devoted to then-current political subjects, and he published several political essays in his amateur journal, The Conservative. He was a teetotaler who supported the implementation of Prohibition, which was one of the few reforms that he supported during the early part of his life. While remaining a teetotaller, he later became convinced that Prohibition was ineffectual in the 1930s. His personal justification for his early political viewpoints was primarily based on tradition and aesthetics.
As a result of the Great Depression, Lovecraft reexamined his political views. Initially, he thought that affluent people would take on the characteristics of his ideal aristocracy and solve America's problems. When this did not occur, he became a democratic socialist. This shift was caused by his observation that the Depression was harming American society. It was also influenced by the increase in socialism's political capital during the 1930s. One of the main points of Lovecraft's socialism was its opposition to Soviet Marxism, as he thought that a Marxist revolution would bring about the destruction of American civilization. Lovecraft thought that an intellectual aristocracy needed to be formed to preserve America. His ideal political system is outlined in his essay "Some Repetitions on the Times". Lovecraft used this essay to echo the political proposals that had been made over the course of the last few decades. In this essay, he advocates governmental control of resource distribution, fewer working hours and a higher wage, and unemployment insurance and old age pensions. He also outlines the need for an oligarchy of intellectuals. In his view, power must be restricted to those who are sufficiently intelligent and educated. He frequently used the term "fascism" to describe this form of government, but, according to S. T. Joshi, it bears little resemblance to that ideology.
Lovecraft had varied views on the political figures of his day. He was an ardent supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He saw that Roosevelt was trying to steer a middle course between the conservatives and the revolutionaries, which he approved of. While he thought that Roosevelt should have been enacting more progressive policies, he came to the conclusion that the New Deal was the only realistic option for reform. He thought that voting for his opponents on the political left would be a wasted effort. Internationally, like many Americans, he initially expressed support for Adolf Hitler. More specifically, he thought that Hitler would preserve German culture. However, he thought that Hitler's racial policies should be based on culture rather than descent. There is evidence that, at the end of his life, Lovecraft began to oppose Hitler. According to Harry K. Brobst, Lovecraft's downstairs neighbor went to Germany and witnessed Jews being beaten. Lovecraft and his aunt were angered by this. His discussions of Hitler drop off after this point.
Atheism
Lovecraft was an atheist. His viewpoints on religion are outlined in his 1922 essay "A Confession of Unfaith". In this essay, he describes his shift away from the Protestantism of his parents to the atheism of his adulthood. Lovecraft was raised by a conservative Protestant family. He was introduced to the Bible and the mythos of Saint Nicholas when he was two. He passively accepted both of them. Over the course of the next few years, he was introduced to Grimms' Fairy Tales and One Thousand and One Nights, favoring the latter. In response, Lovecraft took on the identity of "Abdul Alhazred", a name he would later use for the author of the Necronomicon. According to this account, his first moment of skepticism occurred before his fifth birthday, when he questioned if God is a myth after learning that Santa Claus is not real. In 1896, he was introduced to Greco-Roman myths and became "a genuine pagan".
This came to an end in 1902, when Lovecraft was introduced to space. He later described this event as the most poignant in his life. In response to this discovery, Lovecraft took to studying astronomy and described his observations in the local newspaper. Before his thirteenth birthday, he had become convinced of humanity's impermanence. By the time he was seventeen, he had read detailed writings that agreed with his worldview. Lovecraft ceased writing positively about progress, instead developing his later cosmic philosophy. Despite his interests in science, he had an aversion to realistic literature, so he became interested in fantastical fiction. Lovecraft became pessimistic when he entered amateur journalism in 1914. The Great War seemed to confirm his viewpoints. He began to despise philosophical idealism. Lovecraft took to discussing and debating his pessimism with his peers, which allowed him to solidify his philosophy. His readings of Friedrich Nietzsche and H. L. Mencken, among other pessimistic writers, furthered this development. At the end of his essay, Lovecraft states that all he desired was oblivion. He was willing to cast aside any illusion that he may still have held.
Race
Race is the most controversial aspect of Lovecraft's legacy, expressed in many disparaging remarks against non-Anglo-Saxon races and cultures in his works. As he grew older, his original racial worldview became a classism or elitism which regarded the superior race to include all those self-ennobled through high culture. From the start, Lovecraft did not hold all white people in uniform high regard, but rather esteemed English people and those of English descent. In his early published essays, private letters and personal utterances, he argued for a strong color line to preserve race and culture. His arguments were supported using disparagements of various races in his journalism and letters, and allegorically in his fictional works that depict non-human races. This is evident in his portrayal of the Deep Ones in The Shadow over Innsmouth. Their interbreeding with humanity is framed as being a type of miscegenation that corrupts both the town of Innsmouth and the protagonist.
Initially, Lovecraft showed sympathy to minorities who adopted Western culture, even to the extent of marrying a Jewish woman he viewed as being "well assimilated". By the 1930s, Lovecraft's views on ethnicity and race had moderated. He supported ethnicities' preserving their native cultures; for example, he thought that "a real friend of civilisation wishes merely to make the Germans more German, the French more French, the Spaniards more Spanish, & so on". This represented a shift from his previous support for cultural assimilation. However, this did not represent a complete elimination of his racial prejudices. Scholars have argued that Lovecraft's racial attitudes were common in the society of his day, particularly in the New England in which he grew up.
Influences
His interest in weird fiction began in his childhood when his grandfather, who preferred Gothic stories, would tell him stories of his own design. Lovecraft's childhood home on Angell Street had a large library that contained classical literature, scientific works, and early weird fiction. At the age of five, Lovecraft enjoyed reading One Thousand and One Nights, and was reading Nathaniel Hawthorne a year later. He was also influenced by the travel literature of John Mandeville and Marco Polo. This led to his discovery of gaps in then-contemporary science, which prevented Lovecraft from committing suicide in response to the death of his grandfather and his family's declining financial situation during his adolescence. These travelogues may have also had an influence on how Lovecraft's later works describe their characters and locations. For example, there is a resemblance between the powers of the Tibetan enchanters in The Travels of Marco Polo and the powers unleashed on Sentinel Hill in "The Dunwich Horror".
One of Lovecraft's most significant literary influences was Edgar Allan Poe, whom he described as his "God of Fiction". Poe's fiction was introduced to Lovecraft when the latter was eight years old. His earlier works were significantly influenced by Poe's prose and writing style. He also made extensive use of Poe's unity of effect in his fiction. Furthermore, At the Mountains of Madness directly quotes Poe and was influenced by The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. One of the main themes of the two stories is to discuss the unreliable nature of language as a method of expressing meaning. In 1919, Lovecraft's discovery of the stories of Lord Dunsany moved his writing in a new direction, resulting in a series of fantasies. Throughout his life, Lovecraft referred to Dunsany as the author who had the greatest impact on his literary career. The initial result of this influence was the Dream Cycle, a series of fantasies that originally take place in prehistory, but later shift to a dreamworld setting. By 1930, Lovecraft decided that he would no longer write Dunsianian fantasies, arguing that the style did not come naturally to him. Additionally, he also read and cited Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood as influences in the 1920s.
Aside from horror authors, Lovecraft was significantly influenced by the Decadents, the Puritans, and the Aesthetic Movement. In "H. P. Lovecraft: New England Decadent", Barton Levi St. Armand, a professor emeritus of English and American studies at Brown University, has argued that these three influences combined to define Lovecraft as a writer. He traces this influence to both Lovecraft's stories and letters, noting that he actively cultivated the image of a New England gentleman in his letters. Meanwhile, his influence from the Decadents and the Aesthetic Movement stems from his readings of Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft's aesthetic worldview and fixation on decline stems from these readings. The idea of cosmic decline is described as having been Lovecraft's response to both the Aesthetic Movement and the 19th century Decadents. St. Armand describes it as being a combination of non-theological Puritan thought and the Decadent worldview. This is used as a division in his stories, particularly in "The Horror at Red Hook", "Pickman's Model", and "The Music of Erich Zann". The division between Puritanism and Decadence, St. Armand argues, represents a polarization between an artificial paradise and oneiriscopic visions of different worlds.
A non-literary inspiration came from then-contemporary scientific advances in biology, astronomy, geology, and physics. Lovecraft's study of science contributed to his view of the human race as insignificant, powerless, and doomed in a materialistic and mechanistic universe. Lovecraft was a keen amateur astronomer from his youth, often visiting the Ladd Observatory in Providence, and penning numerous astronomical articles for his personal journal and local newspapers. Lovecraft's materialist views led him to espouse his philosophical views through his fiction; these philosophical views came to be called cosmicism. Cosmicism took on a more pessimistic tone with his creation of what is now known as the Cthulhu Mythos; a fictional universe that contains alien deities and horrors. The term "Cthulhu Mythos" was likely coined by later writers after Lovecraft's death. In his letters, Lovecraft jokingly called his fictional mythology "Yog-Sothothery".
Dreams had a major role in Lovecraft's literary career. In 1991, as a result of his rising place in American literature, it was popularly thought that Lovecraft extensively transcribed his dreams when writing fiction. However, the majority of his stories are not transcribed dreams. Instead, many of them are directly influenced by dreams and dreamlike phenomena. In his letters, Lovecraft frequently compared his characters to dreamers. They are described as being as helpless as a real dreamer who is experiencing a nightmare. His stories also have dreamlike qualities. The Randolph Carter stories deconstruct the division between dreams and reality. The dreamlands in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath are a shared dreamworld that can be accessed by a sensitive dreamer. Meanwhile, in "The Silver Key", Lovecraft mentions the concept of "inward dreams", which implies the existence of outward dreams. Burleson compares this deconstruction to Carl Jung's argument that dreams are the source of archetypal myths. Lovecraft's way of writing fiction required both a level of realism and dreamlike elements. Citing Jung, Burleson argues that a writer may create realism by being inspired by dreams.
Themes
Cosmicism
The central theme of Lovecraft's corpus is cosmicism. Cosmicism is a literary philosophy that argues that humanity is an insignificant force in the universe. Despite appearing pessimistic, Lovecraft thought of himself being as being a cosmic indifferentist, which is expressed in his fiction. In it, human beings are often subject to powerful beings and other cosmic forces, but these forces are not so much malevolent as they are indifferent toward humanity. He believed in a meaningless, mechanical, and uncaring universe that human beings could never fully understand. There is no allowance for beliefs that could not be supported scientifically. Lovecraft first articulated this philosophy in 1921, but he did not fully incorporate it into his fiction until five years later. "Dagon", "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", and "The Temple" contain early depictions of this concept, but the majority of his early tales do not analyze the concept. "Nyarlathotep" interprets the collapse of human civilization as being a corollary to the collapse of the universe. "The Call of Cthulhu" represents an intensification of this theme. In it, Lovecraft introduces the idea of alien influences on humanity, which would come to dominate all subsequent works. In these works, Lovecraft expresses cosmicism through the usage of confirmation rather than revelation. Lovecraftian protagonists do not learn that they are insignificant. Instead, they already know it and have it confirmed to them through an event.
Decline of civilization
For much of his life, Lovecraft was fixated on the concepts of decline and decadence. More specifically, he thought that the West was in a state of terminal decline. Starting in the 1920s, Lovecraft became familiar with the work of the German conservative-revolutionary theorist Oswald Spengler, whose pessimistic thesis of the decadence of the modern West formed a crucial element in Lovecraft's overall anti-modern worldview. Spenglerian imagery of cyclical decay is a central theme in At the Mountains of Madness. S. T. Joshi, in H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West, places Spengler at the center of his discussion of Lovecraft's political and philosophical ideas. According to him, the idea of decline is the single idea that permeates and connects his personal philosophy. The main Spenglerian influence on Lovecraft would be his view that politics, economics, science, and art are all interdependent aspects of civilization. This realization led him to shed his personal ignorance of then-current political and economic developments after 1927. Lovecraft had developed his idea of Western decline independently, but Spengler gave it a clear framework.
Science
Lovecraft shifted supernatural horror away from its previous focus on human issues to a focus on cosmic ones. In this way, he merged the elements of supernatural fiction that he deemed to be scientifically viable with science fiction. This merge required an understanding of both supernatural horror and then-contemporary science. Lovecraft used this combined knowledge to create stories that extensively reference trends in scientific development. Beginning with "The Shunned House", Lovecraft increasingly incorporated elements of both Einsteinian science and his own personal materialism into his stories. This intensified with the writing of "The Call of Cthulhu", where he depicted alien influences on humanity. This trend would continue throughout the remainder of his literary career. "The Colour Out of Space" represents what scholars have called the peak of this trend. It portrays an alien lifeform whose otherness prevents it from being defined by then-contemporary science.
Another part of this effort was the repeated usage of mathematics in an effort to make his creatures and settings appear more alien. Tom Hull, a mathematician, regards this as enhancing his ability to invoke a sense of otherness and fear. He attributes this use of mathematics to Lovecraft's childhood interest in astronomy and his adulthood awareness of non-Euclidean geometry. Another reason for his use of mathematics was his reaction to the scientific developments of his day. These developments convinced him that humanity's primary means of understanding the world was no longer trustable. Lovecraft's usage of mathematics in his fiction serves to convert otherwise supernatural elements into things that have in-universe scientific explanations. "The Dreams in the Witch House" and The Shadow Out of Time both have elements of this. The former uses a witch and her familiar, while the latter uses the idea of mind transference. These elements are explained using scientific theories that were prevalent during Lovecraft's lifetime.
Lovecraft Country
Setting plays a major role in Lovecraft's fiction. Lovecraft Country, a fictionalized version of New England, serves as the central hub for his mythos. It represents the history, culture, and folklore of the region, as interpreted by Lovecraft. These attributes are exaggerated and altered to provide a suitable setting for his stories. The names of the locations in the region were directly influenced by the names of real locations in the region, which was done to increase their realism. Lovecraft's stories use their connections with New England to imbue themselves with the ability to instil fear. Lovecraft was primarily inspired by the cities and towns in Massachusetts. However, the specific location of Lovecraft Country is variable, as it moved according to Lovecraft's literary needs. Starting with areas that he thought were evocative, Lovecraft redefined and exaggerated them under fictional names. For example, Lovecraft based Arkham on the town of Oakham and expanded it to include a nearby landmark. Its location was moved, as Lovecraft decided that it would have been destroyed by the recently-built Quabbin Reservoir. This is alluded to in "The Colour Out of Space", as the "blasted heath" is submerged by the creation of a fictionalized version of the reservoir. Similarly, Lovecraft's other towns were based on other locations in Massachusetts. Innsmouth was based on Newburyport, and Dunwich was based on Greenwich. The vague locations of these towns also played into Lovecraft's desire to create a mood in his stories. In his view, a mood can only be evoked through reading.
Critical reception
Literary
Early efforts to revise an established literary view of Lovecraft as an author of 'pulp' were resisted by some eminent critics; in 1945, Edmund Wilson sneered: "the only real horror in most of these fictions is the horror of bad taste and bad art". However, Wilson praised Lovecraft's ability to write about his chosen field; he described him as having written about it "with much intelligence". According to L. Sprague de Camp, Wilson later improved his opinion of Lovecraft, citing a report of David Chavchavadze that Wilson had included a Lovecraftian reference in Little Blue Light: A Play in Three Acts. After Chavchavadze met with him to discuss this, Wilson revealed that he had been reading a copy of Lovecraft's correspondence. Two years before Wilson's critique, Lovecraft's works were reviewed by Winfield Townley Scott, the literary editor of The Providence Journal. He argued that Lovecraft was one of the most significant Rhode Island authors and that it was regrettable that he had received little attention from mainstream critics at the time. Mystery and Adventure columnist Will Cuppy of the New York Herald Tribune recommended to readers a volume of Lovecraft's stories in 1944, asserting that "the literature of horror and macabre fantasy belongs with mystery in its broader sense".
By 1957, Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction said that Lovecraft was comparable to Robert E. Howard, stating that "they appear more prolific than ever," noting L. Sprague de Camp, Björn Nyberg, and August Derleth's usage of their creations. Gale also said that "Lovecraft at his best could build a mood of horror unsurpassed; at his worst, he was laughable." In 1962, Colin Wilson, in his survey of anti-realist trends in fiction The Strength to Dream, cited Lovecraft as one of the pioneers of the "assault on rationality" and included him with M. R. James, H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, J. R. R. Tolkien and others as one of the builders of mythicised realities contending against what he considered the failing project of literary realism. Subsequently, Lovecraft began to acquire the status of a cult writer in the counterculture of the 1960s, and reprints of his work proliferated.
Michael Dirda, a reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement, has described Lovecraft as being a "visionary" who is "rightly regarded as second only to Edgar Allan Poe in the annals of American supernatural literature". According to him, Lovecraft's works prove that mankind cannot bear the weight of reality, as the true nature of reality cannot be understood by either science or history. In addition, Dirda praises Lovecraft's ability to create an uncanny atmosphere. This atmosphere is created through the feeling of wrongness that pervades the objects, places, and people in Lovecraft's works. He also comments favorably on Lovecraft's correspondence, and compares him to Horace Walpole. Particular attention is given to his correspondence with August Derleth and Robert E. Howard. The Derleth letters are called "delightful", while the Howard letters are described as being an ideological debate. Overall, Dirda believes that Lovecraft's letters are equal to, or better than, his fictional output.Los Angeles Review of Books reviewer Nick Mamatas has stated that Lovecraft was a particularly difficult author, rather than a bad one. He described Lovecraft as being "perfectly capable" in the fields of story logic, pacing, innovation, and generating quotable phrases. However, Lovecraft's difficulty made him ill-suited to the pulps; he was unable to compete with the popular recurring protagonists and damsel-in-distress stories. Furthermore, he compared a paragraph from The Shadow Out of Time to a paragraph from the introduction to The Economic Consequences of the Peace. In Mamatas' view, Lovecraft's quality is obscured by his difficulty, and his skill is what has allowed his following to outlive the followings of other then-prominent authors, such as Seabury Quinn and Kenneth Patchen.
In 2005, the Library of America published a volume of Lovecraft's works. This volume was reviewed by many publications, including The New York Times Book Review and The Wall Street Journal, and sold 25,000 copies within a month of release. The overall critical reception of the volume was mixed. Several scholars, including S. T. Joshi and Alison Sperling, have said that this confirms H. P. Lovecraft's place in the western canon. The editors of The Age of Lovecraft, Carl H. Sederholm and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, attributed the rise of mainstream popular and academic interest in Lovecraft to this volume, along with the Penguin Classics volumes and the Modern Library edition of At the Mountains of Madness. These volumes led to a proliferation of other volumes containing Lovecraft's works. According to the two authors, these volumes are part of a trend in Lovecraft's popular and academic reception: increased attention by one audience causes the other to also become more interested. Lovecraft's success is, in part, the result of his success.
Lovecraft's style has often been subject to criticism, but scholars such as S. T. Joshi have argued that Lovecraft consciously utilized a variety of literary devices to form a unique style of his own—these include prose-poetic rhythm, stream of consciousness, alliteration, and conscious archaism. According to Joyce Carol Oates, Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe have exerted a significant influence on later writers in the horror genre. Horror author Stephen King called Lovecraft "the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale". King stated in his semi-autobiographical non-fiction book Danse Macabre that Lovecraft was responsible for his own fascination with horror and the macabre and was the largest influence on his writing.
Philosophical
H. P. Lovecraft's writings have influenced the speculative realist philosophical movement during the early-twentieth-century. The four founders of the movement, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux, have cited Lovecraft as an inspiration for their worldviews. Graham Harman wrote a monograph, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy, about Lovecraft and philosophy. In it, he argues that Lovecraft was a "productionist" author. He describes Lovecraft as having been an author who was uniquely obsessed with gaps in human knowledge. He goes further and asserts that Lovecraft's personal philosophy as being in opposition to both idealism and David Hume. In his view, Lovecraft resembles Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, and Edmund Husserl in his division of objects into different parts that do not exhaust the potential meanings of the whole. The anti-idealism of Lovecraft is represented through his commentary on the inability of language to describe his horrors. Harman also credits Lovecraft with inspiring parts of his own articulation of object-oriented ontology. According to Lovecraft scholar Alison Sperling, this philosophical interpretation of Lovecraft's fiction has caused other philosophers in Harmon's tradition to write about Lovecraft. These philosophers seek to remove human perception and human life from the foundations of ethics. These scholars have used Lovecraft's works as the central example of their worldview. They base this usage in Lovecraft's arguments against anthropocentrism and the ability of the human mind to truly understand the universe. They have also played a role in Lovecraft's improving literary reputation by focusing on his interpretation of ontology, which gives him a central position in Anthropocene studies.
Legacy
Lovecraft was relatively unknown during his lifetime. While his stories appeared in prominent pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, not many people knew his name. He did, however, correspond regularly with other contemporary writers such as Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth, who became his friends, even though he never met them in person. This group became known as the "Lovecraft Circle", since their writings freely borrowed Lovecraft's motifs, with his encouragement. He borrowed from them as well. For example, he made use of Clark Ashton Smith's Tsathoggua in The Mound.
After Lovecraft's death, the Lovecraft Circle carried on. August Derleth founded Arkham House with Donald Wandrei to preserve Lovecraft's works and keep them in print. He added to and expanded on Lovecraft's vision, not without controversy. While Lovecraft considered his pantheon of alien gods a mere plot device, Derleth created an entire cosmology, complete with a war between the good Elder Gods and the evil Outer Gods, such as Cthulhu and his ilk. The forces of good were supposed to have won, locking Cthulhu and others beneath the earth, the ocean, and elsewhere. Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos stories went on to associate different gods with the traditional four elements of fire, air, earth and water, which did not line up with Lovecraft's original vision of his mythos. However, Derleth's ownership of Arkham House gave him a position of authority in Lovecraftiana that would not dissipate until his death, and through the efforts of Lovecraft scholars in the 1970s.
Lovecraft's works have influenced many writers and other creators. Stephen King has cited Lovecraft as a major influence on his works. As a child in the 1960s, he came across a volume of Lovecraft's works which inspired him to write his fiction. He goes on to argue that all works in the horror genre that were written after Lovecraft were influenced by him. In the field of comics, Alan Moore has also described Lovecraft as having been a formative influence on his graphic novels. Film director John Carpenter's films include direct references and quotations of Lovecraft's fiction, in addition to their use of a Lovecraftian aesthetic and themes. Guillermo del Toro has been similarly influenced by Lovecraft's corpus.
The first World Fantasy Awards were held in Providence in 1975. The theme was "The Lovecraft Circle". Until 2015, winners were presented with an elongated bust of Lovecraft that was designed by cartoonist Gahan Wilson, nicknamed the "Howard". In November 2015 it was announced that the World Fantasy Award trophy would no longer be modeled on H. P. Lovecraft in response to the author's views on race. After the World Fantasy Award dropped their connection to Lovecraft, The Atlantic commented that "In the end, Lovecraft still wins—people who've never read a page of his work will still know who Cthulhu is for years to come, and his legacy lives on in the work of Stephen King, Guillermo del Toro, and Neil Gaiman."
In 2016, Lovecraft was inducted into the Museum of Pop Culture's Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Three years later, Lovecraft and the other mythos authors were posthumously awarded the 1945 Retro-Hugo Award for Best Series for their contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos.
Lovecraft studies
Starting in the early 1970s, a body of scholarly work began to emerge around Lovecraft's life and works. Referred to as Lovecraft studies, its proponents sought to establish Lovecraft as a significant author in the American literary canon. This can be traced to Derleth's preservation and dissemination of Lovecraft's fiction, non-fiction, and letters through Arkham House. Joshi credits the development of the field to this process. However, it was marred by low quality editions and misinterpretations of Lovecraft's worldview. After Derleth's death in 1971, the scholarship entered a new phase. There was a push to create a book-length biography of Lovecraft. L. Sprague de Camp, a science fiction scholar, wrote the first major one in 1975. This biography was criticized by early Lovecraft scholars for its lack of scholarly merit and its lack of sympathy for its subject. Despite this, it played a significant role in Lovecraft's literary rise. It exposed Lovecraft to the mainstream of American literary criticism. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a division in the field between the "Derlethian traditionalists" who wished to interpret Lovecraft through the lens of fantasy literature and the newer scholars who wished to place greater attention on the entirety of his corpus.
The 1980s and 1990s saw a further proliferation of the field. The 1990 H. P. Lovecraft Centennial Conference and the republishing of older essays in An Epicure in the Terrible represented the publishing of many basic studies that would be used as a base for then-future studies. The 1990 centennial also saw the installation of the "H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Plaque" in a garden adjoining John Hay Library, that features a portrait by silhouettist E. J. Perry. Following this, in 1996, S. T. Joshi wrote his own biography of Lovecraft. This biography was met with positive reviews and became the main biography in the field. It has since been superseded by his expanded edition of the book, I am Providence in 2010.
Lovecraft's improving literary reputation has caused his works to receive increased attention by both classics publishers and scholarly fans. His works have been published by several different series of literary classics. Penguin Classics published three volumes of Lovecraft's works between 1999 and 2004. These volumes were edited by S. T. Joshi. Barnes & Noble would publish their own volume of Lovecraft's complete fiction in 2008. The Library of America published a volume of Lovecraft's works in 2005. The publishing of these volumes represented a reversal of the traditional judgment that Lovecraft was not part of the Western canon. Meanwhile, the biannual NecronomiCon Providence convention was first held in 2013. Its purpose is to serve as a fan and scholarly convention that discusses both Lovecraft and the wider field of weird fiction. It is organized by the Lovecraft Arts and Sciences organization and is held on the weekend of Lovecraft's birth. That July, the Providence City Council designated the "H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Square" and installed a commemorative sign at the intersection of Angell and Prospect streets, near the author's former residences.
Music
Lovecraft's fictional Mythos has influenced a number of musicians, particularly in rock and heavy metal music. This began in the 1960s with the formation of the psychedelic rock band H. P. Lovecraft, who released the albums H. P. Lovecraft and H. P. Lovecraft II in 1967 and 1968 respectively. They broke up afterwards, but later songs were released. This included "The White Ship" and "At the Mountains of Madness", both titled after Lovecraft stories. Extreme metal has also been influenced by Lovecraft. This has expressed itself in both the names of bands and the contents of their albums. This began in 1970 with the release of Black Sabbath's first album, Black Sabbath, which contained a song titled Behind the Wall of Sleep, deriving its name from the 1919 story "Beyond the Wall of Sleep." Heavy metal band Metallica was also inspired by Lovecraft. They recorded a song inspired by "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Call of Ktulu", and a song based on The Shadow over Innsmouth titled "The Thing That Should Not Be". These songs contain direct quotations of Lovecraft's works. Joseph Norman, a speculative scholar, has argued that there are similarities between the music described in Lovecraft's fiction and the aesthetics and atmosphere of Black Metal. He argues that this is evident through the "animalistic" qualities of Black metal vocals. The usage of occult elements is also cited as a thematic commonality. In terms of atmosphere, he asserts that both Lovecraft's works and extreme metal place heavy focus on creating a strong negative mood.
Games
Lovecraft has also influenced gaming, despite having personally disliked games during his lifetime. Chaosium's tabletop role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, released in 1981 and currently in its seventh major edition, was one of the first games to draw heavily from Lovecraft. It includes a Lovecraft-inspired insanity mechanic, which allowed for player characters to go insane from contact with cosmic horrors. This mechanic would go on to make appearance in subsequent tabletop and video games. 1987 saw the release of another Lovecraftian board game, Arkham Horror, which was published by Fantasy Flight Games. Though few subsequent Lovecraftian board games were released annually from 1987 to 2014, the years after 2014 saw a rapid increase in the number of Lovecraftian board games. According to Christina Silva, this revival may have been influenced by the entry of Lovecraft's work into the public domain and a revival of interest in board games. Few video games are direct adaptations of Lovecraft's works, but many video games have been inspired or heavily influenced by Lovecraft. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, a Lovecraftian first-person video game, was released in 2005. It is loose adaptation of The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Shadow Out of Time, and "The Thing on the Doorstep" that uses noir themes. These adaptations focus more on Lovecraft's monsters and gamification than they do on his themes, which represents a break from Lovecraft's core theme of human insignificance.
Religion and occultism
Several contemporary religions have been influenced by Lovecraft's works. Kenneth Grant, the founder of the Typhonian Order, incorporated Lovecraft's Mythos into his ritual and occult system. Grant combined his interest in Lovecraft's fiction with his adherence to Aleister Crowley's Thelema. The Typhonian Order considers Lovecraftian entities to be symbols through which people may interact with something inhuman. Grant also argued that Crowley himself was influenced by Lovecraft's writings, particularly in the naming of characters in The Book of the Law. Similarly, The Satanic Rituals, co-written by Anton LaVey and Michael A. Aquino, includes the "Ceremony of the Nine Angles", which is a ritual that was influenced by the descriptions in "The Dreams in the Witch House". It contains invocations of several of Lovecraft's fictional gods.
There have been several books that have claimed to be an authentic edition of Lovecraft's Necronomicon. The Simon Necronomicon is one such example. It was written by an unknown figure who identified themselves as "Simon". Peter Levenda, an occult author who has written about the Necronomicon, claims that he and "Simon" came across a hidden Greek translation of the grimoire while looking through a collection of antiquities at a New York bookstore during the 1960s or 1970s. This book was claimed to have borne the seal of the Necronomicon. Levenda went on to claim that Lovecraft had access to this purported scroll. A textual analysis has determined that the contents of this book were derived from multiple documents that discuss Mesopotamian myth and magic. The finding of a magical text by monks is also a common theme in the history of grimoires. It has been suggested that Lavenda is the true author of the Simon Necronomicon.
Correspondence
Although Lovecraft is known mostly for his works of weird fiction, the bulk of his writing consists of voluminous letters about a variety of topics, from weird fiction and art criticism to politics and history. Lovecraft biographers L. Sprague de Camp and S. T. Joshi have estimated that Lovecraft wrote 100,000 letters in his lifetime, a fifth of which are believed to survive. S. T. Joshi suggested in 1996 that it would have been impossible to publish the entirety of Lovecraft's letters due to their length and the sheer number of them. These letters were directed at fellow writers and members of the amateur press. His involvement in the latter was what caused him to begin writing them. According to Joshi, the most important sets of letters were those written to Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith, and James F. Morton. He attributes this importance to the contents of these letters. With Long, Lovecraft argued in support and in opposition to many of Long's viewpoints. The letters to Clark Ashton Smith are characterized by their focus on weird fiction. Lovecraft and Morton debated many scholarly subjects in their letters, resulting in what Joshi has called the "single greatest correspondence Lovecraft ever wrote."
Copyright and other legal issues
Despite several claims to the contrary, there is currently no evidence that any company or individual owns the copyright to any of Lovecraft's works, and it is generally accepted that it has passed into the public domain. Lovecraft had specified that R. H. Barlow would serve as the executor of his literary estate, but these instructions were not incorporated into his will. Nevertheless, his surviving aunt carried out his expressed wishes, and Barlow was given control of Lovecraft's literary estate upon his death. Barlow deposited the bulk of the papers, including the voluminous correspondence, in the John Hay Library, and attempted to organize and maintain Lovecraft's other writings. Lovecraft protégé August Derleth, an older and more established writer than Barlow, vied for control of the literary estate. He and Donald Wandrei, a fellow protégé and co-owner of Arkham House, falsely claimed that Derleth was the true literary executor. Barlow capitulated, and later committed suicide in 1951. This gave Derleth and Wandrei complete control over Lovecraft's corpus.
On October 9, 1947, Derleth purchased all rights to the stories that were published in Weird Tales. However, since April 1926 at the latest, Lovecraft had reserved all second printing rights to stories published in Weird Tales. Therefore, Weird Tales only owned the rights to at most six of Lovecraft's tales. If Derleth had legally obtained the copyrights to these tales, there is no evidence that they were renewed before the rights expired. Following Derleth's death in 1971, Donald Wandrei sued his estate to challenge Derleth's will, which stated that he only held the copyrights and royalties to Lovecraft's works that were published under both his and Derleth's names. Arkham House's lawyer, Forrest D. Hartmann, argued that the rights to Lovecraft's works were never renewed. Wandrei won the case, but Arkham House's actions regarding copyright have damaged their ability to claim ownership of them.
In H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, S. T. Joshi concludes that Derleth's claims are "almost certainly fictitious" and argues that most of Lovecraft's works that were published in the amateur press are likely in the public domain. The copyright for Lovecraft's works would have been inherited by the only surviving heir named in his 1912 will, his aunt Annie Gamwell. When she died in 1941, the copyrights passed to her remaining descendants, Ethel Phillips Morrish and Edna Lewis. They signed a document, sometimes referred to as the Morrish-Lewis gift, permitting Arkham House to republish Lovecraft's works while retaining their ownership of the copyrights. Searches of the Library of Congress have failed to find any evidence that these copyrights were renewed after the 28-year period, making it likely that these works are in the public domain. However, the Lovecraft literary estate, reconstituted in 1998 under Robert C. Harrall, has claimed that they own the rights. Joshi has withdrawn his support for his conclusion, and now supports the estate's copyright claims.
Bibliography
See also
:Category:H. P. Lovecraft scholars
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
The H. P. Lovecraft Archive
The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society
The Lovecraft Arts & Sciences Council, a non-profit educational organization
H. P. Lovecraft at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction''
Journals
Lovecraft Annual
Lovecraft Studies
Crypt of Cthulhu
Library collections
H. P. Lovecraft Collection in the Special Collections at the John Hay Library (Brown University)
H. P. Lovecraft Collection in the Distinctive Collections of Falvey Memorial Library (Villanova University)
Online editions
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Writers of Gothic fiction | false | [
"George Maximilian Bethune (1854 – 1942) was an English cricketer who played for Hampshire during leaves from his occupation of managing sugar plantations in what was then British Guiana.\n\nCricketing career\nIn 1886 and 1887 Hampshire played him as a batsman, with very limited success. In 1889 he was first used as a bowler, delivering 11 maidens out of 23 overs in his first match and taking 4 wickets for only 25 runs. Thereafter his place was owed to his highly economical bowling, which resulted over his brief career in 44% of his overs being maidens.\n\nHis first cousin Henry Beauclerk Bethune also played for Hampshire.\n\nLife\nHe was the son of the Reverend George Cuddington Bethune (1807-1898), at the time rector of Worth, Sussex, and his wife Julia (1822-1915), daughter of the Reverend George Hole, rector of Chulmleigh, and his wife Jane, daughter of Robert Hawgood Crew. He made his career in the sugar industry of British Guiana, becoming manager of the major estate of Enmore.\n\nIn 1890 he married Elizabeth de Burgh (1861-1930), daughter of Michael Rowland O'Maley, manager of the Colonial Bank (since part of Barclays) in Georgetown, and his first wife Julia Adriana, daughter of Major Jacob Heitmann Gyllich, Knight of the Dannebrog. They had seven children.\n\nHis third son Edward Charles O'Maley Bethune (1900-1985), was also a cricketer, playing for Felsted School.\n\nReferences\n\n1854 births\n1942 deaths\nEnglish cricketers\nPeople from Bersted",
"Marcus De Lafaytte Cutler (January 14, 1875 – August 16, 1949) was an American football coach. He served as the head football coach at Michigan State Normal School—now known as Eastern Michigan University—for one season, in 1895, and compiling a record of 3–3.\n\nEarly years\nCutler was born in 1875. His father, Elim Cutler, was a farmer in DeWitt, Michigan. At the time of the 1880 U.S. Census, Cutler was living with his parents, Elim and Martha Cutler, and an older brother, David, and older sister, Lillian.\n\nCoaching career\nBennett was the fifth head football coach at Michigan State Normal School—now known as Eastern Michigan University—in Ypsilanti, Michigan, serving for one season, in 1895, and compiling a record of 3–3.\n\nLater years\nAt the time of the 1900 U.S. Census, Cutler was living in Portland, Michigan working as a school teacher.\n\nAt the time of the 1910 U.S. Census, Cutler was living in Lansing, Michigan with his wife, Maud, and two sons, Donovan and M. Vernon. His occupation was listed as mail carrier for the post office.\n\nIn 1920, Cutler was living in Riley Township, Clinton County, Michigan, with his wife, Maud, and three sons, Donovan, Vernon and Neil. His occupation was listed as a farmer engaged in general farming. At the time of the 1930 U.S. Census, Cutler remained in Riley Township with his wife, Maud, as a farmer.\n\nHead coaching record\n\nReferences\n\n1875 births\n1949 deaths\nEastern Michigan Eagles football coaches\nPeople from DeWitt, Michigan\nPeople from Portland, Michigan\nPeople from Lansing, Michigan\nPeople from Clinton County, Michigan"
] |
[
"Paul Watson",
"Other environmental activities"
] | C_92b9e56b3db24c86932abccd2b624bea_0 | What is Paul Watson's biggest environmental achievement? | 1 | What is Paul Watson's biggest environmental achievement? | Paul Watson | Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society. During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking. Watson ran as an independent candidate in the 1980 Canadian Federal election in Vancouver Centre, proclaiming he wasn't a politician but an environmentalist. He received less than 100 votes. Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth. In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest. Watson feels that "no human community should be larger than 20,000 people," human populations need to be reduced radically to "fewer than one billion," and only those who are "completely dedicated to the responsibility" of caring for the biosphere should have children, which is a "very small percentage of humans." He likens humankind to a virus or a cancer. The biosphere needs to get cured from this cancer with a "radical and invasive approach." In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. CANNOTANSWER | Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. | Paul Franklin Watson (born December 2, 1950) is a Canadian-American conservation and environmental activist, who founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an anti-poaching and direct action group focused on marine conservation activism. The tactics used by Sea Shepherd have attracted opposition, with the group accused of eco-terrorism by both the Japanese government and Greenpeace. Watson is a citizen of Canada and the United States.
The Toronto native joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing in 1969. He was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972. Because Watson argued for a strategy of direct action that conflicted with the Greenpeace interpretation of nonviolence, he was ousted from the board in 1977. That same year, he formed the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The group was the subject of a reality show named Whale Wars.
He promotes veganism, population reduction and a biocentric, rather than anthropocentric, worldview.
Watson's activities have led to legal action from authorities in countries including the United States, Canada, Norway, Costa Rica and Japan. He was detained in Germany on an extradition request by Costa Rica in May 2012. An Interpol red notice was issued on September 14, 2012, at the request of Japan and Costa Rica.
After staying at sea for 15 months following his escape from Germany, where he was released on bail, he returned to Los Angeles in late October 2013, going through customs and "was not arrested". He appeared before a US appeals court on November 6, 2013, stating that neither he nor the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society violated a 2012 order requiring them to leave whaling vessels alone. Although the United States is a signatory member of Interpol, Watson has not been detained for extradition to Japan or Costa Rica. He is living in Vermont, writing books. He was residing in Paris as of July 1, 2014 but has since returned to the USA.
In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Early and personal life
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Paul Watson was born in Toronto to Anthony Joseph Watson and Annamarie Larsen, and grew up in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, along with two sisters and three brothers. As a child he was a member of the Kindness Club, which he has credited with teaching him to "respect and defend animals". After working as a tour guide at Expo 67, the World's Fair that took place in Montreal in 1967, Watson moved to Vancouver.
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, in 1968 and the early 1970s, he joined the Canadian Coast Guard, where he served aboard weatherships, search and rescue hovercraft, and buoy tenders. He signed up as a merchant seaman in 1969 with the Norwegian Consulate in Vancouver and shipped out on the 30,000 ton bulk carrier Bris as a deckhand. The Bris was registered in Oslo, Norway and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade. In 1972 he shipped out of San Francisco on the 35,000 ton bulk Swedish carrier Jarl R. Trapp and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade
Watson has one daughter Lilliolani (born 1980) with his first wife, Starlet Lum, who was a founding director of Greenpeace Quebec, Earthforce!, Project Wolf, and Sea Shepherd. His second wife, Lisa Distefano, a former Playboy model, was Sea Shepherd's Director of Operations during the Makah anti-whaling campaigns in Friday Harbor. His third wife, Allison Lance, is an animal rights activist and a volunteer crew member of Sea Shepherd. Watson has two grandchildren. Watson married his fourth wife Yana Rusinovich on February 14, 2015, in Paris, France. Watson and Rusinovich had a son, Tiger, on September 29, 2016 and a second son, Murtagh, on August 6, 2021. He ran for parliament in Canada's federal elections twice.
Activism
Early years
In October 1969, Watson joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing at Amchitka Island. The group which formed as a result of that protest was the Don't Make a Wave Committee, which evolved into the group known today as Greenpeace. In the early 1970s, Watson was also active with the Vancouver Liberation Front and the Vancouver Yippies. Watson sailed as a crew member aboard the Greenpeace Too! ship in 1971 and skippered the Greenpeace boat Astral in 1972. Paul Watson continued as a crew member, skipper, and officer aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s.
According to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other sources, Watson was a founding member of Greenpeace, but the organization denies this stating he "was an influential early member but not, as he sometimes claims, a founder." Greenpeace claims that Watson joined Greenpeace on its Amchitka expedition, which they claim to be their second expedition, but Paul Watson claims that this was Greenpeace's first meeting.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
The first Sea Shepherd vessel, the Sea Shepherd, was purchased in December 1978 with assistance from the Fund for Animals and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Sea Shepherd soon established itself as one of the more controversial environmental groups, known for provocative direct action tactics. These tactics have included throwing objects onto the decks of whaling ships, the use of "prop foulers" in an attempt to sabotage the ships, boarding whaling vessels, and the scuttling of two ships in an Icelandic harbor. In January 2013, Watson relinquished captaincy of the Steve Irwin. The organization and its activities to halt whaling are the focus of a reality TV series, Whale Wars, airing on Animal Planet.
In 2010, Watson personally received more than $120,000 from Sea Shepherd.
Because of mounting legal complications, Watson has stepped down as head of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 2013, to abide by an injunction barring him from proximity with Japanese whaling ships. After the resolution of legal issues involving the Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research, Watson returned as President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Commander of the Sea Shepherd fleet.
Other environmental activities
Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.
During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking.
Watson worked with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth.
In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest.
In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
Writings on activism
Watson published Earthforce!, a guide to strategy for environmental activists in 1993. In it, he specifically endorsed the tactics of "monkeywrenching" previously described by Dave Foreman and Edward Abbey. According to Foreman in Eco-Defense—The Field Guide to Monkey-Wrenching— these are tactics of sabotage, covert activity, and direct action. Watson says he incorporated his own personal experience in writing the book.
In Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy, Watson expressed disdain for the truthfulness of mainstream media:
The nature of the mass media today is such that the truth is irrelevant. What is true and what is right to the general public is what is defined as true and right by the mass media. Ronald Reagan understood that the facts are not relevant. The media reported what he said as fact. Follow-up investigation was "old news." A headline comment on Monday's newspaper far outweighs the revelation of inaccuracy revealed in a small box inside the paper on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Watson was explicit about what he perceived to be the lack of truthfulness in mass media: "If you do not know an answer, a fact, or a statistic, then simply follow the example of an American President and do as Ronald Reagan did—make it up on the spot and deliver the information confidently and without hesitation." In a subsequent book, Ocean Warrior, Watson expanded on this view, saying: "Survival in a media culture meant developing the skills to understand and manipulate media to achieve strategic objectives."
In 2007 Watson explained his view of needed population control and the future for humans given their role in the Holocene extinction, which he refers to as the "Holocenic hominid collective suicide event":
Today, escalating human populations have vastly exceeded global carrying capacity and now produce massive quantities of solid, liquid, and gaseous waste [...] No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas [...] We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion [...] Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach [...] Who should have children? Those who are responsible and completely dedicated to the responsibility which is actually a very small percentage of humans.
Controversy
Separation from Greenpeace
Paul Watson continued as a crew member, officer, and skipper (in 1972) aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s. He considers himself a founding member of Greenpeace and Greenpeace International, a claim Greenpeace disputes despite being pointed out in the documentary, How to Change the World which shows that Watson was indeed one of the original founding members of Greenpeace. Watson has since accused Greenpeace of rewriting their history.
In 1977, Watson was expelled from the Greenpeace's board of directors by a vote of 11 to 1 (Watson himself cast the single vote against it). The group felt his strong, "front and center" personality and frequently voiced opposition to Greenpeace's interpretation of "nonviolence" were too divisive. Watson subsequently left the group. The group has since labeled his actions at the time as those of a "mutineer" within their ranks. That same year, he founded his own group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
During an interview in 1978 with CBC Radio, Watson spoke out against Greenpeace (as well as other organizations) and their role and motives for the anti-sealing campaigns. Watson accused these organizations of campaigning against the Canadian seal hunt because it is an easy way to raise money and it is a profit maker for the organizations.
Greenpeace has called Watson a violent extremist and will no longer comment on his activities.
Charges and prosecutions
Watson was sentenced to 10 days in prison and fined $8,000 for his actions during a Canadian seal hunt protest in 1980, after being convicted of assaulting a fisheries officer. Watson served his sentence at Her Majesty's Penitentiary, St. John's, NL. He was also found guilty under the Seal Protection Act for painting harp seal pups with red dye to devalue their pelts. Watson was arrested in 1993 in Canada on charges stemming from actions against Cuban and Spanish fishing boats off the coast of Newfoundland. In 1997, Watson was convicted in absentia and sentenced to serve 120 days in jail by a court in Lofoten, Norway on charges of attempting to sink the small scale Norwegian fishing and whaling vessel Nybrænna on December 26, 1992. Dutch authorities refused to hand him over to Norwegian authorities although he did spend 80 days in detention in the Netherlands pending a ruling on extradition before being released.
There have not been any successful attempts at prosecuting Watson for his activities with Sea Shepherd since the trial in Newfoundland. Watson defends his actions as falling within international law, in particular Sea Shepherd's right to enforce maritime regulations against illegal whalers and sealers.
Sea Shepherd activists Rod Coronado and David Howitt went to Iceland in 1986 and scuttled two whaling ships in port at Reykjavík and also damaged a whale meat processing factory. Watson took responsibility for the operation, abiding by published Sea Shepherd principles. He went to Iceland saying, "I am responsible for all activities undertaken in the name of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I give the orders." He was deported without being charged and is considered a persona non grata by Iceland
In April 2010 the Japanese Coast Guard obtained an arrest warrant for Watson "...on suspicion of ordering sabotage activities against Japan's whaling fleet", and Interpol has listed him as wanted at the request of Japan. The red notice has the charges issued by Japan as, "Breaking into the Vessel, Damage to Property, Forcible Obstruction of Business, Injury". In March 2012 Interpol issued a "written statement to all 190 member countries making it clear that it would not publish a Red Notice" for the detention of Watson, but reversed that position in September 2012. In both statements Interpol stated that a "Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant" that it is "a request for any country to identify or locate an individual with a view to their provisional arrest and extradition in accordance with the country's national laws".
In May 2012 Watson was detained by German authorities at the Frankfurt Airport because of a request from the government of Costa Rica. The charge stemmed from an altercation at sea in 2002 in which Sea Shepherd said that the other vessel was illegally shark finning in Guatemalan waters. Crew members of the other ship accused Sea Shepherd of trying to kill them. Watson was charged with violating navigational regulations with the Interpol alert stating the charge as, "peligro de naufragio" (danger of shipwreck). The conflict took place during filming for the documentary Sharkwater and the charges were dropped by prosecutors after video of the incident made by the documentary film makers was shown. On May 21, Watson was released on bail of €250,000 but required to report to police in Frankfurt on a daily basis. In June, Costa Rica formally requested Watson's extradition from Germany. On July 19, 2012, Japan applied for an extradition order and Watson left Germany, resulting in a German court ordering his immediate re-arrest. It is understood the statute of limitations on his Costa Rican charges was set to expire in June 2013.
On August 7, 2012 Interpol renewed the Red Notice for Watson on the charges of "causing a danger of drowning or of an air disaster" laid by Costa Rica. It was reported that Watson would come out of hiding to join Sea Shepherd in the 2012–13 campaign against Japanese whaling. Watson rejoined the crew of the Steve Irwin in the South Pacific in late November 2012. In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Sierra Club immigration stance
In 1999, Watson ran unsuccessfully for election to the national Sierra Club Board of Directors, with the backing of the anti-immigration faction Sierrans for US Population Stabilization (SUSPS). After his election to the board in 2003, Watson supported an unsuccessful slate of candidates supporting strict immigration controls as an element of a population stabilization policy. This effort was denounced by another candidate in the election, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, as a "hostile takeover" attempt by "radical anti-immigrant activists." Watson responded by saying that the only change he was seeking in the organization's immigration stance was to restore the position it had held before its 1996 "neutrality policy." Watson left the Sierra Club board in 2006.
Anti-sealing activities
In April 2008, Watson stated that, while the deaths of three Canadian seal hunters (a fourth one is still missing) in a marine accident involving a Canadian Coast Guard vessel and a fishing boat during the 2008 Canadian Commercial Seal Hunt were a tragedy, he felt that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seals is an even greater tragedy. Canadian Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn accused Watson of trivializing the memory of the lost sealers. Watson replied that Hearn was trying to distract attention from his government's incompetence as the boat the men were on capsized while under tow by a Canadian Coast Guard vessel, while his political ambitions continued to support and subsidize an industry that had no place in the 21st century. In 1978, Watson expressed opposition to seal hunt protest organization, suggesting in an interview with CBC's Barbara Frum that saving seals is a cheap and easy fundraiser and that seals do not deserve special status over other species. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams was quoted as saying, "I think what a lot of people don't realize is that this man is a terrorist."
Australian visa issues
In October 2009, Watson, who carries a US passport, complained to media outlets about having his request for an Australian visa denied. He states that the Australian government was attempting to sabotage the upcoming 2010 Sea Shepherd campaign by denying him entry into the country. Watson and several other shipmates were also unable to join the Steve Irwin on its promotional tour of Australia until they were able to provide documentation from the governments of the United States, Canada and Norway, exonerating them from previously claimed acts of violence, specifically claims by Sea Shepherd of intentionally sinking a ship in Norway. In January 2013, Paul Watson was presented with an Aboriginal passport by the Krautungalung people of the Gunnai Nation.
Alleged shooting
On March 17, 2008, Paul Watson said that he was shot by the Japanese crew or coast guard personnel during the Operation Migaloo anti-whaling campaign in the Southern Ocean. The incident is documented during the season finale of season 1 of the Whale Wars TV reality show, and the first six episodes are covered as a buildup to what is portrayed as the major incident during the campaign. The Japanese respond by throwing stun grenades, one crew member is injured from a grenade detonating close behind him and another injured trying to escape the explosions. Watson is then shown reaching inside his jacket and body armour and remarking "I've been hit." Back inside the bridge of the Steve Irwin, a metal fragment is found inside the vest.
The Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research disputes Sea Shepherd's statements. The Institute and Coast Guard said that they used seven stun grenades designed to temporarily debilitate a target by rendering them blind and deaf for a period of time. The Japanese government also alleged that the whalers launched "noise balls", described as "loud explosive deterrent devices". Neither of the two conflicting accounts have been independently verified. The Australian Foreign Affairs Department had condemned "actions by crew members of any vessel that cause injury". Two media releases were made on the same day from the office. One said that the Australian Embassy in Tokyo had been informed by the Japanese that the whalers had "fired warning shots" while the updated version used the phrase "'warning balls' – also known as 'flashbangs' – had been fired".
Accusations of terrorism
Watson has been called an eco-terrorist by the Japanese government for his direct action tactics against whalers, and it repeated its position after conflicts during the 2009–10 whaling season.
At an animal rights convention in 2002, Paul Watson was also quoted as saying, "There's nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write the history". In 2010, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck also discussed the comment, criticizing Watson's views. Watson responded to Beck's comments on the official Sea Shepherd website by stating that he had said that but that it was taken out of context, quoting Gerald Seymour's "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter".
Comments following 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami
Watson was criticized for his poem published immediately following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami which suggested the disaster was Neptune's anger. Watson responded to critics with a commentary on the Sea Shepherd website expressing "deepest concern and sympathy for the people of Japan who are suffering through one of the worst natural disasters in the history of civilization".
Criticism of New Zealand
In 2013, three Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ships docked in New Zealand, and were searched by New Zealand authorities to see if Watson was aboard. He was not, having transferred to another ship in international waters, aware New Zealand was required to notify Interpol if he entered the country. Watson criticised the search, accusing New Zealand of siding with Japan on the issue of whaling in the Southern Ocean.
Reactions to activism and leadership
Watson has stated that he does not consider himself a 'protester', but an 'interventionist', as he considers protesting as too submissive. He often takes the attitude that he represents (or stands in for) law enforcement which is either unwilling or unable to enforce existing laws.
His leadership style has variously been called arrogant, as well as pushing himself too much "front and center", which was cited as one of the reasons for expulsion from Greenpeace. The atmosphere aboard his vessels has been compared to an "anarchy run by God".
The former member of Sea Shepherd and captain of the Pete Bethune described Watson as "morally bankrupt" who would order the intentional sinking of his own ships like the Ady Gil as a means to "garner sympathy with the public and to create better TV". Watson denied this, saying "No one ordered him to scuttle it. Pete Bethune was captain of the Ady Gil; all decisions on the Ady Gil were his."
Awards
Paul Watson received the Jules Verne Award on October 10, 2012. He was the second person after Captain Jacques Cousteau to be honored with a Jules Verne Award dedicated to environmentalists and adventurers. On June 28, 2010 Paul received the Asociación de Amigos del Museo de Anclas Philippe Cousteau: Defense of Marine Life Award, in recognition of his merits achieved by the work done in defense of marine life. In 2002, Paul was inducted into the US Animal Rights Hall of Fame for his outstanding contributions to animal liberation. Paul received the George H. W. Bush Daily Points of Light Award in 1999 and in 2000, he was named one of Time Magazine's Top 20 Environmental Heroes of the 20th Century. On May 23, 2019, Paul Watson received an official commendation by Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont stating that the "State of Connecticut conveyed both honor and recognition to Captain Paul Watson." In 2007 Watson received the Amazon Peace Prize presented by the Vice President of Ecuador Lenin Moreno.
Media portrayals
A biographical documentary on Paul Watson's early life and background entitled Pirate for the Sea was produced by Ron Colby in 2008.
The 2008 documentary At the Edge of the World chronicled the efforts of Watson and 45 volunteers to hinder the Japanese whaling fleet in the waters around Antarctica. In 2010, long time friend and filmmaker Peter Brown released the documentary Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist, a satirical look back at the last 30 years of actions. The documentary Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson from 2011 features interviews and footage with early Greenpeace members Rex Weyler and Patrick Moore.
Watson, Whale Wars, and the Japanese whaling industry were satirized in the South Park episode "Whale Whores". In its fictional Larry King show, Watson himself was called "An unorganized incompetent media whore who thought lying to everyone was OK as long as it served his cause" and "A smug, narcoleptic liar with no credibility".
Watson responded to the South Park episode by stating; "My understanding is that the Japanese Prime Minister was not amused and the whalers and dolphin killers are enraged at the way they were portrayed," Watson said. "That's music to my ears. If the humorless whale killers and the bank rollers of the dolphin killers did not like the show, then that's all I need to applaud it."
Watson was portrayed (along with whale biologist, Nan Hauser), during a 60 Minutes episode that aired in 2013, as contributing to the return of the Humpback whale populations in the South Pacific.
In 2019 a biopic film called, Watson directed by one of the producers of An Inconvenient Truth, Lesley Chilcott, was released and also aired on Animal Planet on December 22, 2019.
List of works
Sea Shepherd: My Fight for Whales and Seals (1981) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy (1993) ()
Ocean Warrior: My Battle to End the Illegal Slaughter on the High Seas (1994) ()
Seal Wars: Twenty-Five Years on the Front Lines With the Harp Seals (2002) ()
Contributor to Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberations of Animals (2004) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy 2nd Edition (2012)
The War That Saved the Whales (2019)
Songs from the Southern Ocean (2020)
The Haunted Mariner (2020)
Dealing with Climate Change and Stress (2020)
Orcapedia (2020)
Desperate Mythologies: Theology, Ecology and the General Insanity of Humanity (2020)
Death of a Whale (2021)
URGENT! Save Our Ocean to Survive Climate Change (2021)
See also
List of conservationists
List of vegans
References
Further reading
Earth Warrior: Overboard With Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, by David B. Morris (1995) ()
Eco-Warriors, by Rik Scarce (2006) ()
Capitaine Paul Watson, entretien avec un pirate, by Lamya Essemlali, Paul Watson (2012)
External links
Paul Watson's page on the Sea Shepherd official website
1950 births
Canadian animal rights activists
Canadian environmentalists
Fugitives wanted by Germany
Green Party of British Columbia politicians
Green thinkers
Living people
People associated with Greenpeace
People from St. Andrews, New Brunswick
Activists from Toronto
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Sierra Club directors
Sustainability advocates
Veganism activists
Yippies | true | [
"Paul Watson (born 1950) is a Canadian environmental activist, ship's skipper, and founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.\n\nPaul Watson may also refer to:\n\n Paul Watson (basketball) (born 1994) American basketball player\n Paul Watson (cyclist) (born 1962), former professional English road racing cyclist\n Paul Watson (documentary filmmaker) (born 1942), English film-maker\n Paul Watson (footballer, born 1975), English football player\n Paul Watson (footballer, born 1990), Scottish football player\n Paul Watson (football manager) (born 1984), British sports journalist and expatriate football coach\n Paul Watson (journalist) (born 1959), Canadian photojournalist and author\n Paul Watson (musician) (born 1952), American cornetist and songwriter\n Paul E. Watson (died 1943), American electrical engineer\n Paul Joseph Watson (born 1982), British right-wing YouTuber, radio host, writer and conspiracy theorist",
"Lamya Essemlali (born in 1979) is a French environmental activist, of Moroccan origin. She's the chairperson of Sea Shepherd France and Campaign Coordinator for Sea Shepherd Global.\n\nBiography\n\nEarly and personal life\nLamya’s family is originally from Morocco, but she was born and grew up in Gennevilliers (France), near Paris.\n\nActivism\nEnvironmental activist, she has a Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences and an associate degree in Business Communications.\n\nAt a conference in Paris in 2005, she meets Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. In 2006 the both of them founded Sea Shepherd France and she became the President of the association in 2008. She has led several campaigns for Sea Shepherd Global in the Mediterranean Sea, the Faroe Islands (\"GrindStop\" campaign)\nand the Indian Ocean (Réunion Island) to defend bluefin tuna, dolphins and pilot whales, and sharks.\n\nShe published the book \"Captain Paul Watson , interview with a pirate\" in 2012,.\n\nBooks\n Capitaine Paul Watson, entretien avec un pirate, by Lamya Essemlali, Paul Watson (2012)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Sea Shepherd France\n\n1979 births\nLiving people\nFrench environmentalists\nFrench women environmentalists\nSea Shepherd Conservation Society\nPeople from Gennevilliers\nFrench people of Moroccan descent"
] |
[
"Paul Watson",
"Other environmental activities",
"What is Paul Watson's biggest environmental achievement?",
"Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981."
] | C_92b9e56b3db24c86932abccd2b624bea_0 | What else did he achieve environmentally? | 2 | Aside from being a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife and a field representative for the Fund for Animals What else did Paul Watson achieve environmentally? | Paul Watson | Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society. During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking. Watson ran as an independent candidate in the 1980 Canadian Federal election in Vancouver Centre, proclaiming he wasn't a politician but an environmentalist. He received less than 100 votes. Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth. In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest. Watson feels that "no human community should be larger than 20,000 people," human populations need to be reduced radically to "fewer than one billion," and only those who are "completely dedicated to the responsibility" of caring for the biosphere should have children, which is a "very small percentage of humans." He likens humankind to a virus or a cancer. The biosphere needs to get cured from this cancer with a "radical and invasive approach." In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. CANNOTANSWER | Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society. | Paul Franklin Watson (born December 2, 1950) is a Canadian-American conservation and environmental activist, who founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an anti-poaching and direct action group focused on marine conservation activism. The tactics used by Sea Shepherd have attracted opposition, with the group accused of eco-terrorism by both the Japanese government and Greenpeace. Watson is a citizen of Canada and the United States.
The Toronto native joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing in 1969. He was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972. Because Watson argued for a strategy of direct action that conflicted with the Greenpeace interpretation of nonviolence, he was ousted from the board in 1977. That same year, he formed the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The group was the subject of a reality show named Whale Wars.
He promotes veganism, population reduction and a biocentric, rather than anthropocentric, worldview.
Watson's activities have led to legal action from authorities in countries including the United States, Canada, Norway, Costa Rica and Japan. He was detained in Germany on an extradition request by Costa Rica in May 2012. An Interpol red notice was issued on September 14, 2012, at the request of Japan and Costa Rica.
After staying at sea for 15 months following his escape from Germany, where he was released on bail, he returned to Los Angeles in late October 2013, going through customs and "was not arrested". He appeared before a US appeals court on November 6, 2013, stating that neither he nor the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society violated a 2012 order requiring them to leave whaling vessels alone. Although the United States is a signatory member of Interpol, Watson has not been detained for extradition to Japan or Costa Rica. He is living in Vermont, writing books. He was residing in Paris as of July 1, 2014 but has since returned to the USA.
In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Early and personal life
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Paul Watson was born in Toronto to Anthony Joseph Watson and Annamarie Larsen, and grew up in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, along with two sisters and three brothers. As a child he was a member of the Kindness Club, which he has credited with teaching him to "respect and defend animals". After working as a tour guide at Expo 67, the World's Fair that took place in Montreal in 1967, Watson moved to Vancouver.
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, in 1968 and the early 1970s, he joined the Canadian Coast Guard, where he served aboard weatherships, search and rescue hovercraft, and buoy tenders. He signed up as a merchant seaman in 1969 with the Norwegian Consulate in Vancouver and shipped out on the 30,000 ton bulk carrier Bris as a deckhand. The Bris was registered in Oslo, Norway and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade. In 1972 he shipped out of San Francisco on the 35,000 ton bulk Swedish carrier Jarl R. Trapp and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade
Watson has one daughter Lilliolani (born 1980) with his first wife, Starlet Lum, who was a founding director of Greenpeace Quebec, Earthforce!, Project Wolf, and Sea Shepherd. His second wife, Lisa Distefano, a former Playboy model, was Sea Shepherd's Director of Operations during the Makah anti-whaling campaigns in Friday Harbor. His third wife, Allison Lance, is an animal rights activist and a volunteer crew member of Sea Shepherd. Watson has two grandchildren. Watson married his fourth wife Yana Rusinovich on February 14, 2015, in Paris, France. Watson and Rusinovich had a son, Tiger, on September 29, 2016 and a second son, Murtagh, on August 6, 2021. He ran for parliament in Canada's federal elections twice.
Activism
Early years
In October 1969, Watson joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing at Amchitka Island. The group which formed as a result of that protest was the Don't Make a Wave Committee, which evolved into the group known today as Greenpeace. In the early 1970s, Watson was also active with the Vancouver Liberation Front and the Vancouver Yippies. Watson sailed as a crew member aboard the Greenpeace Too! ship in 1971 and skippered the Greenpeace boat Astral in 1972. Paul Watson continued as a crew member, skipper, and officer aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s.
According to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other sources, Watson was a founding member of Greenpeace, but the organization denies this stating he "was an influential early member but not, as he sometimes claims, a founder." Greenpeace claims that Watson joined Greenpeace on its Amchitka expedition, which they claim to be their second expedition, but Paul Watson claims that this was Greenpeace's first meeting.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
The first Sea Shepherd vessel, the Sea Shepherd, was purchased in December 1978 with assistance from the Fund for Animals and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Sea Shepherd soon established itself as one of the more controversial environmental groups, known for provocative direct action tactics. These tactics have included throwing objects onto the decks of whaling ships, the use of "prop foulers" in an attempt to sabotage the ships, boarding whaling vessels, and the scuttling of two ships in an Icelandic harbor. In January 2013, Watson relinquished captaincy of the Steve Irwin. The organization and its activities to halt whaling are the focus of a reality TV series, Whale Wars, airing on Animal Planet.
In 2010, Watson personally received more than $120,000 from Sea Shepherd.
Because of mounting legal complications, Watson has stepped down as head of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 2013, to abide by an injunction barring him from proximity with Japanese whaling ships. After the resolution of legal issues involving the Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research, Watson returned as President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Commander of the Sea Shepherd fleet.
Other environmental activities
Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.
During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking.
Watson worked with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth.
In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest.
In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
Writings on activism
Watson published Earthforce!, a guide to strategy for environmental activists in 1993. In it, he specifically endorsed the tactics of "monkeywrenching" previously described by Dave Foreman and Edward Abbey. According to Foreman in Eco-Defense—The Field Guide to Monkey-Wrenching— these are tactics of sabotage, covert activity, and direct action. Watson says he incorporated his own personal experience in writing the book.
In Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy, Watson expressed disdain for the truthfulness of mainstream media:
The nature of the mass media today is such that the truth is irrelevant. What is true and what is right to the general public is what is defined as true and right by the mass media. Ronald Reagan understood that the facts are not relevant. The media reported what he said as fact. Follow-up investigation was "old news." A headline comment on Monday's newspaper far outweighs the revelation of inaccuracy revealed in a small box inside the paper on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Watson was explicit about what he perceived to be the lack of truthfulness in mass media: "If you do not know an answer, a fact, or a statistic, then simply follow the example of an American President and do as Ronald Reagan did—make it up on the spot and deliver the information confidently and without hesitation." In a subsequent book, Ocean Warrior, Watson expanded on this view, saying: "Survival in a media culture meant developing the skills to understand and manipulate media to achieve strategic objectives."
In 2007 Watson explained his view of needed population control and the future for humans given their role in the Holocene extinction, which he refers to as the "Holocenic hominid collective suicide event":
Today, escalating human populations have vastly exceeded global carrying capacity and now produce massive quantities of solid, liquid, and gaseous waste [...] No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas [...] We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion [...] Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach [...] Who should have children? Those who are responsible and completely dedicated to the responsibility which is actually a very small percentage of humans.
Controversy
Separation from Greenpeace
Paul Watson continued as a crew member, officer, and skipper (in 1972) aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s. He considers himself a founding member of Greenpeace and Greenpeace International, a claim Greenpeace disputes despite being pointed out in the documentary, How to Change the World which shows that Watson was indeed one of the original founding members of Greenpeace. Watson has since accused Greenpeace of rewriting their history.
In 1977, Watson was expelled from the Greenpeace's board of directors by a vote of 11 to 1 (Watson himself cast the single vote against it). The group felt his strong, "front and center" personality and frequently voiced opposition to Greenpeace's interpretation of "nonviolence" were too divisive. Watson subsequently left the group. The group has since labeled his actions at the time as those of a "mutineer" within their ranks. That same year, he founded his own group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
During an interview in 1978 with CBC Radio, Watson spoke out against Greenpeace (as well as other organizations) and their role and motives for the anti-sealing campaigns. Watson accused these organizations of campaigning against the Canadian seal hunt because it is an easy way to raise money and it is a profit maker for the organizations.
Greenpeace has called Watson a violent extremist and will no longer comment on his activities.
Charges and prosecutions
Watson was sentenced to 10 days in prison and fined $8,000 for his actions during a Canadian seal hunt protest in 1980, after being convicted of assaulting a fisheries officer. Watson served his sentence at Her Majesty's Penitentiary, St. John's, NL. He was also found guilty under the Seal Protection Act for painting harp seal pups with red dye to devalue their pelts. Watson was arrested in 1993 in Canada on charges stemming from actions against Cuban and Spanish fishing boats off the coast of Newfoundland. In 1997, Watson was convicted in absentia and sentenced to serve 120 days in jail by a court in Lofoten, Norway on charges of attempting to sink the small scale Norwegian fishing and whaling vessel Nybrænna on December 26, 1992. Dutch authorities refused to hand him over to Norwegian authorities although he did spend 80 days in detention in the Netherlands pending a ruling on extradition before being released.
There have not been any successful attempts at prosecuting Watson for his activities with Sea Shepherd since the trial in Newfoundland. Watson defends his actions as falling within international law, in particular Sea Shepherd's right to enforce maritime regulations against illegal whalers and sealers.
Sea Shepherd activists Rod Coronado and David Howitt went to Iceland in 1986 and scuttled two whaling ships in port at Reykjavík and also damaged a whale meat processing factory. Watson took responsibility for the operation, abiding by published Sea Shepherd principles. He went to Iceland saying, "I am responsible for all activities undertaken in the name of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I give the orders." He was deported without being charged and is considered a persona non grata by Iceland
In April 2010 the Japanese Coast Guard obtained an arrest warrant for Watson "...on suspicion of ordering sabotage activities against Japan's whaling fleet", and Interpol has listed him as wanted at the request of Japan. The red notice has the charges issued by Japan as, "Breaking into the Vessel, Damage to Property, Forcible Obstruction of Business, Injury". In March 2012 Interpol issued a "written statement to all 190 member countries making it clear that it would not publish a Red Notice" for the detention of Watson, but reversed that position in September 2012. In both statements Interpol stated that a "Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant" that it is "a request for any country to identify or locate an individual with a view to their provisional arrest and extradition in accordance with the country's national laws".
In May 2012 Watson was detained by German authorities at the Frankfurt Airport because of a request from the government of Costa Rica. The charge stemmed from an altercation at sea in 2002 in which Sea Shepherd said that the other vessel was illegally shark finning in Guatemalan waters. Crew members of the other ship accused Sea Shepherd of trying to kill them. Watson was charged with violating navigational regulations with the Interpol alert stating the charge as, "peligro de naufragio" (danger of shipwreck). The conflict took place during filming for the documentary Sharkwater and the charges were dropped by prosecutors after video of the incident made by the documentary film makers was shown. On May 21, Watson was released on bail of €250,000 but required to report to police in Frankfurt on a daily basis. In June, Costa Rica formally requested Watson's extradition from Germany. On July 19, 2012, Japan applied for an extradition order and Watson left Germany, resulting in a German court ordering his immediate re-arrest. It is understood the statute of limitations on his Costa Rican charges was set to expire in June 2013.
On August 7, 2012 Interpol renewed the Red Notice for Watson on the charges of "causing a danger of drowning or of an air disaster" laid by Costa Rica. It was reported that Watson would come out of hiding to join Sea Shepherd in the 2012–13 campaign against Japanese whaling. Watson rejoined the crew of the Steve Irwin in the South Pacific in late November 2012. In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Sierra Club immigration stance
In 1999, Watson ran unsuccessfully for election to the national Sierra Club Board of Directors, with the backing of the anti-immigration faction Sierrans for US Population Stabilization (SUSPS). After his election to the board in 2003, Watson supported an unsuccessful slate of candidates supporting strict immigration controls as an element of a population stabilization policy. This effort was denounced by another candidate in the election, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, as a "hostile takeover" attempt by "radical anti-immigrant activists." Watson responded by saying that the only change he was seeking in the organization's immigration stance was to restore the position it had held before its 1996 "neutrality policy." Watson left the Sierra Club board in 2006.
Anti-sealing activities
In April 2008, Watson stated that, while the deaths of three Canadian seal hunters (a fourth one is still missing) in a marine accident involving a Canadian Coast Guard vessel and a fishing boat during the 2008 Canadian Commercial Seal Hunt were a tragedy, he felt that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seals is an even greater tragedy. Canadian Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn accused Watson of trivializing the memory of the lost sealers. Watson replied that Hearn was trying to distract attention from his government's incompetence as the boat the men were on capsized while under tow by a Canadian Coast Guard vessel, while his political ambitions continued to support and subsidize an industry that had no place in the 21st century. In 1978, Watson expressed opposition to seal hunt protest organization, suggesting in an interview with CBC's Barbara Frum that saving seals is a cheap and easy fundraiser and that seals do not deserve special status over other species. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams was quoted as saying, "I think what a lot of people don't realize is that this man is a terrorist."
Australian visa issues
In October 2009, Watson, who carries a US passport, complained to media outlets about having his request for an Australian visa denied. He states that the Australian government was attempting to sabotage the upcoming 2010 Sea Shepherd campaign by denying him entry into the country. Watson and several other shipmates were also unable to join the Steve Irwin on its promotional tour of Australia until they were able to provide documentation from the governments of the United States, Canada and Norway, exonerating them from previously claimed acts of violence, specifically claims by Sea Shepherd of intentionally sinking a ship in Norway. In January 2013, Paul Watson was presented with an Aboriginal passport by the Krautungalung people of the Gunnai Nation.
Alleged shooting
On March 17, 2008, Paul Watson said that he was shot by the Japanese crew or coast guard personnel during the Operation Migaloo anti-whaling campaign in the Southern Ocean. The incident is documented during the season finale of season 1 of the Whale Wars TV reality show, and the first six episodes are covered as a buildup to what is portrayed as the major incident during the campaign. The Japanese respond by throwing stun grenades, one crew member is injured from a grenade detonating close behind him and another injured trying to escape the explosions. Watson is then shown reaching inside his jacket and body armour and remarking "I've been hit." Back inside the bridge of the Steve Irwin, a metal fragment is found inside the vest.
The Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research disputes Sea Shepherd's statements. The Institute and Coast Guard said that they used seven stun grenades designed to temporarily debilitate a target by rendering them blind and deaf for a period of time. The Japanese government also alleged that the whalers launched "noise balls", described as "loud explosive deterrent devices". Neither of the two conflicting accounts have been independently verified. The Australian Foreign Affairs Department had condemned "actions by crew members of any vessel that cause injury". Two media releases were made on the same day from the office. One said that the Australian Embassy in Tokyo had been informed by the Japanese that the whalers had "fired warning shots" while the updated version used the phrase "'warning balls' – also known as 'flashbangs' – had been fired".
Accusations of terrorism
Watson has been called an eco-terrorist by the Japanese government for his direct action tactics against whalers, and it repeated its position after conflicts during the 2009–10 whaling season.
At an animal rights convention in 2002, Paul Watson was also quoted as saying, "There's nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write the history". In 2010, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck also discussed the comment, criticizing Watson's views. Watson responded to Beck's comments on the official Sea Shepherd website by stating that he had said that but that it was taken out of context, quoting Gerald Seymour's "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter".
Comments following 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami
Watson was criticized for his poem published immediately following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami which suggested the disaster was Neptune's anger. Watson responded to critics with a commentary on the Sea Shepherd website expressing "deepest concern and sympathy for the people of Japan who are suffering through one of the worst natural disasters in the history of civilization".
Criticism of New Zealand
In 2013, three Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ships docked in New Zealand, and were searched by New Zealand authorities to see if Watson was aboard. He was not, having transferred to another ship in international waters, aware New Zealand was required to notify Interpol if he entered the country. Watson criticised the search, accusing New Zealand of siding with Japan on the issue of whaling in the Southern Ocean.
Reactions to activism and leadership
Watson has stated that he does not consider himself a 'protester', but an 'interventionist', as he considers protesting as too submissive. He often takes the attitude that he represents (or stands in for) law enforcement which is either unwilling or unable to enforce existing laws.
His leadership style has variously been called arrogant, as well as pushing himself too much "front and center", which was cited as one of the reasons for expulsion from Greenpeace. The atmosphere aboard his vessels has been compared to an "anarchy run by God".
The former member of Sea Shepherd and captain of the Pete Bethune described Watson as "morally bankrupt" who would order the intentional sinking of his own ships like the Ady Gil as a means to "garner sympathy with the public and to create better TV". Watson denied this, saying "No one ordered him to scuttle it. Pete Bethune was captain of the Ady Gil; all decisions on the Ady Gil were his."
Awards
Paul Watson received the Jules Verne Award on October 10, 2012. He was the second person after Captain Jacques Cousteau to be honored with a Jules Verne Award dedicated to environmentalists and adventurers. On June 28, 2010 Paul received the Asociación de Amigos del Museo de Anclas Philippe Cousteau: Defense of Marine Life Award, in recognition of his merits achieved by the work done in defense of marine life. In 2002, Paul was inducted into the US Animal Rights Hall of Fame for his outstanding contributions to animal liberation. Paul received the George H. W. Bush Daily Points of Light Award in 1999 and in 2000, he was named one of Time Magazine's Top 20 Environmental Heroes of the 20th Century. On May 23, 2019, Paul Watson received an official commendation by Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont stating that the "State of Connecticut conveyed both honor and recognition to Captain Paul Watson." In 2007 Watson received the Amazon Peace Prize presented by the Vice President of Ecuador Lenin Moreno.
Media portrayals
A biographical documentary on Paul Watson's early life and background entitled Pirate for the Sea was produced by Ron Colby in 2008.
The 2008 documentary At the Edge of the World chronicled the efforts of Watson and 45 volunteers to hinder the Japanese whaling fleet in the waters around Antarctica. In 2010, long time friend and filmmaker Peter Brown released the documentary Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist, a satirical look back at the last 30 years of actions. The documentary Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson from 2011 features interviews and footage with early Greenpeace members Rex Weyler and Patrick Moore.
Watson, Whale Wars, and the Japanese whaling industry were satirized in the South Park episode "Whale Whores". In its fictional Larry King show, Watson himself was called "An unorganized incompetent media whore who thought lying to everyone was OK as long as it served his cause" and "A smug, narcoleptic liar with no credibility".
Watson responded to the South Park episode by stating; "My understanding is that the Japanese Prime Minister was not amused and the whalers and dolphin killers are enraged at the way they were portrayed," Watson said. "That's music to my ears. If the humorless whale killers and the bank rollers of the dolphin killers did not like the show, then that's all I need to applaud it."
Watson was portrayed (along with whale biologist, Nan Hauser), during a 60 Minutes episode that aired in 2013, as contributing to the return of the Humpback whale populations in the South Pacific.
In 2019 a biopic film called, Watson directed by one of the producers of An Inconvenient Truth, Lesley Chilcott, was released and also aired on Animal Planet on December 22, 2019.
List of works
Sea Shepherd: My Fight for Whales and Seals (1981) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy (1993) ()
Ocean Warrior: My Battle to End the Illegal Slaughter on the High Seas (1994) ()
Seal Wars: Twenty-Five Years on the Front Lines With the Harp Seals (2002) ()
Contributor to Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberations of Animals (2004) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy 2nd Edition (2012)
The War That Saved the Whales (2019)
Songs from the Southern Ocean (2020)
The Haunted Mariner (2020)
Dealing with Climate Change and Stress (2020)
Orcapedia (2020)
Desperate Mythologies: Theology, Ecology and the General Insanity of Humanity (2020)
Death of a Whale (2021)
URGENT! Save Our Ocean to Survive Climate Change (2021)
See also
List of conservationists
List of vegans
References
Further reading
Earth Warrior: Overboard With Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, by David B. Morris (1995) ()
Eco-Warriors, by Rik Scarce (2006) ()
Capitaine Paul Watson, entretien avec un pirate, by Lamya Essemlali, Paul Watson (2012)
External links
Paul Watson's page on the Sea Shepherd official website
1950 births
Canadian animal rights activists
Canadian environmentalists
Fugitives wanted by Germany
Green Party of British Columbia politicians
Green thinkers
Living people
People associated with Greenpeace
People from St. Andrews, New Brunswick
Activists from Toronto
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Sierra Club directors
Sustainability advocates
Veganism activists
Yippies | true | [
"SOARA (Situation, Objective, Action, Results, Aftermath) is a job interview technique developed by Hagymas Laszlo, Professor of Language at the University of Munich, and Alexander Botos, Chief Curator at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. It is similar to the Situation, Task, Action, Result technique. In many interviews, SOARA is used as a structure for clarifying information relating to a recent challenge.\n\nDetails\n\n Situation: The interviewer wants you to present a recent challenge and situation you found yourself in.\n Objective: What did you have to achieve? The interviewer will be looking to see what you were trying to achieve from the situation.\n Action: What did you do? The interviewer will be looking for information on what you did, why you did it and what were the alternatives.\n Results: What was the outcome of your actions? What did you achieve through your actions and did you meet your objectives.\n Aftermath: What did you learn from this experience and have you used this learning since?\n\nJob interview",
"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"
] |
[
"Paul Watson",
"Other environmental activities",
"What is Paul Watson's biggest environmental achievement?",
"Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981.",
"What else did he achieve environmentally?",
"Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society."
] | C_92b9e56b3db24c86932abccd2b624bea_0 | Did he achieve anything else environmentally? | 3 | Other than co founding Friends of the wolf and Earthforce environmental society Did Paul Watson achieve anything else environmentally? | Paul Watson | Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society. During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking. Watson ran as an independent candidate in the 1980 Canadian Federal election in Vancouver Centre, proclaiming he wasn't a politician but an environmentalist. He received less than 100 votes. Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth. In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest. Watson feels that "no human community should be larger than 20,000 people," human populations need to be reduced radically to "fewer than one billion," and only those who are "completely dedicated to the responsibility" of caring for the biosphere should have children, which is a "very small percentage of humans." He likens humankind to a virus or a cancer. The biosphere needs to get cured from this cancer with a "radical and invasive approach." In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. CANNOTANSWER | According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking. | Paul Franklin Watson (born December 2, 1950) is a Canadian-American conservation and environmental activist, who founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an anti-poaching and direct action group focused on marine conservation activism. The tactics used by Sea Shepherd have attracted opposition, with the group accused of eco-terrorism by both the Japanese government and Greenpeace. Watson is a citizen of Canada and the United States.
The Toronto native joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing in 1969. He was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972. Because Watson argued for a strategy of direct action that conflicted with the Greenpeace interpretation of nonviolence, he was ousted from the board in 1977. That same year, he formed the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The group was the subject of a reality show named Whale Wars.
He promotes veganism, population reduction and a biocentric, rather than anthropocentric, worldview.
Watson's activities have led to legal action from authorities in countries including the United States, Canada, Norway, Costa Rica and Japan. He was detained in Germany on an extradition request by Costa Rica in May 2012. An Interpol red notice was issued on September 14, 2012, at the request of Japan and Costa Rica.
After staying at sea for 15 months following his escape from Germany, where he was released on bail, he returned to Los Angeles in late October 2013, going through customs and "was not arrested". He appeared before a US appeals court on November 6, 2013, stating that neither he nor the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society violated a 2012 order requiring them to leave whaling vessels alone. Although the United States is a signatory member of Interpol, Watson has not been detained for extradition to Japan or Costa Rica. He is living in Vermont, writing books. He was residing in Paris as of July 1, 2014 but has since returned to the USA.
In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Early and personal life
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Paul Watson was born in Toronto to Anthony Joseph Watson and Annamarie Larsen, and grew up in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, along with two sisters and three brothers. As a child he was a member of the Kindness Club, which he has credited with teaching him to "respect and defend animals". After working as a tour guide at Expo 67, the World's Fair that took place in Montreal in 1967, Watson moved to Vancouver.
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, in 1968 and the early 1970s, he joined the Canadian Coast Guard, where he served aboard weatherships, search and rescue hovercraft, and buoy tenders. He signed up as a merchant seaman in 1969 with the Norwegian Consulate in Vancouver and shipped out on the 30,000 ton bulk carrier Bris as a deckhand. The Bris was registered in Oslo, Norway and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade. In 1972 he shipped out of San Francisco on the 35,000 ton bulk Swedish carrier Jarl R. Trapp and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade
Watson has one daughter Lilliolani (born 1980) with his first wife, Starlet Lum, who was a founding director of Greenpeace Quebec, Earthforce!, Project Wolf, and Sea Shepherd. His second wife, Lisa Distefano, a former Playboy model, was Sea Shepherd's Director of Operations during the Makah anti-whaling campaigns in Friday Harbor. His third wife, Allison Lance, is an animal rights activist and a volunteer crew member of Sea Shepherd. Watson has two grandchildren. Watson married his fourth wife Yana Rusinovich on February 14, 2015, in Paris, France. Watson and Rusinovich had a son, Tiger, on September 29, 2016 and a second son, Murtagh, on August 6, 2021. He ran for parliament in Canada's federal elections twice.
Activism
Early years
In October 1969, Watson joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing at Amchitka Island. The group which formed as a result of that protest was the Don't Make a Wave Committee, which evolved into the group known today as Greenpeace. In the early 1970s, Watson was also active with the Vancouver Liberation Front and the Vancouver Yippies. Watson sailed as a crew member aboard the Greenpeace Too! ship in 1971 and skippered the Greenpeace boat Astral in 1972. Paul Watson continued as a crew member, skipper, and officer aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s.
According to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other sources, Watson was a founding member of Greenpeace, but the organization denies this stating he "was an influential early member but not, as he sometimes claims, a founder." Greenpeace claims that Watson joined Greenpeace on its Amchitka expedition, which they claim to be their second expedition, but Paul Watson claims that this was Greenpeace's first meeting.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
The first Sea Shepherd vessel, the Sea Shepherd, was purchased in December 1978 with assistance from the Fund for Animals and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Sea Shepherd soon established itself as one of the more controversial environmental groups, known for provocative direct action tactics. These tactics have included throwing objects onto the decks of whaling ships, the use of "prop foulers" in an attempt to sabotage the ships, boarding whaling vessels, and the scuttling of two ships in an Icelandic harbor. In January 2013, Watson relinquished captaincy of the Steve Irwin. The organization and its activities to halt whaling are the focus of a reality TV series, Whale Wars, airing on Animal Planet.
In 2010, Watson personally received more than $120,000 from Sea Shepherd.
Because of mounting legal complications, Watson has stepped down as head of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 2013, to abide by an injunction barring him from proximity with Japanese whaling ships. After the resolution of legal issues involving the Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research, Watson returned as President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Commander of the Sea Shepherd fleet.
Other environmental activities
Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.
During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking.
Watson worked with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth.
In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest.
In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
Writings on activism
Watson published Earthforce!, a guide to strategy for environmental activists in 1993. In it, he specifically endorsed the tactics of "monkeywrenching" previously described by Dave Foreman and Edward Abbey. According to Foreman in Eco-Defense—The Field Guide to Monkey-Wrenching— these are tactics of sabotage, covert activity, and direct action. Watson says he incorporated his own personal experience in writing the book.
In Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy, Watson expressed disdain for the truthfulness of mainstream media:
The nature of the mass media today is such that the truth is irrelevant. What is true and what is right to the general public is what is defined as true and right by the mass media. Ronald Reagan understood that the facts are not relevant. The media reported what he said as fact. Follow-up investigation was "old news." A headline comment on Monday's newspaper far outweighs the revelation of inaccuracy revealed in a small box inside the paper on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Watson was explicit about what he perceived to be the lack of truthfulness in mass media: "If you do not know an answer, a fact, or a statistic, then simply follow the example of an American President and do as Ronald Reagan did—make it up on the spot and deliver the information confidently and without hesitation." In a subsequent book, Ocean Warrior, Watson expanded on this view, saying: "Survival in a media culture meant developing the skills to understand and manipulate media to achieve strategic objectives."
In 2007 Watson explained his view of needed population control and the future for humans given their role in the Holocene extinction, which he refers to as the "Holocenic hominid collective suicide event":
Today, escalating human populations have vastly exceeded global carrying capacity and now produce massive quantities of solid, liquid, and gaseous waste [...] No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas [...] We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion [...] Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach [...] Who should have children? Those who are responsible and completely dedicated to the responsibility which is actually a very small percentage of humans.
Controversy
Separation from Greenpeace
Paul Watson continued as a crew member, officer, and skipper (in 1972) aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s. He considers himself a founding member of Greenpeace and Greenpeace International, a claim Greenpeace disputes despite being pointed out in the documentary, How to Change the World which shows that Watson was indeed one of the original founding members of Greenpeace. Watson has since accused Greenpeace of rewriting their history.
In 1977, Watson was expelled from the Greenpeace's board of directors by a vote of 11 to 1 (Watson himself cast the single vote against it). The group felt his strong, "front and center" personality and frequently voiced opposition to Greenpeace's interpretation of "nonviolence" were too divisive. Watson subsequently left the group. The group has since labeled his actions at the time as those of a "mutineer" within their ranks. That same year, he founded his own group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
During an interview in 1978 with CBC Radio, Watson spoke out against Greenpeace (as well as other organizations) and their role and motives for the anti-sealing campaigns. Watson accused these organizations of campaigning against the Canadian seal hunt because it is an easy way to raise money and it is a profit maker for the organizations.
Greenpeace has called Watson a violent extremist and will no longer comment on his activities.
Charges and prosecutions
Watson was sentenced to 10 days in prison and fined $8,000 for his actions during a Canadian seal hunt protest in 1980, after being convicted of assaulting a fisheries officer. Watson served his sentence at Her Majesty's Penitentiary, St. John's, NL. He was also found guilty under the Seal Protection Act for painting harp seal pups with red dye to devalue their pelts. Watson was arrested in 1993 in Canada on charges stemming from actions against Cuban and Spanish fishing boats off the coast of Newfoundland. In 1997, Watson was convicted in absentia and sentenced to serve 120 days in jail by a court in Lofoten, Norway on charges of attempting to sink the small scale Norwegian fishing and whaling vessel Nybrænna on December 26, 1992. Dutch authorities refused to hand him over to Norwegian authorities although he did spend 80 days in detention in the Netherlands pending a ruling on extradition before being released.
There have not been any successful attempts at prosecuting Watson for his activities with Sea Shepherd since the trial in Newfoundland. Watson defends his actions as falling within international law, in particular Sea Shepherd's right to enforce maritime regulations against illegal whalers and sealers.
Sea Shepherd activists Rod Coronado and David Howitt went to Iceland in 1986 and scuttled two whaling ships in port at Reykjavík and also damaged a whale meat processing factory. Watson took responsibility for the operation, abiding by published Sea Shepherd principles. He went to Iceland saying, "I am responsible for all activities undertaken in the name of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I give the orders." He was deported without being charged and is considered a persona non grata by Iceland
In April 2010 the Japanese Coast Guard obtained an arrest warrant for Watson "...on suspicion of ordering sabotage activities against Japan's whaling fleet", and Interpol has listed him as wanted at the request of Japan. The red notice has the charges issued by Japan as, "Breaking into the Vessel, Damage to Property, Forcible Obstruction of Business, Injury". In March 2012 Interpol issued a "written statement to all 190 member countries making it clear that it would not publish a Red Notice" for the detention of Watson, but reversed that position in September 2012. In both statements Interpol stated that a "Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant" that it is "a request for any country to identify or locate an individual with a view to their provisional arrest and extradition in accordance with the country's national laws".
In May 2012 Watson was detained by German authorities at the Frankfurt Airport because of a request from the government of Costa Rica. The charge stemmed from an altercation at sea in 2002 in which Sea Shepherd said that the other vessel was illegally shark finning in Guatemalan waters. Crew members of the other ship accused Sea Shepherd of trying to kill them. Watson was charged with violating navigational regulations with the Interpol alert stating the charge as, "peligro de naufragio" (danger of shipwreck). The conflict took place during filming for the documentary Sharkwater and the charges were dropped by prosecutors after video of the incident made by the documentary film makers was shown. On May 21, Watson was released on bail of €250,000 but required to report to police in Frankfurt on a daily basis. In June, Costa Rica formally requested Watson's extradition from Germany. On July 19, 2012, Japan applied for an extradition order and Watson left Germany, resulting in a German court ordering his immediate re-arrest. It is understood the statute of limitations on his Costa Rican charges was set to expire in June 2013.
On August 7, 2012 Interpol renewed the Red Notice for Watson on the charges of "causing a danger of drowning or of an air disaster" laid by Costa Rica. It was reported that Watson would come out of hiding to join Sea Shepherd in the 2012–13 campaign against Japanese whaling. Watson rejoined the crew of the Steve Irwin in the South Pacific in late November 2012. In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Sierra Club immigration stance
In 1999, Watson ran unsuccessfully for election to the national Sierra Club Board of Directors, with the backing of the anti-immigration faction Sierrans for US Population Stabilization (SUSPS). After his election to the board in 2003, Watson supported an unsuccessful slate of candidates supporting strict immigration controls as an element of a population stabilization policy. This effort was denounced by another candidate in the election, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, as a "hostile takeover" attempt by "radical anti-immigrant activists." Watson responded by saying that the only change he was seeking in the organization's immigration stance was to restore the position it had held before its 1996 "neutrality policy." Watson left the Sierra Club board in 2006.
Anti-sealing activities
In April 2008, Watson stated that, while the deaths of three Canadian seal hunters (a fourth one is still missing) in a marine accident involving a Canadian Coast Guard vessel and a fishing boat during the 2008 Canadian Commercial Seal Hunt were a tragedy, he felt that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seals is an even greater tragedy. Canadian Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn accused Watson of trivializing the memory of the lost sealers. Watson replied that Hearn was trying to distract attention from his government's incompetence as the boat the men were on capsized while under tow by a Canadian Coast Guard vessel, while his political ambitions continued to support and subsidize an industry that had no place in the 21st century. In 1978, Watson expressed opposition to seal hunt protest organization, suggesting in an interview with CBC's Barbara Frum that saving seals is a cheap and easy fundraiser and that seals do not deserve special status over other species. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams was quoted as saying, "I think what a lot of people don't realize is that this man is a terrorist."
Australian visa issues
In October 2009, Watson, who carries a US passport, complained to media outlets about having his request for an Australian visa denied. He states that the Australian government was attempting to sabotage the upcoming 2010 Sea Shepherd campaign by denying him entry into the country. Watson and several other shipmates were also unable to join the Steve Irwin on its promotional tour of Australia until they were able to provide documentation from the governments of the United States, Canada and Norway, exonerating them from previously claimed acts of violence, specifically claims by Sea Shepherd of intentionally sinking a ship in Norway. In January 2013, Paul Watson was presented with an Aboriginal passport by the Krautungalung people of the Gunnai Nation.
Alleged shooting
On March 17, 2008, Paul Watson said that he was shot by the Japanese crew or coast guard personnel during the Operation Migaloo anti-whaling campaign in the Southern Ocean. The incident is documented during the season finale of season 1 of the Whale Wars TV reality show, and the first six episodes are covered as a buildup to what is portrayed as the major incident during the campaign. The Japanese respond by throwing stun grenades, one crew member is injured from a grenade detonating close behind him and another injured trying to escape the explosions. Watson is then shown reaching inside his jacket and body armour and remarking "I've been hit." Back inside the bridge of the Steve Irwin, a metal fragment is found inside the vest.
The Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research disputes Sea Shepherd's statements. The Institute and Coast Guard said that they used seven stun grenades designed to temporarily debilitate a target by rendering them blind and deaf for a period of time. The Japanese government also alleged that the whalers launched "noise balls", described as "loud explosive deterrent devices". Neither of the two conflicting accounts have been independently verified. The Australian Foreign Affairs Department had condemned "actions by crew members of any vessel that cause injury". Two media releases were made on the same day from the office. One said that the Australian Embassy in Tokyo had been informed by the Japanese that the whalers had "fired warning shots" while the updated version used the phrase "'warning balls' – also known as 'flashbangs' – had been fired".
Accusations of terrorism
Watson has been called an eco-terrorist by the Japanese government for his direct action tactics against whalers, and it repeated its position after conflicts during the 2009–10 whaling season.
At an animal rights convention in 2002, Paul Watson was also quoted as saying, "There's nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write the history". In 2010, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck also discussed the comment, criticizing Watson's views. Watson responded to Beck's comments on the official Sea Shepherd website by stating that he had said that but that it was taken out of context, quoting Gerald Seymour's "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter".
Comments following 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami
Watson was criticized for his poem published immediately following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami which suggested the disaster was Neptune's anger. Watson responded to critics with a commentary on the Sea Shepherd website expressing "deepest concern and sympathy for the people of Japan who are suffering through one of the worst natural disasters in the history of civilization".
Criticism of New Zealand
In 2013, three Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ships docked in New Zealand, and were searched by New Zealand authorities to see if Watson was aboard. He was not, having transferred to another ship in international waters, aware New Zealand was required to notify Interpol if he entered the country. Watson criticised the search, accusing New Zealand of siding with Japan on the issue of whaling in the Southern Ocean.
Reactions to activism and leadership
Watson has stated that he does not consider himself a 'protester', but an 'interventionist', as he considers protesting as too submissive. He often takes the attitude that he represents (or stands in for) law enforcement which is either unwilling or unable to enforce existing laws.
His leadership style has variously been called arrogant, as well as pushing himself too much "front and center", which was cited as one of the reasons for expulsion from Greenpeace. The atmosphere aboard his vessels has been compared to an "anarchy run by God".
The former member of Sea Shepherd and captain of the Pete Bethune described Watson as "morally bankrupt" who would order the intentional sinking of his own ships like the Ady Gil as a means to "garner sympathy with the public and to create better TV". Watson denied this, saying "No one ordered him to scuttle it. Pete Bethune was captain of the Ady Gil; all decisions on the Ady Gil were his."
Awards
Paul Watson received the Jules Verne Award on October 10, 2012. He was the second person after Captain Jacques Cousteau to be honored with a Jules Verne Award dedicated to environmentalists and adventurers. On June 28, 2010 Paul received the Asociación de Amigos del Museo de Anclas Philippe Cousteau: Defense of Marine Life Award, in recognition of his merits achieved by the work done in defense of marine life. In 2002, Paul was inducted into the US Animal Rights Hall of Fame for his outstanding contributions to animal liberation. Paul received the George H. W. Bush Daily Points of Light Award in 1999 and in 2000, he was named one of Time Magazine's Top 20 Environmental Heroes of the 20th Century. On May 23, 2019, Paul Watson received an official commendation by Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont stating that the "State of Connecticut conveyed both honor and recognition to Captain Paul Watson." In 2007 Watson received the Amazon Peace Prize presented by the Vice President of Ecuador Lenin Moreno.
Media portrayals
A biographical documentary on Paul Watson's early life and background entitled Pirate for the Sea was produced by Ron Colby in 2008.
The 2008 documentary At the Edge of the World chronicled the efforts of Watson and 45 volunteers to hinder the Japanese whaling fleet in the waters around Antarctica. In 2010, long time friend and filmmaker Peter Brown released the documentary Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist, a satirical look back at the last 30 years of actions. The documentary Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson from 2011 features interviews and footage with early Greenpeace members Rex Weyler and Patrick Moore.
Watson, Whale Wars, and the Japanese whaling industry were satirized in the South Park episode "Whale Whores". In its fictional Larry King show, Watson himself was called "An unorganized incompetent media whore who thought lying to everyone was OK as long as it served his cause" and "A smug, narcoleptic liar with no credibility".
Watson responded to the South Park episode by stating; "My understanding is that the Japanese Prime Minister was not amused and the whalers and dolphin killers are enraged at the way they were portrayed," Watson said. "That's music to my ears. If the humorless whale killers and the bank rollers of the dolphin killers did not like the show, then that's all I need to applaud it."
Watson was portrayed (along with whale biologist, Nan Hauser), during a 60 Minutes episode that aired in 2013, as contributing to the return of the Humpback whale populations in the South Pacific.
In 2019 a biopic film called, Watson directed by one of the producers of An Inconvenient Truth, Lesley Chilcott, was released and also aired on Animal Planet on December 22, 2019.
List of works
Sea Shepherd: My Fight for Whales and Seals (1981) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy (1993) ()
Ocean Warrior: My Battle to End the Illegal Slaughter on the High Seas (1994) ()
Seal Wars: Twenty-Five Years on the Front Lines With the Harp Seals (2002) ()
Contributor to Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberations of Animals (2004) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy 2nd Edition (2012)
The War That Saved the Whales (2019)
Songs from the Southern Ocean (2020)
The Haunted Mariner (2020)
Dealing with Climate Change and Stress (2020)
Orcapedia (2020)
Desperate Mythologies: Theology, Ecology and the General Insanity of Humanity (2020)
Death of a Whale (2021)
URGENT! Save Our Ocean to Survive Climate Change (2021)
See also
List of conservationists
List of vegans
References
Further reading
Earth Warrior: Overboard With Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, by David B. Morris (1995) ()
Eco-Warriors, by Rik Scarce (2006) ()
Capitaine Paul Watson, entretien avec un pirate, by Lamya Essemlali, Paul Watson (2012)
External links
Paul Watson's page on the Sea Shepherd official website
1950 births
Canadian animal rights activists
Canadian environmentalists
Fugitives wanted by Germany
Green Party of British Columbia politicians
Green thinkers
Living people
People associated with Greenpeace
People from St. Andrews, New Brunswick
Activists from Toronto
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Sierra Club directors
Sustainability advocates
Veganism activists
Yippies | true | [
"\"Anything\" is a song by rapper Jay-Z that is found on the Vinyl 12\" \"Anything (The Berlin Remixes)\" 1999 with a Remix of DJ Tomekk from Def Jam Germany and later on Beanie Sigel's 2000 album The Truth. It is produced by Sam Sneed and P. Skam, who sample Lionel Bart's \"I'll Do Anything\" for the track's beat and chorus. The sample from Oliver! heavily popularized \"Anything\", as did the Annie sample on \"Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)\", \"Anything\" was also a bonus track on Jay-Z's album Vol. 3... Life and Times of S. Carter (UK/Europe edition) as is \"Anything (Mr. Drunk Mix)\" on the Japanese version of the album.\n\nJay-Z admitted to Angie Martinez in a 2009 interview on the BET program Food for Thought that he hoped the song would be a success like \"Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)\" due to their similarities but was surprised when it wasn't, even saying \"I dropped the record and then nothing\". The song did, however, achieve moderate success in the UK reaching #18 on the singles chart. A music video for the song was also released, which was directed by Chris Robinson.\n\n\"Anything (The Berlin Remixes)\"\n\nFormats and track listings\n\nVinyl 12\"\n\nA-side\n \"Anything (GBZ Remix)\"\t\t\n \"Anything (GBZ Remix Instrumental)\"\n\nB-side\n \"Anything (DJ Tomekk Remix)\"\t\n \"Anything (Original Version)\"\t\n \"Anything (Original Version Instrumental)\"\n\nFormats and track listings\n\nCD\n \"Anything (Radio Edit)\"\n \"So Ghetto\"\n \"There's Been a Murder\"\n \"Anything (Video)\"\n\nVinyl\n\nA-side\n \"Anything (Radio Edit) (3:47)\"\n \"Anything (LP Version) (4:47)\"\n \"Anything (Instrumental) (4:48)\"\n\nB-side\n \"Big Pimpin' (Radio Edit) (3:56)\"\n \"Big Pimpin' (LP Version) (4:44)\"\n \"Big Pimpin' (Instrumental) (4:59)\"\n\nCharts\n\nSee also\nList of songs recorded by Jay-Z\n\nReferences\n\n2000 singles\nJay-Z songs\nMusic videos directed by Chris Robinson (director)\nSongs written by Jay-Z\nSongs written by Lionel Bart\nRoc-A-Fella Records singles\n2000 songs",
"\"If You Can Do Anything Else\" is a song written by Billy Livsey and Don Schlitz, and recorded by American country music artist George Strait. It was released in February 2001 as the third and final single from his self-titled album. The song reached number 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart in July 2001. It also peaked at number 51 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.\n\nContent\nThe song is about man who is giving his woman the option to leave him. He gives her many different options for all the things she can do. At the end he gives her the option to stay with him if she really can’t find anything else to do. He says he will be alright if she leaves, but really it seems he wants her to stay.\n\nChart performance\n\"If You Can Do Anything Else\" debuted at number 60 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks for the week of March 3, 2001.\n\nYear-end charts\n\nReferences\n\n2001 singles\n2000 songs\nGeorge Strait songs\nSongs written by Billy Livsey\nSongs written by Don Schlitz\nSong recordings produced by Tony Brown (record producer)\nMCA Nashville Records singles"
] |
[
"Paul Watson",
"Other environmental activities",
"What is Paul Watson's biggest environmental achievement?",
"Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981.",
"What else did he achieve environmentally?",
"Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.",
"Did he achieve anything else environmentally?",
"According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking."
] | C_92b9e56b3db24c86932abccd2b624bea_0 | Can you tell me about any further achievements environmentally? | 4 | Can you tell me about any further achievements environmentally that Paul Watson received? | Paul Watson | Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society. During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking. Watson ran as an independent candidate in the 1980 Canadian Federal election in Vancouver Centre, proclaiming he wasn't a politician but an environmentalist. He received less than 100 votes. Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth. In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest. Watson feels that "no human community should be larger than 20,000 people," human populations need to be reduced radically to "fewer than one billion," and only those who are "completely dedicated to the responsibility" of caring for the biosphere should have children, which is a "very small percentage of humans." He likens humankind to a virus or a cancer. The biosphere needs to get cured from this cancer with a "radical and invasive approach." In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. CANNOTANSWER | Watson ran as an independent candidate in the 1980 Canadian Federal election in Vancouver Centre, proclaiming he wasn't a politician but an environmentalist. | Paul Franklin Watson (born December 2, 1950) is a Canadian-American conservation and environmental activist, who founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an anti-poaching and direct action group focused on marine conservation activism. The tactics used by Sea Shepherd have attracted opposition, with the group accused of eco-terrorism by both the Japanese government and Greenpeace. Watson is a citizen of Canada and the United States.
The Toronto native joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing in 1969. He was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972. Because Watson argued for a strategy of direct action that conflicted with the Greenpeace interpretation of nonviolence, he was ousted from the board in 1977. That same year, he formed the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The group was the subject of a reality show named Whale Wars.
He promotes veganism, population reduction and a biocentric, rather than anthropocentric, worldview.
Watson's activities have led to legal action from authorities in countries including the United States, Canada, Norway, Costa Rica and Japan. He was detained in Germany on an extradition request by Costa Rica in May 2012. An Interpol red notice was issued on September 14, 2012, at the request of Japan and Costa Rica.
After staying at sea for 15 months following his escape from Germany, where he was released on bail, he returned to Los Angeles in late October 2013, going through customs and "was not arrested". He appeared before a US appeals court on November 6, 2013, stating that neither he nor the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society violated a 2012 order requiring them to leave whaling vessels alone. Although the United States is a signatory member of Interpol, Watson has not been detained for extradition to Japan or Costa Rica. He is living in Vermont, writing books. He was residing in Paris as of July 1, 2014 but has since returned to the USA.
In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Early and personal life
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Paul Watson was born in Toronto to Anthony Joseph Watson and Annamarie Larsen, and grew up in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, along with two sisters and three brothers. As a child he was a member of the Kindness Club, which he has credited with teaching him to "respect and defend animals". After working as a tour guide at Expo 67, the World's Fair that took place in Montreal in 1967, Watson moved to Vancouver.
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, in 1968 and the early 1970s, he joined the Canadian Coast Guard, where he served aboard weatherships, search and rescue hovercraft, and buoy tenders. He signed up as a merchant seaman in 1969 with the Norwegian Consulate in Vancouver and shipped out on the 30,000 ton bulk carrier Bris as a deckhand. The Bris was registered in Oslo, Norway and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade. In 1972 he shipped out of San Francisco on the 35,000 ton bulk Swedish carrier Jarl R. Trapp and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade
Watson has one daughter Lilliolani (born 1980) with his first wife, Starlet Lum, who was a founding director of Greenpeace Quebec, Earthforce!, Project Wolf, and Sea Shepherd. His second wife, Lisa Distefano, a former Playboy model, was Sea Shepherd's Director of Operations during the Makah anti-whaling campaigns in Friday Harbor. His third wife, Allison Lance, is an animal rights activist and a volunteer crew member of Sea Shepherd. Watson has two grandchildren. Watson married his fourth wife Yana Rusinovich on February 14, 2015, in Paris, France. Watson and Rusinovich had a son, Tiger, on September 29, 2016 and a second son, Murtagh, on August 6, 2021. He ran for parliament in Canada's federal elections twice.
Activism
Early years
In October 1969, Watson joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing at Amchitka Island. The group which formed as a result of that protest was the Don't Make a Wave Committee, which evolved into the group known today as Greenpeace. In the early 1970s, Watson was also active with the Vancouver Liberation Front and the Vancouver Yippies. Watson sailed as a crew member aboard the Greenpeace Too! ship in 1971 and skippered the Greenpeace boat Astral in 1972. Paul Watson continued as a crew member, skipper, and officer aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s.
According to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other sources, Watson was a founding member of Greenpeace, but the organization denies this stating he "was an influential early member but not, as he sometimes claims, a founder." Greenpeace claims that Watson joined Greenpeace on its Amchitka expedition, which they claim to be their second expedition, but Paul Watson claims that this was Greenpeace's first meeting.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
The first Sea Shepherd vessel, the Sea Shepherd, was purchased in December 1978 with assistance from the Fund for Animals and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Sea Shepherd soon established itself as one of the more controversial environmental groups, known for provocative direct action tactics. These tactics have included throwing objects onto the decks of whaling ships, the use of "prop foulers" in an attempt to sabotage the ships, boarding whaling vessels, and the scuttling of two ships in an Icelandic harbor. In January 2013, Watson relinquished captaincy of the Steve Irwin. The organization and its activities to halt whaling are the focus of a reality TV series, Whale Wars, airing on Animal Planet.
In 2010, Watson personally received more than $120,000 from Sea Shepherd.
Because of mounting legal complications, Watson has stepped down as head of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 2013, to abide by an injunction barring him from proximity with Japanese whaling ships. After the resolution of legal issues involving the Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research, Watson returned as President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Commander of the Sea Shepherd fleet.
Other environmental activities
Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.
During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking.
Watson worked with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth.
In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest.
In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
Writings on activism
Watson published Earthforce!, a guide to strategy for environmental activists in 1993. In it, he specifically endorsed the tactics of "monkeywrenching" previously described by Dave Foreman and Edward Abbey. According to Foreman in Eco-Defense—The Field Guide to Monkey-Wrenching— these are tactics of sabotage, covert activity, and direct action. Watson says he incorporated his own personal experience in writing the book.
In Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy, Watson expressed disdain for the truthfulness of mainstream media:
The nature of the mass media today is such that the truth is irrelevant. What is true and what is right to the general public is what is defined as true and right by the mass media. Ronald Reagan understood that the facts are not relevant. The media reported what he said as fact. Follow-up investigation was "old news." A headline comment on Monday's newspaper far outweighs the revelation of inaccuracy revealed in a small box inside the paper on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Watson was explicit about what he perceived to be the lack of truthfulness in mass media: "If you do not know an answer, a fact, or a statistic, then simply follow the example of an American President and do as Ronald Reagan did—make it up on the spot and deliver the information confidently and without hesitation." In a subsequent book, Ocean Warrior, Watson expanded on this view, saying: "Survival in a media culture meant developing the skills to understand and manipulate media to achieve strategic objectives."
In 2007 Watson explained his view of needed population control and the future for humans given their role in the Holocene extinction, which he refers to as the "Holocenic hominid collective suicide event":
Today, escalating human populations have vastly exceeded global carrying capacity and now produce massive quantities of solid, liquid, and gaseous waste [...] No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas [...] We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion [...] Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach [...] Who should have children? Those who are responsible and completely dedicated to the responsibility which is actually a very small percentage of humans.
Controversy
Separation from Greenpeace
Paul Watson continued as a crew member, officer, and skipper (in 1972) aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s. He considers himself a founding member of Greenpeace and Greenpeace International, a claim Greenpeace disputes despite being pointed out in the documentary, How to Change the World which shows that Watson was indeed one of the original founding members of Greenpeace. Watson has since accused Greenpeace of rewriting their history.
In 1977, Watson was expelled from the Greenpeace's board of directors by a vote of 11 to 1 (Watson himself cast the single vote against it). The group felt his strong, "front and center" personality and frequently voiced opposition to Greenpeace's interpretation of "nonviolence" were too divisive. Watson subsequently left the group. The group has since labeled his actions at the time as those of a "mutineer" within their ranks. That same year, he founded his own group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
During an interview in 1978 with CBC Radio, Watson spoke out against Greenpeace (as well as other organizations) and their role and motives for the anti-sealing campaigns. Watson accused these organizations of campaigning against the Canadian seal hunt because it is an easy way to raise money and it is a profit maker for the organizations.
Greenpeace has called Watson a violent extremist and will no longer comment on his activities.
Charges and prosecutions
Watson was sentenced to 10 days in prison and fined $8,000 for his actions during a Canadian seal hunt protest in 1980, after being convicted of assaulting a fisheries officer. Watson served his sentence at Her Majesty's Penitentiary, St. John's, NL. He was also found guilty under the Seal Protection Act for painting harp seal pups with red dye to devalue their pelts. Watson was arrested in 1993 in Canada on charges stemming from actions against Cuban and Spanish fishing boats off the coast of Newfoundland. In 1997, Watson was convicted in absentia and sentenced to serve 120 days in jail by a court in Lofoten, Norway on charges of attempting to sink the small scale Norwegian fishing and whaling vessel Nybrænna on December 26, 1992. Dutch authorities refused to hand him over to Norwegian authorities although he did spend 80 days in detention in the Netherlands pending a ruling on extradition before being released.
There have not been any successful attempts at prosecuting Watson for his activities with Sea Shepherd since the trial in Newfoundland. Watson defends his actions as falling within international law, in particular Sea Shepherd's right to enforce maritime regulations against illegal whalers and sealers.
Sea Shepherd activists Rod Coronado and David Howitt went to Iceland in 1986 and scuttled two whaling ships in port at Reykjavík and also damaged a whale meat processing factory. Watson took responsibility for the operation, abiding by published Sea Shepherd principles. He went to Iceland saying, "I am responsible for all activities undertaken in the name of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I give the orders." He was deported without being charged and is considered a persona non grata by Iceland
In April 2010 the Japanese Coast Guard obtained an arrest warrant for Watson "...on suspicion of ordering sabotage activities against Japan's whaling fleet", and Interpol has listed him as wanted at the request of Japan. The red notice has the charges issued by Japan as, "Breaking into the Vessel, Damage to Property, Forcible Obstruction of Business, Injury". In March 2012 Interpol issued a "written statement to all 190 member countries making it clear that it would not publish a Red Notice" for the detention of Watson, but reversed that position in September 2012. In both statements Interpol stated that a "Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant" that it is "a request for any country to identify or locate an individual with a view to their provisional arrest and extradition in accordance with the country's national laws".
In May 2012 Watson was detained by German authorities at the Frankfurt Airport because of a request from the government of Costa Rica. The charge stemmed from an altercation at sea in 2002 in which Sea Shepherd said that the other vessel was illegally shark finning in Guatemalan waters. Crew members of the other ship accused Sea Shepherd of trying to kill them. Watson was charged with violating navigational regulations with the Interpol alert stating the charge as, "peligro de naufragio" (danger of shipwreck). The conflict took place during filming for the documentary Sharkwater and the charges were dropped by prosecutors after video of the incident made by the documentary film makers was shown. On May 21, Watson was released on bail of €250,000 but required to report to police in Frankfurt on a daily basis. In June, Costa Rica formally requested Watson's extradition from Germany. On July 19, 2012, Japan applied for an extradition order and Watson left Germany, resulting in a German court ordering his immediate re-arrest. It is understood the statute of limitations on his Costa Rican charges was set to expire in June 2013.
On August 7, 2012 Interpol renewed the Red Notice for Watson on the charges of "causing a danger of drowning or of an air disaster" laid by Costa Rica. It was reported that Watson would come out of hiding to join Sea Shepherd in the 2012–13 campaign against Japanese whaling. Watson rejoined the crew of the Steve Irwin in the South Pacific in late November 2012. In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Sierra Club immigration stance
In 1999, Watson ran unsuccessfully for election to the national Sierra Club Board of Directors, with the backing of the anti-immigration faction Sierrans for US Population Stabilization (SUSPS). After his election to the board in 2003, Watson supported an unsuccessful slate of candidates supporting strict immigration controls as an element of a population stabilization policy. This effort was denounced by another candidate in the election, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, as a "hostile takeover" attempt by "radical anti-immigrant activists." Watson responded by saying that the only change he was seeking in the organization's immigration stance was to restore the position it had held before its 1996 "neutrality policy." Watson left the Sierra Club board in 2006.
Anti-sealing activities
In April 2008, Watson stated that, while the deaths of three Canadian seal hunters (a fourth one is still missing) in a marine accident involving a Canadian Coast Guard vessel and a fishing boat during the 2008 Canadian Commercial Seal Hunt were a tragedy, he felt that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seals is an even greater tragedy. Canadian Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn accused Watson of trivializing the memory of the lost sealers. Watson replied that Hearn was trying to distract attention from his government's incompetence as the boat the men were on capsized while under tow by a Canadian Coast Guard vessel, while his political ambitions continued to support and subsidize an industry that had no place in the 21st century. In 1978, Watson expressed opposition to seal hunt protest organization, suggesting in an interview with CBC's Barbara Frum that saving seals is a cheap and easy fundraiser and that seals do not deserve special status over other species. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams was quoted as saying, "I think what a lot of people don't realize is that this man is a terrorist."
Australian visa issues
In October 2009, Watson, who carries a US passport, complained to media outlets about having his request for an Australian visa denied. He states that the Australian government was attempting to sabotage the upcoming 2010 Sea Shepherd campaign by denying him entry into the country. Watson and several other shipmates were also unable to join the Steve Irwin on its promotional tour of Australia until they were able to provide documentation from the governments of the United States, Canada and Norway, exonerating them from previously claimed acts of violence, specifically claims by Sea Shepherd of intentionally sinking a ship in Norway. In January 2013, Paul Watson was presented with an Aboriginal passport by the Krautungalung people of the Gunnai Nation.
Alleged shooting
On March 17, 2008, Paul Watson said that he was shot by the Japanese crew or coast guard personnel during the Operation Migaloo anti-whaling campaign in the Southern Ocean. The incident is documented during the season finale of season 1 of the Whale Wars TV reality show, and the first six episodes are covered as a buildup to what is portrayed as the major incident during the campaign. The Japanese respond by throwing stun grenades, one crew member is injured from a grenade detonating close behind him and another injured trying to escape the explosions. Watson is then shown reaching inside his jacket and body armour and remarking "I've been hit." Back inside the bridge of the Steve Irwin, a metal fragment is found inside the vest.
The Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research disputes Sea Shepherd's statements. The Institute and Coast Guard said that they used seven stun grenades designed to temporarily debilitate a target by rendering them blind and deaf for a period of time. The Japanese government also alleged that the whalers launched "noise balls", described as "loud explosive deterrent devices". Neither of the two conflicting accounts have been independently verified. The Australian Foreign Affairs Department had condemned "actions by crew members of any vessel that cause injury". Two media releases were made on the same day from the office. One said that the Australian Embassy in Tokyo had been informed by the Japanese that the whalers had "fired warning shots" while the updated version used the phrase "'warning balls' – also known as 'flashbangs' – had been fired".
Accusations of terrorism
Watson has been called an eco-terrorist by the Japanese government for his direct action tactics against whalers, and it repeated its position after conflicts during the 2009–10 whaling season.
At an animal rights convention in 2002, Paul Watson was also quoted as saying, "There's nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write the history". In 2010, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck also discussed the comment, criticizing Watson's views. Watson responded to Beck's comments on the official Sea Shepherd website by stating that he had said that but that it was taken out of context, quoting Gerald Seymour's "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter".
Comments following 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami
Watson was criticized for his poem published immediately following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami which suggested the disaster was Neptune's anger. Watson responded to critics with a commentary on the Sea Shepherd website expressing "deepest concern and sympathy for the people of Japan who are suffering through one of the worst natural disasters in the history of civilization".
Criticism of New Zealand
In 2013, three Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ships docked in New Zealand, and were searched by New Zealand authorities to see if Watson was aboard. He was not, having transferred to another ship in international waters, aware New Zealand was required to notify Interpol if he entered the country. Watson criticised the search, accusing New Zealand of siding with Japan on the issue of whaling in the Southern Ocean.
Reactions to activism and leadership
Watson has stated that he does not consider himself a 'protester', but an 'interventionist', as he considers protesting as too submissive. He often takes the attitude that he represents (or stands in for) law enforcement which is either unwilling or unable to enforce existing laws.
His leadership style has variously been called arrogant, as well as pushing himself too much "front and center", which was cited as one of the reasons for expulsion from Greenpeace. The atmosphere aboard his vessels has been compared to an "anarchy run by God".
The former member of Sea Shepherd and captain of the Pete Bethune described Watson as "morally bankrupt" who would order the intentional sinking of his own ships like the Ady Gil as a means to "garner sympathy with the public and to create better TV". Watson denied this, saying "No one ordered him to scuttle it. Pete Bethune was captain of the Ady Gil; all decisions on the Ady Gil were his."
Awards
Paul Watson received the Jules Verne Award on October 10, 2012. He was the second person after Captain Jacques Cousteau to be honored with a Jules Verne Award dedicated to environmentalists and adventurers. On June 28, 2010 Paul received the Asociación de Amigos del Museo de Anclas Philippe Cousteau: Defense of Marine Life Award, in recognition of his merits achieved by the work done in defense of marine life. In 2002, Paul was inducted into the US Animal Rights Hall of Fame for his outstanding contributions to animal liberation. Paul received the George H. W. Bush Daily Points of Light Award in 1999 and in 2000, he was named one of Time Magazine's Top 20 Environmental Heroes of the 20th Century. On May 23, 2019, Paul Watson received an official commendation by Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont stating that the "State of Connecticut conveyed both honor and recognition to Captain Paul Watson." In 2007 Watson received the Amazon Peace Prize presented by the Vice President of Ecuador Lenin Moreno.
Media portrayals
A biographical documentary on Paul Watson's early life and background entitled Pirate for the Sea was produced by Ron Colby in 2008.
The 2008 documentary At the Edge of the World chronicled the efforts of Watson and 45 volunteers to hinder the Japanese whaling fleet in the waters around Antarctica. In 2010, long time friend and filmmaker Peter Brown released the documentary Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist, a satirical look back at the last 30 years of actions. The documentary Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson from 2011 features interviews and footage with early Greenpeace members Rex Weyler and Patrick Moore.
Watson, Whale Wars, and the Japanese whaling industry were satirized in the South Park episode "Whale Whores". In its fictional Larry King show, Watson himself was called "An unorganized incompetent media whore who thought lying to everyone was OK as long as it served his cause" and "A smug, narcoleptic liar with no credibility".
Watson responded to the South Park episode by stating; "My understanding is that the Japanese Prime Minister was not amused and the whalers and dolphin killers are enraged at the way they were portrayed," Watson said. "That's music to my ears. If the humorless whale killers and the bank rollers of the dolphin killers did not like the show, then that's all I need to applaud it."
Watson was portrayed (along with whale biologist, Nan Hauser), during a 60 Minutes episode that aired in 2013, as contributing to the return of the Humpback whale populations in the South Pacific.
In 2019 a biopic film called, Watson directed by one of the producers of An Inconvenient Truth, Lesley Chilcott, was released and also aired on Animal Planet on December 22, 2019.
List of works
Sea Shepherd: My Fight for Whales and Seals (1981) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy (1993) ()
Ocean Warrior: My Battle to End the Illegal Slaughter on the High Seas (1994) ()
Seal Wars: Twenty-Five Years on the Front Lines With the Harp Seals (2002) ()
Contributor to Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberations of Animals (2004) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy 2nd Edition (2012)
The War That Saved the Whales (2019)
Songs from the Southern Ocean (2020)
The Haunted Mariner (2020)
Dealing with Climate Change and Stress (2020)
Orcapedia (2020)
Desperate Mythologies: Theology, Ecology and the General Insanity of Humanity (2020)
Death of a Whale (2021)
URGENT! Save Our Ocean to Survive Climate Change (2021)
See also
List of conservationists
List of vegans
References
Further reading
Earth Warrior: Overboard With Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, by David B. Morris (1995) ()
Eco-Warriors, by Rik Scarce (2006) ()
Capitaine Paul Watson, entretien avec un pirate, by Lamya Essemlali, Paul Watson (2012)
External links
Paul Watson's page on the Sea Shepherd official website
1950 births
Canadian animal rights activists
Canadian environmentalists
Fugitives wanted by Germany
Green Party of British Columbia politicians
Green thinkers
Living people
People associated with Greenpeace
People from St. Andrews, New Brunswick
Activists from Toronto
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Sierra Club directors
Sustainability advocates
Veganism activists
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"\"Tell Me How You Feel\" is a song by American singer and actress Joy Enriquez. It samples \"Mellow Mellow Right On\" by Lowrell Simon. The song was released as the second single from her debut self-titled studio album in September 2000, peaking at number 17 on the US Billboard Bubbling Under R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, number 24 in Australia and number 14 in New Zealand, where it was certified Gold for sales of over 5,000.\n\nTrack listings\n\nUS CD single\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" – 4:06\n Snippets from Joy Enriquez\n \"Shake Up the Party\"\n \"Situation\"\n \"I Can't Believe\"\n\nAustralian maxi-CD single\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" – 4:06\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" (Full Crew remix) – 4:04\n \"Between You and Me\" – 4:21\n \"How Can I Not Love You\" – 4:33\n\nEuropean CD single\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" (album version) – 4:06\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" (Full Crew remix) – 4:05\n\nEuropean maxi-CD single\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" (album version) – 4:06\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" (Full Crew remix) – 4:05\n \"Dime mi amor\" (Spanish version) – 3:59\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" (instrumental) – 4:05\n\nJapanese CD single\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\"\n \"How Can I Not Love You\"\n\nCharts\n\nCertifications\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n at Discogs\n\n2000 singles\n2000 songs\n2001 singles\nArista Records singles\nSong recordings produced by Soulshock and Karlin\nSongs written by Kenneth Karlin\nSongs written by Soulshock"
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"Paul Watson",
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"What is Paul Watson's biggest environmental achievement?",
"Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981.",
"What else did he achieve environmentally?",
"Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.",
"Did he achieve anything else environmentally?",
"According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking.",
"Can you tell me about any further achievements environmentally?",
"Watson ran as an independent candidate in the 1980 Canadian Federal election in Vancouver Centre, proclaiming he wasn't a politician but an environmentalist."
] | C_92b9e56b3db24c86932abccd2b624bea_0 | Did he win that election? | 5 | Did Paul Watson win the 1980 Canadian federal election? | Paul Watson | Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society. During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking. Watson ran as an independent candidate in the 1980 Canadian Federal election in Vancouver Centre, proclaiming he wasn't a politician but an environmentalist. He received less than 100 votes. Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth. In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest. Watson feels that "no human community should be larger than 20,000 people," human populations need to be reduced radically to "fewer than one billion," and only those who are "completely dedicated to the responsibility" of caring for the biosphere should have children, which is a "very small percentage of humans." He likens humankind to a virus or a cancer. The biosphere needs to get cured from this cancer with a "radical and invasive approach." In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. CANNOTANSWER | He received less than 100 votes. | Paul Franklin Watson (born December 2, 1950) is a Canadian-American conservation and environmental activist, who founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an anti-poaching and direct action group focused on marine conservation activism. The tactics used by Sea Shepherd have attracted opposition, with the group accused of eco-terrorism by both the Japanese government and Greenpeace. Watson is a citizen of Canada and the United States.
The Toronto native joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing in 1969. He was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972. Because Watson argued for a strategy of direct action that conflicted with the Greenpeace interpretation of nonviolence, he was ousted from the board in 1977. That same year, he formed the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The group was the subject of a reality show named Whale Wars.
He promotes veganism, population reduction and a biocentric, rather than anthropocentric, worldview.
Watson's activities have led to legal action from authorities in countries including the United States, Canada, Norway, Costa Rica and Japan. He was detained in Germany on an extradition request by Costa Rica in May 2012. An Interpol red notice was issued on September 14, 2012, at the request of Japan and Costa Rica.
After staying at sea for 15 months following his escape from Germany, where he was released on bail, he returned to Los Angeles in late October 2013, going through customs and "was not arrested". He appeared before a US appeals court on November 6, 2013, stating that neither he nor the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society violated a 2012 order requiring them to leave whaling vessels alone. Although the United States is a signatory member of Interpol, Watson has not been detained for extradition to Japan or Costa Rica. He is living in Vermont, writing books. He was residing in Paris as of July 1, 2014 but has since returned to the USA.
In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Early and personal life
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Paul Watson was born in Toronto to Anthony Joseph Watson and Annamarie Larsen, and grew up in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, along with two sisters and three brothers. As a child he was a member of the Kindness Club, which he has credited with teaching him to "respect and defend animals". After working as a tour guide at Expo 67, the World's Fair that took place in Montreal in 1967, Watson moved to Vancouver.
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, in 1968 and the early 1970s, he joined the Canadian Coast Guard, where he served aboard weatherships, search and rescue hovercraft, and buoy tenders. He signed up as a merchant seaman in 1969 with the Norwegian Consulate in Vancouver and shipped out on the 30,000 ton bulk carrier Bris as a deckhand. The Bris was registered in Oslo, Norway and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade. In 1972 he shipped out of San Francisco on the 35,000 ton bulk Swedish carrier Jarl R. Trapp and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade
Watson has one daughter Lilliolani (born 1980) with his first wife, Starlet Lum, who was a founding director of Greenpeace Quebec, Earthforce!, Project Wolf, and Sea Shepherd. His second wife, Lisa Distefano, a former Playboy model, was Sea Shepherd's Director of Operations during the Makah anti-whaling campaigns in Friday Harbor. His third wife, Allison Lance, is an animal rights activist and a volunteer crew member of Sea Shepherd. Watson has two grandchildren. Watson married his fourth wife Yana Rusinovich on February 14, 2015, in Paris, France. Watson and Rusinovich had a son, Tiger, on September 29, 2016 and a second son, Murtagh, on August 6, 2021. He ran for parliament in Canada's federal elections twice.
Activism
Early years
In October 1969, Watson joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing at Amchitka Island. The group which formed as a result of that protest was the Don't Make a Wave Committee, which evolved into the group known today as Greenpeace. In the early 1970s, Watson was also active with the Vancouver Liberation Front and the Vancouver Yippies. Watson sailed as a crew member aboard the Greenpeace Too! ship in 1971 and skippered the Greenpeace boat Astral in 1972. Paul Watson continued as a crew member, skipper, and officer aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s.
According to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other sources, Watson was a founding member of Greenpeace, but the organization denies this stating he "was an influential early member but not, as he sometimes claims, a founder." Greenpeace claims that Watson joined Greenpeace on its Amchitka expedition, which they claim to be their second expedition, but Paul Watson claims that this was Greenpeace's first meeting.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
The first Sea Shepherd vessel, the Sea Shepherd, was purchased in December 1978 with assistance from the Fund for Animals and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Sea Shepherd soon established itself as one of the more controversial environmental groups, known for provocative direct action tactics. These tactics have included throwing objects onto the decks of whaling ships, the use of "prop foulers" in an attempt to sabotage the ships, boarding whaling vessels, and the scuttling of two ships in an Icelandic harbor. In January 2013, Watson relinquished captaincy of the Steve Irwin. The organization and its activities to halt whaling are the focus of a reality TV series, Whale Wars, airing on Animal Planet.
In 2010, Watson personally received more than $120,000 from Sea Shepherd.
Because of mounting legal complications, Watson has stepped down as head of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 2013, to abide by an injunction barring him from proximity with Japanese whaling ships. After the resolution of legal issues involving the Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research, Watson returned as President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Commander of the Sea Shepherd fleet.
Other environmental activities
Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.
During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking.
Watson worked with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth.
In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest.
In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
Writings on activism
Watson published Earthforce!, a guide to strategy for environmental activists in 1993. In it, he specifically endorsed the tactics of "monkeywrenching" previously described by Dave Foreman and Edward Abbey. According to Foreman in Eco-Defense—The Field Guide to Monkey-Wrenching— these are tactics of sabotage, covert activity, and direct action. Watson says he incorporated his own personal experience in writing the book.
In Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy, Watson expressed disdain for the truthfulness of mainstream media:
The nature of the mass media today is such that the truth is irrelevant. What is true and what is right to the general public is what is defined as true and right by the mass media. Ronald Reagan understood that the facts are not relevant. The media reported what he said as fact. Follow-up investigation was "old news." A headline comment on Monday's newspaper far outweighs the revelation of inaccuracy revealed in a small box inside the paper on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Watson was explicit about what he perceived to be the lack of truthfulness in mass media: "If you do not know an answer, a fact, or a statistic, then simply follow the example of an American President and do as Ronald Reagan did—make it up on the spot and deliver the information confidently and without hesitation." In a subsequent book, Ocean Warrior, Watson expanded on this view, saying: "Survival in a media culture meant developing the skills to understand and manipulate media to achieve strategic objectives."
In 2007 Watson explained his view of needed population control and the future for humans given their role in the Holocene extinction, which he refers to as the "Holocenic hominid collective suicide event":
Today, escalating human populations have vastly exceeded global carrying capacity and now produce massive quantities of solid, liquid, and gaseous waste [...] No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas [...] We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion [...] Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach [...] Who should have children? Those who are responsible and completely dedicated to the responsibility which is actually a very small percentage of humans.
Controversy
Separation from Greenpeace
Paul Watson continued as a crew member, officer, and skipper (in 1972) aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s. He considers himself a founding member of Greenpeace and Greenpeace International, a claim Greenpeace disputes despite being pointed out in the documentary, How to Change the World which shows that Watson was indeed one of the original founding members of Greenpeace. Watson has since accused Greenpeace of rewriting their history.
In 1977, Watson was expelled from the Greenpeace's board of directors by a vote of 11 to 1 (Watson himself cast the single vote against it). The group felt his strong, "front and center" personality and frequently voiced opposition to Greenpeace's interpretation of "nonviolence" were too divisive. Watson subsequently left the group. The group has since labeled his actions at the time as those of a "mutineer" within their ranks. That same year, he founded his own group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
During an interview in 1978 with CBC Radio, Watson spoke out against Greenpeace (as well as other organizations) and their role and motives for the anti-sealing campaigns. Watson accused these organizations of campaigning against the Canadian seal hunt because it is an easy way to raise money and it is a profit maker for the organizations.
Greenpeace has called Watson a violent extremist and will no longer comment on his activities.
Charges and prosecutions
Watson was sentenced to 10 days in prison and fined $8,000 for his actions during a Canadian seal hunt protest in 1980, after being convicted of assaulting a fisheries officer. Watson served his sentence at Her Majesty's Penitentiary, St. John's, NL. He was also found guilty under the Seal Protection Act for painting harp seal pups with red dye to devalue their pelts. Watson was arrested in 1993 in Canada on charges stemming from actions against Cuban and Spanish fishing boats off the coast of Newfoundland. In 1997, Watson was convicted in absentia and sentenced to serve 120 days in jail by a court in Lofoten, Norway on charges of attempting to sink the small scale Norwegian fishing and whaling vessel Nybrænna on December 26, 1992. Dutch authorities refused to hand him over to Norwegian authorities although he did spend 80 days in detention in the Netherlands pending a ruling on extradition before being released.
There have not been any successful attempts at prosecuting Watson for his activities with Sea Shepherd since the trial in Newfoundland. Watson defends his actions as falling within international law, in particular Sea Shepherd's right to enforce maritime regulations against illegal whalers and sealers.
Sea Shepherd activists Rod Coronado and David Howitt went to Iceland in 1986 and scuttled two whaling ships in port at Reykjavík and also damaged a whale meat processing factory. Watson took responsibility for the operation, abiding by published Sea Shepherd principles. He went to Iceland saying, "I am responsible for all activities undertaken in the name of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I give the orders." He was deported without being charged and is considered a persona non grata by Iceland
In April 2010 the Japanese Coast Guard obtained an arrest warrant for Watson "...on suspicion of ordering sabotage activities against Japan's whaling fleet", and Interpol has listed him as wanted at the request of Japan. The red notice has the charges issued by Japan as, "Breaking into the Vessel, Damage to Property, Forcible Obstruction of Business, Injury". In March 2012 Interpol issued a "written statement to all 190 member countries making it clear that it would not publish a Red Notice" for the detention of Watson, but reversed that position in September 2012. In both statements Interpol stated that a "Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant" that it is "a request for any country to identify or locate an individual with a view to their provisional arrest and extradition in accordance with the country's national laws".
In May 2012 Watson was detained by German authorities at the Frankfurt Airport because of a request from the government of Costa Rica. The charge stemmed from an altercation at sea in 2002 in which Sea Shepherd said that the other vessel was illegally shark finning in Guatemalan waters. Crew members of the other ship accused Sea Shepherd of trying to kill them. Watson was charged with violating navigational regulations with the Interpol alert stating the charge as, "peligro de naufragio" (danger of shipwreck). The conflict took place during filming for the documentary Sharkwater and the charges were dropped by prosecutors after video of the incident made by the documentary film makers was shown. On May 21, Watson was released on bail of €250,000 but required to report to police in Frankfurt on a daily basis. In June, Costa Rica formally requested Watson's extradition from Germany. On July 19, 2012, Japan applied for an extradition order and Watson left Germany, resulting in a German court ordering his immediate re-arrest. It is understood the statute of limitations on his Costa Rican charges was set to expire in June 2013.
On August 7, 2012 Interpol renewed the Red Notice for Watson on the charges of "causing a danger of drowning or of an air disaster" laid by Costa Rica. It was reported that Watson would come out of hiding to join Sea Shepherd in the 2012–13 campaign against Japanese whaling. Watson rejoined the crew of the Steve Irwin in the South Pacific in late November 2012. In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Sierra Club immigration stance
In 1999, Watson ran unsuccessfully for election to the national Sierra Club Board of Directors, with the backing of the anti-immigration faction Sierrans for US Population Stabilization (SUSPS). After his election to the board in 2003, Watson supported an unsuccessful slate of candidates supporting strict immigration controls as an element of a population stabilization policy. This effort was denounced by another candidate in the election, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, as a "hostile takeover" attempt by "radical anti-immigrant activists." Watson responded by saying that the only change he was seeking in the organization's immigration stance was to restore the position it had held before its 1996 "neutrality policy." Watson left the Sierra Club board in 2006.
Anti-sealing activities
In April 2008, Watson stated that, while the deaths of three Canadian seal hunters (a fourth one is still missing) in a marine accident involving a Canadian Coast Guard vessel and a fishing boat during the 2008 Canadian Commercial Seal Hunt were a tragedy, he felt that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seals is an even greater tragedy. Canadian Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn accused Watson of trivializing the memory of the lost sealers. Watson replied that Hearn was trying to distract attention from his government's incompetence as the boat the men were on capsized while under tow by a Canadian Coast Guard vessel, while his political ambitions continued to support and subsidize an industry that had no place in the 21st century. In 1978, Watson expressed opposition to seal hunt protest organization, suggesting in an interview with CBC's Barbara Frum that saving seals is a cheap and easy fundraiser and that seals do not deserve special status over other species. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams was quoted as saying, "I think what a lot of people don't realize is that this man is a terrorist."
Australian visa issues
In October 2009, Watson, who carries a US passport, complained to media outlets about having his request for an Australian visa denied. He states that the Australian government was attempting to sabotage the upcoming 2010 Sea Shepherd campaign by denying him entry into the country. Watson and several other shipmates were also unable to join the Steve Irwin on its promotional tour of Australia until they were able to provide documentation from the governments of the United States, Canada and Norway, exonerating them from previously claimed acts of violence, specifically claims by Sea Shepherd of intentionally sinking a ship in Norway. In January 2013, Paul Watson was presented with an Aboriginal passport by the Krautungalung people of the Gunnai Nation.
Alleged shooting
On March 17, 2008, Paul Watson said that he was shot by the Japanese crew or coast guard personnel during the Operation Migaloo anti-whaling campaign in the Southern Ocean. The incident is documented during the season finale of season 1 of the Whale Wars TV reality show, and the first six episodes are covered as a buildup to what is portrayed as the major incident during the campaign. The Japanese respond by throwing stun grenades, one crew member is injured from a grenade detonating close behind him and another injured trying to escape the explosions. Watson is then shown reaching inside his jacket and body armour and remarking "I've been hit." Back inside the bridge of the Steve Irwin, a metal fragment is found inside the vest.
The Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research disputes Sea Shepherd's statements. The Institute and Coast Guard said that they used seven stun grenades designed to temporarily debilitate a target by rendering them blind and deaf for a period of time. The Japanese government also alleged that the whalers launched "noise balls", described as "loud explosive deterrent devices". Neither of the two conflicting accounts have been independently verified. The Australian Foreign Affairs Department had condemned "actions by crew members of any vessel that cause injury". Two media releases were made on the same day from the office. One said that the Australian Embassy in Tokyo had been informed by the Japanese that the whalers had "fired warning shots" while the updated version used the phrase "'warning balls' – also known as 'flashbangs' – had been fired".
Accusations of terrorism
Watson has been called an eco-terrorist by the Japanese government for his direct action tactics against whalers, and it repeated its position after conflicts during the 2009–10 whaling season.
At an animal rights convention in 2002, Paul Watson was also quoted as saying, "There's nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write the history". In 2010, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck also discussed the comment, criticizing Watson's views. Watson responded to Beck's comments on the official Sea Shepherd website by stating that he had said that but that it was taken out of context, quoting Gerald Seymour's "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter".
Comments following 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami
Watson was criticized for his poem published immediately following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami which suggested the disaster was Neptune's anger. Watson responded to critics with a commentary on the Sea Shepherd website expressing "deepest concern and sympathy for the people of Japan who are suffering through one of the worst natural disasters in the history of civilization".
Criticism of New Zealand
In 2013, three Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ships docked in New Zealand, and were searched by New Zealand authorities to see if Watson was aboard. He was not, having transferred to another ship in international waters, aware New Zealand was required to notify Interpol if he entered the country. Watson criticised the search, accusing New Zealand of siding with Japan on the issue of whaling in the Southern Ocean.
Reactions to activism and leadership
Watson has stated that he does not consider himself a 'protester', but an 'interventionist', as he considers protesting as too submissive. He often takes the attitude that he represents (or stands in for) law enforcement which is either unwilling or unable to enforce existing laws.
His leadership style has variously been called arrogant, as well as pushing himself too much "front and center", which was cited as one of the reasons for expulsion from Greenpeace. The atmosphere aboard his vessels has been compared to an "anarchy run by God".
The former member of Sea Shepherd and captain of the Pete Bethune described Watson as "morally bankrupt" who would order the intentional sinking of his own ships like the Ady Gil as a means to "garner sympathy with the public and to create better TV". Watson denied this, saying "No one ordered him to scuttle it. Pete Bethune was captain of the Ady Gil; all decisions on the Ady Gil were his."
Awards
Paul Watson received the Jules Verne Award on October 10, 2012. He was the second person after Captain Jacques Cousteau to be honored with a Jules Verne Award dedicated to environmentalists and adventurers. On June 28, 2010 Paul received the Asociación de Amigos del Museo de Anclas Philippe Cousteau: Defense of Marine Life Award, in recognition of his merits achieved by the work done in defense of marine life. In 2002, Paul was inducted into the US Animal Rights Hall of Fame for his outstanding contributions to animal liberation. Paul received the George H. W. Bush Daily Points of Light Award in 1999 and in 2000, he was named one of Time Magazine's Top 20 Environmental Heroes of the 20th Century. On May 23, 2019, Paul Watson received an official commendation by Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont stating that the "State of Connecticut conveyed both honor and recognition to Captain Paul Watson." In 2007 Watson received the Amazon Peace Prize presented by the Vice President of Ecuador Lenin Moreno.
Media portrayals
A biographical documentary on Paul Watson's early life and background entitled Pirate for the Sea was produced by Ron Colby in 2008.
The 2008 documentary At the Edge of the World chronicled the efforts of Watson and 45 volunteers to hinder the Japanese whaling fleet in the waters around Antarctica. In 2010, long time friend and filmmaker Peter Brown released the documentary Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist, a satirical look back at the last 30 years of actions. The documentary Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson from 2011 features interviews and footage with early Greenpeace members Rex Weyler and Patrick Moore.
Watson, Whale Wars, and the Japanese whaling industry were satirized in the South Park episode "Whale Whores". In its fictional Larry King show, Watson himself was called "An unorganized incompetent media whore who thought lying to everyone was OK as long as it served his cause" and "A smug, narcoleptic liar with no credibility".
Watson responded to the South Park episode by stating; "My understanding is that the Japanese Prime Minister was not amused and the whalers and dolphin killers are enraged at the way they were portrayed," Watson said. "That's music to my ears. If the humorless whale killers and the bank rollers of the dolphin killers did not like the show, then that's all I need to applaud it."
Watson was portrayed (along with whale biologist, Nan Hauser), during a 60 Minutes episode that aired in 2013, as contributing to the return of the Humpback whale populations in the South Pacific.
In 2019 a biopic film called, Watson directed by one of the producers of An Inconvenient Truth, Lesley Chilcott, was released and also aired on Animal Planet on December 22, 2019.
List of works
Sea Shepherd: My Fight for Whales and Seals (1981) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy (1993) ()
Ocean Warrior: My Battle to End the Illegal Slaughter on the High Seas (1994) ()
Seal Wars: Twenty-Five Years on the Front Lines With the Harp Seals (2002) ()
Contributor to Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberations of Animals (2004) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy 2nd Edition (2012)
The War That Saved the Whales (2019)
Songs from the Southern Ocean (2020)
The Haunted Mariner (2020)
Dealing with Climate Change and Stress (2020)
Orcapedia (2020)
Desperate Mythologies: Theology, Ecology and the General Insanity of Humanity (2020)
Death of a Whale (2021)
URGENT! Save Our Ocean to Survive Climate Change (2021)
See also
List of conservationists
List of vegans
References
Further reading
Earth Warrior: Overboard With Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, by David B. Morris (1995) ()
Eco-Warriors, by Rik Scarce (2006) ()
Capitaine Paul Watson, entretien avec un pirate, by Lamya Essemlali, Paul Watson (2012)
External links
Paul Watson's page on the Sea Shepherd official website
1950 births
Canadian animal rights activists
Canadian environmentalists
Fugitives wanted by Germany
Green Party of British Columbia politicians
Green thinkers
Living people
People associated with Greenpeace
People from St. Andrews, New Brunswick
Activists from Toronto
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Sierra Club directors
Sustainability advocates
Veganism activists
Yippies | false | [
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"The Ukrainian Republican Party (; Ukrajinska Respublikanska Partija) is a political party in Ukraine registered in December 2006 as Ukrainian Republican Party Lukyanenko (). The party was led by political veteran Levko Lukyanenko(1928-2018). The party did not participate in the 2007 parliamentary election as well as the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election nationwide proportional party-list system; instead three members of the party tried to win a seat in three of the 225 local single-member districts. None of the parties candidates did win.\n\nThe party did participate in the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election in 5 single-member districts; but again did not win seats. The party has not taken part in national elections since 2012.\n\nThe party occupies a few seats in local and provincial councils. In the 2020 Ukrainian local elections the party gained 4 deputies (0.01% of all available mandates).\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\nConservative parties in Ukraine\nPolitical parties established in 2006\nNationalist parties in Ukraine"
] |
[
"Paul Watson",
"Other environmental activities",
"What is Paul Watson's biggest environmental achievement?",
"Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981.",
"What else did he achieve environmentally?",
"Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.",
"Did he achieve anything else environmentally?",
"According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking.",
"Can you tell me about any further achievements environmentally?",
"Watson ran as an independent candidate in the 1980 Canadian Federal election in Vancouver Centre, proclaiming he wasn't a politician but an environmentalist.",
"Did he win that election?",
"He received less than 100 votes."
] | C_92b9e56b3db24c86932abccd2b624bea_0 | What did he do after the election? | 6 | What did Paul Watson do after the 1980 Canadian federal election? | Paul Watson | Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society. During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking. Watson ran as an independent candidate in the 1980 Canadian Federal election in Vancouver Centre, proclaiming he wasn't a politician but an environmentalist. He received less than 100 votes. Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth. In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest. Watson feels that "no human community should be larger than 20,000 people," human populations need to be reduced radically to "fewer than one billion," and only those who are "completely dedicated to the responsibility" of caring for the biosphere should have children, which is a "very small percentage of humans." He likens humankind to a virus or a cancer. The biosphere needs to get cured from this cancer with a "radical and invasive approach." In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. CANNOTANSWER | Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. | Paul Franklin Watson (born December 2, 1950) is a Canadian-American conservation and environmental activist, who founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an anti-poaching and direct action group focused on marine conservation activism. The tactics used by Sea Shepherd have attracted opposition, with the group accused of eco-terrorism by both the Japanese government and Greenpeace. Watson is a citizen of Canada and the United States.
The Toronto native joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing in 1969. He was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972. Because Watson argued for a strategy of direct action that conflicted with the Greenpeace interpretation of nonviolence, he was ousted from the board in 1977. That same year, he formed the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The group was the subject of a reality show named Whale Wars.
He promotes veganism, population reduction and a biocentric, rather than anthropocentric, worldview.
Watson's activities have led to legal action from authorities in countries including the United States, Canada, Norway, Costa Rica and Japan. He was detained in Germany on an extradition request by Costa Rica in May 2012. An Interpol red notice was issued on September 14, 2012, at the request of Japan and Costa Rica.
After staying at sea for 15 months following his escape from Germany, where he was released on bail, he returned to Los Angeles in late October 2013, going through customs and "was not arrested". He appeared before a US appeals court on November 6, 2013, stating that neither he nor the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society violated a 2012 order requiring them to leave whaling vessels alone. Although the United States is a signatory member of Interpol, Watson has not been detained for extradition to Japan or Costa Rica. He is living in Vermont, writing books. He was residing in Paris as of July 1, 2014 but has since returned to the USA.
In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Early and personal life
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Paul Watson was born in Toronto to Anthony Joseph Watson and Annamarie Larsen, and grew up in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, along with two sisters and three brothers. As a child he was a member of the Kindness Club, which he has credited with teaching him to "respect and defend animals". After working as a tour guide at Expo 67, the World's Fair that took place in Montreal in 1967, Watson moved to Vancouver.
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, in 1968 and the early 1970s, he joined the Canadian Coast Guard, where he served aboard weatherships, search and rescue hovercraft, and buoy tenders. He signed up as a merchant seaman in 1969 with the Norwegian Consulate in Vancouver and shipped out on the 30,000 ton bulk carrier Bris as a deckhand. The Bris was registered in Oslo, Norway and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade. In 1972 he shipped out of San Francisco on the 35,000 ton bulk Swedish carrier Jarl R. Trapp and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade
Watson has one daughter Lilliolani (born 1980) with his first wife, Starlet Lum, who was a founding director of Greenpeace Quebec, Earthforce!, Project Wolf, and Sea Shepherd. His second wife, Lisa Distefano, a former Playboy model, was Sea Shepherd's Director of Operations during the Makah anti-whaling campaigns in Friday Harbor. His third wife, Allison Lance, is an animal rights activist and a volunteer crew member of Sea Shepherd. Watson has two grandchildren. Watson married his fourth wife Yana Rusinovich on February 14, 2015, in Paris, France. Watson and Rusinovich had a son, Tiger, on September 29, 2016 and a second son, Murtagh, on August 6, 2021. He ran for parliament in Canada's federal elections twice.
Activism
Early years
In October 1969, Watson joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing at Amchitka Island. The group which formed as a result of that protest was the Don't Make a Wave Committee, which evolved into the group known today as Greenpeace. In the early 1970s, Watson was also active with the Vancouver Liberation Front and the Vancouver Yippies. Watson sailed as a crew member aboard the Greenpeace Too! ship in 1971 and skippered the Greenpeace boat Astral in 1972. Paul Watson continued as a crew member, skipper, and officer aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s.
According to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other sources, Watson was a founding member of Greenpeace, but the organization denies this stating he "was an influential early member but not, as he sometimes claims, a founder." Greenpeace claims that Watson joined Greenpeace on its Amchitka expedition, which they claim to be their second expedition, but Paul Watson claims that this was Greenpeace's first meeting.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
The first Sea Shepherd vessel, the Sea Shepherd, was purchased in December 1978 with assistance from the Fund for Animals and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Sea Shepherd soon established itself as one of the more controversial environmental groups, known for provocative direct action tactics. These tactics have included throwing objects onto the decks of whaling ships, the use of "prop foulers" in an attempt to sabotage the ships, boarding whaling vessels, and the scuttling of two ships in an Icelandic harbor. In January 2013, Watson relinquished captaincy of the Steve Irwin. The organization and its activities to halt whaling are the focus of a reality TV series, Whale Wars, airing on Animal Planet.
In 2010, Watson personally received more than $120,000 from Sea Shepherd.
Because of mounting legal complications, Watson has stepped down as head of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 2013, to abide by an injunction barring him from proximity with Japanese whaling ships. After the resolution of legal issues involving the Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research, Watson returned as President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Commander of the Sea Shepherd fleet.
Other environmental activities
Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.
During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking.
Watson worked with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth.
In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest.
In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
Writings on activism
Watson published Earthforce!, a guide to strategy for environmental activists in 1993. In it, he specifically endorsed the tactics of "monkeywrenching" previously described by Dave Foreman and Edward Abbey. According to Foreman in Eco-Defense—The Field Guide to Monkey-Wrenching— these are tactics of sabotage, covert activity, and direct action. Watson says he incorporated his own personal experience in writing the book.
In Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy, Watson expressed disdain for the truthfulness of mainstream media:
The nature of the mass media today is such that the truth is irrelevant. What is true and what is right to the general public is what is defined as true and right by the mass media. Ronald Reagan understood that the facts are not relevant. The media reported what he said as fact. Follow-up investigation was "old news." A headline comment on Monday's newspaper far outweighs the revelation of inaccuracy revealed in a small box inside the paper on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Watson was explicit about what he perceived to be the lack of truthfulness in mass media: "If you do not know an answer, a fact, or a statistic, then simply follow the example of an American President and do as Ronald Reagan did—make it up on the spot and deliver the information confidently and without hesitation." In a subsequent book, Ocean Warrior, Watson expanded on this view, saying: "Survival in a media culture meant developing the skills to understand and manipulate media to achieve strategic objectives."
In 2007 Watson explained his view of needed population control and the future for humans given their role in the Holocene extinction, which he refers to as the "Holocenic hominid collective suicide event":
Today, escalating human populations have vastly exceeded global carrying capacity and now produce massive quantities of solid, liquid, and gaseous waste [...] No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas [...] We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion [...] Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach [...] Who should have children? Those who are responsible and completely dedicated to the responsibility which is actually a very small percentage of humans.
Controversy
Separation from Greenpeace
Paul Watson continued as a crew member, officer, and skipper (in 1972) aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s. He considers himself a founding member of Greenpeace and Greenpeace International, a claim Greenpeace disputes despite being pointed out in the documentary, How to Change the World which shows that Watson was indeed one of the original founding members of Greenpeace. Watson has since accused Greenpeace of rewriting their history.
In 1977, Watson was expelled from the Greenpeace's board of directors by a vote of 11 to 1 (Watson himself cast the single vote against it). The group felt his strong, "front and center" personality and frequently voiced opposition to Greenpeace's interpretation of "nonviolence" were too divisive. Watson subsequently left the group. The group has since labeled his actions at the time as those of a "mutineer" within their ranks. That same year, he founded his own group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
During an interview in 1978 with CBC Radio, Watson spoke out against Greenpeace (as well as other organizations) and their role and motives for the anti-sealing campaigns. Watson accused these organizations of campaigning against the Canadian seal hunt because it is an easy way to raise money and it is a profit maker for the organizations.
Greenpeace has called Watson a violent extremist and will no longer comment on his activities.
Charges and prosecutions
Watson was sentenced to 10 days in prison and fined $8,000 for his actions during a Canadian seal hunt protest in 1980, after being convicted of assaulting a fisheries officer. Watson served his sentence at Her Majesty's Penitentiary, St. John's, NL. He was also found guilty under the Seal Protection Act for painting harp seal pups with red dye to devalue their pelts. Watson was arrested in 1993 in Canada on charges stemming from actions against Cuban and Spanish fishing boats off the coast of Newfoundland. In 1997, Watson was convicted in absentia and sentenced to serve 120 days in jail by a court in Lofoten, Norway on charges of attempting to sink the small scale Norwegian fishing and whaling vessel Nybrænna on December 26, 1992. Dutch authorities refused to hand him over to Norwegian authorities although he did spend 80 days in detention in the Netherlands pending a ruling on extradition before being released.
There have not been any successful attempts at prosecuting Watson for his activities with Sea Shepherd since the trial in Newfoundland. Watson defends his actions as falling within international law, in particular Sea Shepherd's right to enforce maritime regulations against illegal whalers and sealers.
Sea Shepherd activists Rod Coronado and David Howitt went to Iceland in 1986 and scuttled two whaling ships in port at Reykjavík and also damaged a whale meat processing factory. Watson took responsibility for the operation, abiding by published Sea Shepherd principles. He went to Iceland saying, "I am responsible for all activities undertaken in the name of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I give the orders." He was deported without being charged and is considered a persona non grata by Iceland
In April 2010 the Japanese Coast Guard obtained an arrest warrant for Watson "...on suspicion of ordering sabotage activities against Japan's whaling fleet", and Interpol has listed him as wanted at the request of Japan. The red notice has the charges issued by Japan as, "Breaking into the Vessel, Damage to Property, Forcible Obstruction of Business, Injury". In March 2012 Interpol issued a "written statement to all 190 member countries making it clear that it would not publish a Red Notice" for the detention of Watson, but reversed that position in September 2012. In both statements Interpol stated that a "Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant" that it is "a request for any country to identify or locate an individual with a view to their provisional arrest and extradition in accordance with the country's national laws".
In May 2012 Watson was detained by German authorities at the Frankfurt Airport because of a request from the government of Costa Rica. The charge stemmed from an altercation at sea in 2002 in which Sea Shepherd said that the other vessel was illegally shark finning in Guatemalan waters. Crew members of the other ship accused Sea Shepherd of trying to kill them. Watson was charged with violating navigational regulations with the Interpol alert stating the charge as, "peligro de naufragio" (danger of shipwreck). The conflict took place during filming for the documentary Sharkwater and the charges were dropped by prosecutors after video of the incident made by the documentary film makers was shown. On May 21, Watson was released on bail of €250,000 but required to report to police in Frankfurt on a daily basis. In June, Costa Rica formally requested Watson's extradition from Germany. On July 19, 2012, Japan applied for an extradition order and Watson left Germany, resulting in a German court ordering his immediate re-arrest. It is understood the statute of limitations on his Costa Rican charges was set to expire in June 2013.
On August 7, 2012 Interpol renewed the Red Notice for Watson on the charges of "causing a danger of drowning or of an air disaster" laid by Costa Rica. It was reported that Watson would come out of hiding to join Sea Shepherd in the 2012–13 campaign against Japanese whaling. Watson rejoined the crew of the Steve Irwin in the South Pacific in late November 2012. In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Sierra Club immigration stance
In 1999, Watson ran unsuccessfully for election to the national Sierra Club Board of Directors, with the backing of the anti-immigration faction Sierrans for US Population Stabilization (SUSPS). After his election to the board in 2003, Watson supported an unsuccessful slate of candidates supporting strict immigration controls as an element of a population stabilization policy. This effort was denounced by another candidate in the election, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, as a "hostile takeover" attempt by "radical anti-immigrant activists." Watson responded by saying that the only change he was seeking in the organization's immigration stance was to restore the position it had held before its 1996 "neutrality policy." Watson left the Sierra Club board in 2006.
Anti-sealing activities
In April 2008, Watson stated that, while the deaths of three Canadian seal hunters (a fourth one is still missing) in a marine accident involving a Canadian Coast Guard vessel and a fishing boat during the 2008 Canadian Commercial Seal Hunt were a tragedy, he felt that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seals is an even greater tragedy. Canadian Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn accused Watson of trivializing the memory of the lost sealers. Watson replied that Hearn was trying to distract attention from his government's incompetence as the boat the men were on capsized while under tow by a Canadian Coast Guard vessel, while his political ambitions continued to support and subsidize an industry that had no place in the 21st century. In 1978, Watson expressed opposition to seal hunt protest organization, suggesting in an interview with CBC's Barbara Frum that saving seals is a cheap and easy fundraiser and that seals do not deserve special status over other species. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams was quoted as saying, "I think what a lot of people don't realize is that this man is a terrorist."
Australian visa issues
In October 2009, Watson, who carries a US passport, complained to media outlets about having his request for an Australian visa denied. He states that the Australian government was attempting to sabotage the upcoming 2010 Sea Shepherd campaign by denying him entry into the country. Watson and several other shipmates were also unable to join the Steve Irwin on its promotional tour of Australia until they were able to provide documentation from the governments of the United States, Canada and Norway, exonerating them from previously claimed acts of violence, specifically claims by Sea Shepherd of intentionally sinking a ship in Norway. In January 2013, Paul Watson was presented with an Aboriginal passport by the Krautungalung people of the Gunnai Nation.
Alleged shooting
On March 17, 2008, Paul Watson said that he was shot by the Japanese crew or coast guard personnel during the Operation Migaloo anti-whaling campaign in the Southern Ocean. The incident is documented during the season finale of season 1 of the Whale Wars TV reality show, and the first six episodes are covered as a buildup to what is portrayed as the major incident during the campaign. The Japanese respond by throwing stun grenades, one crew member is injured from a grenade detonating close behind him and another injured trying to escape the explosions. Watson is then shown reaching inside his jacket and body armour and remarking "I've been hit." Back inside the bridge of the Steve Irwin, a metal fragment is found inside the vest.
The Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research disputes Sea Shepherd's statements. The Institute and Coast Guard said that they used seven stun grenades designed to temporarily debilitate a target by rendering them blind and deaf for a period of time. The Japanese government also alleged that the whalers launched "noise balls", described as "loud explosive deterrent devices". Neither of the two conflicting accounts have been independently verified. The Australian Foreign Affairs Department had condemned "actions by crew members of any vessel that cause injury". Two media releases were made on the same day from the office. One said that the Australian Embassy in Tokyo had been informed by the Japanese that the whalers had "fired warning shots" while the updated version used the phrase "'warning balls' – also known as 'flashbangs' – had been fired".
Accusations of terrorism
Watson has been called an eco-terrorist by the Japanese government for his direct action tactics against whalers, and it repeated its position after conflicts during the 2009–10 whaling season.
At an animal rights convention in 2002, Paul Watson was also quoted as saying, "There's nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write the history". In 2010, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck also discussed the comment, criticizing Watson's views. Watson responded to Beck's comments on the official Sea Shepherd website by stating that he had said that but that it was taken out of context, quoting Gerald Seymour's "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter".
Comments following 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami
Watson was criticized for his poem published immediately following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami which suggested the disaster was Neptune's anger. Watson responded to critics with a commentary on the Sea Shepherd website expressing "deepest concern and sympathy for the people of Japan who are suffering through one of the worst natural disasters in the history of civilization".
Criticism of New Zealand
In 2013, three Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ships docked in New Zealand, and were searched by New Zealand authorities to see if Watson was aboard. He was not, having transferred to another ship in international waters, aware New Zealand was required to notify Interpol if he entered the country. Watson criticised the search, accusing New Zealand of siding with Japan on the issue of whaling in the Southern Ocean.
Reactions to activism and leadership
Watson has stated that he does not consider himself a 'protester', but an 'interventionist', as he considers protesting as too submissive. He often takes the attitude that he represents (or stands in for) law enforcement which is either unwilling or unable to enforce existing laws.
His leadership style has variously been called arrogant, as well as pushing himself too much "front and center", which was cited as one of the reasons for expulsion from Greenpeace. The atmosphere aboard his vessels has been compared to an "anarchy run by God".
The former member of Sea Shepherd and captain of the Pete Bethune described Watson as "morally bankrupt" who would order the intentional sinking of his own ships like the Ady Gil as a means to "garner sympathy with the public and to create better TV". Watson denied this, saying "No one ordered him to scuttle it. Pete Bethune was captain of the Ady Gil; all decisions on the Ady Gil were his."
Awards
Paul Watson received the Jules Verne Award on October 10, 2012. He was the second person after Captain Jacques Cousteau to be honored with a Jules Verne Award dedicated to environmentalists and adventurers. On June 28, 2010 Paul received the Asociación de Amigos del Museo de Anclas Philippe Cousteau: Defense of Marine Life Award, in recognition of his merits achieved by the work done in defense of marine life. In 2002, Paul was inducted into the US Animal Rights Hall of Fame for his outstanding contributions to animal liberation. Paul received the George H. W. Bush Daily Points of Light Award in 1999 and in 2000, he was named one of Time Magazine's Top 20 Environmental Heroes of the 20th Century. On May 23, 2019, Paul Watson received an official commendation by Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont stating that the "State of Connecticut conveyed both honor and recognition to Captain Paul Watson." In 2007 Watson received the Amazon Peace Prize presented by the Vice President of Ecuador Lenin Moreno.
Media portrayals
A biographical documentary on Paul Watson's early life and background entitled Pirate for the Sea was produced by Ron Colby in 2008.
The 2008 documentary At the Edge of the World chronicled the efforts of Watson and 45 volunteers to hinder the Japanese whaling fleet in the waters around Antarctica. In 2010, long time friend and filmmaker Peter Brown released the documentary Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist, a satirical look back at the last 30 years of actions. The documentary Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson from 2011 features interviews and footage with early Greenpeace members Rex Weyler and Patrick Moore.
Watson, Whale Wars, and the Japanese whaling industry were satirized in the South Park episode "Whale Whores". In its fictional Larry King show, Watson himself was called "An unorganized incompetent media whore who thought lying to everyone was OK as long as it served his cause" and "A smug, narcoleptic liar with no credibility".
Watson responded to the South Park episode by stating; "My understanding is that the Japanese Prime Minister was not amused and the whalers and dolphin killers are enraged at the way they were portrayed," Watson said. "That's music to my ears. If the humorless whale killers and the bank rollers of the dolphin killers did not like the show, then that's all I need to applaud it."
Watson was portrayed (along with whale biologist, Nan Hauser), during a 60 Minutes episode that aired in 2013, as contributing to the return of the Humpback whale populations in the South Pacific.
In 2019 a biopic film called, Watson directed by one of the producers of An Inconvenient Truth, Lesley Chilcott, was released and also aired on Animal Planet on December 22, 2019.
List of works
Sea Shepherd: My Fight for Whales and Seals (1981) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy (1993) ()
Ocean Warrior: My Battle to End the Illegal Slaughter on the High Seas (1994) ()
Seal Wars: Twenty-Five Years on the Front Lines With the Harp Seals (2002) ()
Contributor to Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberations of Animals (2004) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy 2nd Edition (2012)
The War That Saved the Whales (2019)
Songs from the Southern Ocean (2020)
The Haunted Mariner (2020)
Dealing with Climate Change and Stress (2020)
Orcapedia (2020)
Desperate Mythologies: Theology, Ecology and the General Insanity of Humanity (2020)
Death of a Whale (2021)
URGENT! Save Our Ocean to Survive Climate Change (2021)
See also
List of conservationists
List of vegans
References
Further reading
Earth Warrior: Overboard With Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, by David B. Morris (1995) ()
Eco-Warriors, by Rik Scarce (2006) ()
Capitaine Paul Watson, entretien avec un pirate, by Lamya Essemlali, Paul Watson (2012)
External links
Paul Watson's page on the Sea Shepherd official website
1950 births
Canadian animal rights activists
Canadian environmentalists
Fugitives wanted by Germany
Green Party of British Columbia politicians
Green thinkers
Living people
People associated with Greenpeace
People from St. Andrews, New Brunswick
Activists from Toronto
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Sierra Club directors
Sustainability advocates
Veganism activists
Yippies | false | [
"Liga Veneta Serenissima (Most Serene Venetian League, LVS) was a Venetist political party active in Veneto.\n\nLFS was founded in 1984 by splinters from Liga Veneta (LV) led by Achille Tramarin. Tramarin was first elected national secretary of Liga Veneta in 1980 and in the 1983 regional election he was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies. Soon after the election Franco Rocchetta, who was not elected, forced Tramarin to resign as party secretary. When Tramarin refused to do so, Rocchetta organized a revolt and replaced him with Marilena Marin.\n\nAlthough the expulsion of Tramarin and Senator Graziano Girardi from the party meant its disappearance from the Parliament of Italy, Liga Veneta did well in the 1985 regional election (3.7% of the vote and two regional councillors elected), while LVS was relegated to a mere 0.2% of the vote. In 1987 Tramarin and what remained of LVS joined Ettore Beggiato's Union of the Venetian People (UPV), but he did not return into Liga Veneta as UPV did in 1995. In 1998 he returned to active politics and was one of the founding members of Liga Veneta Repubblica (LVR).\n\nReferences\n\nSources\nFrancesco Jori, Dalla Łiga alla Lega. Storia, movimenti, protagonisti, Marsilio, Venice 2009\nEzio Toffano, Short History of the Venetian Autonomism, Raixe Venete\n\nPolitical parties in Veneto\nVenetian nationalism\nPolitical parties established in 1984",
"\"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)"
] |
[
"Paul Watson",
"Other environmental activities",
"What is Paul Watson's biggest environmental achievement?",
"Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981.",
"What else did he achieve environmentally?",
"Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.",
"Did he achieve anything else environmentally?",
"According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking.",
"Can you tell me about any further achievements environmentally?",
"Watson ran as an independent candidate in the 1980 Canadian Federal election in Vancouver Centre, proclaiming he wasn't a politician but an environmentalist.",
"Did he win that election?",
"He received less than 100 votes.",
"What did he do after the election?",
"Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s."
] | C_92b9e56b3db24c86932abccd2b624bea_0 | Did he ever hold political office? | 7 | Did Paul Watson ever hold political office? | Paul Watson | Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society. During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking. Watson ran as an independent candidate in the 1980 Canadian Federal election in Vancouver Centre, proclaiming he wasn't a politician but an environmentalist. He received less than 100 votes. Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth. In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest. Watson feels that "no human community should be larger than 20,000 people," human populations need to be reduced radically to "fewer than one billion," and only those who are "completely dedicated to the responsibility" of caring for the biosphere should have children, which is a "very small percentage of humans." He likens humankind to a virus or a cancer. The biosphere needs to get cured from this cancer with a "radical and invasive approach." In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. CANNOTANSWER | In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. | Paul Franklin Watson (born December 2, 1950) is a Canadian-American conservation and environmental activist, who founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an anti-poaching and direct action group focused on marine conservation activism. The tactics used by Sea Shepherd have attracted opposition, with the group accused of eco-terrorism by both the Japanese government and Greenpeace. Watson is a citizen of Canada and the United States.
The Toronto native joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing in 1969. He was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972. Because Watson argued for a strategy of direct action that conflicted with the Greenpeace interpretation of nonviolence, he was ousted from the board in 1977. That same year, he formed the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The group was the subject of a reality show named Whale Wars.
He promotes veganism, population reduction and a biocentric, rather than anthropocentric, worldview.
Watson's activities have led to legal action from authorities in countries including the United States, Canada, Norway, Costa Rica and Japan. He was detained in Germany on an extradition request by Costa Rica in May 2012. An Interpol red notice was issued on September 14, 2012, at the request of Japan and Costa Rica.
After staying at sea for 15 months following his escape from Germany, where he was released on bail, he returned to Los Angeles in late October 2013, going through customs and "was not arrested". He appeared before a US appeals court on November 6, 2013, stating that neither he nor the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society violated a 2012 order requiring them to leave whaling vessels alone. Although the United States is a signatory member of Interpol, Watson has not been detained for extradition to Japan or Costa Rica. He is living in Vermont, writing books. He was residing in Paris as of July 1, 2014 but has since returned to the USA.
In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Early and personal life
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Paul Watson was born in Toronto to Anthony Joseph Watson and Annamarie Larsen, and grew up in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, along with two sisters and three brothers. As a child he was a member of the Kindness Club, which he has credited with teaching him to "respect and defend animals". After working as a tour guide at Expo 67, the World's Fair that took place in Montreal in 1967, Watson moved to Vancouver.
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, in 1968 and the early 1970s, he joined the Canadian Coast Guard, where he served aboard weatherships, search and rescue hovercraft, and buoy tenders. He signed up as a merchant seaman in 1969 with the Norwegian Consulate in Vancouver and shipped out on the 30,000 ton bulk carrier Bris as a deckhand. The Bris was registered in Oslo, Norway and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade. In 1972 he shipped out of San Francisco on the 35,000 ton bulk Swedish carrier Jarl R. Trapp and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade
Watson has one daughter Lilliolani (born 1980) with his first wife, Starlet Lum, who was a founding director of Greenpeace Quebec, Earthforce!, Project Wolf, and Sea Shepherd. His second wife, Lisa Distefano, a former Playboy model, was Sea Shepherd's Director of Operations during the Makah anti-whaling campaigns in Friday Harbor. His third wife, Allison Lance, is an animal rights activist and a volunteer crew member of Sea Shepherd. Watson has two grandchildren. Watson married his fourth wife Yana Rusinovich on February 14, 2015, in Paris, France. Watson and Rusinovich had a son, Tiger, on September 29, 2016 and a second son, Murtagh, on August 6, 2021. He ran for parliament in Canada's federal elections twice.
Activism
Early years
In October 1969, Watson joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing at Amchitka Island. The group which formed as a result of that protest was the Don't Make a Wave Committee, which evolved into the group known today as Greenpeace. In the early 1970s, Watson was also active with the Vancouver Liberation Front and the Vancouver Yippies. Watson sailed as a crew member aboard the Greenpeace Too! ship in 1971 and skippered the Greenpeace boat Astral in 1972. Paul Watson continued as a crew member, skipper, and officer aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s.
According to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other sources, Watson was a founding member of Greenpeace, but the organization denies this stating he "was an influential early member but not, as he sometimes claims, a founder." Greenpeace claims that Watson joined Greenpeace on its Amchitka expedition, which they claim to be their second expedition, but Paul Watson claims that this was Greenpeace's first meeting.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
The first Sea Shepherd vessel, the Sea Shepherd, was purchased in December 1978 with assistance from the Fund for Animals and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Sea Shepherd soon established itself as one of the more controversial environmental groups, known for provocative direct action tactics. These tactics have included throwing objects onto the decks of whaling ships, the use of "prop foulers" in an attempt to sabotage the ships, boarding whaling vessels, and the scuttling of two ships in an Icelandic harbor. In January 2013, Watson relinquished captaincy of the Steve Irwin. The organization and its activities to halt whaling are the focus of a reality TV series, Whale Wars, airing on Animal Planet.
In 2010, Watson personally received more than $120,000 from Sea Shepherd.
Because of mounting legal complications, Watson has stepped down as head of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 2013, to abide by an injunction barring him from proximity with Japanese whaling ships. After the resolution of legal issues involving the Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research, Watson returned as President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Commander of the Sea Shepherd fleet.
Other environmental activities
Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.
During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking.
Watson worked with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth.
In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest.
In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
Writings on activism
Watson published Earthforce!, a guide to strategy for environmental activists in 1993. In it, he specifically endorsed the tactics of "monkeywrenching" previously described by Dave Foreman and Edward Abbey. According to Foreman in Eco-Defense—The Field Guide to Monkey-Wrenching— these are tactics of sabotage, covert activity, and direct action. Watson says he incorporated his own personal experience in writing the book.
In Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy, Watson expressed disdain for the truthfulness of mainstream media:
The nature of the mass media today is such that the truth is irrelevant. What is true and what is right to the general public is what is defined as true and right by the mass media. Ronald Reagan understood that the facts are not relevant. The media reported what he said as fact. Follow-up investigation was "old news." A headline comment on Monday's newspaper far outweighs the revelation of inaccuracy revealed in a small box inside the paper on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Watson was explicit about what he perceived to be the lack of truthfulness in mass media: "If you do not know an answer, a fact, or a statistic, then simply follow the example of an American President and do as Ronald Reagan did—make it up on the spot and deliver the information confidently and without hesitation." In a subsequent book, Ocean Warrior, Watson expanded on this view, saying: "Survival in a media culture meant developing the skills to understand and manipulate media to achieve strategic objectives."
In 2007 Watson explained his view of needed population control and the future for humans given their role in the Holocene extinction, which he refers to as the "Holocenic hominid collective suicide event":
Today, escalating human populations have vastly exceeded global carrying capacity and now produce massive quantities of solid, liquid, and gaseous waste [...] No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas [...] We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion [...] Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach [...] Who should have children? Those who are responsible and completely dedicated to the responsibility which is actually a very small percentage of humans.
Controversy
Separation from Greenpeace
Paul Watson continued as a crew member, officer, and skipper (in 1972) aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s. He considers himself a founding member of Greenpeace and Greenpeace International, a claim Greenpeace disputes despite being pointed out in the documentary, How to Change the World which shows that Watson was indeed one of the original founding members of Greenpeace. Watson has since accused Greenpeace of rewriting their history.
In 1977, Watson was expelled from the Greenpeace's board of directors by a vote of 11 to 1 (Watson himself cast the single vote against it). The group felt his strong, "front and center" personality and frequently voiced opposition to Greenpeace's interpretation of "nonviolence" were too divisive. Watson subsequently left the group. The group has since labeled his actions at the time as those of a "mutineer" within their ranks. That same year, he founded his own group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
During an interview in 1978 with CBC Radio, Watson spoke out against Greenpeace (as well as other organizations) and their role and motives for the anti-sealing campaigns. Watson accused these organizations of campaigning against the Canadian seal hunt because it is an easy way to raise money and it is a profit maker for the organizations.
Greenpeace has called Watson a violent extremist and will no longer comment on his activities.
Charges and prosecutions
Watson was sentenced to 10 days in prison and fined $8,000 for his actions during a Canadian seal hunt protest in 1980, after being convicted of assaulting a fisheries officer. Watson served his sentence at Her Majesty's Penitentiary, St. John's, NL. He was also found guilty under the Seal Protection Act for painting harp seal pups with red dye to devalue their pelts. Watson was arrested in 1993 in Canada on charges stemming from actions against Cuban and Spanish fishing boats off the coast of Newfoundland. In 1997, Watson was convicted in absentia and sentenced to serve 120 days in jail by a court in Lofoten, Norway on charges of attempting to sink the small scale Norwegian fishing and whaling vessel Nybrænna on December 26, 1992. Dutch authorities refused to hand him over to Norwegian authorities although he did spend 80 days in detention in the Netherlands pending a ruling on extradition before being released.
There have not been any successful attempts at prosecuting Watson for his activities with Sea Shepherd since the trial in Newfoundland. Watson defends his actions as falling within international law, in particular Sea Shepherd's right to enforce maritime regulations against illegal whalers and sealers.
Sea Shepherd activists Rod Coronado and David Howitt went to Iceland in 1986 and scuttled two whaling ships in port at Reykjavík and also damaged a whale meat processing factory. Watson took responsibility for the operation, abiding by published Sea Shepherd principles. He went to Iceland saying, "I am responsible for all activities undertaken in the name of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I give the orders." He was deported without being charged and is considered a persona non grata by Iceland
In April 2010 the Japanese Coast Guard obtained an arrest warrant for Watson "...on suspicion of ordering sabotage activities against Japan's whaling fleet", and Interpol has listed him as wanted at the request of Japan. The red notice has the charges issued by Japan as, "Breaking into the Vessel, Damage to Property, Forcible Obstruction of Business, Injury". In March 2012 Interpol issued a "written statement to all 190 member countries making it clear that it would not publish a Red Notice" for the detention of Watson, but reversed that position in September 2012. In both statements Interpol stated that a "Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant" that it is "a request for any country to identify or locate an individual with a view to their provisional arrest and extradition in accordance with the country's national laws".
In May 2012 Watson was detained by German authorities at the Frankfurt Airport because of a request from the government of Costa Rica. The charge stemmed from an altercation at sea in 2002 in which Sea Shepherd said that the other vessel was illegally shark finning in Guatemalan waters. Crew members of the other ship accused Sea Shepherd of trying to kill them. Watson was charged with violating navigational regulations with the Interpol alert stating the charge as, "peligro de naufragio" (danger of shipwreck). The conflict took place during filming for the documentary Sharkwater and the charges were dropped by prosecutors after video of the incident made by the documentary film makers was shown. On May 21, Watson was released on bail of €250,000 but required to report to police in Frankfurt on a daily basis. In June, Costa Rica formally requested Watson's extradition from Germany. On July 19, 2012, Japan applied for an extradition order and Watson left Germany, resulting in a German court ordering his immediate re-arrest. It is understood the statute of limitations on his Costa Rican charges was set to expire in June 2013.
On August 7, 2012 Interpol renewed the Red Notice for Watson on the charges of "causing a danger of drowning or of an air disaster" laid by Costa Rica. It was reported that Watson would come out of hiding to join Sea Shepherd in the 2012–13 campaign against Japanese whaling. Watson rejoined the crew of the Steve Irwin in the South Pacific in late November 2012. In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Sierra Club immigration stance
In 1999, Watson ran unsuccessfully for election to the national Sierra Club Board of Directors, with the backing of the anti-immigration faction Sierrans for US Population Stabilization (SUSPS). After his election to the board in 2003, Watson supported an unsuccessful slate of candidates supporting strict immigration controls as an element of a population stabilization policy. This effort was denounced by another candidate in the election, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, as a "hostile takeover" attempt by "radical anti-immigrant activists." Watson responded by saying that the only change he was seeking in the organization's immigration stance was to restore the position it had held before its 1996 "neutrality policy." Watson left the Sierra Club board in 2006.
Anti-sealing activities
In April 2008, Watson stated that, while the deaths of three Canadian seal hunters (a fourth one is still missing) in a marine accident involving a Canadian Coast Guard vessel and a fishing boat during the 2008 Canadian Commercial Seal Hunt were a tragedy, he felt that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seals is an even greater tragedy. Canadian Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn accused Watson of trivializing the memory of the lost sealers. Watson replied that Hearn was trying to distract attention from his government's incompetence as the boat the men were on capsized while under tow by a Canadian Coast Guard vessel, while his political ambitions continued to support and subsidize an industry that had no place in the 21st century. In 1978, Watson expressed opposition to seal hunt protest organization, suggesting in an interview with CBC's Barbara Frum that saving seals is a cheap and easy fundraiser and that seals do not deserve special status over other species. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams was quoted as saying, "I think what a lot of people don't realize is that this man is a terrorist."
Australian visa issues
In October 2009, Watson, who carries a US passport, complained to media outlets about having his request for an Australian visa denied. He states that the Australian government was attempting to sabotage the upcoming 2010 Sea Shepherd campaign by denying him entry into the country. Watson and several other shipmates were also unable to join the Steve Irwin on its promotional tour of Australia until they were able to provide documentation from the governments of the United States, Canada and Norway, exonerating them from previously claimed acts of violence, specifically claims by Sea Shepherd of intentionally sinking a ship in Norway. In January 2013, Paul Watson was presented with an Aboriginal passport by the Krautungalung people of the Gunnai Nation.
Alleged shooting
On March 17, 2008, Paul Watson said that he was shot by the Japanese crew or coast guard personnel during the Operation Migaloo anti-whaling campaign in the Southern Ocean. The incident is documented during the season finale of season 1 of the Whale Wars TV reality show, and the first six episodes are covered as a buildup to what is portrayed as the major incident during the campaign. The Japanese respond by throwing stun grenades, one crew member is injured from a grenade detonating close behind him and another injured trying to escape the explosions. Watson is then shown reaching inside his jacket and body armour and remarking "I've been hit." Back inside the bridge of the Steve Irwin, a metal fragment is found inside the vest.
The Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research disputes Sea Shepherd's statements. The Institute and Coast Guard said that they used seven stun grenades designed to temporarily debilitate a target by rendering them blind and deaf for a period of time. The Japanese government also alleged that the whalers launched "noise balls", described as "loud explosive deterrent devices". Neither of the two conflicting accounts have been independently verified. The Australian Foreign Affairs Department had condemned "actions by crew members of any vessel that cause injury". Two media releases were made on the same day from the office. One said that the Australian Embassy in Tokyo had been informed by the Japanese that the whalers had "fired warning shots" while the updated version used the phrase "'warning balls' – also known as 'flashbangs' – had been fired".
Accusations of terrorism
Watson has been called an eco-terrorist by the Japanese government for his direct action tactics against whalers, and it repeated its position after conflicts during the 2009–10 whaling season.
At an animal rights convention in 2002, Paul Watson was also quoted as saying, "There's nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write the history". In 2010, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck also discussed the comment, criticizing Watson's views. Watson responded to Beck's comments on the official Sea Shepherd website by stating that he had said that but that it was taken out of context, quoting Gerald Seymour's "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter".
Comments following 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami
Watson was criticized for his poem published immediately following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami which suggested the disaster was Neptune's anger. Watson responded to critics with a commentary on the Sea Shepherd website expressing "deepest concern and sympathy for the people of Japan who are suffering through one of the worst natural disasters in the history of civilization".
Criticism of New Zealand
In 2013, three Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ships docked in New Zealand, and were searched by New Zealand authorities to see if Watson was aboard. He was not, having transferred to another ship in international waters, aware New Zealand was required to notify Interpol if he entered the country. Watson criticised the search, accusing New Zealand of siding with Japan on the issue of whaling in the Southern Ocean.
Reactions to activism and leadership
Watson has stated that he does not consider himself a 'protester', but an 'interventionist', as he considers protesting as too submissive. He often takes the attitude that he represents (or stands in for) law enforcement which is either unwilling or unable to enforce existing laws.
His leadership style has variously been called arrogant, as well as pushing himself too much "front and center", which was cited as one of the reasons for expulsion from Greenpeace. The atmosphere aboard his vessels has been compared to an "anarchy run by God".
The former member of Sea Shepherd and captain of the Pete Bethune described Watson as "morally bankrupt" who would order the intentional sinking of his own ships like the Ady Gil as a means to "garner sympathy with the public and to create better TV". Watson denied this, saying "No one ordered him to scuttle it. Pete Bethune was captain of the Ady Gil; all decisions on the Ady Gil were his."
Awards
Paul Watson received the Jules Verne Award on October 10, 2012. He was the second person after Captain Jacques Cousteau to be honored with a Jules Verne Award dedicated to environmentalists and adventurers. On June 28, 2010 Paul received the Asociación de Amigos del Museo de Anclas Philippe Cousteau: Defense of Marine Life Award, in recognition of his merits achieved by the work done in defense of marine life. In 2002, Paul was inducted into the US Animal Rights Hall of Fame for his outstanding contributions to animal liberation. Paul received the George H. W. Bush Daily Points of Light Award in 1999 and in 2000, he was named one of Time Magazine's Top 20 Environmental Heroes of the 20th Century. On May 23, 2019, Paul Watson received an official commendation by Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont stating that the "State of Connecticut conveyed both honor and recognition to Captain Paul Watson." In 2007 Watson received the Amazon Peace Prize presented by the Vice President of Ecuador Lenin Moreno.
Media portrayals
A biographical documentary on Paul Watson's early life and background entitled Pirate for the Sea was produced by Ron Colby in 2008.
The 2008 documentary At the Edge of the World chronicled the efforts of Watson and 45 volunteers to hinder the Japanese whaling fleet in the waters around Antarctica. In 2010, long time friend and filmmaker Peter Brown released the documentary Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist, a satirical look back at the last 30 years of actions. The documentary Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson from 2011 features interviews and footage with early Greenpeace members Rex Weyler and Patrick Moore.
Watson, Whale Wars, and the Japanese whaling industry were satirized in the South Park episode "Whale Whores". In its fictional Larry King show, Watson himself was called "An unorganized incompetent media whore who thought lying to everyone was OK as long as it served his cause" and "A smug, narcoleptic liar with no credibility".
Watson responded to the South Park episode by stating; "My understanding is that the Japanese Prime Minister was not amused and the whalers and dolphin killers are enraged at the way they were portrayed," Watson said. "That's music to my ears. If the humorless whale killers and the bank rollers of the dolphin killers did not like the show, then that's all I need to applaud it."
Watson was portrayed (along with whale biologist, Nan Hauser), during a 60 Minutes episode that aired in 2013, as contributing to the return of the Humpback whale populations in the South Pacific.
In 2019 a biopic film called, Watson directed by one of the producers of An Inconvenient Truth, Lesley Chilcott, was released and also aired on Animal Planet on December 22, 2019.
List of works
Sea Shepherd: My Fight for Whales and Seals (1981) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy (1993) ()
Ocean Warrior: My Battle to End the Illegal Slaughter on the High Seas (1994) ()
Seal Wars: Twenty-Five Years on the Front Lines With the Harp Seals (2002) ()
Contributor to Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberations of Animals (2004) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy 2nd Edition (2012)
The War That Saved the Whales (2019)
Songs from the Southern Ocean (2020)
The Haunted Mariner (2020)
Dealing with Climate Change and Stress (2020)
Orcapedia (2020)
Desperate Mythologies: Theology, Ecology and the General Insanity of Humanity (2020)
Death of a Whale (2021)
URGENT! Save Our Ocean to Survive Climate Change (2021)
See also
List of conservationists
List of vegans
References
Further reading
Earth Warrior: Overboard With Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, by David B. Morris (1995) ()
Eco-Warriors, by Rik Scarce (2006) ()
Capitaine Paul Watson, entretien avec un pirate, by Lamya Essemlali, Paul Watson (2012)
External links
Paul Watson's page on the Sea Shepherd official website
1950 births
Canadian animal rights activists
Canadian environmentalists
Fugitives wanted by Germany
Green Party of British Columbia politicians
Green thinkers
Living people
People associated with Greenpeace
People from St. Andrews, New Brunswick
Activists from Toronto
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Sierra Club directors
Sustainability advocates
Veganism activists
Yippies | true | [
"Mohammad Naeem Wardak (ډاکټر محمد نعیم وردک) (born 1985) is one of the current Taliban spokesperson in Qatar office since 2020. He also previously served the same office from 2013 to 2015.\n\nEarly life and education\nWardak belongs to Chak District of Wardak Province. He received his early education at a local madrassa in the village of Chak, then enrolled at Nangarhar University in Jalalabad and obtained a BA degree. He then enrolled at the International Islamic University, Islamabad for his master's degree and later did his Ph.D. in Arabic. He also studied for a short time at Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, from where he studied Hadith and Fiqh. Wardak is the first Taliban leader to hold a PhD.\n\nSpokesperson\nWhen the Taliban's first political office opened in Qatar in 2013, he was appointed spokesperson. Wardak and Suhail Shaheen both acted as spokespersons at the same time and served until 2015. In 2018 he was made part of the Qatar office again and has been based there ever since. In September 2020, he was re-appointed spokesman for the Taliban's political office in Doha.\n\nSee also\n Suhail Shaheen\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\nLiving people\n1985 births\nTaliban leaders\nTaliban spokespersons\nInternational Islamic University, Islamabad alumni\nPeople from Maidan Wardak Province\nNangarhar University alumni\nDarul Uloom Haqqania alumni",
"Smithson E. Wright (1807–1891) was the 16th mayor of Columbus, Ohio. He was the 15th person to hold the office, and did so for one two-year term. He was succeeded by Alexander Patton in 1833.\n\nLife \nSmithson E. Wright was born to Joseph and Eleanor (née Evans) Wright in Belmont County, Ohio, in 1807.\n\nOn August 27, 1832, he married Matilda Martin.\n\nWright died on March 2, 1891 in Cincinnati, Ohio.\n\nReferences\n\nBibliography\n\nExternal links\nSmithson E. Wright at Political Graveyard\n\nMayors of Columbus, Ohio\n1807 births\n1881 deaths\n19th-century American politicians"
] |
[
"Paul Watson",
"Other environmental activities",
"What is Paul Watson's biggest environmental achievement?",
"Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981.",
"What else did he achieve environmentally?",
"Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.",
"Did he achieve anything else environmentally?",
"According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking.",
"Can you tell me about any further achievements environmentally?",
"Watson ran as an independent candidate in the 1980 Canadian Federal election in Vancouver Centre, proclaiming he wasn't a politician but an environmentalist.",
"Did he win that election?",
"He received less than 100 votes.",
"What did he do after the election?",
"Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s.",
"Did he ever hold political office?",
"In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term."
] | C_92b9e56b3db24c86932abccd2b624bea_0 | What did he do there? | 8 | What did Paul Watson do on the board of directors of the sierra club? | Paul Watson | Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society. During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking. Watson ran as an independent candidate in the 1980 Canadian Federal election in Vancouver Centre, proclaiming he wasn't a politician but an environmentalist. He received less than 100 votes. Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth. In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest. Watson feels that "no human community should be larger than 20,000 people," human populations need to be reduced radically to "fewer than one billion," and only those who are "completely dedicated to the responsibility" of caring for the biosphere should have children, which is a "very small percentage of humans." He likens humankind to a virus or a cancer. The biosphere needs to get cured from this cancer with a "radical and invasive approach." In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. CANNOTANSWER | He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest. | Paul Franklin Watson (born December 2, 1950) is a Canadian-American conservation and environmental activist, who founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an anti-poaching and direct action group focused on marine conservation activism. The tactics used by Sea Shepherd have attracted opposition, with the group accused of eco-terrorism by both the Japanese government and Greenpeace. Watson is a citizen of Canada and the United States.
The Toronto native joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing in 1969. He was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972. Because Watson argued for a strategy of direct action that conflicted with the Greenpeace interpretation of nonviolence, he was ousted from the board in 1977. That same year, he formed the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The group was the subject of a reality show named Whale Wars.
He promotes veganism, population reduction and a biocentric, rather than anthropocentric, worldview.
Watson's activities have led to legal action from authorities in countries including the United States, Canada, Norway, Costa Rica and Japan. He was detained in Germany on an extradition request by Costa Rica in May 2012. An Interpol red notice was issued on September 14, 2012, at the request of Japan and Costa Rica.
After staying at sea for 15 months following his escape from Germany, where he was released on bail, he returned to Los Angeles in late October 2013, going through customs and "was not arrested". He appeared before a US appeals court on November 6, 2013, stating that neither he nor the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society violated a 2012 order requiring them to leave whaling vessels alone. Although the United States is a signatory member of Interpol, Watson has not been detained for extradition to Japan or Costa Rica. He is living in Vermont, writing books. He was residing in Paris as of July 1, 2014 but has since returned to the USA.
In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Early and personal life
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Paul Watson was born in Toronto to Anthony Joseph Watson and Annamarie Larsen, and grew up in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, along with two sisters and three brothers. As a child he was a member of the Kindness Club, which he has credited with teaching him to "respect and defend animals". After working as a tour guide at Expo 67, the World's Fair that took place in Montreal in 1967, Watson moved to Vancouver.
According to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, in 1968 and the early 1970s, he joined the Canadian Coast Guard, where he served aboard weatherships, search and rescue hovercraft, and buoy tenders. He signed up as a merchant seaman in 1969 with the Norwegian Consulate in Vancouver and shipped out on the 30,000 ton bulk carrier Bris as a deckhand. The Bris was registered in Oslo, Norway and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade. In 1972 he shipped out of San Francisco on the 35,000 ton bulk Swedish carrier Jarl R. Trapp and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade
Watson has one daughter Lilliolani (born 1980) with his first wife, Starlet Lum, who was a founding director of Greenpeace Quebec, Earthforce!, Project Wolf, and Sea Shepherd. His second wife, Lisa Distefano, a former Playboy model, was Sea Shepherd's Director of Operations during the Makah anti-whaling campaigns in Friday Harbor. His third wife, Allison Lance, is an animal rights activist and a volunteer crew member of Sea Shepherd. Watson has two grandchildren. Watson married his fourth wife Yana Rusinovich on February 14, 2015, in Paris, France. Watson and Rusinovich had a son, Tiger, on September 29, 2016 and a second son, Murtagh, on August 6, 2021. He ran for parliament in Canada's federal elections twice.
Activism
Early years
In October 1969, Watson joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing at Amchitka Island. The group which formed as a result of that protest was the Don't Make a Wave Committee, which evolved into the group known today as Greenpeace. In the early 1970s, Watson was also active with the Vancouver Liberation Front and the Vancouver Yippies. Watson sailed as a crew member aboard the Greenpeace Too! ship in 1971 and skippered the Greenpeace boat Astral in 1972. Paul Watson continued as a crew member, skipper, and officer aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s.
According to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other sources, Watson was a founding member of Greenpeace, but the organization denies this stating he "was an influential early member but not, as he sometimes claims, a founder." Greenpeace claims that Watson joined Greenpeace on its Amchitka expedition, which they claim to be their second expedition, but Paul Watson claims that this was Greenpeace's first meeting.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
The first Sea Shepherd vessel, the Sea Shepherd, was purchased in December 1978 with assistance from the Fund for Animals and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Sea Shepherd soon established itself as one of the more controversial environmental groups, known for provocative direct action tactics. These tactics have included throwing objects onto the decks of whaling ships, the use of "prop foulers" in an attempt to sabotage the ships, boarding whaling vessels, and the scuttling of two ships in an Icelandic harbor. In January 2013, Watson relinquished captaincy of the Steve Irwin. The organization and its activities to halt whaling are the focus of a reality TV series, Whale Wars, airing on Animal Planet.
In 2010, Watson personally received more than $120,000 from Sea Shepherd.
Because of mounting legal complications, Watson has stepped down as head of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 2013, to abide by an injunction barring him from proximity with Japanese whaling ships. After the resolution of legal issues involving the Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research, Watson returned as President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Commander of the Sea Shepherd fleet.
Other environmental activities
Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.
During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! According to The New Yorker, Watson revived the 19th-century practice of tree spiking.
Watson worked with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth.
In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest.
In January 2008, Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
Writings on activism
Watson published Earthforce!, a guide to strategy for environmental activists in 1993. In it, he specifically endorsed the tactics of "monkeywrenching" previously described by Dave Foreman and Edward Abbey. According to Foreman in Eco-Defense—The Field Guide to Monkey-Wrenching— these are tactics of sabotage, covert activity, and direct action. Watson says he incorporated his own personal experience in writing the book.
In Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy, Watson expressed disdain for the truthfulness of mainstream media:
The nature of the mass media today is such that the truth is irrelevant. What is true and what is right to the general public is what is defined as true and right by the mass media. Ronald Reagan understood that the facts are not relevant. The media reported what he said as fact. Follow-up investigation was "old news." A headline comment on Monday's newspaper far outweighs the revelation of inaccuracy revealed in a small box inside the paper on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Watson was explicit about what he perceived to be the lack of truthfulness in mass media: "If you do not know an answer, a fact, or a statistic, then simply follow the example of an American President and do as Ronald Reagan did—make it up on the spot and deliver the information confidently and without hesitation." In a subsequent book, Ocean Warrior, Watson expanded on this view, saying: "Survival in a media culture meant developing the skills to understand and manipulate media to achieve strategic objectives."
In 2007 Watson explained his view of needed population control and the future for humans given their role in the Holocene extinction, which he refers to as the "Holocenic hominid collective suicide event":
Today, escalating human populations have vastly exceeded global carrying capacity and now produce massive quantities of solid, liquid, and gaseous waste [...] No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas [...] We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion [...] Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach [...] Who should have children? Those who are responsible and completely dedicated to the responsibility which is actually a very small percentage of humans.
Controversy
Separation from Greenpeace
Paul Watson continued as a crew member, officer, and skipper (in 1972) aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s. He considers himself a founding member of Greenpeace and Greenpeace International, a claim Greenpeace disputes despite being pointed out in the documentary, How to Change the World which shows that Watson was indeed one of the original founding members of Greenpeace. Watson has since accused Greenpeace of rewriting their history.
In 1977, Watson was expelled from the Greenpeace's board of directors by a vote of 11 to 1 (Watson himself cast the single vote against it). The group felt his strong, "front and center" personality and frequently voiced opposition to Greenpeace's interpretation of "nonviolence" were too divisive. Watson subsequently left the group. The group has since labeled his actions at the time as those of a "mutineer" within their ranks. That same year, he founded his own group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
During an interview in 1978 with CBC Radio, Watson spoke out against Greenpeace (as well as other organizations) and their role and motives for the anti-sealing campaigns. Watson accused these organizations of campaigning against the Canadian seal hunt because it is an easy way to raise money and it is a profit maker for the organizations.
Greenpeace has called Watson a violent extremist and will no longer comment on his activities.
Charges and prosecutions
Watson was sentenced to 10 days in prison and fined $8,000 for his actions during a Canadian seal hunt protest in 1980, after being convicted of assaulting a fisheries officer. Watson served his sentence at Her Majesty's Penitentiary, St. John's, NL. He was also found guilty under the Seal Protection Act for painting harp seal pups with red dye to devalue their pelts. Watson was arrested in 1993 in Canada on charges stemming from actions against Cuban and Spanish fishing boats off the coast of Newfoundland. In 1997, Watson was convicted in absentia and sentenced to serve 120 days in jail by a court in Lofoten, Norway on charges of attempting to sink the small scale Norwegian fishing and whaling vessel Nybrænna on December 26, 1992. Dutch authorities refused to hand him over to Norwegian authorities although he did spend 80 days in detention in the Netherlands pending a ruling on extradition before being released.
There have not been any successful attempts at prosecuting Watson for his activities with Sea Shepherd since the trial in Newfoundland. Watson defends his actions as falling within international law, in particular Sea Shepherd's right to enforce maritime regulations against illegal whalers and sealers.
Sea Shepherd activists Rod Coronado and David Howitt went to Iceland in 1986 and scuttled two whaling ships in port at Reykjavík and also damaged a whale meat processing factory. Watson took responsibility for the operation, abiding by published Sea Shepherd principles. He went to Iceland saying, "I am responsible for all activities undertaken in the name of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I give the orders." He was deported without being charged and is considered a persona non grata by Iceland
In April 2010 the Japanese Coast Guard obtained an arrest warrant for Watson "...on suspicion of ordering sabotage activities against Japan's whaling fleet", and Interpol has listed him as wanted at the request of Japan. The red notice has the charges issued by Japan as, "Breaking into the Vessel, Damage to Property, Forcible Obstruction of Business, Injury". In March 2012 Interpol issued a "written statement to all 190 member countries making it clear that it would not publish a Red Notice" for the detention of Watson, but reversed that position in September 2012. In both statements Interpol stated that a "Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant" that it is "a request for any country to identify or locate an individual with a view to their provisional arrest and extradition in accordance with the country's national laws".
In May 2012 Watson was detained by German authorities at the Frankfurt Airport because of a request from the government of Costa Rica. The charge stemmed from an altercation at sea in 2002 in which Sea Shepherd said that the other vessel was illegally shark finning in Guatemalan waters. Crew members of the other ship accused Sea Shepherd of trying to kill them. Watson was charged with violating navigational regulations with the Interpol alert stating the charge as, "peligro de naufragio" (danger of shipwreck). The conflict took place during filming for the documentary Sharkwater and the charges were dropped by prosecutors after video of the incident made by the documentary film makers was shown. On May 21, Watson was released on bail of €250,000 but required to report to police in Frankfurt on a daily basis. In June, Costa Rica formally requested Watson's extradition from Germany. On July 19, 2012, Japan applied for an extradition order and Watson left Germany, resulting in a German court ordering his immediate re-arrest. It is understood the statute of limitations on his Costa Rican charges was set to expire in June 2013.
On August 7, 2012 Interpol renewed the Red Notice for Watson on the charges of "causing a danger of drowning or of an air disaster" laid by Costa Rica. It was reported that Watson would come out of hiding to join Sea Shepherd in the 2012–13 campaign against Japanese whaling. Watson rejoined the crew of the Steve Irwin in the South Pacific in late November 2012. In March 2019, Costa Rica dropped all charges against Watson and has removed the Interpol red notice.
Sierra Club immigration stance
In 1999, Watson ran unsuccessfully for election to the national Sierra Club Board of Directors, with the backing of the anti-immigration faction Sierrans for US Population Stabilization (SUSPS). After his election to the board in 2003, Watson supported an unsuccessful slate of candidates supporting strict immigration controls as an element of a population stabilization policy. This effort was denounced by another candidate in the election, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, as a "hostile takeover" attempt by "radical anti-immigrant activists." Watson responded by saying that the only change he was seeking in the organization's immigration stance was to restore the position it had held before its 1996 "neutrality policy." Watson left the Sierra Club board in 2006.
Anti-sealing activities
In April 2008, Watson stated that, while the deaths of three Canadian seal hunters (a fourth one is still missing) in a marine accident involving a Canadian Coast Guard vessel and a fishing boat during the 2008 Canadian Commercial Seal Hunt were a tragedy, he felt that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seals is an even greater tragedy. Canadian Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn accused Watson of trivializing the memory of the lost sealers. Watson replied that Hearn was trying to distract attention from his government's incompetence as the boat the men were on capsized while under tow by a Canadian Coast Guard vessel, while his political ambitions continued to support and subsidize an industry that had no place in the 21st century. In 1978, Watson expressed opposition to seal hunt protest organization, suggesting in an interview with CBC's Barbara Frum that saving seals is a cheap and easy fundraiser and that seals do not deserve special status over other species. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams was quoted as saying, "I think what a lot of people don't realize is that this man is a terrorist."
Australian visa issues
In October 2009, Watson, who carries a US passport, complained to media outlets about having his request for an Australian visa denied. He states that the Australian government was attempting to sabotage the upcoming 2010 Sea Shepherd campaign by denying him entry into the country. Watson and several other shipmates were also unable to join the Steve Irwin on its promotional tour of Australia until they were able to provide documentation from the governments of the United States, Canada and Norway, exonerating them from previously claimed acts of violence, specifically claims by Sea Shepherd of intentionally sinking a ship in Norway. In January 2013, Paul Watson was presented with an Aboriginal passport by the Krautungalung people of the Gunnai Nation.
Alleged shooting
On March 17, 2008, Paul Watson said that he was shot by the Japanese crew or coast guard personnel during the Operation Migaloo anti-whaling campaign in the Southern Ocean. The incident is documented during the season finale of season 1 of the Whale Wars TV reality show, and the first six episodes are covered as a buildup to what is portrayed as the major incident during the campaign. The Japanese respond by throwing stun grenades, one crew member is injured from a grenade detonating close behind him and another injured trying to escape the explosions. Watson is then shown reaching inside his jacket and body armour and remarking "I've been hit." Back inside the bridge of the Steve Irwin, a metal fragment is found inside the vest.
The Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research disputes Sea Shepherd's statements. The Institute and Coast Guard said that they used seven stun grenades designed to temporarily debilitate a target by rendering them blind and deaf for a period of time. The Japanese government also alleged that the whalers launched "noise balls", described as "loud explosive deterrent devices". Neither of the two conflicting accounts have been independently verified. The Australian Foreign Affairs Department had condemned "actions by crew members of any vessel that cause injury". Two media releases were made on the same day from the office. One said that the Australian Embassy in Tokyo had been informed by the Japanese that the whalers had "fired warning shots" while the updated version used the phrase "'warning balls' – also known as 'flashbangs' – had been fired".
Accusations of terrorism
Watson has been called an eco-terrorist by the Japanese government for his direct action tactics against whalers, and it repeated its position after conflicts during the 2009–10 whaling season.
At an animal rights convention in 2002, Paul Watson was also quoted as saying, "There's nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write the history". In 2010, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck also discussed the comment, criticizing Watson's views. Watson responded to Beck's comments on the official Sea Shepherd website by stating that he had said that but that it was taken out of context, quoting Gerald Seymour's "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter".
Comments following 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami
Watson was criticized for his poem published immediately following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami which suggested the disaster was Neptune's anger. Watson responded to critics with a commentary on the Sea Shepherd website expressing "deepest concern and sympathy for the people of Japan who are suffering through one of the worst natural disasters in the history of civilization".
Criticism of New Zealand
In 2013, three Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ships docked in New Zealand, and were searched by New Zealand authorities to see if Watson was aboard. He was not, having transferred to another ship in international waters, aware New Zealand was required to notify Interpol if he entered the country. Watson criticised the search, accusing New Zealand of siding with Japan on the issue of whaling in the Southern Ocean.
Reactions to activism and leadership
Watson has stated that he does not consider himself a 'protester', but an 'interventionist', as he considers protesting as too submissive. He often takes the attitude that he represents (or stands in for) law enforcement which is either unwilling or unable to enforce existing laws.
His leadership style has variously been called arrogant, as well as pushing himself too much "front and center", which was cited as one of the reasons for expulsion from Greenpeace. The atmosphere aboard his vessels has been compared to an "anarchy run by God".
The former member of Sea Shepherd and captain of the Pete Bethune described Watson as "morally bankrupt" who would order the intentional sinking of his own ships like the Ady Gil as a means to "garner sympathy with the public and to create better TV". Watson denied this, saying "No one ordered him to scuttle it. Pete Bethune was captain of the Ady Gil; all decisions on the Ady Gil were his."
Awards
Paul Watson received the Jules Verne Award on October 10, 2012. He was the second person after Captain Jacques Cousteau to be honored with a Jules Verne Award dedicated to environmentalists and adventurers. On June 28, 2010 Paul received the Asociación de Amigos del Museo de Anclas Philippe Cousteau: Defense of Marine Life Award, in recognition of his merits achieved by the work done in defense of marine life. In 2002, Paul was inducted into the US Animal Rights Hall of Fame for his outstanding contributions to animal liberation. Paul received the George H. W. Bush Daily Points of Light Award in 1999 and in 2000, he was named one of Time Magazine's Top 20 Environmental Heroes of the 20th Century. On May 23, 2019, Paul Watson received an official commendation by Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont stating that the "State of Connecticut conveyed both honor and recognition to Captain Paul Watson." In 2007 Watson received the Amazon Peace Prize presented by the Vice President of Ecuador Lenin Moreno.
Media portrayals
A biographical documentary on Paul Watson's early life and background entitled Pirate for the Sea was produced by Ron Colby in 2008.
The 2008 documentary At the Edge of the World chronicled the efforts of Watson and 45 volunteers to hinder the Japanese whaling fleet in the waters around Antarctica. In 2010, long time friend and filmmaker Peter Brown released the documentary Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist, a satirical look back at the last 30 years of actions. The documentary Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson from 2011 features interviews and footage with early Greenpeace members Rex Weyler and Patrick Moore.
Watson, Whale Wars, and the Japanese whaling industry were satirized in the South Park episode "Whale Whores". In its fictional Larry King show, Watson himself was called "An unorganized incompetent media whore who thought lying to everyone was OK as long as it served his cause" and "A smug, narcoleptic liar with no credibility".
Watson responded to the South Park episode by stating; "My understanding is that the Japanese Prime Minister was not amused and the whalers and dolphin killers are enraged at the way they were portrayed," Watson said. "That's music to my ears. If the humorless whale killers and the bank rollers of the dolphin killers did not like the show, then that's all I need to applaud it."
Watson was portrayed (along with whale biologist, Nan Hauser), during a 60 Minutes episode that aired in 2013, as contributing to the return of the Humpback whale populations in the South Pacific.
In 2019 a biopic film called, Watson directed by one of the producers of An Inconvenient Truth, Lesley Chilcott, was released and also aired on Animal Planet on December 22, 2019.
List of works
Sea Shepherd: My Fight for Whales and Seals (1981) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy (1993) ()
Ocean Warrior: My Battle to End the Illegal Slaughter on the High Seas (1994) ()
Seal Wars: Twenty-Five Years on the Front Lines With the Harp Seals (2002) ()
Contributor to Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberations of Animals (2004) ()
Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy 2nd Edition (2012)
The War That Saved the Whales (2019)
Songs from the Southern Ocean (2020)
The Haunted Mariner (2020)
Dealing with Climate Change and Stress (2020)
Orcapedia (2020)
Desperate Mythologies: Theology, Ecology and the General Insanity of Humanity (2020)
Death of a Whale (2021)
URGENT! Save Our Ocean to Survive Climate Change (2021)
See also
List of conservationists
List of vegans
References
Further reading
Earth Warrior: Overboard With Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, by David B. Morris (1995) ()
Eco-Warriors, by Rik Scarce (2006) ()
Capitaine Paul Watson, entretien avec un pirate, by Lamya Essemlali, Paul Watson (2012)
External links
Paul Watson's page on the Sea Shepherd official website
1950 births
Canadian animal rights activists
Canadian environmentalists
Fugitives wanted by Germany
Green Party of British Columbia politicians
Green thinkers
Living people
People associated with Greenpeace
People from St. Andrews, New Brunswick
Activists from Toronto
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Sierra Club directors
Sustainability advocates
Veganism activists
Yippies | 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"
] |
[
"Top of the Pops",
"1994-1997"
] | C_4ba6e4aafe884f399b648ba4e20a983e_0 | What happened in 1994? | 1 | What happened in 1994 in Top of the Pops? | Top of the Pops | By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone and the arrival of Ric Blaxill as producer in February 1994 signalled a return to presentation from established Radio 1 DJs Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and Bruno Brookes. Blaxill expanded the use of "via satellite" performances, taking the acts out of studios and concert halls and setting them against landmark backdrops. As a consequence, Bon Jovi performed Always from Niagara Falls and Celine Dion beamed in Think Twice from Miami Beach. The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced (the logo having first been introduced on the new programme Top of the Pops 2 some months previous), coinciding with the introduction of a new set. Blaxill also increasingly experimented with handing presenting duties to celebrities, commonly contemporary comedians and pop stars who were not in the charts at that time. In an attempt to keep the links between acts as fresh as the performances themselves, the so-called "golden mic" was used by, amongst others, Kylie Minogue, Meat Loaf, Des Lynam, Chris Eubank, Damon Albarn, Harry Hill, Jack Dee, Lulu and Jarvis Cocker. Radio 1 DJs still presented occasionally, notably Lisa I'Anson, Steve Lamacq, Jo Whiley and Chris Evans. TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996, originally at 7 pm, but then shifted to 7.30 pm, a change which placed the programme up against the soap opera Coronation Street on ITV. This began a major decline in audience figures as fans were forced to choose between Top of the Pops and an episode of the soap. CANNOTANSWER | By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone | Top of the Pops (TOTP) is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly between 1January 1964 and 30 July 2006. Top of the Pops was the world's longest running weekly music show. For most of its history, it was broadcast on Thursday evenings on BBC One. Each weekly show consisted of performances from some of that week's best-selling popular music records, usually excluding any tracks moving down the chart, including a rundown of that week's singles chart. This was originally the Top 20, though this varied throughout the show's history. The Official Charts Company states "performing on the show was considered an honour, and it pulled in just about every major player."
Dusty Springfield’s "I Only Want to Be with You" was the first song performed on TOTP, while The Rolling Stones were the first band to perform with "I Wanna Be Your Man". Snow Patrol were the last act to play live on the weekly show when they performed their single "Chasing Cars". In addition to the weekly show there was a special edition of TOTP on Christmas Day (and usually, until 1984, a second edition a few days after Christmas), featuring some of the best-selling singles of the year and the Christmas Number 1. Although the weekly show was cancelled in 2006, the Christmas special has continued. End-of-year round-up editions have also been broadcast on BBC1 on or around New Year's Eve, albeit largely featuring the same acts and tracks as the Christmas Day shows. It also survives as Top of the Pops 2, which began in 1994 and features vintage performances from the Top of the Pops archives. Though TOTP2 ceased producing new episodes since 2017, repeats of older episodes are still shown.
The show has seen seminal performances over its history. The March 1971 TOTP appearance of T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan wearing glitter and satins as he performed "Hot Love" is often seen as the inception of glam rock, and David Bowie's performance of "Starman" inspired future musicians. In the 1990s, the show's format was sold to several foreign broadcasters in the form of a franchise package, and at one point various versions of the show were shown in more than 120 countries. Editions of the programme from 1976 onwards started being repeated on BBC Four in 2011 and are aired on most Friday evenings – as of January 2022 the repeat run has reached 1992. Episodes featuring disgraced presenters and artists such as Jonathan King, Jimmy Savile (who opened the show with its familiar slogan, 'It's Number One, it's Top of the Pops'), Dave Lee Travis, Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter, and R. Kelly are no longer repeated.
History
Johnnie Stewart devised the rules which governed how the show would operate: the programme would always end with the number one record, which was the only record that could appear in consecutive weeks. The show would include the highest new entry and (if not featured in the previous week) the highest climber on the charts, and omit any song going down in the chart. Tracks could be featured in consecutive weeks in different formats. For example, if a song was played over the chart countdown or the closing credits, then it was acceptable for the act to appear in the studio the following week.
These rules were sometimes interpreted flexibly and were more formally relaxed from 1997 when records descending the charts were featured more regularly, possibly as a response to the changing nature of the Top 40 (in the late 1990s and early 2000s climbers in the charts were a rarity, with almost all singles peaking at their debut position).
When the programme's format changed in November 2003, it concentrated increasingly on the top 10. Later, during the BBC Two era, the top 20 was regarded as the main cut-off point, with the exception made for up and coming bands below the top 20. Singles from below the top 40 (within the top 75) were shown if the band were up and coming or had a strong selling album. If a single being performed was below the top 40, just the words "New Entry" were shown and not the chart position.
The show was originally intended to run for only a few programmes but lasted over 42 years, reaching landmark episodes of 500, 1,000, 1,500 and 2,000 in the years 1973, 1983, 1992 and 2002 respectively.
The first show
Top of the Pops was first broadcast on Wednesday, 1January 1964 at 6:35 pm. It was produced in Studio A at Dickenson Road Studios in Rusholme, Manchester.
DJ Jimmy Savile presented the first show live from the Manchester studio (with a brief link to Alan Freeman in London to preview the following week's programme), which featured (in order) Dusty Springfield with "I Only Want to Be with You", the Rolling Stones with "I Wanna Be Your Man", the Dave Clark Five with "Glad All Over", the Hollies with "Stay", the Swinging Blue Jeans with "Hippy Hippy Shake" and the Beatles with "I Want to Hold Your Hand", that week's number one – throughout its history, the programme proper always (with very few exceptions) finished with the best-selling single of the week, although there often was a separate play-out track over the end credits.
1960s and 1970s
Later in 1964, the broadcast time was moved to one hour later, at 7:35 pm, and the show moved from Wednesdays to what became its regular Thursday slot. Additionally its length was extended by 5minutes to 30 minutes.
For the first three years Alan Freeman, David Jacobs, Pete Murray and Jimmy Savile rotated presenting duties, with the following week's presenter also appearing at the end of each show, although this practice ceased from October 1964 onwards. Neville Wortman filled in as director/producer on Johnnie Stewart's holiday break.
In the first few editions, Denise Sampey was the "disc girl", who would be seen to put the record on a turntable before the next act played their track. However, a Mancunian model, Samantha Juste, became the regular disc girl after a few episodes, a role she performed until 1967.
Initially acts performing on the show would mime (lip-sync) to the commercially released record, but in 1966 after discussions with the Musicians' Union, miming was banned. After a few weeks during which some bands' attempts to play as well as on their records were somewhat lacking, a compromise was reached whereby a specially recorded backing track was permitted, as long as all the musicians on the track were present in the studio. As a result, Stewart hired Johnny Pearson to conduct an in-studio orchestra to provide musical backing on select performances, beginning with the 4 August 1966 edition. Later, vocal group The Ladybirds began providing vocal backing with the orchestra.
With the birth of BBC Radio 1 in 1967, new Radio1 DJs were added to the roster – Stuart Henry, Emperor Rosko, Simon Dee and Kenny Everett.
Local photographer Harry Goodwin was hired to provide shots of non-appearing artists, and also to provide backdrops for the chart run-down. He continued in the role until 1973.
After two years at the Manchester Dickenson Road Studios, the show moved to London (considered to be better located for bands to appear), initially for six months at BBC TV Centre Studio2 and then to the larger Studio G at BBC Lime Grove Studios in mid-1966 to provide space for the Top of the Pops Orchestra, which was introduced at this time to provide live instrumentation on some performances (previously, acts had generally mimed to the records). In November 1969, with the introduction of colour, the show returned to BBC TV Centre, where it stayed until 1991, when it moved to Elstree Studios Studio C.
For a while in the early 1970s, non-chart songs were played on a more regular basis, to reflect the perceived growing importance of album sales; there was an album slot featuring three songs from a new LP, as well as a New Release spot and a feature of a new act, dubbed Tip for the Top. These features were dropped after a while, although the programme continued to feature new releases on a regular basis for the rest of the decade.
During its heyday, it attracted 15 million viewers each week. The peak TV audience of 19 million was recorded in 1979, during the ITV strike, with only BBC1 and BBC2 on air.
Christmas Top of the Pops
A year-end Christmas show featuring a review of the year's biggest hits was inaugurated on 24 December 1964, and has continued every year since. From 1965 onward, the special edition was broadcast on Christmas Day (although not in 1966) and from the same year, a second edition was broadcast in the days after Christmas, varying depending on the schedule, but initially regularly on 26 December. The first was shown on 26 December 1965. In 1973, there was just one show, airing on Christmas Day. In place of the traditional second show, Jimmy Savile hosted a look back at the first 10 years of TOTP, broadcast on 27 December. In 1975, the first of the two shows was broadcast prior to Christmas Day, airing on 23 December, followed by the traditional Christmas Day show two days later.
The 1978 Christmas Day show was disrupted due to industrial action at the BBC, requiring a change in format to the broadcast. The first show, due to be screened on 21 December, was not shown at all because BBC1 was off the air. For Christmas Day, Noel Edmonds (presenting his last ever edition of TOTP) hosted the show from the 'TOTP Production Office' with clips taken from various editions of the show broadcast during the year and new studio footage performed without an audience. The format was slightly tweaked for the Christmas Day edition in 1981, with the Radio1 DJs choosing their favourite tracks of the year and the following edition on 31 December featuring the year's number1 hits.
The second programme was discontinued after 1984.
1980s
The year 1980 marked major production changes to Top of the Pops and a hiatus forced by industrial action. Steve Wright made his presenting debut on 7 February 1980. Towards the end of February 1980, facing a £40 million budget deficit, the BBC laid off five orchestras as part of £130 million in cuts. The budget cuts led to a Musicians' Union strike that suspended operations of all 11 BBC orchestras and performances of live music on the BBC; Top of the Pops went out of production between 29 May and 7 August 1980. During the Musicians' Union strike, BBC1 showed repeats of Are You Being Served? in the regular Top of the Pops Thursday night time slot.
Following the strike, Nash was replaced as executive producer by Michael Hurll, who introduced more of a "party" atmosphere to the show, with performances often accompanied by balloons and cheerleaders, and more audible audience noise and cheering. Hurll also laid off the orchestra, as the Musicians' Union was loosening enforcement of the 1966 miming ban.
Guest co-presenters and a music news feature were introduced for a short while, but had ceased by the end of 1980. The chart rundown was split into three sections in the middle of the programme, with the final Top 10 section initially featuring clips of the songs' videos, although this became rarer over the next few years.
An occasional feature showing the American music scene with Jonathan King was introduced in November 1981, and ran every few weeks until February 1985. In January 1985, a Breakers section, featuring short video clips of new tracks in the lower end of the Top 40, was introduced, and this continued for most weeks until March 1994.
Although the programme had been broadcast live in its early editions, it had been recorded on the day before transmission for many years. However, from May 1981, the show was sometimes broadcast live for a few editions each year, and this practice continued on an occasional basis (often in the week of a bank holiday, when the release of the new chart was delayed, and for some special editions) for the rest of the decade.
The programme moved in September 1985 to a new regular half-hour timeslot of 7 pm on Thursdays, where it would remain until June 1996.
The end of 1988 was marked by a special 70-minute edition of the show broadcast on 31 December 1988, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first show. The pre-recorded programme featured the return of the original four presenters (Savile, Freeman, Murray and Jacobs) as well as numerous presenters from the show's history, anchored by Paul Gambaccini and Mike Read. Numerous clips from the history of the show were included in between acts performing in the studio, which included Cliff Richard, Engelbert Humperdinck, Lulu, the Four Tops, David Essex, Mud, Status Quo, Shakin' Stevens, the Tremeloes and from the very first edition, the Swinging Blue Jeans. Sandie Shaw, the Pet Shop Boys and Wet Wet Wet were billed in the Radio Times to appear, but none featured in the show other than Shaw in compilation clips.
Paul Ciani took over as producer in 1988. The following year, in an attempt to fit more songs in the allocated half-hour, he restricted the duration of studio performances to three minutes, and videos to two minutes, a practice which was largely continued until May 1997. In July 1990, he introduced a rundown of the Top5 albums, which continued on a monthly basis until May 1991. Ciani had to step down due to illness in 1991, when Hurll returned as producer to cover for two months (and again for a brief time as holiday cover in 1992).
1991: 'Year Zero' revamp
From 1967, the show had become closely associated with the BBC radio station Radio 1, usually being presented by DJs from the station, and between 1988 and 1991 the programme was simulcast on the radio station in FM stereo (that is, until BBC's launch of NICAM stereo for TV made such simulcasts redundant). However, during the last few years of the 1980s the association became less close, and was severed completely (although not permanently) in a radical shake-up known as the 'Year Zero' revamp.
Following a fall in viewing figures and a general perception that the show had become 'uncool' (acts like the Clash had refused to appear in the show in previous years), a radical new format was introduced by incoming executive producer Stanley Appel (who had worked on the programme since 1966 as cameraman, production assistant, director and stand-in producer) in October 1991, in which the Radio1 DJs were replaced by a team of relative unknowns, such as Claudia Simon and Tony Dortie who had previously worked for Children's BBC, 17-year-old local radio DJ Mark Franklin, Steve Anderson, Adrian Rose and Elayne Smith, who was replaced by Femi Oke in 1992. A brand new theme tune ("Now Get Out of That"), title sequence and logo were introduced, and the entire programme moved from BBC Television Centre in London to BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood.
The new presenting team would take turns hosting (initially usually in pairs but sometimes solo), and would often introduce acts in an out-of-vision voiceover over the song's instrumental introduction. They would sometimes even conduct short informal interviews with the performers, and initially the Top 10 countdown was run without any voiceover. Rules relating to performance were also altered meaning acts had to sing live as opposed to the backing tracks for instruments and mimed vocals for which the show was known. To incorporate the shift of dominance towards American artists, more use was made of out-of-studio performances, with acts in America able to transmit their song to the Top of the Pops audience "via satellite". These changes were widely unpopular and much of the presenting team were axed within a year, leaving the show hosted solely by Dortie and Franklin (apart from the Christmas Day editions, when both presenters appeared) from October 1992, on a week-by-week rotation.
1994–1997
By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone and the arrival of Ric Blaxill as producer in February 1994 signalled a return to presentation from established Radio1 DJs Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and Bruno Brookes. Blaxill expanded the use of "via satellite" performances, taking the acts out of studios and concert halls and setting them against landmark backdrops. As a consequence, Bon Jovi performed Always from Niagara Falls and Celine Dion beamed in Think Twice from Miami Beach.
The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced (the logo having first been introduced on the new programme Top of the Pops 2 some months previously), coinciding with the introduction of a new set. Blaxill also increasingly experimented with handing presenting duties to celebrities, commonly contemporary comedians and pop stars who were not in the charts at that time. In an attempt to keep the links between acts as fresh as the performances themselves, the so-called "golden mic" was used by, amongst others, Kylie Minogue, Meat Loaf, Des Lynam, Chris Eubank, Damon Albarn, Harry Hill, Jack Dee, Lulu, Björk, Jarvis Cocker, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. Radio1 DJs still presented occasionally, including Lisa I'Anson, Steve Lamacq, Jo Whiley and Chris Evans.
TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996, originally at 7 pm, but then shifted to 7.30 pm, a change which placed the programme up against the soap opera Coronation Street on ITV. This began a major decline in audience figures as fans were forced to choose between Top of the Pops and an episode of the soap.
1997–2003
In 1997, incoming producer Chris Cowey phased out the use of celebrities and established a rotating team (similar to the 1991 revamp, although much more warmly received) of former presenters of youth music magazine The O-Zone Jayne Middlemiss and Jamie Theakston as well as Radio1 DJs Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball. The team was later augmented by Kate Thornton and Gail Porter.
Chris Cowey in particular instigated a set of 'back to basics' changes when he took over the show. In 1998, a remixed version of the classic "Whole Lotta Love" theme tune previously used in the 1970s was introduced, accompanied by a new 1960s-inspired logo and title sequence. Cowey also began to export the brand overseas with localised versions of the show on air in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy by 2003. Finally, the programme returned to its previous home of BBC Television Centre in 2001, where it remained until its cancellation in 2006.
2003: All New Top of the Pops
On 28 November 2003 (three months after the appointment of Andi Peters as executive producer), the show saw one of its most radical overhauls since the ill-fated 1991 'Year Zero' revamp in what was widely reported as a make-or-break attempt to revitalise the long-running series. In a break with the previous format, the show played more up-and-coming tracks ahead of any chart success, and also featured interviews with artists and a music news feature called "24/7". Most editions of the show were now broadcast live, for the first time since 1991 (apart from a couple of editions in 1994). The launch show, which was an hour long, was notable for a performance of "Flip Reverse" by Blazin' Squad, featuring hordes of hooded teenagers choreographed to dance around the outside of BBC Television Centre.
Although the first edition premièred to improved ratings, the All New format, hosted by MTV presenter Tim Kash, quickly returned to low ratings and brought about scathing reviews. Kash continued to host the show, but Radio1 DJs Reggie Yates and Fearne Cotton (who had each presented a few shows in 2003, before the revamp) were brought back to co-host alongside him, before Kash was completely dropped by the BBC, later taking up a new contract at MTV. The show continued to be hosted by Reggie Yates and Fearne Cotton (usually together, but occasionally solo) on Friday evenings until 8July 2005.
On 30 July 2004, the show took place outside a studio environment for the first time by broadcasting outside in Gateshead. Girls Aloud, Busted, Will Young and Jamelia were among the performers that night.
2005: The Beginning of the End
Figures had plummeted to below three million, prompting an announcement by the BBC that the show was going to move, again, to Sunday evenings on BBC Two, thus losing the prime-time slot on BBC One that it had maintained for more than forty years.
This move was widely reported as a final "sidelining" of the show, and perhaps signalled its likely cancellation. At the time, it was insisted that this was so the show would air immediately after the official announcement of the new top 40 chart on Radio 1, as it was thought that by the following Friday, the chart seemed out of date. The final Top of the Pops to be shown on BBC One (barring Christmas and New Year specials) was broadcast on Monday 11 July 2005, which was edition number 2,166.
The first edition on BBC Two was broadcast on 17 July 2005 at 7.00 pm with presenter Fearne Cotton. After the move to Sundays, Cotton continued to host with a different guest presenter each week, such as Rufus Hound or Richard Bacon. On a number of occasions, however, Reggie Yates would step in, joined by female guest presenters such as Lulu, Cyndi Lauper and Anastacia. Viewing figures during this period averaged around 1½ million. Shortly after the move to BBC Two, Peters resigned as executive producer. He was replaced by the BBC's Creative Head of Music Entertainment Mark Cooper, while producer Sally Wood remained to oversee the show on a weekly basis.
2006: Cancellation
On 20 June 2006, the show was formally cancelled and it was announced that the last edition would be broadcast on 30 July 2006. Edith Bowman co-presented its hour-long swansong, along with Jimmy Savile (who was the main presenter on the first show), Reggie Yates, Mike Read, Pat Sharp, Sarah Cawood, Dave Lee Travis, Rufus Hound, Tony Blackburn and Janice Long.
The final day of recording was 26 July 2006 and featured archive footage and tributes, including the Rolling Stones – the very first band to appear on Top of the Pops – opening with "The Last Time", the Spice Girls, David Bowie, Wham!, Madonna, Beyoncé, Gnarls Barkley, the Jackson 5, Sonny and Cher and Robbie Williams. The show closed with a final countdown, topped by Shakira, as her track "Hips Don't Lie" (featuring Wyclef Jean) had climbed back up to number one on the UK Singles Chart earlier in the day. The show ended with Savile ultimately turning the lights off in the empty studio.
Fearne Cotton, who was the current presenter, was unavailable to co-host for the final edition due to her filming of ITV's Love Island in Fiji but opened the show with a quick introduction recorded on location, saying "It's still number one, it's Top of the Pops". BARB reported the final show's viewing figures as 3.98 million.
As the last episode featured no live acts in the studio, the last act to actually play live on a weekly episode of TOTP was Snow Patrol, who performed "Chasing Cars" in the penultimate edition; the last act ever featured visually on a weekly Top of the Pops was Girls Aloud, as part of the closing sequence of bands performing on the show throughout the years. They were shown performing "Love Machine".
2006–present: After the end
The magazine and TOTP2 have both survived despite the show's axing, and the Christmas editions also continue after returning to BBC One. However, the TOTP website, which the BBC had originally promised would continue, is now no longer updated, although many of the old features of the site – interviews, music news, reviews – have remained, now in the form of the Radio 1-affiliated TOTP ChartBlog accessible via the remains of the old website.
Calls for its return
In October 2008, British Culture Secretary Andy Burnham and Manchester indie band the Ting Tings called for the show to return.
On 29 October 2008, Simon Cowell stated in an interview that he would be willing to buy the rights to Top of the Pops from the BBC. The corporation responded that they had not been formally approached by Cowell, and that in any case the format was "not up for sale". In November 2008, it was reported by The Times and other newspapers that the weekly programme was to be revived in 2009, but the BBC said there were no such plans.
In July 2009, Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant criticised the BBC for ending the programme, stating that new acts were missing out on "that great moment of being crowned that week's Kings of Pop".
In early 2015 there was increased speculation of a return of the show including rumours that Dermot O'Leary might present alongside Fearne Cotton. According to a report in the Daily Mirror, a BBC insider stated that "some at the highest level are massive supporters of the plan [of a return] and have given the go-ahead." The move of the UK charts to a Friday due to take place in summer 2015 was also said to favour the possibility of a return, making it "the perfect tie-in" and a "perfect start to the weekend", but no weekly return has occurred.
BBC Four reruns
In April 2011, the BBC began to reshow Top of the Pops on Thursday nights on BBC Four beginning with the equivalent show from 35 years earlier in a 7:30 pm–8:00 pm slot approximating to the time the programme was traditionally shown. The first programme shown, 1April 1976, was chosen because it was from approximately this episode onwards that most editions remain in the BBC archive. The repeat programmes come in two versions; the first is edited down to fit in the 30-minute 7:30 slot, the second is shown normally twice overnight in the following weekend, and is usually complete. However both the short and longer editions can be edited for a number of reasons. Potentially offensive content to modern audiences is cut (for example The Barron Knights' in-studio performance of "Food For Thought" on the edition of 13 December 1979 including a segment parodying Chinese takeaways using mannerisms that may now be viewed as offensive), and cinematic film footage can be truncated, replaced or removed entirely due to the costs to the BBC of reshowing such footage. The BBC also makes the repeats available on BBC iPlayer. The repeats are continuing as of January 2022 with episodes from 1992.
Since October 2012, episodes featuring Jimmy Savile have ceased to be broadcast due to the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal and subsequent Operation Yewtree police investigation. Following the arrest of Dave Lee Travis by Operation Yewtree officers, and his subsequent conviction for indecent assault, episodes featuring Travis were also omitted. Following Gary Glitter's conviction for sexual assault, episodes featuring him are not included in the run, or otherwise have Glitter's performances edited out.
Mike Smith decided not to sign the licence extension that would allow the BBC to repeat the Top of the Pops episodes that he presented, with the BBC continuing to respect his wishes following his death. As a result, episodes featuring Smith are also omitted.
In 2021, it was discovered that episodes hosted by Adrian Rose (later Adrian Woolfe) were being skipped, starting with the 28th November 1991 episode featuring Nirvana's famous performance of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (mentioned below).
Other edits that have been made to episodes have included Jonathan King's reports from the US during episodes from the early 1980s, sometimes also resulting in the removal of a performance or video introduced as part of the report, and the removal of The Doors' performance of "Light My Fire" from a 1991 episode, due to The Doors not being covered by the BBC's music licensing agreement (which also resulted in another 1991 episode being skipped).
"Story of" Specials
Prior to the 1976 BBC reruns shown in 2011, the BBC produced a special programme, "The Story of 1976". This comprised excerpts from the 1976 programmes, interspersed with new interviews with people discussing the time period. They have produced similar programmes prior to subsequent annual reruns, "The Story of 1990" being the most recent such programme in October 2020, as 1991 and 1992 reruns started without a 'The Story of...' programme preceding them.
"Big Hits" compilation
A series of "Big Hits" compilations have been broadcast with on-screen captions about artists.In December 2016, a festive special using the format of the "Big Hits" programmes, Top of the Pops: Christmas Hits was broadcast on BBC Four, featuring a mix of Christmas music and non-festive songs which had been hits at Christmas time. This effectively replaced the annual Christmas edition of Top of the Pops 2, which did not run that year.
Christmas and New Year specials
Although the weekly Top of the Pops has been cancelled, the Christmas Specials have continued, hosted by Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates. The Christmas specials are broadcast on Christmas Day afternoon on BBC One. Since 2008 (apart from 2010 and 2011), a New Year special has also been broadcast. A new logo and title sequence were introduced on the 2019 Christmas special. The BBC's Head of Music Television, Mark Cooper, continued to oversee the programme as executive producer until 2019 when he was replaced by Alison Howe. Meanwhile, Stephanie McWhinnie, who had replaced Wood as producer with effect from Christmas 2011, was replaced by Caroline Cullen (who had previously worked as assistant producer on the show) from Christmas 2020, when both festive shows were recorded with new studio performances but no live audience physically in attendance. On 4December 2017, Yates stepped down from hosting Top of the Pops due to comments he made regarding Jewish people and rappers. The BBC later announced Clara Amfo as Yates' replacement, she continues to hold the role. Amfo was joined by Jordan North for the 2021 specials, with him replacing Cotton.
Comic Relief specials
The show was given a one-off revival (of sorts) for Comic Relief 2007 in the form of Top Gear of the Pops, presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. It was filmed at the Top Gear aerodrome studio in Surrey on Sunday, 11 March 2007, although it bore little resemblance to the usual Top of the Pops format.
On 13 March 2009, Top of The Pops was once again revived, this time in its usual format, for a special live Comic Relief edition, airing on BBC Two while the main telethon took a break for the BBC News at Ten on BBC One. As with the Christmas specials the show was presented by Radio1 duo Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates with special guest presenter Noel Fielding and appearances from Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Claudia Winkleman, Jonathan Ross, Davina McCall (dancing in the audience and later as a Flo Rida dancer with Claudia Winkleman and French and Saunders) and David Tennant.
Live performances – interspersed with Comic Relief appeal films – included acts such as Franz Ferdinand, Oasis, Take That, U2, James Morrison and Flo Rida (that week's Number1). Kicking off the show was a performance from Rob Brydon and Ruth Jones in their Gavin & Stacey guises, feat. Tom Jones and Robin Gibb with "(Barry) Islands in the Stream", the Comic Relief single.
Performers, performances and presenters
In its extensive history, Top of the Pops has featured many artists, many of whom have appeared more than once on the show to promote many of their records.
Green Day hold the record for the longest Top of the Pops performance: "Jesus of Suburbia" broadcast on 6November 2005, lasted 9minutes and 10 seconds. There is uncertainty about what was the shortest performance. In 2005, presenter Reggie Yates announced on the show that it was Super Furry Animals with "Do or Die", broadcast on 28 January 2000, clocking in at 95 seconds. However, "It's My Turn" by Angelic was 91 seconds on 16 June 2000 and, according to an August 2012 edition of TOTP2, "Here Comes the Summer" by the Undertones was just 84 seconds on 26 July 1979. Cliff Richard appeared the most times on the show, with almost 160 performances. Status Quo were the most frequent group with 106 performances.
Miming
Throughout the show's history, many artists mimed to backing tracks. Early on, Musicians' Union rules required that groups re-record backing tracks with union members performing when possible. However, as The Guardian recounted in 2001: "In practice, artists pretended to re-record the song, then used their original tapes."
The miming policy also led to the occasional technical hitch. In 1967, as Jimi Hendrix prepared to perform "Burning of the Midnight Lamp", the song "The House That Jack Built" by Alan Price was played in studio instead, prompting Hendrix to respond: "I like the voice...but I don't know the words." In 1988, All About Eve appeared to perform "Martha's Harbour". Although the song was being played on the television broadcast, it was not being played in studio, so lead singer Julianne Regan remained silent on a stool on stage while Tim Bricheno (the only other band member present) did not play his guitar.
Occasionally bands played live, examples in the 1970s and 1980s being the Four Seasons, the Who, Blondie, John Otway, Sham 69, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Jimmy James and the Vagabonds, The Sweet, The Jackson 5, Heavy Metal Kids, Elton John, Typically Tropical, New Order, Whitney Houston and David Bowie. In 1980, heavy metal band Iron Maiden played live on the show when they refused to mime to their single "Running Free". Solo artists and vocal groups were supposed to sing live to the Top of the Pops Orchestra. Billy Ocean, Brotherhood of Man, Anita Ward, Thelma Houston, Deniece Williams, Hylda Baker and the Nolans all performed in this way.
In 1991 the producers of the show allowed artists the option of singing live over a backing track. Miming has resulted in a number of notable moments. In 1991, Nirvana refused to mime to the pre-recorded backing track of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with Kurt Cobain singing in a deliberately low voice and altering lyrics in the song, and bassist Krist Novoselic swinging his bass over his head and drummer Dave Grohl playing randomly on his kit. In 1995, the Gallagher brothers of Oasis switched places while performing "Roll with It". During their performance of "Don't Leave Me This Way" the Communards singers Jimmy Somerville and Sarah Jane Morris swapped lyrics for part of the song towards the end. Another example of whimsy was John Peel's appearance as the mandolin soloist for Rod Stewart on "Maggie May". The new practice also exposed a number of poor live singers, and was dropped as a general rule.
In its final few years miming had become less and less common, especially for bands, as studio technology became more reliable and artists were given the freedom to choose their performance style. Former Executive Producer Andi Peters said there was no policy on miming and that it was entirely up to the performer whether they wanted to sing live or mime.
Orchestra and backing singers
From 1966 to 1980, Top of the Pops had an in-studio orchestra conducted by Johnny Pearson accompany select musical performances, with The Ladybirds (later Maggie Stredder Singers) providing backing vocals. Credited on the show as musical associate, Derek Warne played piano and provided musical arrangements for the orchestra. As The Telegraph recounted, Pearson and the orchestra improvised accompaniments with about 20 minutes of rehearsal time per song, and the musicians, "almost all middle-aged, often struggled with the enormous range of rock and pop tunes with which they were presented." In contrast, The Times said upon Pearson's passing in 2011 that the orchestra "often elicit[ed] excellent performances with barely enough time beforehand for a couple of run-throughs."
Other notable members of the orchestra include drummer Clem Cattini, trombonist Bobby Lamb, and lead trumpeters Leon Calvert and Ian Hamer. From 1971 to 1974, Martin Briley played guitar for the orchestra before joining rock group Greenslade.
Following the 1980 Musicians Union strike, the programme resumed broadcast on 7 August 1980 without its orchestra or backing singers. However, Pearson continued to make occasional contributions as musical director until the 900th episode in the summer of 1981. Afterwards, Warne occasionally made musical arrangements through April 1982. Ronnie Hazlehurst conducted the orchestra from 1982 to 1983.
Music videos
When an artist or group was unavailable to perform in studio, Top of the Pops would show a music video in place. According to Queen guitarist Brian May, the groundbreaking 1975 music video for "Bohemian Rhapsody" was produced so that the band could avoid miming on TOTP since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song.
Dance troupes
January to October 1964 – no dance troupes
In the era before promotional videos were routinely produced for every charting single, the BBC would frequently have neither the band themselves nor alternative footage available for a song selected for the programme. In the first few months of the show in 1964, the director would just scan across the audience dancing in the absence of any other footage, but by October 1964 a decision was made to at least occasionally bring in a dance troupe with a choreographed routine to some of the tracks.
November 1964 to April 1968 – The Go-Jos
An initial candidate troupe was the existing BBC TV Beat Girls, but an ex-dancer from the Beat Girls, Jo Cook, was eventually engaged to create a troupe, the all-female Go-Jos, with Cook as choreographer. The Go-Jos also worked outside of Top of the Pops, notably for two years on the Val Doonican show – Doonican said in 1968 "I thought the Gojos were fabulous, something really new. When I got my own television series I just had to have them with me."
They were initially a three-piece (Pat Hughes for the first edition only, Linda Hotchkin and Jane Bartlett), but their number eventually grew to six (Hotchkin, Bartlett, Lesley Larbey, Wendy Hilhouse, Barbara van der Heyde and Thelma Bignell) with Cook as full-time choreographer. Lulu remembered of their costumes "They mostly wore white boots to the knee and short skirts and the camera would go up the skirt and it was all very risqué."
Cook herself said of working on the Doonican show (of which she was dance director) comparing to Top of the Pops, "Pop steps are limited... With Val we have more scope, and we can work to get more of the feel of ballet into our numbers."
May to June 1968 – Go-Jos/Pan's People transition
In April 1968, a Top of the Pops choreographer, Virginia Mason, auditioned for dancers for a routine on Top of The Pops ("Simon Says" by the 1910 Fruitgum Company); two of whom that were successful (Ruth Pearson and Patricia "Dee Dee" Wilde) were part of the existing six-female dance troupe, Pan's People. Like the Go-Jos, this group was also partly drawn from ex-members of the Beat Girls.
Although this routine did not make it onto the programme itself, in subsequent weeks, members of Pan's People (Louise Clarke, Felicity "Flick" Colby, Barbara "Babs" Lord, Pearson, Andrea "Andi" Rutherford and Wilde) started to appear on the programme separately to the Go-Jos. Pan's People were then selected by the BBC over the Go-Jos when they chose a group to be the resident troupe. The Go-Jos' final Top of the Pops performance was in June 1968 dancing to "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones.
July 1968 to April 1976 – Pan's People
As with the Go-Jos, in the first eighteen months of the Pan's People era the dancers were not a weekly fixture on the programme. However, due to group fan mail and good viewing figures, by 1970 the group was on nearly every week. Pay was not high – they were paid the minimum Equity rate of £56 per week.
One of the original Pan's People dancers, Colby, became the full-time choreographer in 1971.
Colby spoke of the dancing – "They weren't Broadway-standard routines... we were definitely doing watercolours, not oil paintings."
May to October 1976 – Ruby Flipper
In early 1976, the last remaining of the early members of Pan's People, Ruth Pearson announced her retirement, leaving just four members all of whom who had joined within the last four years; Cherry Gillespie, Mary Corpe, Lee Ward and Sue Menhenick. Rather than continue with this line up or add additional members, it was decided by Colby and BBC production staff to replace this group with a male and female group created for the programme, Ruby Flipper, choreographed by Colby and managed by Colby with Pearson. Lee Ward left shortly after this decision was made, reportedly saying regarding the change: "It's a big mistake. Men rush home to watch sexy ladies. They do not want to see other men."
Rehearsals for this new group started in March 1976, and the group began appearing on Top of the Pops in May 1976. Whilst producers were aware of the switch to the new group, Bill Cotton, the then head of the light entertainment unit of which Top of the Pops was part, was not. This group started as a seven-piece with three men (Gavin Trace, Floyd Pearce and Phil Steggles) and four women (Menhenick, Gillespie, Patti Hammond and Lulu Cartwright). Corpe was not invited to join the new troupe. Trace, Pearce, Steggles and Cartwright joined following open auditions, Hammond, an established dancer, was invited to join to complete the "look" following a later individual audition. Colby viewed this gender-mixed group as an opportunity to develop more physical routines including lifts, more duets and generally not have the whole group at each performance.
However, by August the BBC had decided to terminate the group due to perceived unpopularity and being "...out of step with viewers". Their final appearance was in October 1976.
November 1976 to October 1981 – Legs and Co
The group created to replace Ruby Flipper was Legs & Co, reverting to an all-female line-up, and once more choreographed by Colby. Three of the six in the initial line-up (Menhenick, Cartwight and Hammond) were taken from Ruby Flipper. with Rosie Hetherington, Gill Clarke and Pauline Peters making up the six. Despite being an all-female group, on occasion one or more male dancers were brought in, notably Pearce several times.
During their run, the group covered the transition from Disco to Punk, Electronic and Modern Romantic music. Notably, they danced to two Sex Pistols tracks.
December 1981 to September 1983 – Zoo
By late 1981, Legs & Co (by this time Anita Chellamah had replaced Peters) had become more integrated into the studio audience, rather than performing set-piece routines, as a result of the 'party atmosphere' brought in by Michael Hurll. Also by this time Colby was particularly keen to work once more with male dancers; feeling it time for a change, Legs & Co's stint was ended, and a twenty-member dance troupe (ten male, ten female), named Zoo was created, with a set of performers drawn from the pool of twenty each week. Colby was now credited as "Dance Director". Three members of previous troupes, Menhenick, Corpe and Chellamah, made at least one appearance each during the Zoo period. The dancers now chose their own clothes, moving away from the synchronised appearance of previous troupes.
October 1983 to 2006 – After Zoo
By the early 1980s, record companies were offering the BBC free promotional videos, meaning dance troupes no longer fulfilled their original purpose. Zoo's run ended in 1983, and with it the use of dance troupes on Top of the Pops.
After the demise of Zoo, the audience took a more active role, often dancing in more prominent areas such as behind performing acts on the back of the stage, and on podiums. However, the show also employed cheerleaders to lead the dancing.
Dance Troupe chronology
Go-Jos' first performance: 19 November 1964 – Dancing to "Baby Love" by the Supremes
Pan's People first performance (three of the dancers, independently contracted): April 1968 – Dancing to "Young Girl" by Gary Puckett & the Union Gap or "Respect" by Aretha Franklin
Pan's People's first performance (as the six-piece group of early 1968): 30 May 1968 – Dancing to "U.S. Male" by Elvis Presley
Go-Jos' final performance: 27 June 1968 – Dancing to "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones
Pan's People's final performance: 29 April 1976 – Dancing to "Silver Star" by the Four Seasons
Ruby Flipper's first performance: 6 May 1976 – Dancing to "Can't Help Falling In Love" by the Stylistics
Ruby Flipper's final performance: 14 October 1976 – Dancing to "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry
Legs & Co's first performance (credited as Ruby Flipper & Legs & Co): 21 October 1976 – Dancing to "Queen of My Soul" by Average White Band
Legs & Co's first performance (credited as Legs & Co): 11 November 1976 – Dancing to "Spinning Rock Boogie" by Hank C. Burnette
Legs & Co's final performance: 29 October 1981 – Dancing to "Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)" by Haircut 100
Zoo's first performance: 5 November 1981 – Dancing to "Twilight" by E.L.O.
Zoo's final performance: 29 September 1983 – Dancing to "What I Got Is What You Need" by Unique
Theme music
For much of the 1960s, the show's theme music was an organ-based instrumental track, also called "Top of the Pops", by the Dave Davani Four.
1 January 1964 to ?: Instrumental percussion piece written by Johnnie Stewart and Harry Rabinowitz and performed by drummer Bobby Midgly.
1965 to 1966: Dave Davani Four's "Top of the Pops" with the Ladybirds on backing vocal harmonies. Originally the opening theme, this was later played as a closing theme from 1966 up until 1970.
20 January 1966 to 13 November 1969: Unknown instrumental guitar track.
27 November 1969 to 29 October 1970: Unknown brass track played over colour titles with a voiceover proclaiming, "Yes! It's number one! It's Top of the Pops!" There was no TOTP on 20 November 1969 due to the Apollo 12 Moon landing.
5 November 1970 to 14 July 1977: An instrumental version of the Led Zeppelin-Willie Dixon composition "Whole Lotta Love" performed by CCS members.
21 July 1977 to 29 May 1980: No opening theme tune; a contemporary chart song was played over the countdown stills. "Whole Lotta Love" featured only in Christmas editions, the 800th edition from 26 July 1979 and the voice-over only edition from 22 November 1979.
7 August 1980 to 2July 1981: No opening theme tune; the CCS version of "Whole Lotta Love" was played over some of the images of the featured artists and during the countdown stills in the Top 30 and Top 20 sections which were moved later on in the programme. From the edition of 7August 1980 to the edition of 2July 1981, "Whole Lotta Love" was heard only during the chart rundowns.
9 July 1981 to 27 March 1986: "Yellow Pearl" was commissioned as the new theme music. From May 1983 to July 1984, a re-recording of "Yellow Pearl" was played over the chart rundown and a pop rock version from August 1984 to March 1986.
3 April 1986 to 26 September 1991: "The Wizard", a composition by Paul Hardcastle.
3 October 1991 to 26 January 1995: "Now Get Out of That" composed by Tony Gibber.
2 February 1995 to 8 August 1997 (except 27 June & 25 July 1997 and 15 August 1997 to 24 April 1998) and 10 October 1997: the theme was a track called "Red Hot Pop" composed by Vince Clarke of Erasure.
27 June and 25 July 1997 then 15 August 1997 to 24 April 1998 (except 10 October 1997): No theme tune; the opening of the first song of the episode was played under the titles and a song from the top 20 was played under the chart rundown.
1 May 1998 to 21 November 2003: Updated, drum and bass version of "Whole Lotta Love" by Ben Chapman.
28 November 2003 to 30 July 2006 and until 2012 for TOTP2 and Xmas specials: A remixed version of "Now Get Out of That" by Tony Gibber.
25 December 2013 to present for Top of the Pops Christmas and New Year Specials: A mix of both the 1970s "Whole Lotta Love" theme and the 1998 remix.
Lost episodes
Due to the then standard practice of wiping videotape, the vast majority of the episodes from the programme's history prior to 1976 have been lost, including any official recording of the only live appearance by the Beatles.
Of the first 500 episodes (1964–73), only about 20 complete recordings remain in the BBC archives, and the majority of these are from 1969 onwards. The earliest surviving footage dates from 26 February 1964, and consists of performances by Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas and the Dave Clark Five. Some programmes exist only partially (largely performances that were either pre-recorded or re-used in later editions). There are also two examples of rehearsal footage, which are both from 1965, one which includes Alan Freeman introducing the Seekers, and another with Sandie Shaw rehearsing "Long Live Love"—both believed to be for the end-of-year Christmas Special. There are also cases of shows that exist only in their raw, unedited form. The oldest complete episode in existence was originally transmitted on Boxing Day in 1967 (only five complete recordings from the 1960s survive, two of which have mute presenter links). The most recent that is not held is dated 8September 1977. Most editions after this date exist in full, except a few 1981–85 episodes recorded live feature mute presenter links (These episodes were skipped on the BBC Four re-runs).
Some off-air recordings, made by fans at home with a microphone in front of the TV speaker, exist in varying quality, including the Jimi Hendrix Experience performing a live version of "Hey Joe" in December 1966.
Some segments of TOTP which were not retained do survive in some form owing to having been included in other programmes, either by the BBC itself or by foreign broadcasters. What was thought to be the only surviving footage of the Beatles on the programme, for instance, comes from its re-use in episode one of 1965 Doctor Who serial The Chase. Additionally a number of recordings are believed to exist in private collections. However, in 2019, an 11-second clip of the group's only live appearance on TOTP, from 16 June 1966, was unearthed – this was recorded by a viewer using an 8mm camera to film the live transmission on their television. Other individual but complete clips that have surfaced over recent years include The Hollies performing "Bus Stop", and The Jimi Hendrix Experience playing both "Purple Haze" and "The Wind Cries Mary".
Thanks to a deal between the BBC and German television network ZDF around the turn of the 1970s, several TOTP clips were sent over to be shown on Disco, a similar-styled chart show. This meant that performances from the likes of The Kinks (Apeman), The Who (The Seeker) and King Crimson (Cat Food) still exist in German archives.
Two complete episodes from 1967 were discovered in a private collection in 2009, having been recorded at home on an early available open reel to reel video recorder. Whilst the tapes suffered from major damage and degradation of both sound and picture quality, one show featured Pink Floyd with original leader Syd Barrett performing "See Emily Play", whilst the second contained Dave Davies singing his solo hit "Death of a Clown".
The programme was forced off the air for several weeks by industrial action by the Musicians' Union in both 1974 and 1980.
Spin-offs
Top of the Pops has a sister show called TOTP2 which uses archive footage from as early as the late 1960s. It began on 17 September 1994. The early series were narrated by Johnnie Walker, before Steve Wright took over as narrator. In summer 2004 BBC Two's controller, Roly Keating, announced that it was being "rested". Shortly after UKTV G2 began showing re-edited versions of earlier programmes with re-recorded dialogue. Finally after a two-year break TOTP2 returned to the BBC Two schedules for a new series on Saturday, 30 September 2006, in an evening timeslot. It was still narrated by Steve Wright and featured a mixture of performances from the TOTP archive and newly recorded performances. The first edition of this series featured new performances by Razorlight and Nelly Furtado recorded after the final episode of Top of the Pops. In 2009 Mark Radcliffe took over as narrator. TOTP2 continued to receive sporadic new episodes from this point onwards, most notably Christmas specials, until 2017 when the show ceased producing new episodes, though previous episodes are still repeated on both BBC Two and BBC Four.
Aired on BBC Radio 1 between the mid-1990s and late 2001 was Top of the Pops: The Radio Show which went out every Sunday at 3 pm just before the singles chart, and was presented by Jayne Middlemiss and Scott Mills. It later reappeared on the BBC World Service in May 2003 originally presented by Emma B, where it continues to be broadcast weekly in an hourly format, now presented by Kim Robson and produced by former BBC World Service producer Alan Rowett.
The defunct channel Play UK created two spin offs; TOTP+ Plus and TOTP@Play (2000–2001) (until mid-2000, this show was called The Phone Zone and was a spin-off from BBC Two music series The O-Zone). BBC Choice featured a show called TOTP The New Chart (5 December 1999 – 26 March 2000) and on BBC Two TOTP+ (8 October 2000 – 26 August 2001) which featured the TOTP @ Play studio and presenters. This is not to be confused with the UK Play version of the same name. A more recent spin-off (now ended) was Top of the Pops Saturday hosted originally by Fearne Cotton and Simon Grant, and its successor Top of the Pops Reloaded. This was shown on Saturday mornings on BBC One and featured competitions, star interviews, video reviews and some Top of the Pops performances. This was aimed at a younger audience and was part of the CBBC Saturday morning line-up. This was to rival CD:UK at the same time on ITV.
Send-ups
A number of performers have sent up the format in various ways. This was often by performers who disliked the mime format of the show, as a protest against this rather than simply refusing to appear.
When Fairport Convention appeared to promote their 1969 hit "Si Tu Dois Partir", drummer Dave Mattacks wore a T-shirt printed "MIMING".
When the Smiths appeared on the show to perform their single "This Charming Man", lead singer Morrissey was unhappy about having to lip-sync and so held a bunch of gladioli on the stage instead of a microphone.
While performing their 1982 hit "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)", the band Dexy's Midnight Runners were seen performing in front of a projection of the darts player with a similar sounding name (Jocky Wilson instead of soul singer Jackie Wilson). Dexy's frontman Kevin Rowland later said in an interview that the use of the Jocky Wilson picture was his idea and not a mistake by the programme makers as is sometimes stated.
A performance of "Marguerita Time" by Status Quo in early 1984 in which a clearly-refreshed Rick Parfitt walks directly into the drum kit at the end of the song, taking the drummer and whole kit with him as the others continue miming
Frankie Goes To Hollywood performed one of the many 1984 performances of their hit "Two Tribes" with bassist Mark O'Toole playing drums whilst drummer Ped Gill played bass.
When Oasis mimed to "Whatever" on Top of the Pops in 1994, one of the cello players from the symphony was replaced by rhythm guitarist Bonehead, who clearly had no idea how the instrument should be played. Towards the end of the song, he gave up the pretence and started using the bow to conduct. A woman plays his rhythm guitar.
Singer Les Gray of Mud went on stage to perform with a ventriloquist dummy during the performance of "Lonely This Christmas" and had the dummy lip-synch to the voice-over in the middle of the song.
During Mott the Hoople's performance of their single "Roll Away the Stone" in 1973, drummer Dale Griffin plays with oversized drumsticks.
EMF appeared on the show with one of the guitarists strumming along while wearing boxing gloves.
At the end of The Who's performance of "5:15" the band proceeded to destroy their instruments despite the fact the backing track was still playing.
In Blur's performance of "Charmless Man" in 1996, Dave Rowntree decided to play with oversized drumsticks, while Graham Coxon played a mini guitar.
In Green Day's first Top of the Pops appearance in 1994, the band played the song "Welcome to Paradise". Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong wore an otherwise plain white T-shirt with the phrase "Who am I fooling anyway?" handwritten on it, most likely a reference to his own miming during the performance. He could also be seen not playing his guitar during the instrumental bridge in the song.
The performance of "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart and the Faces featured John Peel miming on mandolin. Near the end of the song, Rod and the Faces begin to kick around a football. This is despite the fact that the music can be still heard playing in the background.
The Cure were known for their abhorrence for miming their songs whilst on TOTP and on several occasions made it obvious they were not playing their parts – using such stunts as playing guitar left-handed and miming very badly out of synch.
Ambient house group the Orb sat and played chess while an edited version of their 39:57-minute single "Blue Room" played in the background.
Depeche Mode's performance of "Barrel of a Gun" in 1997 featured Dutch photographer and director Anton Corbijn who mimed playing the drums. Also Tim Simenon (who produced the album the song appeared on) mimed playing keyboards along with Andy Fletcher.
When the Cuban Boys performed "Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia" at the end of 1999, a performance which was reportedly unbroadcast, the band wearing labcoats, covered in cobwebs.
International versions
Europe
The TOTP format was sold to RTL in Germany in the 1990s, and aired on Saturday afternoons. It was very successful for a long time, with a compilation album series and magazine. However, in 2006 it was announced that the German show would be ending. The Italian version (first broadcast on Rai 2 and later on Italia 1) also ended in 2006. In February 2010 the show returned on Rai 2, and was broadcast for two seasons before being cancelled again in October 2011. The French version of the show ended by September 2006 on France 2.
In the Netherlands, TopPop was broadcast by AVRO 1970–1988, and a version of the show continued to run on BNN until the end of December 2006. BBC Prime used to broadcast re-edited episodes of the BBC version, the weekend after it was transmitted in the UK. Ireland began transmitting Top of the Pops in November 1978 on RTÉ2. This was the UK version being transmitted at the same time as on BBC. The broadcasts ceased in late 1993.
United States
Top of the Pops had short-lived fame in the United States. In October 1987, the CBS television network decided to try an American version of the show. It was hosted by Nia Peeples and even showed performances from the BBC version of the programme (and vice versa). The show was presented on late Friday nights as part of CBS Late Night, and lasted almost half a year.
In 2002, BBC America presented the BBC version of Top of the Pops as part of their weekend schedule. The network would get the episodes one week after they were transmitted in the UK. BBC America then tinkered with the show by cutting a few minutes out of each show and moving it to a weekday time slot.
On 23 January 2006, Lou Pearlman made a deal to bring Top of the Pops back to the airwaves in the United States. It was expected to be similar to the 1987 version, but it would also utilise the Billboard magazine music charts, most notably the Hot 100 chart. It was supposed to be planned for a possible 2006 or 2007 launch, but with several lawsuits against Lou and his companies (which resulted in his conviction in 2008), as well as the cancellation of the UK version, the proposed US project never went forward. On 19 August 2006, VH1 aired the UK series' final episode.
The United States had its own similar series, American Bandstand, which aired nationally on ABC from 1957 to 1987 (although it would continue in first-run syndication until 1988 and end its run on USA in 1989). Similar series also included Soul Train (1970–2006, featuring R&B artists), Club MTV (1986–92, featuring dance music acts; hosted by Downtown Julie Brown, an alumnus of TOTP as part of the show's last dance troupe Zoo) and Solid Gold (1980–88; like the early TOTP, it also used dance troupes).
Canada
Canada's version was Electric Circus (1988–2003) on MuchMusic, which was also seen in the USA through MuchMusic USA. It had a national chart (mostly of dance music and some pop) as well as live performances, and was based on a local late '70s programme in Toronto called CITY-TV Boogie.
New Zealand
The Top of the Pops brand has also been exported to New Zealand. Although the British show has been broadcast intermittently in New Zealand, the country historically relied on music video-based shows to demonstrate its own Top 20, as the major international acts, who dominated the local charts, considered New Zealand too small and remote to visit regularly. This changed to an extent in 2002, when the New Zealand government suggested a voluntary New Zealand music quota on radio (essentially a threat that if the stations did not impose a quota themselves then one would be imposed on them). The amount of local music played on radio stations increased, as did the number of local songs in the top 20. Therefore, a new local version of Top of the Pops became feasible for the first time, and the show was commissioned by Television New Zealand. The show was executive produced by David Rose, managing director and owner of Satellite Media, and began airing in early 2004 with host Alex Behan. The hour-long show (as opposed to the 30-minute UK version) which was broadcast at 5 pm on Saturdays on TV2 contained a mixture of performances recorded locally on a sound stage in the Auckland CBD, as well as performances from the international versions of the show. The New Zealand Top 20 singles and Top 10 albums charts are also featured. Alex Behan stayed as host for two years before Bede Skinner took over. Despite having a sizeable fan base, in 2006 TVNZ announced that Top of the Pops had been axed.
Free-to-air music channel C4 then picked up the UK version of Top of the Pops and aired it on Saturdays at 8 pm with a repeat screening on Thursdays. However, since the weekly UK version was axed itself, this arrangement also ended.
Africa, Asia and the Middle East
An edited version of the UK show was shown on BBC Prime, the weekend after UK transmission.
In addition, a licensed version was shown on the United Arab Emirates-based MBC2 television channel. This version consisted of parts of the UK version, including the Top 10 charts, as well as live performances by Arabic pop singers.
Latin America
A complete version of the UK show was shown on People+Arts, two weeks after the UK transmission.
Brazilian network TV Globo aired a loosely based version of the original format in 2018, labeled as 'Só Toca Top', hosted by singer Luan Santana and actress Fernanda Souza.
Compilation albums
A number of compilation albums using the Top of the Pops brand have been issued over the years. The first one to reach the charts was BBC TV's The Best of Top of the Pops on the Super Beeb record label in 1975, which reached number 21 and in 1986 the BBC released The Wizard by Paul Hardcastle (the 1986-1990 Top of The Pops theme tune) on Vinyl under the BBC Records and Tapes banner.
Starting in 1968 and carrying on through the 1970s a rival series of Top of the Pops albums were produced, however these had no connection with the television series except for its name. They were a series of budget cover albums of current chart hits recorded by anonymous session singers and musicians released on the Hallmark record label. They had initially reached the charts but were later disallowed due to a change in the criteria for entering the charts. These albums continued to be produced until the early 1980s, when the advent of compilation albums featuring the original versions of hits, such as the Now That's What I Call Music! series, led to a steep decline in their popularity.
In the 1990s, the BBC Top of the Pops brand was again licensed for use in a tie-in compilation series. Starting in 1995 with Sony Music's Columbia Records label, these double disc collections moved to the special marketing arm of PolyGram / Universal Music Group TV, before becoming a sister brand of the Now That's What I Call Music! range in the EMI / Virgin / Universal joint venture.
Similarly to the roles of Top of the Pops on BBC One and BBC Two in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the compilation albums range featured current hits for the main series and classic hits (such as '70s Rock) for the "Top of the Pops 2" spin-offs.
The Top of the Pops brand has now been licensed by EMI who released a compilation series in 2007–08, with one CD for each year that Top of the Pops was running. The boxset for the entire series of 43 discs was released 7July 2008. A podcast supporting the release of the boxset featuring interviews with Mark Goodier, Miles Leonard, Malcolm McLaren and David Hepworth is available.
Number One in the Compilation Charts
These albums in the series reached No. 1:
Top of the Pops 1 (Columbia Records, 1995)
Top of the Pops '99 – Volume 2 (Universal Music TV, 1999)
Top of the Pops 2000 – Volume Two (BBC Music / Universal Music TV, 2000)
Top of the Pops magazine
Top of the Pops magazine has been running since February 1995, and filled the void in the BBC magazine portfolio where Number One magazine used to be. It began much in the mould of Q magazine, then changed its editorial policy to directly compete with popular teen celebrity magazines such as Smash Hits and Big, with free sticker giveaways replacing Brett Anderson covers.
A July 1996 feature on the Spice Girls coined the famous "Spice" nicknames for each member (Baby, Ginger, Posh, Scary and Sporty) that stayed with them throughout their career as a group and beyond.
The BBC announced that the magazine would continue in publication despite the end of the television series, and is still running.
An earlier Top of the Pops magazine appeared briefly in the mid-1970s. Mud drummer Dave Mount sat reading an edition throughout a 1975 appearance on the show.
In popular culture
The Number 6 track of the Kinks' 1970 eighth studio album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One is called "Top of the Pops" and narrates the path to stardom by reaching Number1 in the music charts.
Benny Hill did a parody of Top of the Pops in January 1971 called "Top of the Tops". It featured satires of many music acts at the time as well as impersonations of both Jimmy Savile and Tony Blackburn.
The Scottish punk band the Rezillos lampooned the show in their song "Top of the Pops". The band performed the song on the programme twice when it entered the charts in 1978.
In 1984, British Rail HST power car 43002 was named Top of the Pops, by Jimmy Savile. This followed an edition which was broadcast live on a train, which 43002 was one of the power cars for. The nameplates were removed in 1989.
The Smashie and Nicey 1994 TV special Smashie and Nicey: The End of an Era featured doctored and recreated footage of the two fictional DJs hosting a montage of 1970s editions of Top of the Pops, including a "Black music" edition, which the pair presented in Blackface.
In the opening credits of the Spice Girls' 1997 feature film Spiceworld: The Movie, the girls perform their hit single "Too Much" on a fictional episode of the show. They did also perform it on the show in real life when it became their second Christmas number one in the UK that same year.
A 2001 episode of Tweenies featured a parody of Top of the Pops, complete with Max imitating Jimmy Savile. The episode was unintententionally repeated in January 2013, and received 216 complaints.
Licensing
In May 2006, following a special Red Hot Chili Peppers concert recorded in the car park of BBC Television Centre, Hammersmith and Fulham Council (which governs the area the centre is located) informed the BBC that it lacked the necessary public entertainment license (as required by the Licensing Act 2003). Until the BBC could obtain the license, BBC staff stood-in as audience members for live music programmes.
DVDs
In 2004 there was a DVD released called Top of the Pops 40th Anniversary 1964–2004 DVD. It features live performances, containing one song for each year, except 1966. (Two tracks from 1965 are featured instead). Also included as extras are seven opening titles, most notably the one with the flying coloured LP's from 1981. This title sequence had Phil Lynott's song "Yellow Pearl" as the theme. The 1986 and 1989 titles are also featured, with Paul Hardcastle's hit "The Wizard" as the theme. This DVD was to celebrate 40 years since the show started.
There was also a DVD quiz released in 2007 called The Essential Music Quiz. There was also a DVD in 2001 called Summer 2001, a sister DVD to the album of the same name.
See also
Alright Now
The Old Grey Whistle Test
Ready Steady Go!
Revolver (TV series)
Top of the Box
The Tube (TV series)
References
Further reading
Blacknell, Steve. The Story of Top of the Pops. Wellingborough, Northants: Patrick Stephens, 1985
Gittens, Ian. Top Of The Pops: Mishaps, Miming and Music: True Adventures of TV's No.1 Pop Show. London: BBC, 2007
Seaton, Pete with Richard Down. The Kaleidoscope British Television Music & Variety Guide II: Top Pop: 1964–2006. Dudley: Kaleidoscope Publishing, 2007
Simpson, Jeff. Top of the Pops: 1964–2002: it's still number one, its Top of the Pops! London: BBC, 2002
External links
1964 British television series debuts
British music television shows
1964 in British music
1960s British music television series
1970s British music television series
1980s British music television series
1990s British music television series
2000s British music television series
2010s British music television series
1960s in British music
1970s in British music
1980s in British music
1990s in British music
2000s in British music
2010s in British music
BBC Television shows
CBS original programming
Television series by CBS Studios
Television series by BBC Studios
Lost BBC episodes
Pop music television series
British music chart television shows
English-language television shows
Jimmy Savile
British television series revived after cancellation
Television shows shot at BBC Elstree Centre | true | [
"Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, in Spanish Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio (Book of the Examples of Count Lucanor and of Patronio), also commonly known as El Conde Lucanor, Libro de Patronio, or Libro de los ejemplos (original Old Castilian: Libro de los enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor et de Patronio), is one of the earliest works of prose in Castilian Spanish. It was first written in 1335.\n\nThe book is divided into four parts. The first and most well-known part is a series of 51 short stories (some no more than a page or two) drawn from various sources, such as Aesop and other classical writers, and Arabic folktales.\n\nTales of Count Lucanor was first printed in 1575 when it was published at Seville under the auspices of Argote de Molina. It was again printed at Madrid in 1642, after which it lay forgotten for nearly two centuries.\n\nPurpose and structure\n\nA didactic, moralistic purpose, which would color so much of the Spanish literature to follow (see Novela picaresca), is the mark of this book. Count Lucanor engages in conversation with his advisor Patronio, putting to him a problem (\"Some man has made me a proposition...\" or \"I fear that such and such person intends to...\") and asking for advice. Patronio responds always with the greatest humility, claiming not to wish to offer advice to so illustrious a person as the Count, but offering to tell him a story of which the Count's problem reminds him. (Thus, the stories are \"examples\" [ejemplos] of wise action.) At the end he advises the Count to do as the protagonist of his story did.\n\nEach chapter ends in more or less the same way, with slight variations on: \"And this pleased the Count greatly and he did just so, and found it well. And Don Johán (Juan) saw that this example was very good, and had it written in this book, and composed the following verses.\" A rhymed couplet closes, giving the moral of the story.\n\nOrigin of stories and influence on later literature\nMany of the stories written in the book are the first examples written in a modern European language of various stories, which many other writers would use in the proceeding centuries. Many of the stories he included were themselves derived from other stories, coming from western and Arab sources.\n\nShakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew has the basic elements of Tale 35, \"What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\".\n\nTale 32, \"What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth\" tells the story that Hans Christian Andersen made popular as The Emperor's New Clothes.\n\nStory 7, \"What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana\", a version of Aesop's The Milkmaid and Her Pail, was claimed by Max Müller to originate in the Hindu cycle Panchatantra.\n\nTale 2, \"What happened to a good Man and his Son, leading a beast to market,\" is the familiar fable The miller, his son and the donkey.\n\nIn 2016, Baroque Decay released a game under the name \"The Count Lucanor\". As well as some protagonists' names, certain events from the books inspired past events in the game.\n\nThe stories\n\nThe book opens with a prologue which introduces the characters of the Count and Patronio. The titles in the following list are those given in Keller and Keating's 1977 translation into English. James York's 1868 translation into English gives a significantly different ordering of the stories and omits the fifty-first.\n\n What Happened to a King and His Favorite \n What Happened to a Good Man and His Son \n How King Richard of England Leapt into the Sea against the Moors\n What a Genoese Said to His Soul When He Was about to Die \n What Happened to a Fox and a Crow Who Had a Piece of Cheese in His Beak\n How the Swallow Warned the Other Birds When She Saw Flax Being Sown \n What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana \n What Happened to a Man Whose Liver Had to Be Washed \n What Happened to Two Horses Which Were Thrown to the Lion \n What Happened to a Man Who on Account of Poverty and Lack of Other Food Was Eating Bitter Lentils \n What Happened to a Dean of Santiago de Compostela and Don Yllán, the Grand Master of Toledo\n What Happened to the Fox and the Rooster \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Hunting Partridges \n The Miracle of Saint Dominick When He Preached against the Usurer \n What Happened to Lorenzo Suárez at the Siege of Seville \n The Reply that count Fernán González Gave to His Relative Núño Laynes \n What Happened to a Very Hungry Man Who Was Half-heartedly Invited to Dinner \n What Happened to Pero Meléndez de Valdés When He Broke His Leg \n What Happened to the Crows and the Owls \n What Happened to a King for Whom a Man Promised to Perform Alchemy \n What Happened to a Young King and a Philosopher to Whom his Father Commended Him \n What Happened to the Lion and the Bull \n How the Ants Provide for Themselves \n What Happened to the King Who Wanted to Test His Three Sons \n What Happened to the Count of Provence and How He Was Freed from Prison by the Advice of Saladin\n What Happened to the Tree of Lies \n What Happened to an Emperor and to Don Alvarfáñez Minaya and Their Wives \n What Happened in Granada to Don Lorenzo Suárez Gallinato When He Beheaded the Renegade Chaplain \n What Happened to a Fox Who Lay down in the Street to Play Dead \n What Happened to King Abenabet of Seville and Ramayquía His Wife \n How a Cardinal Judged between the Canons of Paris and the Friars Minor \n What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth \n What Happened to Don Juan Manuel's Saker Falcon and an Eagle and a Heron \n What Happened to a Blind Man Who Was Leading Another \n What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\n What Happened to a Merchant When He Found His Son and His Wife Sleeping Together \n What Happened to Count Fernán González with His Men after He Had Won the Battle of Hacinas \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Loaded down with Precious Stones and Drowned in the River \n What Happened to a Man and a Swallow and a Sparrow \n Why the Seneschal of Carcassonne Lost His Soul \n What Happened to a King of Córdova Named Al-Haquem \n What Happened to a Woman of Sham Piety \n What Happened to Good and Evil and the Wise Man and the Madman \n What Happened to Don Pero Núñez the Loyal, to Don Ruy González de Zavallos, and to Don Gutier Roiz de Blaguiello with Don Rodrigo the Generous \n What Happened to a Man Who Became the Devil's Friend and Vassal \n What Happened to a Philosopher who by Accident Went down a Street Where Prostitutes Lived \n What Befell a Moor and His Sister Who Pretended That She Was Timid \n What Happened to a Man Who Tested His Friends \n What Happened to the Man Whom They Cast out Naked on an Island When They Took away from Him the Kingdom He Ruled \n What Happened to Saladin and a Lady, the Wife of a Knight Who Was His Vassal \n What Happened to a Christian King Who Was Very Powerful and Haughty\n\nReferences\n\nNotes\n\nBibliography\n\n Sturm, Harlan\n\n Wacks, David\n\nExternal links\n\nThe Internet Archive provides free access to the 1868 translation by James York.\nJSTOR has the to the 1977 translation by Keller and Keating.\nSelections in English and Spanish (pedagogical edition) with introduction, notes, and bibliography in Open Iberia/América (open access teaching anthology)\n\n14th-century books\nSpanish literature\n1335 books",
"\"What Happened to Us\" is a song by Australian recording artist Jessica Mauboy, featuring English recording artist Jay Sean. It was written by Sean, Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim and Israel Cruz. \"What Happened to Us\" was leaked online in October 2010, and was released on 10 March 2011, as the third single from Mauboy's second studio album, Get 'Em Girls (2010). The song received positive reviews from critics.\n\nA remix of \"What Happened to Us\" made by production team OFM, was released on 11 April 2011. A different version of the song which features Stan Walker, was released on 29 May 2011. \"What Happened to Us\" charted on the ARIA Singles Chart at number 14 and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). An accompanying music video was directed by Mark Alston, and reminisces on a former relationship between Mauboy and Sean.\n\nProduction and release\n\n\"What Happened to Us\" was written by Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz and Jay Sean. It was produced by Skaller, Cruz, Rohaim and Bobby Bass. The song uses C, D, and B minor chords in the chorus. \"What Happened to Us\" was sent to contemporary hit radio in Australia on 14 February 2011. The cover art for the song was revealed on 22 February on Mauboy's official Facebook page. A CD release was available for purchase via her official website on 10 March, for one week only. It was released digitally the following day.\n\nReception\nMajhid Heath from ABC Online Indigenous called the song a \"Jordin Sparks-esque duet\", and wrote that it \"has a nice innocence to it that rings true to the experience of losing a first love.\" Chris Urankar from Nine to Five wrote that it as a \"mid-tempo duet ballad\" which signifies Mauboy's strength as a global player. On 21 March 2011, \"What Happened to Us\" debuted at number 30 on the ARIA Singles Chart, and peaked at number 14 the following week. The song was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), for selling 70,000 copies. \"What Happened to Us\" spent a total of ten weeks in the ARIA top fifty.\n\nMusic video\n\nBackground\nThe music video for the song was shot in the Elizabeth Bay House in Sydney on 26 November 2010. The video was shot during Sean's visit to Australia for the Summerbeatz tour. During an interview with The Daily Telegraph while on the set of the video, Sean said \"the song is sick! ... Jessica's voice is amazing and we're shooting [the video] in this ridiculously beautiful mansion overlooking the harbour.\" The video was directed by Mark Alston, who had previously directed the video for Mauboy's single \"Let Me Be Me\" (2009). It premiered on YouTube on 10 February 2011.\n\nSynopsis and reception\nThe video begins showing Mauboy who appears to be sitting on a yellow antique couch in a mansion, wearing a purple dress. As the video progresses, scenes of memories are displayed of Mauboy and her love interest, played by Sean, spending time there previously. It then cuts to the scenes where Sean appears in the main entrance room of the mansion. The final scene shows Mauboy outdoors in a gold dress, surrounded by green grass and trees. She is later joined by Sean who appears in a black suit and a white shirt, and together they sing the chorus of the song to each other. David Lim of Feed Limmy wrote that the video is \"easily the best thing our R&B princess has committed to film – ever\" and praised the \"mansion and wondrous interior décor\". He also commended Mauboy for choosing Australian talent to direct the video instead of American directors, which she had used for her previous two music videos. Since its release, the video has received over two million views on Vevo.\n\nLive performances\nMauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" live for the first time during her YouTube Live Sessions program on 4 December 2010. She also appeared on Adam Hills in Gordon Street Tonight on 23 February 2011 for an interview and later performed the song. On 15 March 2011, Mauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Sunrise. She also performed the song with Stan Walker during the Australian leg of Chris Brown's F.A.M.E. Tour in April 2011. Mauboy and Walker later performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Dancing with the Stars Australia on 29 May 2011. From November 2013 to February 2014, \"What Happened to Us\" was part of the set list of the To the End of the Earth Tour, Mauboy's second headlining tour of Australia, with Nathaniel Willemse singing Sean's part.\n\nTrack listing\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Just Witness Remix) – 3:45\n\nCD single\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Album Version) – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:39\n\nDigital download – Remix\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:38\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Stan Walker – 3:20\n\nPersonnel\nSongwriting – Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz, Jay Sean\nProduction – Jeremy Skaller, Bobby Bass\nAdditional production – Israel Cruz, Khaled Rohaim\nLead vocals – Jessica Mauboy, Jay Sean\nMixing – Phil Tan\nAdditional mixing – Damien Lewis\nMastering – Tom Coyne \nSource:\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly chart\n\nYear-end chart\n\nCertification\n\nRadio dates and release history\n\nReferences\n\n2010 songs\n2011 singles\nJessica Mauboy songs\nJay Sean songs\nSongs written by Billy Steinberg\nSongs written by Jay Sean\nSongs written by Josh Alexander\nSongs written by Israel Cruz\nVocal duets\nSony Music Australia singles\nSongs written by Khaled Rohaim"
] |
[
"Top of the Pops",
"1994-1997",
"What happened in 1994?",
"By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone"
] | C_4ba6e4aafe884f399b648ba4e20a983e_0 | What was year zero? | 2 | What was "Year Zero"? | Top of the Pops | By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone and the arrival of Ric Blaxill as producer in February 1994 signalled a return to presentation from established Radio 1 DJs Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and Bruno Brookes. Blaxill expanded the use of "via satellite" performances, taking the acts out of studios and concert halls and setting them against landmark backdrops. As a consequence, Bon Jovi performed Always from Niagara Falls and Celine Dion beamed in Think Twice from Miami Beach. The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced (the logo having first been introduced on the new programme Top of the Pops 2 some months previous), coinciding with the introduction of a new set. Blaxill also increasingly experimented with handing presenting duties to celebrities, commonly contemporary comedians and pop stars who were not in the charts at that time. In an attempt to keep the links between acts as fresh as the performances themselves, the so-called "golden mic" was used by, amongst others, Kylie Minogue, Meat Loaf, Des Lynam, Chris Eubank, Damon Albarn, Harry Hill, Jack Dee, Lulu and Jarvis Cocker. Radio 1 DJs still presented occasionally, notably Lisa I'Anson, Steve Lamacq, Jo Whiley and Chris Evans. TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996, originally at 7 pm, but then shifted to 7.30 pm, a change which placed the programme up against the soap opera Coronation Street on ITV. This began a major decline in audience figures as fans were forced to choose between Top of the Pops and an episode of the soap. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Top of the Pops (TOTP) is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly between 1January 1964 and 30 July 2006. Top of the Pops was the world's longest running weekly music show. For most of its history, it was broadcast on Thursday evenings on BBC One. Each weekly show consisted of performances from some of that week's best-selling popular music records, usually excluding any tracks moving down the chart, including a rundown of that week's singles chart. This was originally the Top 20, though this varied throughout the show's history. The Official Charts Company states "performing on the show was considered an honour, and it pulled in just about every major player."
Dusty Springfield’s "I Only Want to Be with You" was the first song performed on TOTP, while The Rolling Stones were the first band to perform with "I Wanna Be Your Man". Snow Patrol were the last act to play live on the weekly show when they performed their single "Chasing Cars". In addition to the weekly show there was a special edition of TOTP on Christmas Day (and usually, until 1984, a second edition a few days after Christmas), featuring some of the best-selling singles of the year and the Christmas Number 1. Although the weekly show was cancelled in 2006, the Christmas special has continued. End-of-year round-up editions have also been broadcast on BBC1 on or around New Year's Eve, albeit largely featuring the same acts and tracks as the Christmas Day shows. It also survives as Top of the Pops 2, which began in 1994 and features vintage performances from the Top of the Pops archives. Though TOTP2 ceased producing new episodes since 2017, repeats of older episodes are still shown.
The show has seen seminal performances over its history. The March 1971 TOTP appearance of T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan wearing glitter and satins as he performed "Hot Love" is often seen as the inception of glam rock, and David Bowie's performance of "Starman" inspired future musicians. In the 1990s, the show's format was sold to several foreign broadcasters in the form of a franchise package, and at one point various versions of the show were shown in more than 120 countries. Editions of the programme from 1976 onwards started being repeated on BBC Four in 2011 and are aired on most Friday evenings – as of January 2022 the repeat run has reached 1992. Episodes featuring disgraced presenters and artists such as Jonathan King, Jimmy Savile (who opened the show with its familiar slogan, 'It's Number One, it's Top of the Pops'), Dave Lee Travis, Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter, and R. Kelly are no longer repeated.
History
Johnnie Stewart devised the rules which governed how the show would operate: the programme would always end with the number one record, which was the only record that could appear in consecutive weeks. The show would include the highest new entry and (if not featured in the previous week) the highest climber on the charts, and omit any song going down in the chart. Tracks could be featured in consecutive weeks in different formats. For example, if a song was played over the chart countdown or the closing credits, then it was acceptable for the act to appear in the studio the following week.
These rules were sometimes interpreted flexibly and were more formally relaxed from 1997 when records descending the charts were featured more regularly, possibly as a response to the changing nature of the Top 40 (in the late 1990s and early 2000s climbers in the charts were a rarity, with almost all singles peaking at their debut position).
When the programme's format changed in November 2003, it concentrated increasingly on the top 10. Later, during the BBC Two era, the top 20 was regarded as the main cut-off point, with the exception made for up and coming bands below the top 20. Singles from below the top 40 (within the top 75) were shown if the band were up and coming or had a strong selling album. If a single being performed was below the top 40, just the words "New Entry" were shown and not the chart position.
The show was originally intended to run for only a few programmes but lasted over 42 years, reaching landmark episodes of 500, 1,000, 1,500 and 2,000 in the years 1973, 1983, 1992 and 2002 respectively.
The first show
Top of the Pops was first broadcast on Wednesday, 1January 1964 at 6:35 pm. It was produced in Studio A at Dickenson Road Studios in Rusholme, Manchester.
DJ Jimmy Savile presented the first show live from the Manchester studio (with a brief link to Alan Freeman in London to preview the following week's programme), which featured (in order) Dusty Springfield with "I Only Want to Be with You", the Rolling Stones with "I Wanna Be Your Man", the Dave Clark Five with "Glad All Over", the Hollies with "Stay", the Swinging Blue Jeans with "Hippy Hippy Shake" and the Beatles with "I Want to Hold Your Hand", that week's number one – throughout its history, the programme proper always (with very few exceptions) finished with the best-selling single of the week, although there often was a separate play-out track over the end credits.
1960s and 1970s
Later in 1964, the broadcast time was moved to one hour later, at 7:35 pm, and the show moved from Wednesdays to what became its regular Thursday slot. Additionally its length was extended by 5minutes to 30 minutes.
For the first three years Alan Freeman, David Jacobs, Pete Murray and Jimmy Savile rotated presenting duties, with the following week's presenter also appearing at the end of each show, although this practice ceased from October 1964 onwards. Neville Wortman filled in as director/producer on Johnnie Stewart's holiday break.
In the first few editions, Denise Sampey was the "disc girl", who would be seen to put the record on a turntable before the next act played their track. However, a Mancunian model, Samantha Juste, became the regular disc girl after a few episodes, a role she performed until 1967.
Initially acts performing on the show would mime (lip-sync) to the commercially released record, but in 1966 after discussions with the Musicians' Union, miming was banned. After a few weeks during which some bands' attempts to play as well as on their records were somewhat lacking, a compromise was reached whereby a specially recorded backing track was permitted, as long as all the musicians on the track were present in the studio. As a result, Stewart hired Johnny Pearson to conduct an in-studio orchestra to provide musical backing on select performances, beginning with the 4 August 1966 edition. Later, vocal group The Ladybirds began providing vocal backing with the orchestra.
With the birth of BBC Radio 1 in 1967, new Radio1 DJs were added to the roster – Stuart Henry, Emperor Rosko, Simon Dee and Kenny Everett.
Local photographer Harry Goodwin was hired to provide shots of non-appearing artists, and also to provide backdrops for the chart run-down. He continued in the role until 1973.
After two years at the Manchester Dickenson Road Studios, the show moved to London (considered to be better located for bands to appear), initially for six months at BBC TV Centre Studio2 and then to the larger Studio G at BBC Lime Grove Studios in mid-1966 to provide space for the Top of the Pops Orchestra, which was introduced at this time to provide live instrumentation on some performances (previously, acts had generally mimed to the records). In November 1969, with the introduction of colour, the show returned to BBC TV Centre, where it stayed until 1991, when it moved to Elstree Studios Studio C.
For a while in the early 1970s, non-chart songs were played on a more regular basis, to reflect the perceived growing importance of album sales; there was an album slot featuring three songs from a new LP, as well as a New Release spot and a feature of a new act, dubbed Tip for the Top. These features were dropped after a while, although the programme continued to feature new releases on a regular basis for the rest of the decade.
During its heyday, it attracted 15 million viewers each week. The peak TV audience of 19 million was recorded in 1979, during the ITV strike, with only BBC1 and BBC2 on air.
Christmas Top of the Pops
A year-end Christmas show featuring a review of the year's biggest hits was inaugurated on 24 December 1964, and has continued every year since. From 1965 onward, the special edition was broadcast on Christmas Day (although not in 1966) and from the same year, a second edition was broadcast in the days after Christmas, varying depending on the schedule, but initially regularly on 26 December. The first was shown on 26 December 1965. In 1973, there was just one show, airing on Christmas Day. In place of the traditional second show, Jimmy Savile hosted a look back at the first 10 years of TOTP, broadcast on 27 December. In 1975, the first of the two shows was broadcast prior to Christmas Day, airing on 23 December, followed by the traditional Christmas Day show two days later.
The 1978 Christmas Day show was disrupted due to industrial action at the BBC, requiring a change in format to the broadcast. The first show, due to be screened on 21 December, was not shown at all because BBC1 was off the air. For Christmas Day, Noel Edmonds (presenting his last ever edition of TOTP) hosted the show from the 'TOTP Production Office' with clips taken from various editions of the show broadcast during the year and new studio footage performed without an audience. The format was slightly tweaked for the Christmas Day edition in 1981, with the Radio1 DJs choosing their favourite tracks of the year and the following edition on 31 December featuring the year's number1 hits.
The second programme was discontinued after 1984.
1980s
The year 1980 marked major production changes to Top of the Pops and a hiatus forced by industrial action. Steve Wright made his presenting debut on 7 February 1980. Towards the end of February 1980, facing a £40 million budget deficit, the BBC laid off five orchestras as part of £130 million in cuts. The budget cuts led to a Musicians' Union strike that suspended operations of all 11 BBC orchestras and performances of live music on the BBC; Top of the Pops went out of production between 29 May and 7 August 1980. During the Musicians' Union strike, BBC1 showed repeats of Are You Being Served? in the regular Top of the Pops Thursday night time slot.
Following the strike, Nash was replaced as executive producer by Michael Hurll, who introduced more of a "party" atmosphere to the show, with performances often accompanied by balloons and cheerleaders, and more audible audience noise and cheering. Hurll also laid off the orchestra, as the Musicians' Union was loosening enforcement of the 1966 miming ban.
Guest co-presenters and a music news feature were introduced for a short while, but had ceased by the end of 1980. The chart rundown was split into three sections in the middle of the programme, with the final Top 10 section initially featuring clips of the songs' videos, although this became rarer over the next few years.
An occasional feature showing the American music scene with Jonathan King was introduced in November 1981, and ran every few weeks until February 1985. In January 1985, a Breakers section, featuring short video clips of new tracks in the lower end of the Top 40, was introduced, and this continued for most weeks until March 1994.
Although the programme had been broadcast live in its early editions, it had been recorded on the day before transmission for many years. However, from May 1981, the show was sometimes broadcast live for a few editions each year, and this practice continued on an occasional basis (often in the week of a bank holiday, when the release of the new chart was delayed, and for some special editions) for the rest of the decade.
The programme moved in September 1985 to a new regular half-hour timeslot of 7 pm on Thursdays, where it would remain until June 1996.
The end of 1988 was marked by a special 70-minute edition of the show broadcast on 31 December 1988, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first show. The pre-recorded programme featured the return of the original four presenters (Savile, Freeman, Murray and Jacobs) as well as numerous presenters from the show's history, anchored by Paul Gambaccini and Mike Read. Numerous clips from the history of the show were included in between acts performing in the studio, which included Cliff Richard, Engelbert Humperdinck, Lulu, the Four Tops, David Essex, Mud, Status Quo, Shakin' Stevens, the Tremeloes and from the very first edition, the Swinging Blue Jeans. Sandie Shaw, the Pet Shop Boys and Wet Wet Wet were billed in the Radio Times to appear, but none featured in the show other than Shaw in compilation clips.
Paul Ciani took over as producer in 1988. The following year, in an attempt to fit more songs in the allocated half-hour, he restricted the duration of studio performances to three minutes, and videos to two minutes, a practice which was largely continued until May 1997. In July 1990, he introduced a rundown of the Top5 albums, which continued on a monthly basis until May 1991. Ciani had to step down due to illness in 1991, when Hurll returned as producer to cover for two months (and again for a brief time as holiday cover in 1992).
1991: 'Year Zero' revamp
From 1967, the show had become closely associated with the BBC radio station Radio 1, usually being presented by DJs from the station, and between 1988 and 1991 the programme was simulcast on the radio station in FM stereo (that is, until BBC's launch of NICAM stereo for TV made such simulcasts redundant). However, during the last few years of the 1980s the association became less close, and was severed completely (although not permanently) in a radical shake-up known as the 'Year Zero' revamp.
Following a fall in viewing figures and a general perception that the show had become 'uncool' (acts like the Clash had refused to appear in the show in previous years), a radical new format was introduced by incoming executive producer Stanley Appel (who had worked on the programme since 1966 as cameraman, production assistant, director and stand-in producer) in October 1991, in which the Radio1 DJs were replaced by a team of relative unknowns, such as Claudia Simon and Tony Dortie who had previously worked for Children's BBC, 17-year-old local radio DJ Mark Franklin, Steve Anderson, Adrian Rose and Elayne Smith, who was replaced by Femi Oke in 1992. A brand new theme tune ("Now Get Out of That"), title sequence and logo were introduced, and the entire programme moved from BBC Television Centre in London to BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood.
The new presenting team would take turns hosting (initially usually in pairs but sometimes solo), and would often introduce acts in an out-of-vision voiceover over the song's instrumental introduction. They would sometimes even conduct short informal interviews with the performers, and initially the Top 10 countdown was run without any voiceover. Rules relating to performance were also altered meaning acts had to sing live as opposed to the backing tracks for instruments and mimed vocals for which the show was known. To incorporate the shift of dominance towards American artists, more use was made of out-of-studio performances, with acts in America able to transmit their song to the Top of the Pops audience "via satellite". These changes were widely unpopular and much of the presenting team were axed within a year, leaving the show hosted solely by Dortie and Franklin (apart from the Christmas Day editions, when both presenters appeared) from October 1992, on a week-by-week rotation.
1994–1997
By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone and the arrival of Ric Blaxill as producer in February 1994 signalled a return to presentation from established Radio1 DJs Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and Bruno Brookes. Blaxill expanded the use of "via satellite" performances, taking the acts out of studios and concert halls and setting them against landmark backdrops. As a consequence, Bon Jovi performed Always from Niagara Falls and Celine Dion beamed in Think Twice from Miami Beach.
The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced (the logo having first been introduced on the new programme Top of the Pops 2 some months previously), coinciding with the introduction of a new set. Blaxill also increasingly experimented with handing presenting duties to celebrities, commonly contemporary comedians and pop stars who were not in the charts at that time. In an attempt to keep the links between acts as fresh as the performances themselves, the so-called "golden mic" was used by, amongst others, Kylie Minogue, Meat Loaf, Des Lynam, Chris Eubank, Damon Albarn, Harry Hill, Jack Dee, Lulu, Björk, Jarvis Cocker, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. Radio1 DJs still presented occasionally, including Lisa I'Anson, Steve Lamacq, Jo Whiley and Chris Evans.
TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996, originally at 7 pm, but then shifted to 7.30 pm, a change which placed the programme up against the soap opera Coronation Street on ITV. This began a major decline in audience figures as fans were forced to choose between Top of the Pops and an episode of the soap.
1997–2003
In 1997, incoming producer Chris Cowey phased out the use of celebrities and established a rotating team (similar to the 1991 revamp, although much more warmly received) of former presenters of youth music magazine The O-Zone Jayne Middlemiss and Jamie Theakston as well as Radio1 DJs Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball. The team was later augmented by Kate Thornton and Gail Porter.
Chris Cowey in particular instigated a set of 'back to basics' changes when he took over the show. In 1998, a remixed version of the classic "Whole Lotta Love" theme tune previously used in the 1970s was introduced, accompanied by a new 1960s-inspired logo and title sequence. Cowey also began to export the brand overseas with localised versions of the show on air in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy by 2003. Finally, the programme returned to its previous home of BBC Television Centre in 2001, where it remained until its cancellation in 2006.
2003: All New Top of the Pops
On 28 November 2003 (three months after the appointment of Andi Peters as executive producer), the show saw one of its most radical overhauls since the ill-fated 1991 'Year Zero' revamp in what was widely reported as a make-or-break attempt to revitalise the long-running series. In a break with the previous format, the show played more up-and-coming tracks ahead of any chart success, and also featured interviews with artists and a music news feature called "24/7". Most editions of the show were now broadcast live, for the first time since 1991 (apart from a couple of editions in 1994). The launch show, which was an hour long, was notable for a performance of "Flip Reverse" by Blazin' Squad, featuring hordes of hooded teenagers choreographed to dance around the outside of BBC Television Centre.
Although the first edition premièred to improved ratings, the All New format, hosted by MTV presenter Tim Kash, quickly returned to low ratings and brought about scathing reviews. Kash continued to host the show, but Radio1 DJs Reggie Yates and Fearne Cotton (who had each presented a few shows in 2003, before the revamp) were brought back to co-host alongside him, before Kash was completely dropped by the BBC, later taking up a new contract at MTV. The show continued to be hosted by Reggie Yates and Fearne Cotton (usually together, but occasionally solo) on Friday evenings until 8July 2005.
On 30 July 2004, the show took place outside a studio environment for the first time by broadcasting outside in Gateshead. Girls Aloud, Busted, Will Young and Jamelia were among the performers that night.
2005: The Beginning of the End
Figures had plummeted to below three million, prompting an announcement by the BBC that the show was going to move, again, to Sunday evenings on BBC Two, thus losing the prime-time slot on BBC One that it had maintained for more than forty years.
This move was widely reported as a final "sidelining" of the show, and perhaps signalled its likely cancellation. At the time, it was insisted that this was so the show would air immediately after the official announcement of the new top 40 chart on Radio 1, as it was thought that by the following Friday, the chart seemed out of date. The final Top of the Pops to be shown on BBC One (barring Christmas and New Year specials) was broadcast on Monday 11 July 2005, which was edition number 2,166.
The first edition on BBC Two was broadcast on 17 July 2005 at 7.00 pm with presenter Fearne Cotton. After the move to Sundays, Cotton continued to host with a different guest presenter each week, such as Rufus Hound or Richard Bacon. On a number of occasions, however, Reggie Yates would step in, joined by female guest presenters such as Lulu, Cyndi Lauper and Anastacia. Viewing figures during this period averaged around 1½ million. Shortly after the move to BBC Two, Peters resigned as executive producer. He was replaced by the BBC's Creative Head of Music Entertainment Mark Cooper, while producer Sally Wood remained to oversee the show on a weekly basis.
2006: Cancellation
On 20 June 2006, the show was formally cancelled and it was announced that the last edition would be broadcast on 30 July 2006. Edith Bowman co-presented its hour-long swansong, along with Jimmy Savile (who was the main presenter on the first show), Reggie Yates, Mike Read, Pat Sharp, Sarah Cawood, Dave Lee Travis, Rufus Hound, Tony Blackburn and Janice Long.
The final day of recording was 26 July 2006 and featured archive footage and tributes, including the Rolling Stones – the very first band to appear on Top of the Pops – opening with "The Last Time", the Spice Girls, David Bowie, Wham!, Madonna, Beyoncé, Gnarls Barkley, the Jackson 5, Sonny and Cher and Robbie Williams. The show closed with a final countdown, topped by Shakira, as her track "Hips Don't Lie" (featuring Wyclef Jean) had climbed back up to number one on the UK Singles Chart earlier in the day. The show ended with Savile ultimately turning the lights off in the empty studio.
Fearne Cotton, who was the current presenter, was unavailable to co-host for the final edition due to her filming of ITV's Love Island in Fiji but opened the show with a quick introduction recorded on location, saying "It's still number one, it's Top of the Pops". BARB reported the final show's viewing figures as 3.98 million.
As the last episode featured no live acts in the studio, the last act to actually play live on a weekly episode of TOTP was Snow Patrol, who performed "Chasing Cars" in the penultimate edition; the last act ever featured visually on a weekly Top of the Pops was Girls Aloud, as part of the closing sequence of bands performing on the show throughout the years. They were shown performing "Love Machine".
2006–present: After the end
The magazine and TOTP2 have both survived despite the show's axing, and the Christmas editions also continue after returning to BBC One. However, the TOTP website, which the BBC had originally promised would continue, is now no longer updated, although many of the old features of the site – interviews, music news, reviews – have remained, now in the form of the Radio 1-affiliated TOTP ChartBlog accessible via the remains of the old website.
Calls for its return
In October 2008, British Culture Secretary Andy Burnham and Manchester indie band the Ting Tings called for the show to return.
On 29 October 2008, Simon Cowell stated in an interview that he would be willing to buy the rights to Top of the Pops from the BBC. The corporation responded that they had not been formally approached by Cowell, and that in any case the format was "not up for sale". In November 2008, it was reported by The Times and other newspapers that the weekly programme was to be revived in 2009, but the BBC said there were no such plans.
In July 2009, Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant criticised the BBC for ending the programme, stating that new acts were missing out on "that great moment of being crowned that week's Kings of Pop".
In early 2015 there was increased speculation of a return of the show including rumours that Dermot O'Leary might present alongside Fearne Cotton. According to a report in the Daily Mirror, a BBC insider stated that "some at the highest level are massive supporters of the plan [of a return] and have given the go-ahead." The move of the UK charts to a Friday due to take place in summer 2015 was also said to favour the possibility of a return, making it "the perfect tie-in" and a "perfect start to the weekend", but no weekly return has occurred.
BBC Four reruns
In April 2011, the BBC began to reshow Top of the Pops on Thursday nights on BBC Four beginning with the equivalent show from 35 years earlier in a 7:30 pm–8:00 pm slot approximating to the time the programme was traditionally shown. The first programme shown, 1April 1976, was chosen because it was from approximately this episode onwards that most editions remain in the BBC archive. The repeat programmes come in two versions; the first is edited down to fit in the 30-minute 7:30 slot, the second is shown normally twice overnight in the following weekend, and is usually complete. However both the short and longer editions can be edited for a number of reasons. Potentially offensive content to modern audiences is cut (for example The Barron Knights' in-studio performance of "Food For Thought" on the edition of 13 December 1979 including a segment parodying Chinese takeaways using mannerisms that may now be viewed as offensive), and cinematic film footage can be truncated, replaced or removed entirely due to the costs to the BBC of reshowing such footage. The BBC also makes the repeats available on BBC iPlayer. The repeats are continuing as of January 2022 with episodes from 1992.
Since October 2012, episodes featuring Jimmy Savile have ceased to be broadcast due to the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal and subsequent Operation Yewtree police investigation. Following the arrest of Dave Lee Travis by Operation Yewtree officers, and his subsequent conviction for indecent assault, episodes featuring Travis were also omitted. Following Gary Glitter's conviction for sexual assault, episodes featuring him are not included in the run, or otherwise have Glitter's performances edited out.
Mike Smith decided not to sign the licence extension that would allow the BBC to repeat the Top of the Pops episodes that he presented, with the BBC continuing to respect his wishes following his death. As a result, episodes featuring Smith are also omitted.
In 2021, it was discovered that episodes hosted by Adrian Rose (later Adrian Woolfe) were being skipped, starting with the 28th November 1991 episode featuring Nirvana's famous performance of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (mentioned below).
Other edits that have been made to episodes have included Jonathan King's reports from the US during episodes from the early 1980s, sometimes also resulting in the removal of a performance or video introduced as part of the report, and the removal of The Doors' performance of "Light My Fire" from a 1991 episode, due to The Doors not being covered by the BBC's music licensing agreement (which also resulted in another 1991 episode being skipped).
"Story of" Specials
Prior to the 1976 BBC reruns shown in 2011, the BBC produced a special programme, "The Story of 1976". This comprised excerpts from the 1976 programmes, interspersed with new interviews with people discussing the time period. They have produced similar programmes prior to subsequent annual reruns, "The Story of 1990" being the most recent such programme in October 2020, as 1991 and 1992 reruns started without a 'The Story of...' programme preceding them.
"Big Hits" compilation
A series of "Big Hits" compilations have been broadcast with on-screen captions about artists.In December 2016, a festive special using the format of the "Big Hits" programmes, Top of the Pops: Christmas Hits was broadcast on BBC Four, featuring a mix of Christmas music and non-festive songs which had been hits at Christmas time. This effectively replaced the annual Christmas edition of Top of the Pops 2, which did not run that year.
Christmas and New Year specials
Although the weekly Top of the Pops has been cancelled, the Christmas Specials have continued, hosted by Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates. The Christmas specials are broadcast on Christmas Day afternoon on BBC One. Since 2008 (apart from 2010 and 2011), a New Year special has also been broadcast. A new logo and title sequence were introduced on the 2019 Christmas special. The BBC's Head of Music Television, Mark Cooper, continued to oversee the programme as executive producer until 2019 when he was replaced by Alison Howe. Meanwhile, Stephanie McWhinnie, who had replaced Wood as producer with effect from Christmas 2011, was replaced by Caroline Cullen (who had previously worked as assistant producer on the show) from Christmas 2020, when both festive shows were recorded with new studio performances but no live audience physically in attendance. On 4December 2017, Yates stepped down from hosting Top of the Pops due to comments he made regarding Jewish people and rappers. The BBC later announced Clara Amfo as Yates' replacement, she continues to hold the role. Amfo was joined by Jordan North for the 2021 specials, with him replacing Cotton.
Comic Relief specials
The show was given a one-off revival (of sorts) for Comic Relief 2007 in the form of Top Gear of the Pops, presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. It was filmed at the Top Gear aerodrome studio in Surrey on Sunday, 11 March 2007, although it bore little resemblance to the usual Top of the Pops format.
On 13 March 2009, Top of The Pops was once again revived, this time in its usual format, for a special live Comic Relief edition, airing on BBC Two while the main telethon took a break for the BBC News at Ten on BBC One. As with the Christmas specials the show was presented by Radio1 duo Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates with special guest presenter Noel Fielding and appearances from Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Claudia Winkleman, Jonathan Ross, Davina McCall (dancing in the audience and later as a Flo Rida dancer with Claudia Winkleman and French and Saunders) and David Tennant.
Live performances – interspersed with Comic Relief appeal films – included acts such as Franz Ferdinand, Oasis, Take That, U2, James Morrison and Flo Rida (that week's Number1). Kicking off the show was a performance from Rob Brydon and Ruth Jones in their Gavin & Stacey guises, feat. Tom Jones and Robin Gibb with "(Barry) Islands in the Stream", the Comic Relief single.
Performers, performances and presenters
In its extensive history, Top of the Pops has featured many artists, many of whom have appeared more than once on the show to promote many of their records.
Green Day hold the record for the longest Top of the Pops performance: "Jesus of Suburbia" broadcast on 6November 2005, lasted 9minutes and 10 seconds. There is uncertainty about what was the shortest performance. In 2005, presenter Reggie Yates announced on the show that it was Super Furry Animals with "Do or Die", broadcast on 28 January 2000, clocking in at 95 seconds. However, "It's My Turn" by Angelic was 91 seconds on 16 June 2000 and, according to an August 2012 edition of TOTP2, "Here Comes the Summer" by the Undertones was just 84 seconds on 26 July 1979. Cliff Richard appeared the most times on the show, with almost 160 performances. Status Quo were the most frequent group with 106 performances.
Miming
Throughout the show's history, many artists mimed to backing tracks. Early on, Musicians' Union rules required that groups re-record backing tracks with union members performing when possible. However, as The Guardian recounted in 2001: "In practice, artists pretended to re-record the song, then used their original tapes."
The miming policy also led to the occasional technical hitch. In 1967, as Jimi Hendrix prepared to perform "Burning of the Midnight Lamp", the song "The House That Jack Built" by Alan Price was played in studio instead, prompting Hendrix to respond: "I like the voice...but I don't know the words." In 1988, All About Eve appeared to perform "Martha's Harbour". Although the song was being played on the television broadcast, it was not being played in studio, so lead singer Julianne Regan remained silent on a stool on stage while Tim Bricheno (the only other band member present) did not play his guitar.
Occasionally bands played live, examples in the 1970s and 1980s being the Four Seasons, the Who, Blondie, John Otway, Sham 69, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Jimmy James and the Vagabonds, The Sweet, The Jackson 5, Heavy Metal Kids, Elton John, Typically Tropical, New Order, Whitney Houston and David Bowie. In 1980, heavy metal band Iron Maiden played live on the show when they refused to mime to their single "Running Free". Solo artists and vocal groups were supposed to sing live to the Top of the Pops Orchestra. Billy Ocean, Brotherhood of Man, Anita Ward, Thelma Houston, Deniece Williams, Hylda Baker and the Nolans all performed in this way.
In 1991 the producers of the show allowed artists the option of singing live over a backing track. Miming has resulted in a number of notable moments. In 1991, Nirvana refused to mime to the pre-recorded backing track of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with Kurt Cobain singing in a deliberately low voice and altering lyrics in the song, and bassist Krist Novoselic swinging his bass over his head and drummer Dave Grohl playing randomly on his kit. In 1995, the Gallagher brothers of Oasis switched places while performing "Roll with It". During their performance of "Don't Leave Me This Way" the Communards singers Jimmy Somerville and Sarah Jane Morris swapped lyrics for part of the song towards the end. Another example of whimsy was John Peel's appearance as the mandolin soloist for Rod Stewart on "Maggie May". The new practice also exposed a number of poor live singers, and was dropped as a general rule.
In its final few years miming had become less and less common, especially for bands, as studio technology became more reliable and artists were given the freedom to choose their performance style. Former Executive Producer Andi Peters said there was no policy on miming and that it was entirely up to the performer whether they wanted to sing live or mime.
Orchestra and backing singers
From 1966 to 1980, Top of the Pops had an in-studio orchestra conducted by Johnny Pearson accompany select musical performances, with The Ladybirds (later Maggie Stredder Singers) providing backing vocals. Credited on the show as musical associate, Derek Warne played piano and provided musical arrangements for the orchestra. As The Telegraph recounted, Pearson and the orchestra improvised accompaniments with about 20 minutes of rehearsal time per song, and the musicians, "almost all middle-aged, often struggled with the enormous range of rock and pop tunes with which they were presented." In contrast, The Times said upon Pearson's passing in 2011 that the orchestra "often elicit[ed] excellent performances with barely enough time beforehand for a couple of run-throughs."
Other notable members of the orchestra include drummer Clem Cattini, trombonist Bobby Lamb, and lead trumpeters Leon Calvert and Ian Hamer. From 1971 to 1974, Martin Briley played guitar for the orchestra before joining rock group Greenslade.
Following the 1980 Musicians Union strike, the programme resumed broadcast on 7 August 1980 without its orchestra or backing singers. However, Pearson continued to make occasional contributions as musical director until the 900th episode in the summer of 1981. Afterwards, Warne occasionally made musical arrangements through April 1982. Ronnie Hazlehurst conducted the orchestra from 1982 to 1983.
Music videos
When an artist or group was unavailable to perform in studio, Top of the Pops would show a music video in place. According to Queen guitarist Brian May, the groundbreaking 1975 music video for "Bohemian Rhapsody" was produced so that the band could avoid miming on TOTP since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song.
Dance troupes
January to October 1964 – no dance troupes
In the era before promotional videos were routinely produced for every charting single, the BBC would frequently have neither the band themselves nor alternative footage available for a song selected for the programme. In the first few months of the show in 1964, the director would just scan across the audience dancing in the absence of any other footage, but by October 1964 a decision was made to at least occasionally bring in a dance troupe with a choreographed routine to some of the tracks.
November 1964 to April 1968 – The Go-Jos
An initial candidate troupe was the existing BBC TV Beat Girls, but an ex-dancer from the Beat Girls, Jo Cook, was eventually engaged to create a troupe, the all-female Go-Jos, with Cook as choreographer. The Go-Jos also worked outside of Top of the Pops, notably for two years on the Val Doonican show – Doonican said in 1968 "I thought the Gojos were fabulous, something really new. When I got my own television series I just had to have them with me."
They were initially a three-piece (Pat Hughes for the first edition only, Linda Hotchkin and Jane Bartlett), but their number eventually grew to six (Hotchkin, Bartlett, Lesley Larbey, Wendy Hilhouse, Barbara van der Heyde and Thelma Bignell) with Cook as full-time choreographer. Lulu remembered of their costumes "They mostly wore white boots to the knee and short skirts and the camera would go up the skirt and it was all very risqué."
Cook herself said of working on the Doonican show (of which she was dance director) comparing to Top of the Pops, "Pop steps are limited... With Val we have more scope, and we can work to get more of the feel of ballet into our numbers."
May to June 1968 – Go-Jos/Pan's People transition
In April 1968, a Top of the Pops choreographer, Virginia Mason, auditioned for dancers for a routine on Top of The Pops ("Simon Says" by the 1910 Fruitgum Company); two of whom that were successful (Ruth Pearson and Patricia "Dee Dee" Wilde) were part of the existing six-female dance troupe, Pan's People. Like the Go-Jos, this group was also partly drawn from ex-members of the Beat Girls.
Although this routine did not make it onto the programme itself, in subsequent weeks, members of Pan's People (Louise Clarke, Felicity "Flick" Colby, Barbara "Babs" Lord, Pearson, Andrea "Andi" Rutherford and Wilde) started to appear on the programme separately to the Go-Jos. Pan's People were then selected by the BBC over the Go-Jos when they chose a group to be the resident troupe. The Go-Jos' final Top of the Pops performance was in June 1968 dancing to "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones.
July 1968 to April 1976 – Pan's People
As with the Go-Jos, in the first eighteen months of the Pan's People era the dancers were not a weekly fixture on the programme. However, due to group fan mail and good viewing figures, by 1970 the group was on nearly every week. Pay was not high – they were paid the minimum Equity rate of £56 per week.
One of the original Pan's People dancers, Colby, became the full-time choreographer in 1971.
Colby spoke of the dancing – "They weren't Broadway-standard routines... we were definitely doing watercolours, not oil paintings."
May to October 1976 – Ruby Flipper
In early 1976, the last remaining of the early members of Pan's People, Ruth Pearson announced her retirement, leaving just four members all of whom who had joined within the last four years; Cherry Gillespie, Mary Corpe, Lee Ward and Sue Menhenick. Rather than continue with this line up or add additional members, it was decided by Colby and BBC production staff to replace this group with a male and female group created for the programme, Ruby Flipper, choreographed by Colby and managed by Colby with Pearson. Lee Ward left shortly after this decision was made, reportedly saying regarding the change: "It's a big mistake. Men rush home to watch sexy ladies. They do not want to see other men."
Rehearsals for this new group started in March 1976, and the group began appearing on Top of the Pops in May 1976. Whilst producers were aware of the switch to the new group, Bill Cotton, the then head of the light entertainment unit of which Top of the Pops was part, was not. This group started as a seven-piece with three men (Gavin Trace, Floyd Pearce and Phil Steggles) and four women (Menhenick, Gillespie, Patti Hammond and Lulu Cartwright). Corpe was not invited to join the new troupe. Trace, Pearce, Steggles and Cartwright joined following open auditions, Hammond, an established dancer, was invited to join to complete the "look" following a later individual audition. Colby viewed this gender-mixed group as an opportunity to develop more physical routines including lifts, more duets and generally not have the whole group at each performance.
However, by August the BBC had decided to terminate the group due to perceived unpopularity and being "...out of step with viewers". Their final appearance was in October 1976.
November 1976 to October 1981 – Legs and Co
The group created to replace Ruby Flipper was Legs & Co, reverting to an all-female line-up, and once more choreographed by Colby. Three of the six in the initial line-up (Menhenick, Cartwight and Hammond) were taken from Ruby Flipper. with Rosie Hetherington, Gill Clarke and Pauline Peters making up the six. Despite being an all-female group, on occasion one or more male dancers were brought in, notably Pearce several times.
During their run, the group covered the transition from Disco to Punk, Electronic and Modern Romantic music. Notably, they danced to two Sex Pistols tracks.
December 1981 to September 1983 – Zoo
By late 1981, Legs & Co (by this time Anita Chellamah had replaced Peters) had become more integrated into the studio audience, rather than performing set-piece routines, as a result of the 'party atmosphere' brought in by Michael Hurll. Also by this time Colby was particularly keen to work once more with male dancers; feeling it time for a change, Legs & Co's stint was ended, and a twenty-member dance troupe (ten male, ten female), named Zoo was created, with a set of performers drawn from the pool of twenty each week. Colby was now credited as "Dance Director". Three members of previous troupes, Menhenick, Corpe and Chellamah, made at least one appearance each during the Zoo period. The dancers now chose their own clothes, moving away from the synchronised appearance of previous troupes.
October 1983 to 2006 – After Zoo
By the early 1980s, record companies were offering the BBC free promotional videos, meaning dance troupes no longer fulfilled their original purpose. Zoo's run ended in 1983, and with it the use of dance troupes on Top of the Pops.
After the demise of Zoo, the audience took a more active role, often dancing in more prominent areas such as behind performing acts on the back of the stage, and on podiums. However, the show also employed cheerleaders to lead the dancing.
Dance Troupe chronology
Go-Jos' first performance: 19 November 1964 – Dancing to "Baby Love" by the Supremes
Pan's People first performance (three of the dancers, independently contracted): April 1968 – Dancing to "Young Girl" by Gary Puckett & the Union Gap or "Respect" by Aretha Franklin
Pan's People's first performance (as the six-piece group of early 1968): 30 May 1968 – Dancing to "U.S. Male" by Elvis Presley
Go-Jos' final performance: 27 June 1968 – Dancing to "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones
Pan's People's final performance: 29 April 1976 – Dancing to "Silver Star" by the Four Seasons
Ruby Flipper's first performance: 6 May 1976 – Dancing to "Can't Help Falling In Love" by the Stylistics
Ruby Flipper's final performance: 14 October 1976 – Dancing to "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry
Legs & Co's first performance (credited as Ruby Flipper & Legs & Co): 21 October 1976 – Dancing to "Queen of My Soul" by Average White Band
Legs & Co's first performance (credited as Legs & Co): 11 November 1976 – Dancing to "Spinning Rock Boogie" by Hank C. Burnette
Legs & Co's final performance: 29 October 1981 – Dancing to "Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)" by Haircut 100
Zoo's first performance: 5 November 1981 – Dancing to "Twilight" by E.L.O.
Zoo's final performance: 29 September 1983 – Dancing to "What I Got Is What You Need" by Unique
Theme music
For much of the 1960s, the show's theme music was an organ-based instrumental track, also called "Top of the Pops", by the Dave Davani Four.
1 January 1964 to ?: Instrumental percussion piece written by Johnnie Stewart and Harry Rabinowitz and performed by drummer Bobby Midgly.
1965 to 1966: Dave Davani Four's "Top of the Pops" with the Ladybirds on backing vocal harmonies. Originally the opening theme, this was later played as a closing theme from 1966 up until 1970.
20 January 1966 to 13 November 1969: Unknown instrumental guitar track.
27 November 1969 to 29 October 1970: Unknown brass track played over colour titles with a voiceover proclaiming, "Yes! It's number one! It's Top of the Pops!" There was no TOTP on 20 November 1969 due to the Apollo 12 Moon landing.
5 November 1970 to 14 July 1977: An instrumental version of the Led Zeppelin-Willie Dixon composition "Whole Lotta Love" performed by CCS members.
21 July 1977 to 29 May 1980: No opening theme tune; a contemporary chart song was played over the countdown stills. "Whole Lotta Love" featured only in Christmas editions, the 800th edition from 26 July 1979 and the voice-over only edition from 22 November 1979.
7 August 1980 to 2July 1981: No opening theme tune; the CCS version of "Whole Lotta Love" was played over some of the images of the featured artists and during the countdown stills in the Top 30 and Top 20 sections which were moved later on in the programme. From the edition of 7August 1980 to the edition of 2July 1981, "Whole Lotta Love" was heard only during the chart rundowns.
9 July 1981 to 27 March 1986: "Yellow Pearl" was commissioned as the new theme music. From May 1983 to July 1984, a re-recording of "Yellow Pearl" was played over the chart rundown and a pop rock version from August 1984 to March 1986.
3 April 1986 to 26 September 1991: "The Wizard", a composition by Paul Hardcastle.
3 October 1991 to 26 January 1995: "Now Get Out of That" composed by Tony Gibber.
2 February 1995 to 8 August 1997 (except 27 June & 25 July 1997 and 15 August 1997 to 24 April 1998) and 10 October 1997: the theme was a track called "Red Hot Pop" composed by Vince Clarke of Erasure.
27 June and 25 July 1997 then 15 August 1997 to 24 April 1998 (except 10 October 1997): No theme tune; the opening of the first song of the episode was played under the titles and a song from the top 20 was played under the chart rundown.
1 May 1998 to 21 November 2003: Updated, drum and bass version of "Whole Lotta Love" by Ben Chapman.
28 November 2003 to 30 July 2006 and until 2012 for TOTP2 and Xmas specials: A remixed version of "Now Get Out of That" by Tony Gibber.
25 December 2013 to present for Top of the Pops Christmas and New Year Specials: A mix of both the 1970s "Whole Lotta Love" theme and the 1998 remix.
Lost episodes
Due to the then standard practice of wiping videotape, the vast majority of the episodes from the programme's history prior to 1976 have been lost, including any official recording of the only live appearance by the Beatles.
Of the first 500 episodes (1964–73), only about 20 complete recordings remain in the BBC archives, and the majority of these are from 1969 onwards. The earliest surviving footage dates from 26 February 1964, and consists of performances by Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas and the Dave Clark Five. Some programmes exist only partially (largely performances that were either pre-recorded or re-used in later editions). There are also two examples of rehearsal footage, which are both from 1965, one which includes Alan Freeman introducing the Seekers, and another with Sandie Shaw rehearsing "Long Live Love"—both believed to be for the end-of-year Christmas Special. There are also cases of shows that exist only in their raw, unedited form. The oldest complete episode in existence was originally transmitted on Boxing Day in 1967 (only five complete recordings from the 1960s survive, two of which have mute presenter links). The most recent that is not held is dated 8September 1977. Most editions after this date exist in full, except a few 1981–85 episodes recorded live feature mute presenter links (These episodes were skipped on the BBC Four re-runs).
Some off-air recordings, made by fans at home with a microphone in front of the TV speaker, exist in varying quality, including the Jimi Hendrix Experience performing a live version of "Hey Joe" in December 1966.
Some segments of TOTP which were not retained do survive in some form owing to having been included in other programmes, either by the BBC itself or by foreign broadcasters. What was thought to be the only surviving footage of the Beatles on the programme, for instance, comes from its re-use in episode one of 1965 Doctor Who serial The Chase. Additionally a number of recordings are believed to exist in private collections. However, in 2019, an 11-second clip of the group's only live appearance on TOTP, from 16 June 1966, was unearthed – this was recorded by a viewer using an 8mm camera to film the live transmission on their television. Other individual but complete clips that have surfaced over recent years include The Hollies performing "Bus Stop", and The Jimi Hendrix Experience playing both "Purple Haze" and "The Wind Cries Mary".
Thanks to a deal between the BBC and German television network ZDF around the turn of the 1970s, several TOTP clips were sent over to be shown on Disco, a similar-styled chart show. This meant that performances from the likes of The Kinks (Apeman), The Who (The Seeker) and King Crimson (Cat Food) still exist in German archives.
Two complete episodes from 1967 were discovered in a private collection in 2009, having been recorded at home on an early available open reel to reel video recorder. Whilst the tapes suffered from major damage and degradation of both sound and picture quality, one show featured Pink Floyd with original leader Syd Barrett performing "See Emily Play", whilst the second contained Dave Davies singing his solo hit "Death of a Clown".
The programme was forced off the air for several weeks by industrial action by the Musicians' Union in both 1974 and 1980.
Spin-offs
Top of the Pops has a sister show called TOTP2 which uses archive footage from as early as the late 1960s. It began on 17 September 1994. The early series were narrated by Johnnie Walker, before Steve Wright took over as narrator. In summer 2004 BBC Two's controller, Roly Keating, announced that it was being "rested". Shortly after UKTV G2 began showing re-edited versions of earlier programmes with re-recorded dialogue. Finally after a two-year break TOTP2 returned to the BBC Two schedules for a new series on Saturday, 30 September 2006, in an evening timeslot. It was still narrated by Steve Wright and featured a mixture of performances from the TOTP archive and newly recorded performances. The first edition of this series featured new performances by Razorlight and Nelly Furtado recorded after the final episode of Top of the Pops. In 2009 Mark Radcliffe took over as narrator. TOTP2 continued to receive sporadic new episodes from this point onwards, most notably Christmas specials, until 2017 when the show ceased producing new episodes, though previous episodes are still repeated on both BBC Two and BBC Four.
Aired on BBC Radio 1 between the mid-1990s and late 2001 was Top of the Pops: The Radio Show which went out every Sunday at 3 pm just before the singles chart, and was presented by Jayne Middlemiss and Scott Mills. It later reappeared on the BBC World Service in May 2003 originally presented by Emma B, where it continues to be broadcast weekly in an hourly format, now presented by Kim Robson and produced by former BBC World Service producer Alan Rowett.
The defunct channel Play UK created two spin offs; TOTP+ Plus and TOTP@Play (2000–2001) (until mid-2000, this show was called The Phone Zone and was a spin-off from BBC Two music series The O-Zone). BBC Choice featured a show called TOTP The New Chart (5 December 1999 – 26 March 2000) and on BBC Two TOTP+ (8 October 2000 – 26 August 2001) which featured the TOTP @ Play studio and presenters. This is not to be confused with the UK Play version of the same name. A more recent spin-off (now ended) was Top of the Pops Saturday hosted originally by Fearne Cotton and Simon Grant, and its successor Top of the Pops Reloaded. This was shown on Saturday mornings on BBC One and featured competitions, star interviews, video reviews and some Top of the Pops performances. This was aimed at a younger audience and was part of the CBBC Saturday morning line-up. This was to rival CD:UK at the same time on ITV.
Send-ups
A number of performers have sent up the format in various ways. This was often by performers who disliked the mime format of the show, as a protest against this rather than simply refusing to appear.
When Fairport Convention appeared to promote their 1969 hit "Si Tu Dois Partir", drummer Dave Mattacks wore a T-shirt printed "MIMING".
When the Smiths appeared on the show to perform their single "This Charming Man", lead singer Morrissey was unhappy about having to lip-sync and so held a bunch of gladioli on the stage instead of a microphone.
While performing their 1982 hit "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)", the band Dexy's Midnight Runners were seen performing in front of a projection of the darts player with a similar sounding name (Jocky Wilson instead of soul singer Jackie Wilson). Dexy's frontman Kevin Rowland later said in an interview that the use of the Jocky Wilson picture was his idea and not a mistake by the programme makers as is sometimes stated.
A performance of "Marguerita Time" by Status Quo in early 1984 in which a clearly-refreshed Rick Parfitt walks directly into the drum kit at the end of the song, taking the drummer and whole kit with him as the others continue miming
Frankie Goes To Hollywood performed one of the many 1984 performances of their hit "Two Tribes" with bassist Mark O'Toole playing drums whilst drummer Ped Gill played bass.
When Oasis mimed to "Whatever" on Top of the Pops in 1994, one of the cello players from the symphony was replaced by rhythm guitarist Bonehead, who clearly had no idea how the instrument should be played. Towards the end of the song, he gave up the pretence and started using the bow to conduct. A woman plays his rhythm guitar.
Singer Les Gray of Mud went on stage to perform with a ventriloquist dummy during the performance of "Lonely This Christmas" and had the dummy lip-synch to the voice-over in the middle of the song.
During Mott the Hoople's performance of their single "Roll Away the Stone" in 1973, drummer Dale Griffin plays with oversized drumsticks.
EMF appeared on the show with one of the guitarists strumming along while wearing boxing gloves.
At the end of The Who's performance of "5:15" the band proceeded to destroy their instruments despite the fact the backing track was still playing.
In Blur's performance of "Charmless Man" in 1996, Dave Rowntree decided to play with oversized drumsticks, while Graham Coxon played a mini guitar.
In Green Day's first Top of the Pops appearance in 1994, the band played the song "Welcome to Paradise". Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong wore an otherwise plain white T-shirt with the phrase "Who am I fooling anyway?" handwritten on it, most likely a reference to his own miming during the performance. He could also be seen not playing his guitar during the instrumental bridge in the song.
The performance of "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart and the Faces featured John Peel miming on mandolin. Near the end of the song, Rod and the Faces begin to kick around a football. This is despite the fact that the music can be still heard playing in the background.
The Cure were known for their abhorrence for miming their songs whilst on TOTP and on several occasions made it obvious they were not playing their parts – using such stunts as playing guitar left-handed and miming very badly out of synch.
Ambient house group the Orb sat and played chess while an edited version of their 39:57-minute single "Blue Room" played in the background.
Depeche Mode's performance of "Barrel of a Gun" in 1997 featured Dutch photographer and director Anton Corbijn who mimed playing the drums. Also Tim Simenon (who produced the album the song appeared on) mimed playing keyboards along with Andy Fletcher.
When the Cuban Boys performed "Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia" at the end of 1999, a performance which was reportedly unbroadcast, the band wearing labcoats, covered in cobwebs.
International versions
Europe
The TOTP format was sold to RTL in Germany in the 1990s, and aired on Saturday afternoons. It was very successful for a long time, with a compilation album series and magazine. However, in 2006 it was announced that the German show would be ending. The Italian version (first broadcast on Rai 2 and later on Italia 1) also ended in 2006. In February 2010 the show returned on Rai 2, and was broadcast for two seasons before being cancelled again in October 2011. The French version of the show ended by September 2006 on France 2.
In the Netherlands, TopPop was broadcast by AVRO 1970–1988, and a version of the show continued to run on BNN until the end of December 2006. BBC Prime used to broadcast re-edited episodes of the BBC version, the weekend after it was transmitted in the UK. Ireland began transmitting Top of the Pops in November 1978 on RTÉ2. This was the UK version being transmitted at the same time as on BBC. The broadcasts ceased in late 1993.
United States
Top of the Pops had short-lived fame in the United States. In October 1987, the CBS television network decided to try an American version of the show. It was hosted by Nia Peeples and even showed performances from the BBC version of the programme (and vice versa). The show was presented on late Friday nights as part of CBS Late Night, and lasted almost half a year.
In 2002, BBC America presented the BBC version of Top of the Pops as part of their weekend schedule. The network would get the episodes one week after they were transmitted in the UK. BBC America then tinkered with the show by cutting a few minutes out of each show and moving it to a weekday time slot.
On 23 January 2006, Lou Pearlman made a deal to bring Top of the Pops back to the airwaves in the United States. It was expected to be similar to the 1987 version, but it would also utilise the Billboard magazine music charts, most notably the Hot 100 chart. It was supposed to be planned for a possible 2006 or 2007 launch, but with several lawsuits against Lou and his companies (which resulted in his conviction in 2008), as well as the cancellation of the UK version, the proposed US project never went forward. On 19 August 2006, VH1 aired the UK series' final episode.
The United States had its own similar series, American Bandstand, which aired nationally on ABC from 1957 to 1987 (although it would continue in first-run syndication until 1988 and end its run on USA in 1989). Similar series also included Soul Train (1970–2006, featuring R&B artists), Club MTV (1986–92, featuring dance music acts; hosted by Downtown Julie Brown, an alumnus of TOTP as part of the show's last dance troupe Zoo) and Solid Gold (1980–88; like the early TOTP, it also used dance troupes).
Canada
Canada's version was Electric Circus (1988–2003) on MuchMusic, which was also seen in the USA through MuchMusic USA. It had a national chart (mostly of dance music and some pop) as well as live performances, and was based on a local late '70s programme in Toronto called CITY-TV Boogie.
New Zealand
The Top of the Pops brand has also been exported to New Zealand. Although the British show has been broadcast intermittently in New Zealand, the country historically relied on music video-based shows to demonstrate its own Top 20, as the major international acts, who dominated the local charts, considered New Zealand too small and remote to visit regularly. This changed to an extent in 2002, when the New Zealand government suggested a voluntary New Zealand music quota on radio (essentially a threat that if the stations did not impose a quota themselves then one would be imposed on them). The amount of local music played on radio stations increased, as did the number of local songs in the top 20. Therefore, a new local version of Top of the Pops became feasible for the first time, and the show was commissioned by Television New Zealand. The show was executive produced by David Rose, managing director and owner of Satellite Media, and began airing in early 2004 with host Alex Behan. The hour-long show (as opposed to the 30-minute UK version) which was broadcast at 5 pm on Saturdays on TV2 contained a mixture of performances recorded locally on a sound stage in the Auckland CBD, as well as performances from the international versions of the show. The New Zealand Top 20 singles and Top 10 albums charts are also featured. Alex Behan stayed as host for two years before Bede Skinner took over. Despite having a sizeable fan base, in 2006 TVNZ announced that Top of the Pops had been axed.
Free-to-air music channel C4 then picked up the UK version of Top of the Pops and aired it on Saturdays at 8 pm with a repeat screening on Thursdays. However, since the weekly UK version was axed itself, this arrangement also ended.
Africa, Asia and the Middle East
An edited version of the UK show was shown on BBC Prime, the weekend after UK transmission.
In addition, a licensed version was shown on the United Arab Emirates-based MBC2 television channel. This version consisted of parts of the UK version, including the Top 10 charts, as well as live performances by Arabic pop singers.
Latin America
A complete version of the UK show was shown on People+Arts, two weeks after the UK transmission.
Brazilian network TV Globo aired a loosely based version of the original format in 2018, labeled as 'Só Toca Top', hosted by singer Luan Santana and actress Fernanda Souza.
Compilation albums
A number of compilation albums using the Top of the Pops brand have been issued over the years. The first one to reach the charts was BBC TV's The Best of Top of the Pops on the Super Beeb record label in 1975, which reached number 21 and in 1986 the BBC released The Wizard by Paul Hardcastle (the 1986-1990 Top of The Pops theme tune) on Vinyl under the BBC Records and Tapes banner.
Starting in 1968 and carrying on through the 1970s a rival series of Top of the Pops albums were produced, however these had no connection with the television series except for its name. They were a series of budget cover albums of current chart hits recorded by anonymous session singers and musicians released on the Hallmark record label. They had initially reached the charts but were later disallowed due to a change in the criteria for entering the charts. These albums continued to be produced until the early 1980s, when the advent of compilation albums featuring the original versions of hits, such as the Now That's What I Call Music! series, led to a steep decline in their popularity.
In the 1990s, the BBC Top of the Pops brand was again licensed for use in a tie-in compilation series. Starting in 1995 with Sony Music's Columbia Records label, these double disc collections moved to the special marketing arm of PolyGram / Universal Music Group TV, before becoming a sister brand of the Now That's What I Call Music! range in the EMI / Virgin / Universal joint venture.
Similarly to the roles of Top of the Pops on BBC One and BBC Two in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the compilation albums range featured current hits for the main series and classic hits (such as '70s Rock) for the "Top of the Pops 2" spin-offs.
The Top of the Pops brand has now been licensed by EMI who released a compilation series in 2007–08, with one CD for each year that Top of the Pops was running. The boxset for the entire series of 43 discs was released 7July 2008. A podcast supporting the release of the boxset featuring interviews with Mark Goodier, Miles Leonard, Malcolm McLaren and David Hepworth is available.
Number One in the Compilation Charts
These albums in the series reached No. 1:
Top of the Pops 1 (Columbia Records, 1995)
Top of the Pops '99 – Volume 2 (Universal Music TV, 1999)
Top of the Pops 2000 – Volume Two (BBC Music / Universal Music TV, 2000)
Top of the Pops magazine
Top of the Pops magazine has been running since February 1995, and filled the void in the BBC magazine portfolio where Number One magazine used to be. It began much in the mould of Q magazine, then changed its editorial policy to directly compete with popular teen celebrity magazines such as Smash Hits and Big, with free sticker giveaways replacing Brett Anderson covers.
A July 1996 feature on the Spice Girls coined the famous "Spice" nicknames for each member (Baby, Ginger, Posh, Scary and Sporty) that stayed with them throughout their career as a group and beyond.
The BBC announced that the magazine would continue in publication despite the end of the television series, and is still running.
An earlier Top of the Pops magazine appeared briefly in the mid-1970s. Mud drummer Dave Mount sat reading an edition throughout a 1975 appearance on the show.
In popular culture
The Number 6 track of the Kinks' 1970 eighth studio album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One is called "Top of the Pops" and narrates the path to stardom by reaching Number1 in the music charts.
Benny Hill did a parody of Top of the Pops in January 1971 called "Top of the Tops". It featured satires of many music acts at the time as well as impersonations of both Jimmy Savile and Tony Blackburn.
The Scottish punk band the Rezillos lampooned the show in their song "Top of the Pops". The band performed the song on the programme twice when it entered the charts in 1978.
In 1984, British Rail HST power car 43002 was named Top of the Pops, by Jimmy Savile. This followed an edition which was broadcast live on a train, which 43002 was one of the power cars for. The nameplates were removed in 1989.
The Smashie and Nicey 1994 TV special Smashie and Nicey: The End of an Era featured doctored and recreated footage of the two fictional DJs hosting a montage of 1970s editions of Top of the Pops, including a "Black music" edition, which the pair presented in Blackface.
In the opening credits of the Spice Girls' 1997 feature film Spiceworld: The Movie, the girls perform their hit single "Too Much" on a fictional episode of the show. They did also perform it on the show in real life when it became their second Christmas number one in the UK that same year.
A 2001 episode of Tweenies featured a parody of Top of the Pops, complete with Max imitating Jimmy Savile. The episode was unintententionally repeated in January 2013, and received 216 complaints.
Licensing
In May 2006, following a special Red Hot Chili Peppers concert recorded in the car park of BBC Television Centre, Hammersmith and Fulham Council (which governs the area the centre is located) informed the BBC that it lacked the necessary public entertainment license (as required by the Licensing Act 2003). Until the BBC could obtain the license, BBC staff stood-in as audience members for live music programmes.
DVDs
In 2004 there was a DVD released called Top of the Pops 40th Anniversary 1964–2004 DVD. It features live performances, containing one song for each year, except 1966. (Two tracks from 1965 are featured instead). Also included as extras are seven opening titles, most notably the one with the flying coloured LP's from 1981. This title sequence had Phil Lynott's song "Yellow Pearl" as the theme. The 1986 and 1989 titles are also featured, with Paul Hardcastle's hit "The Wizard" as the theme. This DVD was to celebrate 40 years since the show started.
There was also a DVD quiz released in 2007 called The Essential Music Quiz. There was also a DVD in 2001 called Summer 2001, a sister DVD to the album of the same name.
See also
Alright Now
The Old Grey Whistle Test
Ready Steady Go!
Revolver (TV series)
Top of the Box
The Tube (TV series)
References
Further reading
Blacknell, Steve. The Story of Top of the Pops. Wellingborough, Northants: Patrick Stephens, 1985
Gittens, Ian. Top Of The Pops: Mishaps, Miming and Music: True Adventures of TV's No.1 Pop Show. London: BBC, 2007
Seaton, Pete with Richard Down. The Kaleidoscope British Television Music & Variety Guide II: Top Pop: 1964–2006. Dudley: Kaleidoscope Publishing, 2007
Simpson, Jeff. Top of the Pops: 1964–2002: it's still number one, its Top of the Pops! London: BBC, 2002
External links
1964 British television series debuts
British music television shows
1964 in British music
1960s British music television series
1970s British music television series
1980s British music television series
1990s British music television series
2000s British music television series
2010s British music television series
1960s in British music
1970s in British music
1980s in British music
1990s in British music
2000s in British music
2010s in British music
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Television series by CBS Studios
Television series by BBC Studios
Lost BBC episodes
Pop music television series
British music chart television shows
English-language television shows
Jimmy Savile
British television series revived after cancellation
Television shows shot at BBC Elstree Centre | false | [
"\"Get What You Want\" is a song by Australian band Operator Please. The song was first recorded in 2006 and featured on the band's second Extended Play Cement Cement. The song was re-recorded and released in Australia on 29 October 2007 as the second single their debut album, Yes Yes Vindictive. The song peaked at number 27 on the ARIA Singles Chart.\n\n\"Get What You Want\" was one of the 100 most-played songs on Australian radio network Triple J during the year of its release, and has also been used in television ad campaigns for Australian National Youth Week and airline Virgin Blue.\n\nTrack listings\nAustralian CD single\n \"Get What You Want\" (album version) – 3:53\n \"Icicle\" – 2:47\n \"Get What You Want\" (Wolf & Cub remix) – 6:02\n\nAustralian iTunes single\n \"Get What You Want\" (Album version) – 3:54\n \"Zero, Zero\" – 3:05\n\nUK CD single\n \"Get What You Want\" (album version) – 3:54\n \"Waiting by the Car\" – 3:01\n \"Get What You Want\" (UK music video) – 3:57\n\nUK iTunes single\n \"Get What You Want\" (Album version) – 3:54\n \"Get What You Want\" (G.L.O.V.E.S. remix) – 3:54\n\nCharts\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\n2007 singles\n2006 songs\nVirgin Records singles",
"Black Box Distribution was a skateboard distributor owned by professional skateboarder Jamie Thomas. Prior to October 2014, it served seven brands, three of which were owned by Thomas: Fallen Footwear, Mystery Skateboards, and Zero Skateboards. After the company was dissolved, Zero and Fallen moved to Dwindle Distribution.\n\nHistory\nThe company was founded in 2000 as a way for Jamie Thomas to distribute his Zero Skateboards brand, which had been founded as the Zero Division apparel brand in 1996. The brand was initially supported by American distributor Tum Yeto (responsible for distributing Thomas' previous skateboard deck sponsor Toy Machine). The company's headquarters was in Carlsbad, California. Prior to its closure in 2014, it distributed Zero Skateboards, Fallen Footwear, Slave, Threat, Destroyer, Mystery, and New Balance Numeric brands.\n\nIn 2006, Thomas won an Ernst & Young regional Entrepreneur of the Year Award as founder/president of Black Box. The company eventually spun off Cinco Maderas, a Mexico-based woodshop that manufactures the skateboard decks for Mystery, Slave, and Zero.\n\nBlack Box announced a partnership with surf and skate clothing label Insight in mid-2009. At the time of the announcement, Thomas explained: \"My personal opinion is that Insight is a rad brand, and I think that's what matters most ... it's the raw elements and passion behind what it is more so than what category it supports most, whether it be surf, skate, or fashion. It's so original and raw that I find it inspiring.\"\n\nTransition to Dwindle\nIn a June 2014 interview with the Jenkem online publication, Thomas explained that the Dwindle Distribution skateboard company—responsible for the Enjoi, Blind Skateboards, Almost Skateboards, Darkstar, and Cliché Skateboards brands—would take over \"the sales, finance, production and distribution aspects\" of the Zero and Fallen brands. Thomas further explained that Zero employees would remain independent and focus on \"the team, marketing and creative aspects\" of the brand. However, in an October 2014 interview, former Zero rider Chris Cole stated that the entirety of Black Box had moved to Dwindle, so the exact terms of the transition are unclear.\n\nZero Skateboards\n\nTeam (as of 12 July 2018)\n\nProfessional\n Jamie Thomas\n Chris Wimer\n Tommy Sandoval\n James Brockman\n Jon Allie\n Dane Burman\n Tony Cervantes\n Windsor James\n\nFallen Footwear\n\nFallen Footwear is a skate shoe company that was founded as a partnership between Thomas and DC Shoes in 2003.\n\nTeam (as of 7 June 2015)\n Jamie Thomas\n Tony Cervantes\n Tommy Sandoval\n Brian \"Slash\" Hansen\n Dane Burman\n Jon Dickson\n\nSlave Skateboards\nSlave Skateboards (styled as $lave Skateboards), owned by former Black Box artist Ben Horton, was launched under the distribution company in 2007. The brand's debut full-length video, Radio-Television, premiered in September 2009.\n\nTeam (as of 7 June 2015)\n Jon Allie\n Matt Mumford\n AJ Zavala\n Jon Goemann\n Anthony Schultz\n Pat Burke\n Frecks\n Danny Dicola\n Conhuir Lynn\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Dwindle Distribution official website\n\nSkateboarding companies"
] |
[
"Top of the Pops",
"1994-1997",
"What happened in 1994?",
"By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone",
"What was year zero?",
"I don't know."
] | C_4ba6e4aafe884f399b648ba4e20a983e_0 | What happened in 1995? | 3 | What happened in 1995 in Top of the Pops? | Top of the Pops | By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone and the arrival of Ric Blaxill as producer in February 1994 signalled a return to presentation from established Radio 1 DJs Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and Bruno Brookes. Blaxill expanded the use of "via satellite" performances, taking the acts out of studios and concert halls and setting them against landmark backdrops. As a consequence, Bon Jovi performed Always from Niagara Falls and Celine Dion beamed in Think Twice from Miami Beach. The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced (the logo having first been introduced on the new programme Top of the Pops 2 some months previous), coinciding with the introduction of a new set. Blaxill also increasingly experimented with handing presenting duties to celebrities, commonly contemporary comedians and pop stars who were not in the charts at that time. In an attempt to keep the links between acts as fresh as the performances themselves, the so-called "golden mic" was used by, amongst others, Kylie Minogue, Meat Loaf, Des Lynam, Chris Eubank, Damon Albarn, Harry Hill, Jack Dee, Lulu and Jarvis Cocker. Radio 1 DJs still presented occasionally, notably Lisa I'Anson, Steve Lamacq, Jo Whiley and Chris Evans. TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996, originally at 7 pm, but then shifted to 7.30 pm, a change which placed the programme up against the soap opera Coronation Street on ITV. This began a major decline in audience figures as fans were forced to choose between Top of the Pops and an episode of the soap. CANNOTANSWER | The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced | Top of the Pops (TOTP) is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly between 1January 1964 and 30 July 2006. Top of the Pops was the world's longest running weekly music show. For most of its history, it was broadcast on Thursday evenings on BBC One. Each weekly show consisted of performances from some of that week's best-selling popular music records, usually excluding any tracks moving down the chart, including a rundown of that week's singles chart. This was originally the Top 20, though this varied throughout the show's history. The Official Charts Company states "performing on the show was considered an honour, and it pulled in just about every major player."
Dusty Springfield’s "I Only Want to Be with You" was the first song performed on TOTP, while The Rolling Stones were the first band to perform with "I Wanna Be Your Man". Snow Patrol were the last act to play live on the weekly show when they performed their single "Chasing Cars". In addition to the weekly show there was a special edition of TOTP on Christmas Day (and usually, until 1984, a second edition a few days after Christmas), featuring some of the best-selling singles of the year and the Christmas Number 1. Although the weekly show was cancelled in 2006, the Christmas special has continued. End-of-year round-up editions have also been broadcast on BBC1 on or around New Year's Eve, albeit largely featuring the same acts and tracks as the Christmas Day shows. It also survives as Top of the Pops 2, which began in 1994 and features vintage performances from the Top of the Pops archives. Though TOTP2 ceased producing new episodes since 2017, repeats of older episodes are still shown.
The show has seen seminal performances over its history. The March 1971 TOTP appearance of T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan wearing glitter and satins as he performed "Hot Love" is often seen as the inception of glam rock, and David Bowie's performance of "Starman" inspired future musicians. In the 1990s, the show's format was sold to several foreign broadcasters in the form of a franchise package, and at one point various versions of the show were shown in more than 120 countries. Editions of the programme from 1976 onwards started being repeated on BBC Four in 2011 and are aired on most Friday evenings – as of January 2022 the repeat run has reached 1992. Episodes featuring disgraced presenters and artists such as Jonathan King, Jimmy Savile (who opened the show with its familiar slogan, 'It's Number One, it's Top of the Pops'), Dave Lee Travis, Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter, and R. Kelly are no longer repeated.
History
Johnnie Stewart devised the rules which governed how the show would operate: the programme would always end with the number one record, which was the only record that could appear in consecutive weeks. The show would include the highest new entry and (if not featured in the previous week) the highest climber on the charts, and omit any song going down in the chart. Tracks could be featured in consecutive weeks in different formats. For example, if a song was played over the chart countdown or the closing credits, then it was acceptable for the act to appear in the studio the following week.
These rules were sometimes interpreted flexibly and were more formally relaxed from 1997 when records descending the charts were featured more regularly, possibly as a response to the changing nature of the Top 40 (in the late 1990s and early 2000s climbers in the charts were a rarity, with almost all singles peaking at their debut position).
When the programme's format changed in November 2003, it concentrated increasingly on the top 10. Later, during the BBC Two era, the top 20 was regarded as the main cut-off point, with the exception made for up and coming bands below the top 20. Singles from below the top 40 (within the top 75) were shown if the band were up and coming or had a strong selling album. If a single being performed was below the top 40, just the words "New Entry" were shown and not the chart position.
The show was originally intended to run for only a few programmes but lasted over 42 years, reaching landmark episodes of 500, 1,000, 1,500 and 2,000 in the years 1973, 1983, 1992 and 2002 respectively.
The first show
Top of the Pops was first broadcast on Wednesday, 1January 1964 at 6:35 pm. It was produced in Studio A at Dickenson Road Studios in Rusholme, Manchester.
DJ Jimmy Savile presented the first show live from the Manchester studio (with a brief link to Alan Freeman in London to preview the following week's programme), which featured (in order) Dusty Springfield with "I Only Want to Be with You", the Rolling Stones with "I Wanna Be Your Man", the Dave Clark Five with "Glad All Over", the Hollies with "Stay", the Swinging Blue Jeans with "Hippy Hippy Shake" and the Beatles with "I Want to Hold Your Hand", that week's number one – throughout its history, the programme proper always (with very few exceptions) finished with the best-selling single of the week, although there often was a separate play-out track over the end credits.
1960s and 1970s
Later in 1964, the broadcast time was moved to one hour later, at 7:35 pm, and the show moved from Wednesdays to what became its regular Thursday slot. Additionally its length was extended by 5minutes to 30 minutes.
For the first three years Alan Freeman, David Jacobs, Pete Murray and Jimmy Savile rotated presenting duties, with the following week's presenter also appearing at the end of each show, although this practice ceased from October 1964 onwards. Neville Wortman filled in as director/producer on Johnnie Stewart's holiday break.
In the first few editions, Denise Sampey was the "disc girl", who would be seen to put the record on a turntable before the next act played their track. However, a Mancunian model, Samantha Juste, became the regular disc girl after a few episodes, a role she performed until 1967.
Initially acts performing on the show would mime (lip-sync) to the commercially released record, but in 1966 after discussions with the Musicians' Union, miming was banned. After a few weeks during which some bands' attempts to play as well as on their records were somewhat lacking, a compromise was reached whereby a specially recorded backing track was permitted, as long as all the musicians on the track were present in the studio. As a result, Stewart hired Johnny Pearson to conduct an in-studio orchestra to provide musical backing on select performances, beginning with the 4 August 1966 edition. Later, vocal group The Ladybirds began providing vocal backing with the orchestra.
With the birth of BBC Radio 1 in 1967, new Radio1 DJs were added to the roster – Stuart Henry, Emperor Rosko, Simon Dee and Kenny Everett.
Local photographer Harry Goodwin was hired to provide shots of non-appearing artists, and also to provide backdrops for the chart run-down. He continued in the role until 1973.
After two years at the Manchester Dickenson Road Studios, the show moved to London (considered to be better located for bands to appear), initially for six months at BBC TV Centre Studio2 and then to the larger Studio G at BBC Lime Grove Studios in mid-1966 to provide space for the Top of the Pops Orchestra, which was introduced at this time to provide live instrumentation on some performances (previously, acts had generally mimed to the records). In November 1969, with the introduction of colour, the show returned to BBC TV Centre, where it stayed until 1991, when it moved to Elstree Studios Studio C.
For a while in the early 1970s, non-chart songs were played on a more regular basis, to reflect the perceived growing importance of album sales; there was an album slot featuring three songs from a new LP, as well as a New Release spot and a feature of a new act, dubbed Tip for the Top. These features were dropped after a while, although the programme continued to feature new releases on a regular basis for the rest of the decade.
During its heyday, it attracted 15 million viewers each week. The peak TV audience of 19 million was recorded in 1979, during the ITV strike, with only BBC1 and BBC2 on air.
Christmas Top of the Pops
A year-end Christmas show featuring a review of the year's biggest hits was inaugurated on 24 December 1964, and has continued every year since. From 1965 onward, the special edition was broadcast on Christmas Day (although not in 1966) and from the same year, a second edition was broadcast in the days after Christmas, varying depending on the schedule, but initially regularly on 26 December. The first was shown on 26 December 1965. In 1973, there was just one show, airing on Christmas Day. In place of the traditional second show, Jimmy Savile hosted a look back at the first 10 years of TOTP, broadcast on 27 December. In 1975, the first of the two shows was broadcast prior to Christmas Day, airing on 23 December, followed by the traditional Christmas Day show two days later.
The 1978 Christmas Day show was disrupted due to industrial action at the BBC, requiring a change in format to the broadcast. The first show, due to be screened on 21 December, was not shown at all because BBC1 was off the air. For Christmas Day, Noel Edmonds (presenting his last ever edition of TOTP) hosted the show from the 'TOTP Production Office' with clips taken from various editions of the show broadcast during the year and new studio footage performed without an audience. The format was slightly tweaked for the Christmas Day edition in 1981, with the Radio1 DJs choosing their favourite tracks of the year and the following edition on 31 December featuring the year's number1 hits.
The second programme was discontinued after 1984.
1980s
The year 1980 marked major production changes to Top of the Pops and a hiatus forced by industrial action. Steve Wright made his presenting debut on 7 February 1980. Towards the end of February 1980, facing a £40 million budget deficit, the BBC laid off five orchestras as part of £130 million in cuts. The budget cuts led to a Musicians' Union strike that suspended operations of all 11 BBC orchestras and performances of live music on the BBC; Top of the Pops went out of production between 29 May and 7 August 1980. During the Musicians' Union strike, BBC1 showed repeats of Are You Being Served? in the regular Top of the Pops Thursday night time slot.
Following the strike, Nash was replaced as executive producer by Michael Hurll, who introduced more of a "party" atmosphere to the show, with performances often accompanied by balloons and cheerleaders, and more audible audience noise and cheering. Hurll also laid off the orchestra, as the Musicians' Union was loosening enforcement of the 1966 miming ban.
Guest co-presenters and a music news feature were introduced for a short while, but had ceased by the end of 1980. The chart rundown was split into three sections in the middle of the programme, with the final Top 10 section initially featuring clips of the songs' videos, although this became rarer over the next few years.
An occasional feature showing the American music scene with Jonathan King was introduced in November 1981, and ran every few weeks until February 1985. In January 1985, a Breakers section, featuring short video clips of new tracks in the lower end of the Top 40, was introduced, and this continued for most weeks until March 1994.
Although the programme had been broadcast live in its early editions, it had been recorded on the day before transmission for many years. However, from May 1981, the show was sometimes broadcast live for a few editions each year, and this practice continued on an occasional basis (often in the week of a bank holiday, when the release of the new chart was delayed, and for some special editions) for the rest of the decade.
The programme moved in September 1985 to a new regular half-hour timeslot of 7 pm on Thursdays, where it would remain until June 1996.
The end of 1988 was marked by a special 70-minute edition of the show broadcast on 31 December 1988, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first show. The pre-recorded programme featured the return of the original four presenters (Savile, Freeman, Murray and Jacobs) as well as numerous presenters from the show's history, anchored by Paul Gambaccini and Mike Read. Numerous clips from the history of the show were included in between acts performing in the studio, which included Cliff Richard, Engelbert Humperdinck, Lulu, the Four Tops, David Essex, Mud, Status Quo, Shakin' Stevens, the Tremeloes and from the very first edition, the Swinging Blue Jeans. Sandie Shaw, the Pet Shop Boys and Wet Wet Wet were billed in the Radio Times to appear, but none featured in the show other than Shaw in compilation clips.
Paul Ciani took over as producer in 1988. The following year, in an attempt to fit more songs in the allocated half-hour, he restricted the duration of studio performances to three minutes, and videos to two minutes, a practice which was largely continued until May 1997. In July 1990, he introduced a rundown of the Top5 albums, which continued on a monthly basis until May 1991. Ciani had to step down due to illness in 1991, when Hurll returned as producer to cover for two months (and again for a brief time as holiday cover in 1992).
1991: 'Year Zero' revamp
From 1967, the show had become closely associated with the BBC radio station Radio 1, usually being presented by DJs from the station, and between 1988 and 1991 the programme was simulcast on the radio station in FM stereo (that is, until BBC's launch of NICAM stereo for TV made such simulcasts redundant). However, during the last few years of the 1980s the association became less close, and was severed completely (although not permanently) in a radical shake-up known as the 'Year Zero' revamp.
Following a fall in viewing figures and a general perception that the show had become 'uncool' (acts like the Clash had refused to appear in the show in previous years), a radical new format was introduced by incoming executive producer Stanley Appel (who had worked on the programme since 1966 as cameraman, production assistant, director and stand-in producer) in October 1991, in which the Radio1 DJs were replaced by a team of relative unknowns, such as Claudia Simon and Tony Dortie who had previously worked for Children's BBC, 17-year-old local radio DJ Mark Franklin, Steve Anderson, Adrian Rose and Elayne Smith, who was replaced by Femi Oke in 1992. A brand new theme tune ("Now Get Out of That"), title sequence and logo were introduced, and the entire programme moved from BBC Television Centre in London to BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood.
The new presenting team would take turns hosting (initially usually in pairs but sometimes solo), and would often introduce acts in an out-of-vision voiceover over the song's instrumental introduction. They would sometimes even conduct short informal interviews with the performers, and initially the Top 10 countdown was run without any voiceover. Rules relating to performance were also altered meaning acts had to sing live as opposed to the backing tracks for instruments and mimed vocals for which the show was known. To incorporate the shift of dominance towards American artists, more use was made of out-of-studio performances, with acts in America able to transmit their song to the Top of the Pops audience "via satellite". These changes were widely unpopular and much of the presenting team were axed within a year, leaving the show hosted solely by Dortie and Franklin (apart from the Christmas Day editions, when both presenters appeared) from October 1992, on a week-by-week rotation.
1994–1997
By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone and the arrival of Ric Blaxill as producer in February 1994 signalled a return to presentation from established Radio1 DJs Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and Bruno Brookes. Blaxill expanded the use of "via satellite" performances, taking the acts out of studios and concert halls and setting them against landmark backdrops. As a consequence, Bon Jovi performed Always from Niagara Falls and Celine Dion beamed in Think Twice from Miami Beach.
The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced (the logo having first been introduced on the new programme Top of the Pops 2 some months previously), coinciding with the introduction of a new set. Blaxill also increasingly experimented with handing presenting duties to celebrities, commonly contemporary comedians and pop stars who were not in the charts at that time. In an attempt to keep the links between acts as fresh as the performances themselves, the so-called "golden mic" was used by, amongst others, Kylie Minogue, Meat Loaf, Des Lynam, Chris Eubank, Damon Albarn, Harry Hill, Jack Dee, Lulu, Björk, Jarvis Cocker, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. Radio1 DJs still presented occasionally, including Lisa I'Anson, Steve Lamacq, Jo Whiley and Chris Evans.
TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996, originally at 7 pm, but then shifted to 7.30 pm, a change which placed the programme up against the soap opera Coronation Street on ITV. This began a major decline in audience figures as fans were forced to choose between Top of the Pops and an episode of the soap.
1997–2003
In 1997, incoming producer Chris Cowey phased out the use of celebrities and established a rotating team (similar to the 1991 revamp, although much more warmly received) of former presenters of youth music magazine The O-Zone Jayne Middlemiss and Jamie Theakston as well as Radio1 DJs Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball. The team was later augmented by Kate Thornton and Gail Porter.
Chris Cowey in particular instigated a set of 'back to basics' changes when he took over the show. In 1998, a remixed version of the classic "Whole Lotta Love" theme tune previously used in the 1970s was introduced, accompanied by a new 1960s-inspired logo and title sequence. Cowey also began to export the brand overseas with localised versions of the show on air in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy by 2003. Finally, the programme returned to its previous home of BBC Television Centre in 2001, where it remained until its cancellation in 2006.
2003: All New Top of the Pops
On 28 November 2003 (three months after the appointment of Andi Peters as executive producer), the show saw one of its most radical overhauls since the ill-fated 1991 'Year Zero' revamp in what was widely reported as a make-or-break attempt to revitalise the long-running series. In a break with the previous format, the show played more up-and-coming tracks ahead of any chart success, and also featured interviews with artists and a music news feature called "24/7". Most editions of the show were now broadcast live, for the first time since 1991 (apart from a couple of editions in 1994). The launch show, which was an hour long, was notable for a performance of "Flip Reverse" by Blazin' Squad, featuring hordes of hooded teenagers choreographed to dance around the outside of BBC Television Centre.
Although the first edition premièred to improved ratings, the All New format, hosted by MTV presenter Tim Kash, quickly returned to low ratings and brought about scathing reviews. Kash continued to host the show, but Radio1 DJs Reggie Yates and Fearne Cotton (who had each presented a few shows in 2003, before the revamp) were brought back to co-host alongside him, before Kash was completely dropped by the BBC, later taking up a new contract at MTV. The show continued to be hosted by Reggie Yates and Fearne Cotton (usually together, but occasionally solo) on Friday evenings until 8July 2005.
On 30 July 2004, the show took place outside a studio environment for the first time by broadcasting outside in Gateshead. Girls Aloud, Busted, Will Young and Jamelia were among the performers that night.
2005: The Beginning of the End
Figures had plummeted to below three million, prompting an announcement by the BBC that the show was going to move, again, to Sunday evenings on BBC Two, thus losing the prime-time slot on BBC One that it had maintained for more than forty years.
This move was widely reported as a final "sidelining" of the show, and perhaps signalled its likely cancellation. At the time, it was insisted that this was so the show would air immediately after the official announcement of the new top 40 chart on Radio 1, as it was thought that by the following Friday, the chart seemed out of date. The final Top of the Pops to be shown on BBC One (barring Christmas and New Year specials) was broadcast on Monday 11 July 2005, which was edition number 2,166.
The first edition on BBC Two was broadcast on 17 July 2005 at 7.00 pm with presenter Fearne Cotton. After the move to Sundays, Cotton continued to host with a different guest presenter each week, such as Rufus Hound or Richard Bacon. On a number of occasions, however, Reggie Yates would step in, joined by female guest presenters such as Lulu, Cyndi Lauper and Anastacia. Viewing figures during this period averaged around 1½ million. Shortly after the move to BBC Two, Peters resigned as executive producer. He was replaced by the BBC's Creative Head of Music Entertainment Mark Cooper, while producer Sally Wood remained to oversee the show on a weekly basis.
2006: Cancellation
On 20 June 2006, the show was formally cancelled and it was announced that the last edition would be broadcast on 30 July 2006. Edith Bowman co-presented its hour-long swansong, along with Jimmy Savile (who was the main presenter on the first show), Reggie Yates, Mike Read, Pat Sharp, Sarah Cawood, Dave Lee Travis, Rufus Hound, Tony Blackburn and Janice Long.
The final day of recording was 26 July 2006 and featured archive footage and tributes, including the Rolling Stones – the very first band to appear on Top of the Pops – opening with "The Last Time", the Spice Girls, David Bowie, Wham!, Madonna, Beyoncé, Gnarls Barkley, the Jackson 5, Sonny and Cher and Robbie Williams. The show closed with a final countdown, topped by Shakira, as her track "Hips Don't Lie" (featuring Wyclef Jean) had climbed back up to number one on the UK Singles Chart earlier in the day. The show ended with Savile ultimately turning the lights off in the empty studio.
Fearne Cotton, who was the current presenter, was unavailable to co-host for the final edition due to her filming of ITV's Love Island in Fiji but opened the show with a quick introduction recorded on location, saying "It's still number one, it's Top of the Pops". BARB reported the final show's viewing figures as 3.98 million.
As the last episode featured no live acts in the studio, the last act to actually play live on a weekly episode of TOTP was Snow Patrol, who performed "Chasing Cars" in the penultimate edition; the last act ever featured visually on a weekly Top of the Pops was Girls Aloud, as part of the closing sequence of bands performing on the show throughout the years. They were shown performing "Love Machine".
2006–present: After the end
The magazine and TOTP2 have both survived despite the show's axing, and the Christmas editions also continue after returning to BBC One. However, the TOTP website, which the BBC had originally promised would continue, is now no longer updated, although many of the old features of the site – interviews, music news, reviews – have remained, now in the form of the Radio 1-affiliated TOTP ChartBlog accessible via the remains of the old website.
Calls for its return
In October 2008, British Culture Secretary Andy Burnham and Manchester indie band the Ting Tings called for the show to return.
On 29 October 2008, Simon Cowell stated in an interview that he would be willing to buy the rights to Top of the Pops from the BBC. The corporation responded that they had not been formally approached by Cowell, and that in any case the format was "not up for sale". In November 2008, it was reported by The Times and other newspapers that the weekly programme was to be revived in 2009, but the BBC said there were no such plans.
In July 2009, Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant criticised the BBC for ending the programme, stating that new acts were missing out on "that great moment of being crowned that week's Kings of Pop".
In early 2015 there was increased speculation of a return of the show including rumours that Dermot O'Leary might present alongside Fearne Cotton. According to a report in the Daily Mirror, a BBC insider stated that "some at the highest level are massive supporters of the plan [of a return] and have given the go-ahead." The move of the UK charts to a Friday due to take place in summer 2015 was also said to favour the possibility of a return, making it "the perfect tie-in" and a "perfect start to the weekend", but no weekly return has occurred.
BBC Four reruns
In April 2011, the BBC began to reshow Top of the Pops on Thursday nights on BBC Four beginning with the equivalent show from 35 years earlier in a 7:30 pm–8:00 pm slot approximating to the time the programme was traditionally shown. The first programme shown, 1April 1976, was chosen because it was from approximately this episode onwards that most editions remain in the BBC archive. The repeat programmes come in two versions; the first is edited down to fit in the 30-minute 7:30 slot, the second is shown normally twice overnight in the following weekend, and is usually complete. However both the short and longer editions can be edited for a number of reasons. Potentially offensive content to modern audiences is cut (for example The Barron Knights' in-studio performance of "Food For Thought" on the edition of 13 December 1979 including a segment parodying Chinese takeaways using mannerisms that may now be viewed as offensive), and cinematic film footage can be truncated, replaced or removed entirely due to the costs to the BBC of reshowing such footage. The BBC also makes the repeats available on BBC iPlayer. The repeats are continuing as of January 2022 with episodes from 1992.
Since October 2012, episodes featuring Jimmy Savile have ceased to be broadcast due to the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal and subsequent Operation Yewtree police investigation. Following the arrest of Dave Lee Travis by Operation Yewtree officers, and his subsequent conviction for indecent assault, episodes featuring Travis were also omitted. Following Gary Glitter's conviction for sexual assault, episodes featuring him are not included in the run, or otherwise have Glitter's performances edited out.
Mike Smith decided not to sign the licence extension that would allow the BBC to repeat the Top of the Pops episodes that he presented, with the BBC continuing to respect his wishes following his death. As a result, episodes featuring Smith are also omitted.
In 2021, it was discovered that episodes hosted by Adrian Rose (later Adrian Woolfe) were being skipped, starting with the 28th November 1991 episode featuring Nirvana's famous performance of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (mentioned below).
Other edits that have been made to episodes have included Jonathan King's reports from the US during episodes from the early 1980s, sometimes also resulting in the removal of a performance or video introduced as part of the report, and the removal of The Doors' performance of "Light My Fire" from a 1991 episode, due to The Doors not being covered by the BBC's music licensing agreement (which also resulted in another 1991 episode being skipped).
"Story of" Specials
Prior to the 1976 BBC reruns shown in 2011, the BBC produced a special programme, "The Story of 1976". This comprised excerpts from the 1976 programmes, interspersed with new interviews with people discussing the time period. They have produced similar programmes prior to subsequent annual reruns, "The Story of 1990" being the most recent such programme in October 2020, as 1991 and 1992 reruns started without a 'The Story of...' programme preceding them.
"Big Hits" compilation
A series of "Big Hits" compilations have been broadcast with on-screen captions about artists.In December 2016, a festive special using the format of the "Big Hits" programmes, Top of the Pops: Christmas Hits was broadcast on BBC Four, featuring a mix of Christmas music and non-festive songs which had been hits at Christmas time. This effectively replaced the annual Christmas edition of Top of the Pops 2, which did not run that year.
Christmas and New Year specials
Although the weekly Top of the Pops has been cancelled, the Christmas Specials have continued, hosted by Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates. The Christmas specials are broadcast on Christmas Day afternoon on BBC One. Since 2008 (apart from 2010 and 2011), a New Year special has also been broadcast. A new logo and title sequence were introduced on the 2019 Christmas special. The BBC's Head of Music Television, Mark Cooper, continued to oversee the programme as executive producer until 2019 when he was replaced by Alison Howe. Meanwhile, Stephanie McWhinnie, who had replaced Wood as producer with effect from Christmas 2011, was replaced by Caroline Cullen (who had previously worked as assistant producer on the show) from Christmas 2020, when both festive shows were recorded with new studio performances but no live audience physically in attendance. On 4December 2017, Yates stepped down from hosting Top of the Pops due to comments he made regarding Jewish people and rappers. The BBC later announced Clara Amfo as Yates' replacement, she continues to hold the role. Amfo was joined by Jordan North for the 2021 specials, with him replacing Cotton.
Comic Relief specials
The show was given a one-off revival (of sorts) for Comic Relief 2007 in the form of Top Gear of the Pops, presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. It was filmed at the Top Gear aerodrome studio in Surrey on Sunday, 11 March 2007, although it bore little resemblance to the usual Top of the Pops format.
On 13 March 2009, Top of The Pops was once again revived, this time in its usual format, for a special live Comic Relief edition, airing on BBC Two while the main telethon took a break for the BBC News at Ten on BBC One. As with the Christmas specials the show was presented by Radio1 duo Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates with special guest presenter Noel Fielding and appearances from Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Claudia Winkleman, Jonathan Ross, Davina McCall (dancing in the audience and later as a Flo Rida dancer with Claudia Winkleman and French and Saunders) and David Tennant.
Live performances – interspersed with Comic Relief appeal films – included acts such as Franz Ferdinand, Oasis, Take That, U2, James Morrison and Flo Rida (that week's Number1). Kicking off the show was a performance from Rob Brydon and Ruth Jones in their Gavin & Stacey guises, feat. Tom Jones and Robin Gibb with "(Barry) Islands in the Stream", the Comic Relief single.
Performers, performances and presenters
In its extensive history, Top of the Pops has featured many artists, many of whom have appeared more than once on the show to promote many of their records.
Green Day hold the record for the longest Top of the Pops performance: "Jesus of Suburbia" broadcast on 6November 2005, lasted 9minutes and 10 seconds. There is uncertainty about what was the shortest performance. In 2005, presenter Reggie Yates announced on the show that it was Super Furry Animals with "Do or Die", broadcast on 28 January 2000, clocking in at 95 seconds. However, "It's My Turn" by Angelic was 91 seconds on 16 June 2000 and, according to an August 2012 edition of TOTP2, "Here Comes the Summer" by the Undertones was just 84 seconds on 26 July 1979. Cliff Richard appeared the most times on the show, with almost 160 performances. Status Quo were the most frequent group with 106 performances.
Miming
Throughout the show's history, many artists mimed to backing tracks. Early on, Musicians' Union rules required that groups re-record backing tracks with union members performing when possible. However, as The Guardian recounted in 2001: "In practice, artists pretended to re-record the song, then used their original tapes."
The miming policy also led to the occasional technical hitch. In 1967, as Jimi Hendrix prepared to perform "Burning of the Midnight Lamp", the song "The House That Jack Built" by Alan Price was played in studio instead, prompting Hendrix to respond: "I like the voice...but I don't know the words." In 1988, All About Eve appeared to perform "Martha's Harbour". Although the song was being played on the television broadcast, it was not being played in studio, so lead singer Julianne Regan remained silent on a stool on stage while Tim Bricheno (the only other band member present) did not play his guitar.
Occasionally bands played live, examples in the 1970s and 1980s being the Four Seasons, the Who, Blondie, John Otway, Sham 69, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Jimmy James and the Vagabonds, The Sweet, The Jackson 5, Heavy Metal Kids, Elton John, Typically Tropical, New Order, Whitney Houston and David Bowie. In 1980, heavy metal band Iron Maiden played live on the show when they refused to mime to their single "Running Free". Solo artists and vocal groups were supposed to sing live to the Top of the Pops Orchestra. Billy Ocean, Brotherhood of Man, Anita Ward, Thelma Houston, Deniece Williams, Hylda Baker and the Nolans all performed in this way.
In 1991 the producers of the show allowed artists the option of singing live over a backing track. Miming has resulted in a number of notable moments. In 1991, Nirvana refused to mime to the pre-recorded backing track of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with Kurt Cobain singing in a deliberately low voice and altering lyrics in the song, and bassist Krist Novoselic swinging his bass over his head and drummer Dave Grohl playing randomly on his kit. In 1995, the Gallagher brothers of Oasis switched places while performing "Roll with It". During their performance of "Don't Leave Me This Way" the Communards singers Jimmy Somerville and Sarah Jane Morris swapped lyrics for part of the song towards the end. Another example of whimsy was John Peel's appearance as the mandolin soloist for Rod Stewart on "Maggie May". The new practice also exposed a number of poor live singers, and was dropped as a general rule.
In its final few years miming had become less and less common, especially for bands, as studio technology became more reliable and artists were given the freedom to choose their performance style. Former Executive Producer Andi Peters said there was no policy on miming and that it was entirely up to the performer whether they wanted to sing live or mime.
Orchestra and backing singers
From 1966 to 1980, Top of the Pops had an in-studio orchestra conducted by Johnny Pearson accompany select musical performances, with The Ladybirds (later Maggie Stredder Singers) providing backing vocals. Credited on the show as musical associate, Derek Warne played piano and provided musical arrangements for the orchestra. As The Telegraph recounted, Pearson and the orchestra improvised accompaniments with about 20 minutes of rehearsal time per song, and the musicians, "almost all middle-aged, often struggled with the enormous range of rock and pop tunes with which they were presented." In contrast, The Times said upon Pearson's passing in 2011 that the orchestra "often elicit[ed] excellent performances with barely enough time beforehand for a couple of run-throughs."
Other notable members of the orchestra include drummer Clem Cattini, trombonist Bobby Lamb, and lead trumpeters Leon Calvert and Ian Hamer. From 1971 to 1974, Martin Briley played guitar for the orchestra before joining rock group Greenslade.
Following the 1980 Musicians Union strike, the programme resumed broadcast on 7 August 1980 without its orchestra or backing singers. However, Pearson continued to make occasional contributions as musical director until the 900th episode in the summer of 1981. Afterwards, Warne occasionally made musical arrangements through April 1982. Ronnie Hazlehurst conducted the orchestra from 1982 to 1983.
Music videos
When an artist or group was unavailable to perform in studio, Top of the Pops would show a music video in place. According to Queen guitarist Brian May, the groundbreaking 1975 music video for "Bohemian Rhapsody" was produced so that the band could avoid miming on TOTP since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song.
Dance troupes
January to October 1964 – no dance troupes
In the era before promotional videos were routinely produced for every charting single, the BBC would frequently have neither the band themselves nor alternative footage available for a song selected for the programme. In the first few months of the show in 1964, the director would just scan across the audience dancing in the absence of any other footage, but by October 1964 a decision was made to at least occasionally bring in a dance troupe with a choreographed routine to some of the tracks.
November 1964 to April 1968 – The Go-Jos
An initial candidate troupe was the existing BBC TV Beat Girls, but an ex-dancer from the Beat Girls, Jo Cook, was eventually engaged to create a troupe, the all-female Go-Jos, with Cook as choreographer. The Go-Jos also worked outside of Top of the Pops, notably for two years on the Val Doonican show – Doonican said in 1968 "I thought the Gojos were fabulous, something really new. When I got my own television series I just had to have them with me."
They were initially a three-piece (Pat Hughes for the first edition only, Linda Hotchkin and Jane Bartlett), but their number eventually grew to six (Hotchkin, Bartlett, Lesley Larbey, Wendy Hilhouse, Barbara van der Heyde and Thelma Bignell) with Cook as full-time choreographer. Lulu remembered of their costumes "They mostly wore white boots to the knee and short skirts and the camera would go up the skirt and it was all very risqué."
Cook herself said of working on the Doonican show (of which she was dance director) comparing to Top of the Pops, "Pop steps are limited... With Val we have more scope, and we can work to get more of the feel of ballet into our numbers."
May to June 1968 – Go-Jos/Pan's People transition
In April 1968, a Top of the Pops choreographer, Virginia Mason, auditioned for dancers for a routine on Top of The Pops ("Simon Says" by the 1910 Fruitgum Company); two of whom that were successful (Ruth Pearson and Patricia "Dee Dee" Wilde) were part of the existing six-female dance troupe, Pan's People. Like the Go-Jos, this group was also partly drawn from ex-members of the Beat Girls.
Although this routine did not make it onto the programme itself, in subsequent weeks, members of Pan's People (Louise Clarke, Felicity "Flick" Colby, Barbara "Babs" Lord, Pearson, Andrea "Andi" Rutherford and Wilde) started to appear on the programme separately to the Go-Jos. Pan's People were then selected by the BBC over the Go-Jos when they chose a group to be the resident troupe. The Go-Jos' final Top of the Pops performance was in June 1968 dancing to "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones.
July 1968 to April 1976 – Pan's People
As with the Go-Jos, in the first eighteen months of the Pan's People era the dancers were not a weekly fixture on the programme. However, due to group fan mail and good viewing figures, by 1970 the group was on nearly every week. Pay was not high – they were paid the minimum Equity rate of £56 per week.
One of the original Pan's People dancers, Colby, became the full-time choreographer in 1971.
Colby spoke of the dancing – "They weren't Broadway-standard routines... we were definitely doing watercolours, not oil paintings."
May to October 1976 – Ruby Flipper
In early 1976, the last remaining of the early members of Pan's People, Ruth Pearson announced her retirement, leaving just four members all of whom who had joined within the last four years; Cherry Gillespie, Mary Corpe, Lee Ward and Sue Menhenick. Rather than continue with this line up or add additional members, it was decided by Colby and BBC production staff to replace this group with a male and female group created for the programme, Ruby Flipper, choreographed by Colby and managed by Colby with Pearson. Lee Ward left shortly after this decision was made, reportedly saying regarding the change: "It's a big mistake. Men rush home to watch sexy ladies. They do not want to see other men."
Rehearsals for this new group started in March 1976, and the group began appearing on Top of the Pops in May 1976. Whilst producers were aware of the switch to the new group, Bill Cotton, the then head of the light entertainment unit of which Top of the Pops was part, was not. This group started as a seven-piece with three men (Gavin Trace, Floyd Pearce and Phil Steggles) and four women (Menhenick, Gillespie, Patti Hammond and Lulu Cartwright). Corpe was not invited to join the new troupe. Trace, Pearce, Steggles and Cartwright joined following open auditions, Hammond, an established dancer, was invited to join to complete the "look" following a later individual audition. Colby viewed this gender-mixed group as an opportunity to develop more physical routines including lifts, more duets and generally not have the whole group at each performance.
However, by August the BBC had decided to terminate the group due to perceived unpopularity and being "...out of step with viewers". Their final appearance was in October 1976.
November 1976 to October 1981 – Legs and Co
The group created to replace Ruby Flipper was Legs & Co, reverting to an all-female line-up, and once more choreographed by Colby. Three of the six in the initial line-up (Menhenick, Cartwight and Hammond) were taken from Ruby Flipper. with Rosie Hetherington, Gill Clarke and Pauline Peters making up the six. Despite being an all-female group, on occasion one or more male dancers were brought in, notably Pearce several times.
During their run, the group covered the transition from Disco to Punk, Electronic and Modern Romantic music. Notably, they danced to two Sex Pistols tracks.
December 1981 to September 1983 – Zoo
By late 1981, Legs & Co (by this time Anita Chellamah had replaced Peters) had become more integrated into the studio audience, rather than performing set-piece routines, as a result of the 'party atmosphere' brought in by Michael Hurll. Also by this time Colby was particularly keen to work once more with male dancers; feeling it time for a change, Legs & Co's stint was ended, and a twenty-member dance troupe (ten male, ten female), named Zoo was created, with a set of performers drawn from the pool of twenty each week. Colby was now credited as "Dance Director". Three members of previous troupes, Menhenick, Corpe and Chellamah, made at least one appearance each during the Zoo period. The dancers now chose their own clothes, moving away from the synchronised appearance of previous troupes.
October 1983 to 2006 – After Zoo
By the early 1980s, record companies were offering the BBC free promotional videos, meaning dance troupes no longer fulfilled their original purpose. Zoo's run ended in 1983, and with it the use of dance troupes on Top of the Pops.
After the demise of Zoo, the audience took a more active role, often dancing in more prominent areas such as behind performing acts on the back of the stage, and on podiums. However, the show also employed cheerleaders to lead the dancing.
Dance Troupe chronology
Go-Jos' first performance: 19 November 1964 – Dancing to "Baby Love" by the Supremes
Pan's People first performance (three of the dancers, independently contracted): April 1968 – Dancing to "Young Girl" by Gary Puckett & the Union Gap or "Respect" by Aretha Franklin
Pan's People's first performance (as the six-piece group of early 1968): 30 May 1968 – Dancing to "U.S. Male" by Elvis Presley
Go-Jos' final performance: 27 June 1968 – Dancing to "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones
Pan's People's final performance: 29 April 1976 – Dancing to "Silver Star" by the Four Seasons
Ruby Flipper's first performance: 6 May 1976 – Dancing to "Can't Help Falling In Love" by the Stylistics
Ruby Flipper's final performance: 14 October 1976 – Dancing to "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry
Legs & Co's first performance (credited as Ruby Flipper & Legs & Co): 21 October 1976 – Dancing to "Queen of My Soul" by Average White Band
Legs & Co's first performance (credited as Legs & Co): 11 November 1976 – Dancing to "Spinning Rock Boogie" by Hank C. Burnette
Legs & Co's final performance: 29 October 1981 – Dancing to "Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)" by Haircut 100
Zoo's first performance: 5 November 1981 – Dancing to "Twilight" by E.L.O.
Zoo's final performance: 29 September 1983 – Dancing to "What I Got Is What You Need" by Unique
Theme music
For much of the 1960s, the show's theme music was an organ-based instrumental track, also called "Top of the Pops", by the Dave Davani Four.
1 January 1964 to ?: Instrumental percussion piece written by Johnnie Stewart and Harry Rabinowitz and performed by drummer Bobby Midgly.
1965 to 1966: Dave Davani Four's "Top of the Pops" with the Ladybirds on backing vocal harmonies. Originally the opening theme, this was later played as a closing theme from 1966 up until 1970.
20 January 1966 to 13 November 1969: Unknown instrumental guitar track.
27 November 1969 to 29 October 1970: Unknown brass track played over colour titles with a voiceover proclaiming, "Yes! It's number one! It's Top of the Pops!" There was no TOTP on 20 November 1969 due to the Apollo 12 Moon landing.
5 November 1970 to 14 July 1977: An instrumental version of the Led Zeppelin-Willie Dixon composition "Whole Lotta Love" performed by CCS members.
21 July 1977 to 29 May 1980: No opening theme tune; a contemporary chart song was played over the countdown stills. "Whole Lotta Love" featured only in Christmas editions, the 800th edition from 26 July 1979 and the voice-over only edition from 22 November 1979.
7 August 1980 to 2July 1981: No opening theme tune; the CCS version of "Whole Lotta Love" was played over some of the images of the featured artists and during the countdown stills in the Top 30 and Top 20 sections which were moved later on in the programme. From the edition of 7August 1980 to the edition of 2July 1981, "Whole Lotta Love" was heard only during the chart rundowns.
9 July 1981 to 27 March 1986: "Yellow Pearl" was commissioned as the new theme music. From May 1983 to July 1984, a re-recording of "Yellow Pearl" was played over the chart rundown and a pop rock version from August 1984 to March 1986.
3 April 1986 to 26 September 1991: "The Wizard", a composition by Paul Hardcastle.
3 October 1991 to 26 January 1995: "Now Get Out of That" composed by Tony Gibber.
2 February 1995 to 8 August 1997 (except 27 June & 25 July 1997 and 15 August 1997 to 24 April 1998) and 10 October 1997: the theme was a track called "Red Hot Pop" composed by Vince Clarke of Erasure.
27 June and 25 July 1997 then 15 August 1997 to 24 April 1998 (except 10 October 1997): No theme tune; the opening of the first song of the episode was played under the titles and a song from the top 20 was played under the chart rundown.
1 May 1998 to 21 November 2003: Updated, drum and bass version of "Whole Lotta Love" by Ben Chapman.
28 November 2003 to 30 July 2006 and until 2012 for TOTP2 and Xmas specials: A remixed version of "Now Get Out of That" by Tony Gibber.
25 December 2013 to present for Top of the Pops Christmas and New Year Specials: A mix of both the 1970s "Whole Lotta Love" theme and the 1998 remix.
Lost episodes
Due to the then standard practice of wiping videotape, the vast majority of the episodes from the programme's history prior to 1976 have been lost, including any official recording of the only live appearance by the Beatles.
Of the first 500 episodes (1964–73), only about 20 complete recordings remain in the BBC archives, and the majority of these are from 1969 onwards. The earliest surviving footage dates from 26 February 1964, and consists of performances by Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas and the Dave Clark Five. Some programmes exist only partially (largely performances that were either pre-recorded or re-used in later editions). There are also two examples of rehearsal footage, which are both from 1965, one which includes Alan Freeman introducing the Seekers, and another with Sandie Shaw rehearsing "Long Live Love"—both believed to be for the end-of-year Christmas Special. There are also cases of shows that exist only in their raw, unedited form. The oldest complete episode in existence was originally transmitted on Boxing Day in 1967 (only five complete recordings from the 1960s survive, two of which have mute presenter links). The most recent that is not held is dated 8September 1977. Most editions after this date exist in full, except a few 1981–85 episodes recorded live feature mute presenter links (These episodes were skipped on the BBC Four re-runs).
Some off-air recordings, made by fans at home with a microphone in front of the TV speaker, exist in varying quality, including the Jimi Hendrix Experience performing a live version of "Hey Joe" in December 1966.
Some segments of TOTP which were not retained do survive in some form owing to having been included in other programmes, either by the BBC itself or by foreign broadcasters. What was thought to be the only surviving footage of the Beatles on the programme, for instance, comes from its re-use in episode one of 1965 Doctor Who serial The Chase. Additionally a number of recordings are believed to exist in private collections. However, in 2019, an 11-second clip of the group's only live appearance on TOTP, from 16 June 1966, was unearthed – this was recorded by a viewer using an 8mm camera to film the live transmission on their television. Other individual but complete clips that have surfaced over recent years include The Hollies performing "Bus Stop", and The Jimi Hendrix Experience playing both "Purple Haze" and "The Wind Cries Mary".
Thanks to a deal between the BBC and German television network ZDF around the turn of the 1970s, several TOTP clips were sent over to be shown on Disco, a similar-styled chart show. This meant that performances from the likes of The Kinks (Apeman), The Who (The Seeker) and King Crimson (Cat Food) still exist in German archives.
Two complete episodes from 1967 were discovered in a private collection in 2009, having been recorded at home on an early available open reel to reel video recorder. Whilst the tapes suffered from major damage and degradation of both sound and picture quality, one show featured Pink Floyd with original leader Syd Barrett performing "See Emily Play", whilst the second contained Dave Davies singing his solo hit "Death of a Clown".
The programme was forced off the air for several weeks by industrial action by the Musicians' Union in both 1974 and 1980.
Spin-offs
Top of the Pops has a sister show called TOTP2 which uses archive footage from as early as the late 1960s. It began on 17 September 1994. The early series were narrated by Johnnie Walker, before Steve Wright took over as narrator. In summer 2004 BBC Two's controller, Roly Keating, announced that it was being "rested". Shortly after UKTV G2 began showing re-edited versions of earlier programmes with re-recorded dialogue. Finally after a two-year break TOTP2 returned to the BBC Two schedules for a new series on Saturday, 30 September 2006, in an evening timeslot. It was still narrated by Steve Wright and featured a mixture of performances from the TOTP archive and newly recorded performances. The first edition of this series featured new performances by Razorlight and Nelly Furtado recorded after the final episode of Top of the Pops. In 2009 Mark Radcliffe took over as narrator. TOTP2 continued to receive sporadic new episodes from this point onwards, most notably Christmas specials, until 2017 when the show ceased producing new episodes, though previous episodes are still repeated on both BBC Two and BBC Four.
Aired on BBC Radio 1 between the mid-1990s and late 2001 was Top of the Pops: The Radio Show which went out every Sunday at 3 pm just before the singles chart, and was presented by Jayne Middlemiss and Scott Mills. It later reappeared on the BBC World Service in May 2003 originally presented by Emma B, where it continues to be broadcast weekly in an hourly format, now presented by Kim Robson and produced by former BBC World Service producer Alan Rowett.
The defunct channel Play UK created two spin offs; TOTP+ Plus and TOTP@Play (2000–2001) (until mid-2000, this show was called The Phone Zone and was a spin-off from BBC Two music series The O-Zone). BBC Choice featured a show called TOTP The New Chart (5 December 1999 – 26 March 2000) and on BBC Two TOTP+ (8 October 2000 – 26 August 2001) which featured the TOTP @ Play studio and presenters. This is not to be confused with the UK Play version of the same name. A more recent spin-off (now ended) was Top of the Pops Saturday hosted originally by Fearne Cotton and Simon Grant, and its successor Top of the Pops Reloaded. This was shown on Saturday mornings on BBC One and featured competitions, star interviews, video reviews and some Top of the Pops performances. This was aimed at a younger audience and was part of the CBBC Saturday morning line-up. This was to rival CD:UK at the same time on ITV.
Send-ups
A number of performers have sent up the format in various ways. This was often by performers who disliked the mime format of the show, as a protest against this rather than simply refusing to appear.
When Fairport Convention appeared to promote their 1969 hit "Si Tu Dois Partir", drummer Dave Mattacks wore a T-shirt printed "MIMING".
When the Smiths appeared on the show to perform their single "This Charming Man", lead singer Morrissey was unhappy about having to lip-sync and so held a bunch of gladioli on the stage instead of a microphone.
While performing their 1982 hit "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)", the band Dexy's Midnight Runners were seen performing in front of a projection of the darts player with a similar sounding name (Jocky Wilson instead of soul singer Jackie Wilson). Dexy's frontman Kevin Rowland later said in an interview that the use of the Jocky Wilson picture was his idea and not a mistake by the programme makers as is sometimes stated.
A performance of "Marguerita Time" by Status Quo in early 1984 in which a clearly-refreshed Rick Parfitt walks directly into the drum kit at the end of the song, taking the drummer and whole kit with him as the others continue miming
Frankie Goes To Hollywood performed one of the many 1984 performances of their hit "Two Tribes" with bassist Mark O'Toole playing drums whilst drummer Ped Gill played bass.
When Oasis mimed to "Whatever" on Top of the Pops in 1994, one of the cello players from the symphony was replaced by rhythm guitarist Bonehead, who clearly had no idea how the instrument should be played. Towards the end of the song, he gave up the pretence and started using the bow to conduct. A woman plays his rhythm guitar.
Singer Les Gray of Mud went on stage to perform with a ventriloquist dummy during the performance of "Lonely This Christmas" and had the dummy lip-synch to the voice-over in the middle of the song.
During Mott the Hoople's performance of their single "Roll Away the Stone" in 1973, drummer Dale Griffin plays with oversized drumsticks.
EMF appeared on the show with one of the guitarists strumming along while wearing boxing gloves.
At the end of The Who's performance of "5:15" the band proceeded to destroy their instruments despite the fact the backing track was still playing.
In Blur's performance of "Charmless Man" in 1996, Dave Rowntree decided to play with oversized drumsticks, while Graham Coxon played a mini guitar.
In Green Day's first Top of the Pops appearance in 1994, the band played the song "Welcome to Paradise". Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong wore an otherwise plain white T-shirt with the phrase "Who am I fooling anyway?" handwritten on it, most likely a reference to his own miming during the performance. He could also be seen not playing his guitar during the instrumental bridge in the song.
The performance of "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart and the Faces featured John Peel miming on mandolin. Near the end of the song, Rod and the Faces begin to kick around a football. This is despite the fact that the music can be still heard playing in the background.
The Cure were known for their abhorrence for miming their songs whilst on TOTP and on several occasions made it obvious they were not playing their parts – using such stunts as playing guitar left-handed and miming very badly out of synch.
Ambient house group the Orb sat and played chess while an edited version of their 39:57-minute single "Blue Room" played in the background.
Depeche Mode's performance of "Barrel of a Gun" in 1997 featured Dutch photographer and director Anton Corbijn who mimed playing the drums. Also Tim Simenon (who produced the album the song appeared on) mimed playing keyboards along with Andy Fletcher.
When the Cuban Boys performed "Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia" at the end of 1999, a performance which was reportedly unbroadcast, the band wearing labcoats, covered in cobwebs.
International versions
Europe
The TOTP format was sold to RTL in Germany in the 1990s, and aired on Saturday afternoons. It was very successful for a long time, with a compilation album series and magazine. However, in 2006 it was announced that the German show would be ending. The Italian version (first broadcast on Rai 2 and later on Italia 1) also ended in 2006. In February 2010 the show returned on Rai 2, and was broadcast for two seasons before being cancelled again in October 2011. The French version of the show ended by September 2006 on France 2.
In the Netherlands, TopPop was broadcast by AVRO 1970–1988, and a version of the show continued to run on BNN until the end of December 2006. BBC Prime used to broadcast re-edited episodes of the BBC version, the weekend after it was transmitted in the UK. Ireland began transmitting Top of the Pops in November 1978 on RTÉ2. This was the UK version being transmitted at the same time as on BBC. The broadcasts ceased in late 1993.
United States
Top of the Pops had short-lived fame in the United States. In October 1987, the CBS television network decided to try an American version of the show. It was hosted by Nia Peeples and even showed performances from the BBC version of the programme (and vice versa). The show was presented on late Friday nights as part of CBS Late Night, and lasted almost half a year.
In 2002, BBC America presented the BBC version of Top of the Pops as part of their weekend schedule. The network would get the episodes one week after they were transmitted in the UK. BBC America then tinkered with the show by cutting a few minutes out of each show and moving it to a weekday time slot.
On 23 January 2006, Lou Pearlman made a deal to bring Top of the Pops back to the airwaves in the United States. It was expected to be similar to the 1987 version, but it would also utilise the Billboard magazine music charts, most notably the Hot 100 chart. It was supposed to be planned for a possible 2006 or 2007 launch, but with several lawsuits against Lou and his companies (which resulted in his conviction in 2008), as well as the cancellation of the UK version, the proposed US project never went forward. On 19 August 2006, VH1 aired the UK series' final episode.
The United States had its own similar series, American Bandstand, which aired nationally on ABC from 1957 to 1987 (although it would continue in first-run syndication until 1988 and end its run on USA in 1989). Similar series also included Soul Train (1970–2006, featuring R&B artists), Club MTV (1986–92, featuring dance music acts; hosted by Downtown Julie Brown, an alumnus of TOTP as part of the show's last dance troupe Zoo) and Solid Gold (1980–88; like the early TOTP, it also used dance troupes).
Canada
Canada's version was Electric Circus (1988–2003) on MuchMusic, which was also seen in the USA through MuchMusic USA. It had a national chart (mostly of dance music and some pop) as well as live performances, and was based on a local late '70s programme in Toronto called CITY-TV Boogie.
New Zealand
The Top of the Pops brand has also been exported to New Zealand. Although the British show has been broadcast intermittently in New Zealand, the country historically relied on music video-based shows to demonstrate its own Top 20, as the major international acts, who dominated the local charts, considered New Zealand too small and remote to visit regularly. This changed to an extent in 2002, when the New Zealand government suggested a voluntary New Zealand music quota on radio (essentially a threat that if the stations did not impose a quota themselves then one would be imposed on them). The amount of local music played on radio stations increased, as did the number of local songs in the top 20. Therefore, a new local version of Top of the Pops became feasible for the first time, and the show was commissioned by Television New Zealand. The show was executive produced by David Rose, managing director and owner of Satellite Media, and began airing in early 2004 with host Alex Behan. The hour-long show (as opposed to the 30-minute UK version) which was broadcast at 5 pm on Saturdays on TV2 contained a mixture of performances recorded locally on a sound stage in the Auckland CBD, as well as performances from the international versions of the show. The New Zealand Top 20 singles and Top 10 albums charts are also featured. Alex Behan stayed as host for two years before Bede Skinner took over. Despite having a sizeable fan base, in 2006 TVNZ announced that Top of the Pops had been axed.
Free-to-air music channel C4 then picked up the UK version of Top of the Pops and aired it on Saturdays at 8 pm with a repeat screening on Thursdays. However, since the weekly UK version was axed itself, this arrangement also ended.
Africa, Asia and the Middle East
An edited version of the UK show was shown on BBC Prime, the weekend after UK transmission.
In addition, a licensed version was shown on the United Arab Emirates-based MBC2 television channel. This version consisted of parts of the UK version, including the Top 10 charts, as well as live performances by Arabic pop singers.
Latin America
A complete version of the UK show was shown on People+Arts, two weeks after the UK transmission.
Brazilian network TV Globo aired a loosely based version of the original format in 2018, labeled as 'Só Toca Top', hosted by singer Luan Santana and actress Fernanda Souza.
Compilation albums
A number of compilation albums using the Top of the Pops brand have been issued over the years. The first one to reach the charts was BBC TV's The Best of Top of the Pops on the Super Beeb record label in 1975, which reached number 21 and in 1986 the BBC released The Wizard by Paul Hardcastle (the 1986-1990 Top of The Pops theme tune) on Vinyl under the BBC Records and Tapes banner.
Starting in 1968 and carrying on through the 1970s a rival series of Top of the Pops albums were produced, however these had no connection with the television series except for its name. They were a series of budget cover albums of current chart hits recorded by anonymous session singers and musicians released on the Hallmark record label. They had initially reached the charts but were later disallowed due to a change in the criteria for entering the charts. These albums continued to be produced until the early 1980s, when the advent of compilation albums featuring the original versions of hits, such as the Now That's What I Call Music! series, led to a steep decline in their popularity.
In the 1990s, the BBC Top of the Pops brand was again licensed for use in a tie-in compilation series. Starting in 1995 with Sony Music's Columbia Records label, these double disc collections moved to the special marketing arm of PolyGram / Universal Music Group TV, before becoming a sister brand of the Now That's What I Call Music! range in the EMI / Virgin / Universal joint venture.
Similarly to the roles of Top of the Pops on BBC One and BBC Two in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the compilation albums range featured current hits for the main series and classic hits (such as '70s Rock) for the "Top of the Pops 2" spin-offs.
The Top of the Pops brand has now been licensed by EMI who released a compilation series in 2007–08, with one CD for each year that Top of the Pops was running. The boxset for the entire series of 43 discs was released 7July 2008. A podcast supporting the release of the boxset featuring interviews with Mark Goodier, Miles Leonard, Malcolm McLaren and David Hepworth is available.
Number One in the Compilation Charts
These albums in the series reached No. 1:
Top of the Pops 1 (Columbia Records, 1995)
Top of the Pops '99 – Volume 2 (Universal Music TV, 1999)
Top of the Pops 2000 – Volume Two (BBC Music / Universal Music TV, 2000)
Top of the Pops magazine
Top of the Pops magazine has been running since February 1995, and filled the void in the BBC magazine portfolio where Number One magazine used to be. It began much in the mould of Q magazine, then changed its editorial policy to directly compete with popular teen celebrity magazines such as Smash Hits and Big, with free sticker giveaways replacing Brett Anderson covers.
A July 1996 feature on the Spice Girls coined the famous "Spice" nicknames for each member (Baby, Ginger, Posh, Scary and Sporty) that stayed with them throughout their career as a group and beyond.
The BBC announced that the magazine would continue in publication despite the end of the television series, and is still running.
An earlier Top of the Pops magazine appeared briefly in the mid-1970s. Mud drummer Dave Mount sat reading an edition throughout a 1975 appearance on the show.
In popular culture
The Number 6 track of the Kinks' 1970 eighth studio album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One is called "Top of the Pops" and narrates the path to stardom by reaching Number1 in the music charts.
Benny Hill did a parody of Top of the Pops in January 1971 called "Top of the Tops". It featured satires of many music acts at the time as well as impersonations of both Jimmy Savile and Tony Blackburn.
The Scottish punk band the Rezillos lampooned the show in their song "Top of the Pops". The band performed the song on the programme twice when it entered the charts in 1978.
In 1984, British Rail HST power car 43002 was named Top of the Pops, by Jimmy Savile. This followed an edition which was broadcast live on a train, which 43002 was one of the power cars for. The nameplates were removed in 1989.
The Smashie and Nicey 1994 TV special Smashie and Nicey: The End of an Era featured doctored and recreated footage of the two fictional DJs hosting a montage of 1970s editions of Top of the Pops, including a "Black music" edition, which the pair presented in Blackface.
In the opening credits of the Spice Girls' 1997 feature film Spiceworld: The Movie, the girls perform their hit single "Too Much" on a fictional episode of the show. They did also perform it on the show in real life when it became their second Christmas number one in the UK that same year.
A 2001 episode of Tweenies featured a parody of Top of the Pops, complete with Max imitating Jimmy Savile. The episode was unintententionally repeated in January 2013, and received 216 complaints.
Licensing
In May 2006, following a special Red Hot Chili Peppers concert recorded in the car park of BBC Television Centre, Hammersmith and Fulham Council (which governs the area the centre is located) informed the BBC that it lacked the necessary public entertainment license (as required by the Licensing Act 2003). Until the BBC could obtain the license, BBC staff stood-in as audience members for live music programmes.
DVDs
In 2004 there was a DVD released called Top of the Pops 40th Anniversary 1964–2004 DVD. It features live performances, containing one song for each year, except 1966. (Two tracks from 1965 are featured instead). Also included as extras are seven opening titles, most notably the one with the flying coloured LP's from 1981. This title sequence had Phil Lynott's song "Yellow Pearl" as the theme. The 1986 and 1989 titles are also featured, with Paul Hardcastle's hit "The Wizard" as the theme. This DVD was to celebrate 40 years since the show started.
There was also a DVD quiz released in 2007 called The Essential Music Quiz. There was also a DVD in 2001 called Summer 2001, a sister DVD to the album of the same name.
See also
Alright Now
The Old Grey Whistle Test
Ready Steady Go!
Revolver (TV series)
Top of the Box
The Tube (TV series)
References
Further reading
Blacknell, Steve. The Story of Top of the Pops. Wellingborough, Northants: Patrick Stephens, 1985
Gittens, Ian. Top Of The Pops: Mishaps, Miming and Music: True Adventures of TV's No.1 Pop Show. London: BBC, 2007
Seaton, Pete with Richard Down. The Kaleidoscope British Television Music & Variety Guide II: Top Pop: 1964–2006. Dudley: Kaleidoscope Publishing, 2007
Simpson, Jeff. Top of the Pops: 1964–2002: it's still number one, its Top of the Pops! London: BBC, 2002
External links
1964 British television series debuts
British music television shows
1964 in British music
1960s British music television series
1970s British music television series
1980s British music television series
1990s British music television series
2000s British music television series
2010s British music television series
1960s in British music
1970s in British music
1980s in British music
1990s in British music
2000s in British music
2010s in British music
BBC Television shows
CBS original programming
Television series by CBS Studios
Television series by BBC Studios
Lost BBC episodes
Pop music television series
British music chart television shows
English-language television shows
Jimmy Savile
British television series revived after cancellation
Television shows shot at BBC Elstree Centre | true | [
"Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, in Spanish Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio (Book of the Examples of Count Lucanor and of Patronio), also commonly known as El Conde Lucanor, Libro de Patronio, or Libro de los ejemplos (original Old Castilian: Libro de los enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor et de Patronio), is one of the earliest works of prose in Castilian Spanish. It was first written in 1335.\n\nThe book is divided into four parts. The first and most well-known part is a series of 51 short stories (some no more than a page or two) drawn from various sources, such as Aesop and other classical writers, and Arabic folktales.\n\nTales of Count Lucanor was first printed in 1575 when it was published at Seville under the auspices of Argote de Molina. It was again printed at Madrid in 1642, after which it lay forgotten for nearly two centuries.\n\nPurpose and structure\n\nA didactic, moralistic purpose, which would color so much of the Spanish literature to follow (see Novela picaresca), is the mark of this book. Count Lucanor engages in conversation with his advisor Patronio, putting to him a problem (\"Some man has made me a proposition...\" or \"I fear that such and such person intends to...\") and asking for advice. Patronio responds always with the greatest humility, claiming not to wish to offer advice to so illustrious a person as the Count, but offering to tell him a story of which the Count's problem reminds him. (Thus, the stories are \"examples\" [ejemplos] of wise action.) At the end he advises the Count to do as the protagonist of his story did.\n\nEach chapter ends in more or less the same way, with slight variations on: \"And this pleased the Count greatly and he did just so, and found it well. And Don Johán (Juan) saw that this example was very good, and had it written in this book, and composed the following verses.\" A rhymed couplet closes, giving the moral of the story.\n\nOrigin of stories and influence on later literature\nMany of the stories written in the book are the first examples written in a modern European language of various stories, which many other writers would use in the proceeding centuries. Many of the stories he included were themselves derived from other stories, coming from western and Arab sources.\n\nShakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew has the basic elements of Tale 35, \"What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\".\n\nTale 32, \"What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth\" tells the story that Hans Christian Andersen made popular as The Emperor's New Clothes.\n\nStory 7, \"What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana\", a version of Aesop's The Milkmaid and Her Pail, was claimed by Max Müller to originate in the Hindu cycle Panchatantra.\n\nTale 2, \"What happened to a good Man and his Son, leading a beast to market,\" is the familiar fable The miller, his son and the donkey.\n\nIn 2016, Baroque Decay released a game under the name \"The Count Lucanor\". As well as some protagonists' names, certain events from the books inspired past events in the game.\n\nThe stories\n\nThe book opens with a prologue which introduces the characters of the Count and Patronio. The titles in the following list are those given in Keller and Keating's 1977 translation into English. James York's 1868 translation into English gives a significantly different ordering of the stories and omits the fifty-first.\n\n What Happened to a King and His Favorite \n What Happened to a Good Man and His Son \n How King Richard of England Leapt into the Sea against the Moors\n What a Genoese Said to His Soul When He Was about to Die \n What Happened to a Fox and a Crow Who Had a Piece of Cheese in His Beak\n How the Swallow Warned the Other Birds When She Saw Flax Being Sown \n What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana \n What Happened to a Man Whose Liver Had to Be Washed \n What Happened to Two Horses Which Were Thrown to the Lion \n What Happened to a Man Who on Account of Poverty and Lack of Other Food Was Eating Bitter Lentils \n What Happened to a Dean of Santiago de Compostela and Don Yllán, the Grand Master of Toledo\n What Happened to the Fox and the Rooster \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Hunting Partridges \n The Miracle of Saint Dominick When He Preached against the Usurer \n What Happened to Lorenzo Suárez at the Siege of Seville \n The Reply that count Fernán González Gave to His Relative Núño Laynes \n What Happened to a Very Hungry Man Who Was Half-heartedly Invited to Dinner \n What Happened to Pero Meléndez de Valdés When He Broke His Leg \n What Happened to the Crows and the Owls \n What Happened to a King for Whom a Man Promised to Perform Alchemy \n What Happened to a Young King and a Philosopher to Whom his Father Commended Him \n What Happened to the Lion and the Bull \n How the Ants Provide for Themselves \n What Happened to the King Who Wanted to Test His Three Sons \n What Happened to the Count of Provence and How He Was Freed from Prison by the Advice of Saladin\n What Happened to the Tree of Lies \n What Happened to an Emperor and to Don Alvarfáñez Minaya and Their Wives \n What Happened in Granada to Don Lorenzo Suárez Gallinato When He Beheaded the Renegade Chaplain \n What Happened to a Fox Who Lay down in the Street to Play Dead \n What Happened to King Abenabet of Seville and Ramayquía His Wife \n How a Cardinal Judged between the Canons of Paris and the Friars Minor \n What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth \n What Happened to Don Juan Manuel's Saker Falcon and an Eagle and a Heron \n What Happened to a Blind Man Who Was Leading Another \n What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\n What Happened to a Merchant When He Found His Son and His Wife Sleeping Together \n What Happened to Count Fernán González with His Men after He Had Won the Battle of Hacinas \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Loaded down with Precious Stones and Drowned in the River \n What Happened to a Man and a Swallow and a Sparrow \n Why the Seneschal of Carcassonne Lost His Soul \n What Happened to a King of Córdova Named Al-Haquem \n What Happened to a Woman of Sham Piety \n What Happened to Good and Evil and the Wise Man and the Madman \n What Happened to Don Pero Núñez the Loyal, to Don Ruy González de Zavallos, and to Don Gutier Roiz de Blaguiello with Don Rodrigo the Generous \n What Happened to a Man Who Became the Devil's Friend and Vassal \n What Happened to a Philosopher who by Accident Went down a Street Where Prostitutes Lived \n What Befell a Moor and His Sister Who Pretended That She Was Timid \n What Happened to a Man Who Tested His Friends \n What Happened to the Man Whom They Cast out Naked on an Island When They Took away from Him the Kingdom He Ruled \n What Happened to Saladin and a Lady, the Wife of a Knight Who Was His Vassal \n What Happened to a Christian King Who Was Very Powerful and Haughty\n\nReferences\n\nNotes\n\nBibliography\n\n Sturm, Harlan\n\n Wacks, David\n\nExternal links\n\nThe Internet Archive provides free access to the 1868 translation by James York.\nJSTOR has the to the 1977 translation by Keller and Keating.\nSelections in English and Spanish (pedagogical edition) with introduction, notes, and bibliography in Open Iberia/América (open access teaching anthology)\n\n14th-century books\nSpanish literature\n1335 books",
"\"What Happened to Us\" is a song by Australian recording artist Jessica Mauboy, featuring English recording artist Jay Sean. It was written by Sean, Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim and Israel Cruz. \"What Happened to Us\" was leaked online in October 2010, and was released on 10 March 2011, as the third single from Mauboy's second studio album, Get 'Em Girls (2010). The song received positive reviews from critics.\n\nA remix of \"What Happened to Us\" made by production team OFM, was released on 11 April 2011. A different version of the song which features Stan Walker, was released on 29 May 2011. \"What Happened to Us\" charted on the ARIA Singles Chart at number 14 and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). An accompanying music video was directed by Mark Alston, and reminisces on a former relationship between Mauboy and Sean.\n\nProduction and release\n\n\"What Happened to Us\" was written by Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz and Jay Sean. It was produced by Skaller, Cruz, Rohaim and Bobby Bass. The song uses C, D, and B minor chords in the chorus. \"What Happened to Us\" was sent to contemporary hit radio in Australia on 14 February 2011. The cover art for the song was revealed on 22 February on Mauboy's official Facebook page. A CD release was available for purchase via her official website on 10 March, for one week only. It was released digitally the following day.\n\nReception\nMajhid Heath from ABC Online Indigenous called the song a \"Jordin Sparks-esque duet\", and wrote that it \"has a nice innocence to it that rings true to the experience of losing a first love.\" Chris Urankar from Nine to Five wrote that it as a \"mid-tempo duet ballad\" which signifies Mauboy's strength as a global player. On 21 March 2011, \"What Happened to Us\" debuted at number 30 on the ARIA Singles Chart, and peaked at number 14 the following week. The song was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), for selling 70,000 copies. \"What Happened to Us\" spent a total of ten weeks in the ARIA top fifty.\n\nMusic video\n\nBackground\nThe music video for the song was shot in the Elizabeth Bay House in Sydney on 26 November 2010. The video was shot during Sean's visit to Australia for the Summerbeatz tour. During an interview with The Daily Telegraph while on the set of the video, Sean said \"the song is sick! ... Jessica's voice is amazing and we're shooting [the video] in this ridiculously beautiful mansion overlooking the harbour.\" The video was directed by Mark Alston, who had previously directed the video for Mauboy's single \"Let Me Be Me\" (2009). It premiered on YouTube on 10 February 2011.\n\nSynopsis and reception\nThe video begins showing Mauboy who appears to be sitting on a yellow antique couch in a mansion, wearing a purple dress. As the video progresses, scenes of memories are displayed of Mauboy and her love interest, played by Sean, spending time there previously. It then cuts to the scenes where Sean appears in the main entrance room of the mansion. The final scene shows Mauboy outdoors in a gold dress, surrounded by green grass and trees. She is later joined by Sean who appears in a black suit and a white shirt, and together they sing the chorus of the song to each other. David Lim of Feed Limmy wrote that the video is \"easily the best thing our R&B princess has committed to film – ever\" and praised the \"mansion and wondrous interior décor\". He also commended Mauboy for choosing Australian talent to direct the video instead of American directors, which she had used for her previous two music videos. Since its release, the video has received over two million views on Vevo.\n\nLive performances\nMauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" live for the first time during her YouTube Live Sessions program on 4 December 2010. She also appeared on Adam Hills in Gordon Street Tonight on 23 February 2011 for an interview and later performed the song. On 15 March 2011, Mauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Sunrise. She also performed the song with Stan Walker during the Australian leg of Chris Brown's F.A.M.E. Tour in April 2011. Mauboy and Walker later performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Dancing with the Stars Australia on 29 May 2011. From November 2013 to February 2014, \"What Happened to Us\" was part of the set list of the To the End of the Earth Tour, Mauboy's second headlining tour of Australia, with Nathaniel Willemse singing Sean's part.\n\nTrack listing\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Just Witness Remix) – 3:45\n\nCD single\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Album Version) – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:39\n\nDigital download – Remix\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:38\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Stan Walker – 3:20\n\nPersonnel\nSongwriting – Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz, Jay Sean\nProduction – Jeremy Skaller, Bobby Bass\nAdditional production – Israel Cruz, Khaled Rohaim\nLead vocals – Jessica Mauboy, Jay Sean\nMixing – Phil Tan\nAdditional mixing – Damien Lewis\nMastering – Tom Coyne \nSource:\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly chart\n\nYear-end chart\n\nCertification\n\nRadio dates and release history\n\nReferences\n\n2010 songs\n2011 singles\nJessica Mauboy songs\nJay Sean songs\nSongs written by Billy Steinberg\nSongs written by Jay Sean\nSongs written by Josh Alexander\nSongs written by Israel Cruz\nVocal duets\nSony Music Australia singles\nSongs written by Khaled Rohaim"
] |
[
"Top of the Pops",
"1994-1997",
"What happened in 1994?",
"By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone",
"What was year zero?",
"I don't know.",
"What happened in 1995?",
"The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced"
] | C_4ba6e4aafe884f399b648ba4e20a983e_0 | What else was revamped | 4 | What else was revamped besides "Year Zero" in 1995 in Top of the Pops? | Top of the Pops | By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone and the arrival of Ric Blaxill as producer in February 1994 signalled a return to presentation from established Radio 1 DJs Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and Bruno Brookes. Blaxill expanded the use of "via satellite" performances, taking the acts out of studios and concert halls and setting them against landmark backdrops. As a consequence, Bon Jovi performed Always from Niagara Falls and Celine Dion beamed in Think Twice from Miami Beach. The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced (the logo having first been introduced on the new programme Top of the Pops 2 some months previous), coinciding with the introduction of a new set. Blaxill also increasingly experimented with handing presenting duties to celebrities, commonly contemporary comedians and pop stars who were not in the charts at that time. In an attempt to keep the links between acts as fresh as the performances themselves, the so-called "golden mic" was used by, amongst others, Kylie Minogue, Meat Loaf, Des Lynam, Chris Eubank, Damon Albarn, Harry Hill, Jack Dee, Lulu and Jarvis Cocker. Radio 1 DJs still presented occasionally, notably Lisa I'Anson, Steve Lamacq, Jo Whiley and Chris Evans. TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996, originally at 7 pm, but then shifted to 7.30 pm, a change which placed the programme up against the soap opera Coronation Street on ITV. This began a major decline in audience figures as fans were forced to choose between Top of the Pops and an episode of the soap. CANNOTANSWER | introduction of a new set. | Top of the Pops (TOTP) is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly between 1January 1964 and 30 July 2006. Top of the Pops was the world's longest running weekly music show. For most of its history, it was broadcast on Thursday evenings on BBC One. Each weekly show consisted of performances from some of that week's best-selling popular music records, usually excluding any tracks moving down the chart, including a rundown of that week's singles chart. This was originally the Top 20, though this varied throughout the show's history. The Official Charts Company states "performing on the show was considered an honour, and it pulled in just about every major player."
Dusty Springfield’s "I Only Want to Be with You" was the first song performed on TOTP, while The Rolling Stones were the first band to perform with "I Wanna Be Your Man". Snow Patrol were the last act to play live on the weekly show when they performed their single "Chasing Cars". In addition to the weekly show there was a special edition of TOTP on Christmas Day (and usually, until 1984, a second edition a few days after Christmas), featuring some of the best-selling singles of the year and the Christmas Number 1. Although the weekly show was cancelled in 2006, the Christmas special has continued. End-of-year round-up editions have also been broadcast on BBC1 on or around New Year's Eve, albeit largely featuring the same acts and tracks as the Christmas Day shows. It also survives as Top of the Pops 2, which began in 1994 and features vintage performances from the Top of the Pops archives. Though TOTP2 ceased producing new episodes since 2017, repeats of older episodes are still shown.
The show has seen seminal performances over its history. The March 1971 TOTP appearance of T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan wearing glitter and satins as he performed "Hot Love" is often seen as the inception of glam rock, and David Bowie's performance of "Starman" inspired future musicians. In the 1990s, the show's format was sold to several foreign broadcasters in the form of a franchise package, and at one point various versions of the show were shown in more than 120 countries. Editions of the programme from 1976 onwards started being repeated on BBC Four in 2011 and are aired on most Friday evenings – as of January 2022 the repeat run has reached 1992. Episodes featuring disgraced presenters and artists such as Jonathan King, Jimmy Savile (who opened the show with its familiar slogan, 'It's Number One, it's Top of the Pops'), Dave Lee Travis, Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter, and R. Kelly are no longer repeated.
History
Johnnie Stewart devised the rules which governed how the show would operate: the programme would always end with the number one record, which was the only record that could appear in consecutive weeks. The show would include the highest new entry and (if not featured in the previous week) the highest climber on the charts, and omit any song going down in the chart. Tracks could be featured in consecutive weeks in different formats. For example, if a song was played over the chart countdown or the closing credits, then it was acceptable for the act to appear in the studio the following week.
These rules were sometimes interpreted flexibly and were more formally relaxed from 1997 when records descending the charts were featured more regularly, possibly as a response to the changing nature of the Top 40 (in the late 1990s and early 2000s climbers in the charts were a rarity, with almost all singles peaking at their debut position).
When the programme's format changed in November 2003, it concentrated increasingly on the top 10. Later, during the BBC Two era, the top 20 was regarded as the main cut-off point, with the exception made for up and coming bands below the top 20. Singles from below the top 40 (within the top 75) were shown if the band were up and coming or had a strong selling album. If a single being performed was below the top 40, just the words "New Entry" were shown and not the chart position.
The show was originally intended to run for only a few programmes but lasted over 42 years, reaching landmark episodes of 500, 1,000, 1,500 and 2,000 in the years 1973, 1983, 1992 and 2002 respectively.
The first show
Top of the Pops was first broadcast on Wednesday, 1January 1964 at 6:35 pm. It was produced in Studio A at Dickenson Road Studios in Rusholme, Manchester.
DJ Jimmy Savile presented the first show live from the Manchester studio (with a brief link to Alan Freeman in London to preview the following week's programme), which featured (in order) Dusty Springfield with "I Only Want to Be with You", the Rolling Stones with "I Wanna Be Your Man", the Dave Clark Five with "Glad All Over", the Hollies with "Stay", the Swinging Blue Jeans with "Hippy Hippy Shake" and the Beatles with "I Want to Hold Your Hand", that week's number one – throughout its history, the programme proper always (with very few exceptions) finished with the best-selling single of the week, although there often was a separate play-out track over the end credits.
1960s and 1970s
Later in 1964, the broadcast time was moved to one hour later, at 7:35 pm, and the show moved from Wednesdays to what became its regular Thursday slot. Additionally its length was extended by 5minutes to 30 minutes.
For the first three years Alan Freeman, David Jacobs, Pete Murray and Jimmy Savile rotated presenting duties, with the following week's presenter also appearing at the end of each show, although this practice ceased from October 1964 onwards. Neville Wortman filled in as director/producer on Johnnie Stewart's holiday break.
In the first few editions, Denise Sampey was the "disc girl", who would be seen to put the record on a turntable before the next act played their track. However, a Mancunian model, Samantha Juste, became the regular disc girl after a few episodes, a role she performed until 1967.
Initially acts performing on the show would mime (lip-sync) to the commercially released record, but in 1966 after discussions with the Musicians' Union, miming was banned. After a few weeks during which some bands' attempts to play as well as on their records were somewhat lacking, a compromise was reached whereby a specially recorded backing track was permitted, as long as all the musicians on the track were present in the studio. As a result, Stewart hired Johnny Pearson to conduct an in-studio orchestra to provide musical backing on select performances, beginning with the 4 August 1966 edition. Later, vocal group The Ladybirds began providing vocal backing with the orchestra.
With the birth of BBC Radio 1 in 1967, new Radio1 DJs were added to the roster – Stuart Henry, Emperor Rosko, Simon Dee and Kenny Everett.
Local photographer Harry Goodwin was hired to provide shots of non-appearing artists, and also to provide backdrops for the chart run-down. He continued in the role until 1973.
After two years at the Manchester Dickenson Road Studios, the show moved to London (considered to be better located for bands to appear), initially for six months at BBC TV Centre Studio2 and then to the larger Studio G at BBC Lime Grove Studios in mid-1966 to provide space for the Top of the Pops Orchestra, which was introduced at this time to provide live instrumentation on some performances (previously, acts had generally mimed to the records). In November 1969, with the introduction of colour, the show returned to BBC TV Centre, where it stayed until 1991, when it moved to Elstree Studios Studio C.
For a while in the early 1970s, non-chart songs were played on a more regular basis, to reflect the perceived growing importance of album sales; there was an album slot featuring three songs from a new LP, as well as a New Release spot and a feature of a new act, dubbed Tip for the Top. These features were dropped after a while, although the programme continued to feature new releases on a regular basis for the rest of the decade.
During its heyday, it attracted 15 million viewers each week. The peak TV audience of 19 million was recorded in 1979, during the ITV strike, with only BBC1 and BBC2 on air.
Christmas Top of the Pops
A year-end Christmas show featuring a review of the year's biggest hits was inaugurated on 24 December 1964, and has continued every year since. From 1965 onward, the special edition was broadcast on Christmas Day (although not in 1966) and from the same year, a second edition was broadcast in the days after Christmas, varying depending on the schedule, but initially regularly on 26 December. The first was shown on 26 December 1965. In 1973, there was just one show, airing on Christmas Day. In place of the traditional second show, Jimmy Savile hosted a look back at the first 10 years of TOTP, broadcast on 27 December. In 1975, the first of the two shows was broadcast prior to Christmas Day, airing on 23 December, followed by the traditional Christmas Day show two days later.
The 1978 Christmas Day show was disrupted due to industrial action at the BBC, requiring a change in format to the broadcast. The first show, due to be screened on 21 December, was not shown at all because BBC1 was off the air. For Christmas Day, Noel Edmonds (presenting his last ever edition of TOTP) hosted the show from the 'TOTP Production Office' with clips taken from various editions of the show broadcast during the year and new studio footage performed without an audience. The format was slightly tweaked for the Christmas Day edition in 1981, with the Radio1 DJs choosing their favourite tracks of the year and the following edition on 31 December featuring the year's number1 hits.
The second programme was discontinued after 1984.
1980s
The year 1980 marked major production changes to Top of the Pops and a hiatus forced by industrial action. Steve Wright made his presenting debut on 7 February 1980. Towards the end of February 1980, facing a £40 million budget deficit, the BBC laid off five orchestras as part of £130 million in cuts. The budget cuts led to a Musicians' Union strike that suspended operations of all 11 BBC orchestras and performances of live music on the BBC; Top of the Pops went out of production between 29 May and 7 August 1980. During the Musicians' Union strike, BBC1 showed repeats of Are You Being Served? in the regular Top of the Pops Thursday night time slot.
Following the strike, Nash was replaced as executive producer by Michael Hurll, who introduced more of a "party" atmosphere to the show, with performances often accompanied by balloons and cheerleaders, and more audible audience noise and cheering. Hurll also laid off the orchestra, as the Musicians' Union was loosening enforcement of the 1966 miming ban.
Guest co-presenters and a music news feature were introduced for a short while, but had ceased by the end of 1980. The chart rundown was split into three sections in the middle of the programme, with the final Top 10 section initially featuring clips of the songs' videos, although this became rarer over the next few years.
An occasional feature showing the American music scene with Jonathan King was introduced in November 1981, and ran every few weeks until February 1985. In January 1985, a Breakers section, featuring short video clips of new tracks in the lower end of the Top 40, was introduced, and this continued for most weeks until March 1994.
Although the programme had been broadcast live in its early editions, it had been recorded on the day before transmission for many years. However, from May 1981, the show was sometimes broadcast live for a few editions each year, and this practice continued on an occasional basis (often in the week of a bank holiday, when the release of the new chart was delayed, and for some special editions) for the rest of the decade.
The programme moved in September 1985 to a new regular half-hour timeslot of 7 pm on Thursdays, where it would remain until June 1996.
The end of 1988 was marked by a special 70-minute edition of the show broadcast on 31 December 1988, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first show. The pre-recorded programme featured the return of the original four presenters (Savile, Freeman, Murray and Jacobs) as well as numerous presenters from the show's history, anchored by Paul Gambaccini and Mike Read. Numerous clips from the history of the show were included in between acts performing in the studio, which included Cliff Richard, Engelbert Humperdinck, Lulu, the Four Tops, David Essex, Mud, Status Quo, Shakin' Stevens, the Tremeloes and from the very first edition, the Swinging Blue Jeans. Sandie Shaw, the Pet Shop Boys and Wet Wet Wet were billed in the Radio Times to appear, but none featured in the show other than Shaw in compilation clips.
Paul Ciani took over as producer in 1988. The following year, in an attempt to fit more songs in the allocated half-hour, he restricted the duration of studio performances to three minutes, and videos to two minutes, a practice which was largely continued until May 1997. In July 1990, he introduced a rundown of the Top5 albums, which continued on a monthly basis until May 1991. Ciani had to step down due to illness in 1991, when Hurll returned as producer to cover for two months (and again for a brief time as holiday cover in 1992).
1991: 'Year Zero' revamp
From 1967, the show had become closely associated with the BBC radio station Radio 1, usually being presented by DJs from the station, and between 1988 and 1991 the programme was simulcast on the radio station in FM stereo (that is, until BBC's launch of NICAM stereo for TV made such simulcasts redundant). However, during the last few years of the 1980s the association became less close, and was severed completely (although not permanently) in a radical shake-up known as the 'Year Zero' revamp.
Following a fall in viewing figures and a general perception that the show had become 'uncool' (acts like the Clash had refused to appear in the show in previous years), a radical new format was introduced by incoming executive producer Stanley Appel (who had worked on the programme since 1966 as cameraman, production assistant, director and stand-in producer) in October 1991, in which the Radio1 DJs were replaced by a team of relative unknowns, such as Claudia Simon and Tony Dortie who had previously worked for Children's BBC, 17-year-old local radio DJ Mark Franklin, Steve Anderson, Adrian Rose and Elayne Smith, who was replaced by Femi Oke in 1992. A brand new theme tune ("Now Get Out of That"), title sequence and logo were introduced, and the entire programme moved from BBC Television Centre in London to BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood.
The new presenting team would take turns hosting (initially usually in pairs but sometimes solo), and would often introduce acts in an out-of-vision voiceover over the song's instrumental introduction. They would sometimes even conduct short informal interviews with the performers, and initially the Top 10 countdown was run without any voiceover. Rules relating to performance were also altered meaning acts had to sing live as opposed to the backing tracks for instruments and mimed vocals for which the show was known. To incorporate the shift of dominance towards American artists, more use was made of out-of-studio performances, with acts in America able to transmit their song to the Top of the Pops audience "via satellite". These changes were widely unpopular and much of the presenting team were axed within a year, leaving the show hosted solely by Dortie and Franklin (apart from the Christmas Day editions, when both presenters appeared) from October 1992, on a week-by-week rotation.
1994–1997
By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone and the arrival of Ric Blaxill as producer in February 1994 signalled a return to presentation from established Radio1 DJs Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and Bruno Brookes. Blaxill expanded the use of "via satellite" performances, taking the acts out of studios and concert halls and setting them against landmark backdrops. As a consequence, Bon Jovi performed Always from Niagara Falls and Celine Dion beamed in Think Twice from Miami Beach.
The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced (the logo having first been introduced on the new programme Top of the Pops 2 some months previously), coinciding with the introduction of a new set. Blaxill also increasingly experimented with handing presenting duties to celebrities, commonly contemporary comedians and pop stars who were not in the charts at that time. In an attempt to keep the links between acts as fresh as the performances themselves, the so-called "golden mic" was used by, amongst others, Kylie Minogue, Meat Loaf, Des Lynam, Chris Eubank, Damon Albarn, Harry Hill, Jack Dee, Lulu, Björk, Jarvis Cocker, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. Radio1 DJs still presented occasionally, including Lisa I'Anson, Steve Lamacq, Jo Whiley and Chris Evans.
TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996, originally at 7 pm, but then shifted to 7.30 pm, a change which placed the programme up against the soap opera Coronation Street on ITV. This began a major decline in audience figures as fans were forced to choose between Top of the Pops and an episode of the soap.
1997–2003
In 1997, incoming producer Chris Cowey phased out the use of celebrities and established a rotating team (similar to the 1991 revamp, although much more warmly received) of former presenters of youth music magazine The O-Zone Jayne Middlemiss and Jamie Theakston as well as Radio1 DJs Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball. The team was later augmented by Kate Thornton and Gail Porter.
Chris Cowey in particular instigated a set of 'back to basics' changes when he took over the show. In 1998, a remixed version of the classic "Whole Lotta Love" theme tune previously used in the 1970s was introduced, accompanied by a new 1960s-inspired logo and title sequence. Cowey also began to export the brand overseas with localised versions of the show on air in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy by 2003. Finally, the programme returned to its previous home of BBC Television Centre in 2001, where it remained until its cancellation in 2006.
2003: All New Top of the Pops
On 28 November 2003 (three months after the appointment of Andi Peters as executive producer), the show saw one of its most radical overhauls since the ill-fated 1991 'Year Zero' revamp in what was widely reported as a make-or-break attempt to revitalise the long-running series. In a break with the previous format, the show played more up-and-coming tracks ahead of any chart success, and also featured interviews with artists and a music news feature called "24/7". Most editions of the show were now broadcast live, for the first time since 1991 (apart from a couple of editions in 1994). The launch show, which was an hour long, was notable for a performance of "Flip Reverse" by Blazin' Squad, featuring hordes of hooded teenagers choreographed to dance around the outside of BBC Television Centre.
Although the first edition premièred to improved ratings, the All New format, hosted by MTV presenter Tim Kash, quickly returned to low ratings and brought about scathing reviews. Kash continued to host the show, but Radio1 DJs Reggie Yates and Fearne Cotton (who had each presented a few shows in 2003, before the revamp) were brought back to co-host alongside him, before Kash was completely dropped by the BBC, later taking up a new contract at MTV. The show continued to be hosted by Reggie Yates and Fearne Cotton (usually together, but occasionally solo) on Friday evenings until 8July 2005.
On 30 July 2004, the show took place outside a studio environment for the first time by broadcasting outside in Gateshead. Girls Aloud, Busted, Will Young and Jamelia were among the performers that night.
2005: The Beginning of the End
Figures had plummeted to below three million, prompting an announcement by the BBC that the show was going to move, again, to Sunday evenings on BBC Two, thus losing the prime-time slot on BBC One that it had maintained for more than forty years.
This move was widely reported as a final "sidelining" of the show, and perhaps signalled its likely cancellation. At the time, it was insisted that this was so the show would air immediately after the official announcement of the new top 40 chart on Radio 1, as it was thought that by the following Friday, the chart seemed out of date. The final Top of the Pops to be shown on BBC One (barring Christmas and New Year specials) was broadcast on Monday 11 July 2005, which was edition number 2,166.
The first edition on BBC Two was broadcast on 17 July 2005 at 7.00 pm with presenter Fearne Cotton. After the move to Sundays, Cotton continued to host with a different guest presenter each week, such as Rufus Hound or Richard Bacon. On a number of occasions, however, Reggie Yates would step in, joined by female guest presenters such as Lulu, Cyndi Lauper and Anastacia. Viewing figures during this period averaged around 1½ million. Shortly after the move to BBC Two, Peters resigned as executive producer. He was replaced by the BBC's Creative Head of Music Entertainment Mark Cooper, while producer Sally Wood remained to oversee the show on a weekly basis.
2006: Cancellation
On 20 June 2006, the show was formally cancelled and it was announced that the last edition would be broadcast on 30 July 2006. Edith Bowman co-presented its hour-long swansong, along with Jimmy Savile (who was the main presenter on the first show), Reggie Yates, Mike Read, Pat Sharp, Sarah Cawood, Dave Lee Travis, Rufus Hound, Tony Blackburn and Janice Long.
The final day of recording was 26 July 2006 and featured archive footage and tributes, including the Rolling Stones – the very first band to appear on Top of the Pops – opening with "The Last Time", the Spice Girls, David Bowie, Wham!, Madonna, Beyoncé, Gnarls Barkley, the Jackson 5, Sonny and Cher and Robbie Williams. The show closed with a final countdown, topped by Shakira, as her track "Hips Don't Lie" (featuring Wyclef Jean) had climbed back up to number one on the UK Singles Chart earlier in the day. The show ended with Savile ultimately turning the lights off in the empty studio.
Fearne Cotton, who was the current presenter, was unavailable to co-host for the final edition due to her filming of ITV's Love Island in Fiji but opened the show with a quick introduction recorded on location, saying "It's still number one, it's Top of the Pops". BARB reported the final show's viewing figures as 3.98 million.
As the last episode featured no live acts in the studio, the last act to actually play live on a weekly episode of TOTP was Snow Patrol, who performed "Chasing Cars" in the penultimate edition; the last act ever featured visually on a weekly Top of the Pops was Girls Aloud, as part of the closing sequence of bands performing on the show throughout the years. They were shown performing "Love Machine".
2006–present: After the end
The magazine and TOTP2 have both survived despite the show's axing, and the Christmas editions also continue after returning to BBC One. However, the TOTP website, which the BBC had originally promised would continue, is now no longer updated, although many of the old features of the site – interviews, music news, reviews – have remained, now in the form of the Radio 1-affiliated TOTP ChartBlog accessible via the remains of the old website.
Calls for its return
In October 2008, British Culture Secretary Andy Burnham and Manchester indie band the Ting Tings called for the show to return.
On 29 October 2008, Simon Cowell stated in an interview that he would be willing to buy the rights to Top of the Pops from the BBC. The corporation responded that they had not been formally approached by Cowell, and that in any case the format was "not up for sale". In November 2008, it was reported by The Times and other newspapers that the weekly programme was to be revived in 2009, but the BBC said there were no such plans.
In July 2009, Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant criticised the BBC for ending the programme, stating that new acts were missing out on "that great moment of being crowned that week's Kings of Pop".
In early 2015 there was increased speculation of a return of the show including rumours that Dermot O'Leary might present alongside Fearne Cotton. According to a report in the Daily Mirror, a BBC insider stated that "some at the highest level are massive supporters of the plan [of a return] and have given the go-ahead." The move of the UK charts to a Friday due to take place in summer 2015 was also said to favour the possibility of a return, making it "the perfect tie-in" and a "perfect start to the weekend", but no weekly return has occurred.
BBC Four reruns
In April 2011, the BBC began to reshow Top of the Pops on Thursday nights on BBC Four beginning with the equivalent show from 35 years earlier in a 7:30 pm–8:00 pm slot approximating to the time the programme was traditionally shown. The first programme shown, 1April 1976, was chosen because it was from approximately this episode onwards that most editions remain in the BBC archive. The repeat programmes come in two versions; the first is edited down to fit in the 30-minute 7:30 slot, the second is shown normally twice overnight in the following weekend, and is usually complete. However both the short and longer editions can be edited for a number of reasons. Potentially offensive content to modern audiences is cut (for example The Barron Knights' in-studio performance of "Food For Thought" on the edition of 13 December 1979 including a segment parodying Chinese takeaways using mannerisms that may now be viewed as offensive), and cinematic film footage can be truncated, replaced or removed entirely due to the costs to the BBC of reshowing such footage. The BBC also makes the repeats available on BBC iPlayer. The repeats are continuing as of January 2022 with episodes from 1992.
Since October 2012, episodes featuring Jimmy Savile have ceased to be broadcast due to the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal and subsequent Operation Yewtree police investigation. Following the arrest of Dave Lee Travis by Operation Yewtree officers, and his subsequent conviction for indecent assault, episodes featuring Travis were also omitted. Following Gary Glitter's conviction for sexual assault, episodes featuring him are not included in the run, or otherwise have Glitter's performances edited out.
Mike Smith decided not to sign the licence extension that would allow the BBC to repeat the Top of the Pops episodes that he presented, with the BBC continuing to respect his wishes following his death. As a result, episodes featuring Smith are also omitted.
In 2021, it was discovered that episodes hosted by Adrian Rose (later Adrian Woolfe) were being skipped, starting with the 28th November 1991 episode featuring Nirvana's famous performance of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (mentioned below).
Other edits that have been made to episodes have included Jonathan King's reports from the US during episodes from the early 1980s, sometimes also resulting in the removal of a performance or video introduced as part of the report, and the removal of The Doors' performance of "Light My Fire" from a 1991 episode, due to The Doors not being covered by the BBC's music licensing agreement (which also resulted in another 1991 episode being skipped).
"Story of" Specials
Prior to the 1976 BBC reruns shown in 2011, the BBC produced a special programme, "The Story of 1976". This comprised excerpts from the 1976 programmes, interspersed with new interviews with people discussing the time period. They have produced similar programmes prior to subsequent annual reruns, "The Story of 1990" being the most recent such programme in October 2020, as 1991 and 1992 reruns started without a 'The Story of...' programme preceding them.
"Big Hits" compilation
A series of "Big Hits" compilations have been broadcast with on-screen captions about artists.In December 2016, a festive special using the format of the "Big Hits" programmes, Top of the Pops: Christmas Hits was broadcast on BBC Four, featuring a mix of Christmas music and non-festive songs which had been hits at Christmas time. This effectively replaced the annual Christmas edition of Top of the Pops 2, which did not run that year.
Christmas and New Year specials
Although the weekly Top of the Pops has been cancelled, the Christmas Specials have continued, hosted by Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates. The Christmas specials are broadcast on Christmas Day afternoon on BBC One. Since 2008 (apart from 2010 and 2011), a New Year special has also been broadcast. A new logo and title sequence were introduced on the 2019 Christmas special. The BBC's Head of Music Television, Mark Cooper, continued to oversee the programme as executive producer until 2019 when he was replaced by Alison Howe. Meanwhile, Stephanie McWhinnie, who had replaced Wood as producer with effect from Christmas 2011, was replaced by Caroline Cullen (who had previously worked as assistant producer on the show) from Christmas 2020, when both festive shows were recorded with new studio performances but no live audience physically in attendance. On 4December 2017, Yates stepped down from hosting Top of the Pops due to comments he made regarding Jewish people and rappers. The BBC later announced Clara Amfo as Yates' replacement, she continues to hold the role. Amfo was joined by Jordan North for the 2021 specials, with him replacing Cotton.
Comic Relief specials
The show was given a one-off revival (of sorts) for Comic Relief 2007 in the form of Top Gear of the Pops, presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. It was filmed at the Top Gear aerodrome studio in Surrey on Sunday, 11 March 2007, although it bore little resemblance to the usual Top of the Pops format.
On 13 March 2009, Top of The Pops was once again revived, this time in its usual format, for a special live Comic Relief edition, airing on BBC Two while the main telethon took a break for the BBC News at Ten on BBC One. As with the Christmas specials the show was presented by Radio1 duo Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates with special guest presenter Noel Fielding and appearances from Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Claudia Winkleman, Jonathan Ross, Davina McCall (dancing in the audience and later as a Flo Rida dancer with Claudia Winkleman and French and Saunders) and David Tennant.
Live performances – interspersed with Comic Relief appeal films – included acts such as Franz Ferdinand, Oasis, Take That, U2, James Morrison and Flo Rida (that week's Number1). Kicking off the show was a performance from Rob Brydon and Ruth Jones in their Gavin & Stacey guises, feat. Tom Jones and Robin Gibb with "(Barry) Islands in the Stream", the Comic Relief single.
Performers, performances and presenters
In its extensive history, Top of the Pops has featured many artists, many of whom have appeared more than once on the show to promote many of their records.
Green Day hold the record for the longest Top of the Pops performance: "Jesus of Suburbia" broadcast on 6November 2005, lasted 9minutes and 10 seconds. There is uncertainty about what was the shortest performance. In 2005, presenter Reggie Yates announced on the show that it was Super Furry Animals with "Do or Die", broadcast on 28 January 2000, clocking in at 95 seconds. However, "It's My Turn" by Angelic was 91 seconds on 16 June 2000 and, according to an August 2012 edition of TOTP2, "Here Comes the Summer" by the Undertones was just 84 seconds on 26 July 1979. Cliff Richard appeared the most times on the show, with almost 160 performances. Status Quo were the most frequent group with 106 performances.
Miming
Throughout the show's history, many artists mimed to backing tracks. Early on, Musicians' Union rules required that groups re-record backing tracks with union members performing when possible. However, as The Guardian recounted in 2001: "In practice, artists pretended to re-record the song, then used their original tapes."
The miming policy also led to the occasional technical hitch. In 1967, as Jimi Hendrix prepared to perform "Burning of the Midnight Lamp", the song "The House That Jack Built" by Alan Price was played in studio instead, prompting Hendrix to respond: "I like the voice...but I don't know the words." In 1988, All About Eve appeared to perform "Martha's Harbour". Although the song was being played on the television broadcast, it was not being played in studio, so lead singer Julianne Regan remained silent on a stool on stage while Tim Bricheno (the only other band member present) did not play his guitar.
Occasionally bands played live, examples in the 1970s and 1980s being the Four Seasons, the Who, Blondie, John Otway, Sham 69, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Jimmy James and the Vagabonds, The Sweet, The Jackson 5, Heavy Metal Kids, Elton John, Typically Tropical, New Order, Whitney Houston and David Bowie. In 1980, heavy metal band Iron Maiden played live on the show when they refused to mime to their single "Running Free". Solo artists and vocal groups were supposed to sing live to the Top of the Pops Orchestra. Billy Ocean, Brotherhood of Man, Anita Ward, Thelma Houston, Deniece Williams, Hylda Baker and the Nolans all performed in this way.
In 1991 the producers of the show allowed artists the option of singing live over a backing track. Miming has resulted in a number of notable moments. In 1991, Nirvana refused to mime to the pre-recorded backing track of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with Kurt Cobain singing in a deliberately low voice and altering lyrics in the song, and bassist Krist Novoselic swinging his bass over his head and drummer Dave Grohl playing randomly on his kit. In 1995, the Gallagher brothers of Oasis switched places while performing "Roll with It". During their performance of "Don't Leave Me This Way" the Communards singers Jimmy Somerville and Sarah Jane Morris swapped lyrics for part of the song towards the end. Another example of whimsy was John Peel's appearance as the mandolin soloist for Rod Stewart on "Maggie May". The new practice also exposed a number of poor live singers, and was dropped as a general rule.
In its final few years miming had become less and less common, especially for bands, as studio technology became more reliable and artists were given the freedom to choose their performance style. Former Executive Producer Andi Peters said there was no policy on miming and that it was entirely up to the performer whether they wanted to sing live or mime.
Orchestra and backing singers
From 1966 to 1980, Top of the Pops had an in-studio orchestra conducted by Johnny Pearson accompany select musical performances, with The Ladybirds (later Maggie Stredder Singers) providing backing vocals. Credited on the show as musical associate, Derek Warne played piano and provided musical arrangements for the orchestra. As The Telegraph recounted, Pearson and the orchestra improvised accompaniments with about 20 minutes of rehearsal time per song, and the musicians, "almost all middle-aged, often struggled with the enormous range of rock and pop tunes with which they were presented." In contrast, The Times said upon Pearson's passing in 2011 that the orchestra "often elicit[ed] excellent performances with barely enough time beforehand for a couple of run-throughs."
Other notable members of the orchestra include drummer Clem Cattini, trombonist Bobby Lamb, and lead trumpeters Leon Calvert and Ian Hamer. From 1971 to 1974, Martin Briley played guitar for the orchestra before joining rock group Greenslade.
Following the 1980 Musicians Union strike, the programme resumed broadcast on 7 August 1980 without its orchestra or backing singers. However, Pearson continued to make occasional contributions as musical director until the 900th episode in the summer of 1981. Afterwards, Warne occasionally made musical arrangements through April 1982. Ronnie Hazlehurst conducted the orchestra from 1982 to 1983.
Music videos
When an artist or group was unavailable to perform in studio, Top of the Pops would show a music video in place. According to Queen guitarist Brian May, the groundbreaking 1975 music video for "Bohemian Rhapsody" was produced so that the band could avoid miming on TOTP since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song.
Dance troupes
January to October 1964 – no dance troupes
In the era before promotional videos were routinely produced for every charting single, the BBC would frequently have neither the band themselves nor alternative footage available for a song selected for the programme. In the first few months of the show in 1964, the director would just scan across the audience dancing in the absence of any other footage, but by October 1964 a decision was made to at least occasionally bring in a dance troupe with a choreographed routine to some of the tracks.
November 1964 to April 1968 – The Go-Jos
An initial candidate troupe was the existing BBC TV Beat Girls, but an ex-dancer from the Beat Girls, Jo Cook, was eventually engaged to create a troupe, the all-female Go-Jos, with Cook as choreographer. The Go-Jos also worked outside of Top of the Pops, notably for two years on the Val Doonican show – Doonican said in 1968 "I thought the Gojos were fabulous, something really new. When I got my own television series I just had to have them with me."
They were initially a three-piece (Pat Hughes for the first edition only, Linda Hotchkin and Jane Bartlett), but their number eventually grew to six (Hotchkin, Bartlett, Lesley Larbey, Wendy Hilhouse, Barbara van der Heyde and Thelma Bignell) with Cook as full-time choreographer. Lulu remembered of their costumes "They mostly wore white boots to the knee and short skirts and the camera would go up the skirt and it was all very risqué."
Cook herself said of working on the Doonican show (of which she was dance director) comparing to Top of the Pops, "Pop steps are limited... With Val we have more scope, and we can work to get more of the feel of ballet into our numbers."
May to June 1968 – Go-Jos/Pan's People transition
In April 1968, a Top of the Pops choreographer, Virginia Mason, auditioned for dancers for a routine on Top of The Pops ("Simon Says" by the 1910 Fruitgum Company); two of whom that were successful (Ruth Pearson and Patricia "Dee Dee" Wilde) were part of the existing six-female dance troupe, Pan's People. Like the Go-Jos, this group was also partly drawn from ex-members of the Beat Girls.
Although this routine did not make it onto the programme itself, in subsequent weeks, members of Pan's People (Louise Clarke, Felicity "Flick" Colby, Barbara "Babs" Lord, Pearson, Andrea "Andi" Rutherford and Wilde) started to appear on the programme separately to the Go-Jos. Pan's People were then selected by the BBC over the Go-Jos when they chose a group to be the resident troupe. The Go-Jos' final Top of the Pops performance was in June 1968 dancing to "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones.
July 1968 to April 1976 – Pan's People
As with the Go-Jos, in the first eighteen months of the Pan's People era the dancers were not a weekly fixture on the programme. However, due to group fan mail and good viewing figures, by 1970 the group was on nearly every week. Pay was not high – they were paid the minimum Equity rate of £56 per week.
One of the original Pan's People dancers, Colby, became the full-time choreographer in 1971.
Colby spoke of the dancing – "They weren't Broadway-standard routines... we were definitely doing watercolours, not oil paintings."
May to October 1976 – Ruby Flipper
In early 1976, the last remaining of the early members of Pan's People, Ruth Pearson announced her retirement, leaving just four members all of whom who had joined within the last four years; Cherry Gillespie, Mary Corpe, Lee Ward and Sue Menhenick. Rather than continue with this line up or add additional members, it was decided by Colby and BBC production staff to replace this group with a male and female group created for the programme, Ruby Flipper, choreographed by Colby and managed by Colby with Pearson. Lee Ward left shortly after this decision was made, reportedly saying regarding the change: "It's a big mistake. Men rush home to watch sexy ladies. They do not want to see other men."
Rehearsals for this new group started in March 1976, and the group began appearing on Top of the Pops in May 1976. Whilst producers were aware of the switch to the new group, Bill Cotton, the then head of the light entertainment unit of which Top of the Pops was part, was not. This group started as a seven-piece with three men (Gavin Trace, Floyd Pearce and Phil Steggles) and four women (Menhenick, Gillespie, Patti Hammond and Lulu Cartwright). Corpe was not invited to join the new troupe. Trace, Pearce, Steggles and Cartwright joined following open auditions, Hammond, an established dancer, was invited to join to complete the "look" following a later individual audition. Colby viewed this gender-mixed group as an opportunity to develop more physical routines including lifts, more duets and generally not have the whole group at each performance.
However, by August the BBC had decided to terminate the group due to perceived unpopularity and being "...out of step with viewers". Their final appearance was in October 1976.
November 1976 to October 1981 – Legs and Co
The group created to replace Ruby Flipper was Legs & Co, reverting to an all-female line-up, and once more choreographed by Colby. Three of the six in the initial line-up (Menhenick, Cartwight and Hammond) were taken from Ruby Flipper. with Rosie Hetherington, Gill Clarke and Pauline Peters making up the six. Despite being an all-female group, on occasion one or more male dancers were brought in, notably Pearce several times.
During their run, the group covered the transition from Disco to Punk, Electronic and Modern Romantic music. Notably, they danced to two Sex Pistols tracks.
December 1981 to September 1983 – Zoo
By late 1981, Legs & Co (by this time Anita Chellamah had replaced Peters) had become more integrated into the studio audience, rather than performing set-piece routines, as a result of the 'party atmosphere' brought in by Michael Hurll. Also by this time Colby was particularly keen to work once more with male dancers; feeling it time for a change, Legs & Co's stint was ended, and a twenty-member dance troupe (ten male, ten female), named Zoo was created, with a set of performers drawn from the pool of twenty each week. Colby was now credited as "Dance Director". Three members of previous troupes, Menhenick, Corpe and Chellamah, made at least one appearance each during the Zoo period. The dancers now chose their own clothes, moving away from the synchronised appearance of previous troupes.
October 1983 to 2006 – After Zoo
By the early 1980s, record companies were offering the BBC free promotional videos, meaning dance troupes no longer fulfilled their original purpose. Zoo's run ended in 1983, and with it the use of dance troupes on Top of the Pops.
After the demise of Zoo, the audience took a more active role, often dancing in more prominent areas such as behind performing acts on the back of the stage, and on podiums. However, the show also employed cheerleaders to lead the dancing.
Dance Troupe chronology
Go-Jos' first performance: 19 November 1964 – Dancing to "Baby Love" by the Supremes
Pan's People first performance (three of the dancers, independently contracted): April 1968 – Dancing to "Young Girl" by Gary Puckett & the Union Gap or "Respect" by Aretha Franklin
Pan's People's first performance (as the six-piece group of early 1968): 30 May 1968 – Dancing to "U.S. Male" by Elvis Presley
Go-Jos' final performance: 27 June 1968 – Dancing to "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones
Pan's People's final performance: 29 April 1976 – Dancing to "Silver Star" by the Four Seasons
Ruby Flipper's first performance: 6 May 1976 – Dancing to "Can't Help Falling In Love" by the Stylistics
Ruby Flipper's final performance: 14 October 1976 – Dancing to "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry
Legs & Co's first performance (credited as Ruby Flipper & Legs & Co): 21 October 1976 – Dancing to "Queen of My Soul" by Average White Band
Legs & Co's first performance (credited as Legs & Co): 11 November 1976 – Dancing to "Spinning Rock Boogie" by Hank C. Burnette
Legs & Co's final performance: 29 October 1981 – Dancing to "Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)" by Haircut 100
Zoo's first performance: 5 November 1981 – Dancing to "Twilight" by E.L.O.
Zoo's final performance: 29 September 1983 – Dancing to "What I Got Is What You Need" by Unique
Theme music
For much of the 1960s, the show's theme music was an organ-based instrumental track, also called "Top of the Pops", by the Dave Davani Four.
1 January 1964 to ?: Instrumental percussion piece written by Johnnie Stewart and Harry Rabinowitz and performed by drummer Bobby Midgly.
1965 to 1966: Dave Davani Four's "Top of the Pops" with the Ladybirds on backing vocal harmonies. Originally the opening theme, this was later played as a closing theme from 1966 up until 1970.
20 January 1966 to 13 November 1969: Unknown instrumental guitar track.
27 November 1969 to 29 October 1970: Unknown brass track played over colour titles with a voiceover proclaiming, "Yes! It's number one! It's Top of the Pops!" There was no TOTP on 20 November 1969 due to the Apollo 12 Moon landing.
5 November 1970 to 14 July 1977: An instrumental version of the Led Zeppelin-Willie Dixon composition "Whole Lotta Love" performed by CCS members.
21 July 1977 to 29 May 1980: No opening theme tune; a contemporary chart song was played over the countdown stills. "Whole Lotta Love" featured only in Christmas editions, the 800th edition from 26 July 1979 and the voice-over only edition from 22 November 1979.
7 August 1980 to 2July 1981: No opening theme tune; the CCS version of "Whole Lotta Love" was played over some of the images of the featured artists and during the countdown stills in the Top 30 and Top 20 sections which were moved later on in the programme. From the edition of 7August 1980 to the edition of 2July 1981, "Whole Lotta Love" was heard only during the chart rundowns.
9 July 1981 to 27 March 1986: "Yellow Pearl" was commissioned as the new theme music. From May 1983 to July 1984, a re-recording of "Yellow Pearl" was played over the chart rundown and a pop rock version from August 1984 to March 1986.
3 April 1986 to 26 September 1991: "The Wizard", a composition by Paul Hardcastle.
3 October 1991 to 26 January 1995: "Now Get Out of That" composed by Tony Gibber.
2 February 1995 to 8 August 1997 (except 27 June & 25 July 1997 and 15 August 1997 to 24 April 1998) and 10 October 1997: the theme was a track called "Red Hot Pop" composed by Vince Clarke of Erasure.
27 June and 25 July 1997 then 15 August 1997 to 24 April 1998 (except 10 October 1997): No theme tune; the opening of the first song of the episode was played under the titles and a song from the top 20 was played under the chart rundown.
1 May 1998 to 21 November 2003: Updated, drum and bass version of "Whole Lotta Love" by Ben Chapman.
28 November 2003 to 30 July 2006 and until 2012 for TOTP2 and Xmas specials: A remixed version of "Now Get Out of That" by Tony Gibber.
25 December 2013 to present for Top of the Pops Christmas and New Year Specials: A mix of both the 1970s "Whole Lotta Love" theme and the 1998 remix.
Lost episodes
Due to the then standard practice of wiping videotape, the vast majority of the episodes from the programme's history prior to 1976 have been lost, including any official recording of the only live appearance by the Beatles.
Of the first 500 episodes (1964–73), only about 20 complete recordings remain in the BBC archives, and the majority of these are from 1969 onwards. The earliest surviving footage dates from 26 February 1964, and consists of performances by Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas and the Dave Clark Five. Some programmes exist only partially (largely performances that were either pre-recorded or re-used in later editions). There are also two examples of rehearsal footage, which are both from 1965, one which includes Alan Freeman introducing the Seekers, and another with Sandie Shaw rehearsing "Long Live Love"—both believed to be for the end-of-year Christmas Special. There are also cases of shows that exist only in their raw, unedited form. The oldest complete episode in existence was originally transmitted on Boxing Day in 1967 (only five complete recordings from the 1960s survive, two of which have mute presenter links). The most recent that is not held is dated 8September 1977. Most editions after this date exist in full, except a few 1981–85 episodes recorded live feature mute presenter links (These episodes were skipped on the BBC Four re-runs).
Some off-air recordings, made by fans at home with a microphone in front of the TV speaker, exist in varying quality, including the Jimi Hendrix Experience performing a live version of "Hey Joe" in December 1966.
Some segments of TOTP which were not retained do survive in some form owing to having been included in other programmes, either by the BBC itself or by foreign broadcasters. What was thought to be the only surviving footage of the Beatles on the programme, for instance, comes from its re-use in episode one of 1965 Doctor Who serial The Chase. Additionally a number of recordings are believed to exist in private collections. However, in 2019, an 11-second clip of the group's only live appearance on TOTP, from 16 June 1966, was unearthed – this was recorded by a viewer using an 8mm camera to film the live transmission on their television. Other individual but complete clips that have surfaced over recent years include The Hollies performing "Bus Stop", and The Jimi Hendrix Experience playing both "Purple Haze" and "The Wind Cries Mary".
Thanks to a deal between the BBC and German television network ZDF around the turn of the 1970s, several TOTP clips were sent over to be shown on Disco, a similar-styled chart show. This meant that performances from the likes of The Kinks (Apeman), The Who (The Seeker) and King Crimson (Cat Food) still exist in German archives.
Two complete episodes from 1967 were discovered in a private collection in 2009, having been recorded at home on an early available open reel to reel video recorder. Whilst the tapes suffered from major damage and degradation of both sound and picture quality, one show featured Pink Floyd with original leader Syd Barrett performing "See Emily Play", whilst the second contained Dave Davies singing his solo hit "Death of a Clown".
The programme was forced off the air for several weeks by industrial action by the Musicians' Union in both 1974 and 1980.
Spin-offs
Top of the Pops has a sister show called TOTP2 which uses archive footage from as early as the late 1960s. It began on 17 September 1994. The early series were narrated by Johnnie Walker, before Steve Wright took over as narrator. In summer 2004 BBC Two's controller, Roly Keating, announced that it was being "rested". Shortly after UKTV G2 began showing re-edited versions of earlier programmes with re-recorded dialogue. Finally after a two-year break TOTP2 returned to the BBC Two schedules for a new series on Saturday, 30 September 2006, in an evening timeslot. It was still narrated by Steve Wright and featured a mixture of performances from the TOTP archive and newly recorded performances. The first edition of this series featured new performances by Razorlight and Nelly Furtado recorded after the final episode of Top of the Pops. In 2009 Mark Radcliffe took over as narrator. TOTP2 continued to receive sporadic new episodes from this point onwards, most notably Christmas specials, until 2017 when the show ceased producing new episodes, though previous episodes are still repeated on both BBC Two and BBC Four.
Aired on BBC Radio 1 between the mid-1990s and late 2001 was Top of the Pops: The Radio Show which went out every Sunday at 3 pm just before the singles chart, and was presented by Jayne Middlemiss and Scott Mills. It later reappeared on the BBC World Service in May 2003 originally presented by Emma B, where it continues to be broadcast weekly in an hourly format, now presented by Kim Robson and produced by former BBC World Service producer Alan Rowett.
The defunct channel Play UK created two spin offs; TOTP+ Plus and TOTP@Play (2000–2001) (until mid-2000, this show was called The Phone Zone and was a spin-off from BBC Two music series The O-Zone). BBC Choice featured a show called TOTP The New Chart (5 December 1999 – 26 March 2000) and on BBC Two TOTP+ (8 October 2000 – 26 August 2001) which featured the TOTP @ Play studio and presenters. This is not to be confused with the UK Play version of the same name. A more recent spin-off (now ended) was Top of the Pops Saturday hosted originally by Fearne Cotton and Simon Grant, and its successor Top of the Pops Reloaded. This was shown on Saturday mornings on BBC One and featured competitions, star interviews, video reviews and some Top of the Pops performances. This was aimed at a younger audience and was part of the CBBC Saturday morning line-up. This was to rival CD:UK at the same time on ITV.
Send-ups
A number of performers have sent up the format in various ways. This was often by performers who disliked the mime format of the show, as a protest against this rather than simply refusing to appear.
When Fairport Convention appeared to promote their 1969 hit "Si Tu Dois Partir", drummer Dave Mattacks wore a T-shirt printed "MIMING".
When the Smiths appeared on the show to perform their single "This Charming Man", lead singer Morrissey was unhappy about having to lip-sync and so held a bunch of gladioli on the stage instead of a microphone.
While performing their 1982 hit "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)", the band Dexy's Midnight Runners were seen performing in front of a projection of the darts player with a similar sounding name (Jocky Wilson instead of soul singer Jackie Wilson). Dexy's frontman Kevin Rowland later said in an interview that the use of the Jocky Wilson picture was his idea and not a mistake by the programme makers as is sometimes stated.
A performance of "Marguerita Time" by Status Quo in early 1984 in which a clearly-refreshed Rick Parfitt walks directly into the drum kit at the end of the song, taking the drummer and whole kit with him as the others continue miming
Frankie Goes To Hollywood performed one of the many 1984 performances of their hit "Two Tribes" with bassist Mark O'Toole playing drums whilst drummer Ped Gill played bass.
When Oasis mimed to "Whatever" on Top of the Pops in 1994, one of the cello players from the symphony was replaced by rhythm guitarist Bonehead, who clearly had no idea how the instrument should be played. Towards the end of the song, he gave up the pretence and started using the bow to conduct. A woman plays his rhythm guitar.
Singer Les Gray of Mud went on stage to perform with a ventriloquist dummy during the performance of "Lonely This Christmas" and had the dummy lip-synch to the voice-over in the middle of the song.
During Mott the Hoople's performance of their single "Roll Away the Stone" in 1973, drummer Dale Griffin plays with oversized drumsticks.
EMF appeared on the show with one of the guitarists strumming along while wearing boxing gloves.
At the end of The Who's performance of "5:15" the band proceeded to destroy their instruments despite the fact the backing track was still playing.
In Blur's performance of "Charmless Man" in 1996, Dave Rowntree decided to play with oversized drumsticks, while Graham Coxon played a mini guitar.
In Green Day's first Top of the Pops appearance in 1994, the band played the song "Welcome to Paradise". Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong wore an otherwise plain white T-shirt with the phrase "Who am I fooling anyway?" handwritten on it, most likely a reference to his own miming during the performance. He could also be seen not playing his guitar during the instrumental bridge in the song.
The performance of "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart and the Faces featured John Peel miming on mandolin. Near the end of the song, Rod and the Faces begin to kick around a football. This is despite the fact that the music can be still heard playing in the background.
The Cure were known for their abhorrence for miming their songs whilst on TOTP and on several occasions made it obvious they were not playing their parts – using such stunts as playing guitar left-handed and miming very badly out of synch.
Ambient house group the Orb sat and played chess while an edited version of their 39:57-minute single "Blue Room" played in the background.
Depeche Mode's performance of "Barrel of a Gun" in 1997 featured Dutch photographer and director Anton Corbijn who mimed playing the drums. Also Tim Simenon (who produced the album the song appeared on) mimed playing keyboards along with Andy Fletcher.
When the Cuban Boys performed "Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia" at the end of 1999, a performance which was reportedly unbroadcast, the band wearing labcoats, covered in cobwebs.
International versions
Europe
The TOTP format was sold to RTL in Germany in the 1990s, and aired on Saturday afternoons. It was very successful for a long time, with a compilation album series and magazine. However, in 2006 it was announced that the German show would be ending. The Italian version (first broadcast on Rai 2 and later on Italia 1) also ended in 2006. In February 2010 the show returned on Rai 2, and was broadcast for two seasons before being cancelled again in October 2011. The French version of the show ended by September 2006 on France 2.
In the Netherlands, TopPop was broadcast by AVRO 1970–1988, and a version of the show continued to run on BNN until the end of December 2006. BBC Prime used to broadcast re-edited episodes of the BBC version, the weekend after it was transmitted in the UK. Ireland began transmitting Top of the Pops in November 1978 on RTÉ2. This was the UK version being transmitted at the same time as on BBC. The broadcasts ceased in late 1993.
United States
Top of the Pops had short-lived fame in the United States. In October 1987, the CBS television network decided to try an American version of the show. It was hosted by Nia Peeples and even showed performances from the BBC version of the programme (and vice versa). The show was presented on late Friday nights as part of CBS Late Night, and lasted almost half a year.
In 2002, BBC America presented the BBC version of Top of the Pops as part of their weekend schedule. The network would get the episodes one week after they were transmitted in the UK. BBC America then tinkered with the show by cutting a few minutes out of each show and moving it to a weekday time slot.
On 23 January 2006, Lou Pearlman made a deal to bring Top of the Pops back to the airwaves in the United States. It was expected to be similar to the 1987 version, but it would also utilise the Billboard magazine music charts, most notably the Hot 100 chart. It was supposed to be planned for a possible 2006 or 2007 launch, but with several lawsuits against Lou and his companies (which resulted in his conviction in 2008), as well as the cancellation of the UK version, the proposed US project never went forward. On 19 August 2006, VH1 aired the UK series' final episode.
The United States had its own similar series, American Bandstand, which aired nationally on ABC from 1957 to 1987 (although it would continue in first-run syndication until 1988 and end its run on USA in 1989). Similar series also included Soul Train (1970–2006, featuring R&B artists), Club MTV (1986–92, featuring dance music acts; hosted by Downtown Julie Brown, an alumnus of TOTP as part of the show's last dance troupe Zoo) and Solid Gold (1980–88; like the early TOTP, it also used dance troupes).
Canada
Canada's version was Electric Circus (1988–2003) on MuchMusic, which was also seen in the USA through MuchMusic USA. It had a national chart (mostly of dance music and some pop) as well as live performances, and was based on a local late '70s programme in Toronto called CITY-TV Boogie.
New Zealand
The Top of the Pops brand has also been exported to New Zealand. Although the British show has been broadcast intermittently in New Zealand, the country historically relied on music video-based shows to demonstrate its own Top 20, as the major international acts, who dominated the local charts, considered New Zealand too small and remote to visit regularly. This changed to an extent in 2002, when the New Zealand government suggested a voluntary New Zealand music quota on radio (essentially a threat that if the stations did not impose a quota themselves then one would be imposed on them). The amount of local music played on radio stations increased, as did the number of local songs in the top 20. Therefore, a new local version of Top of the Pops became feasible for the first time, and the show was commissioned by Television New Zealand. The show was executive produced by David Rose, managing director and owner of Satellite Media, and began airing in early 2004 with host Alex Behan. The hour-long show (as opposed to the 30-minute UK version) which was broadcast at 5 pm on Saturdays on TV2 contained a mixture of performances recorded locally on a sound stage in the Auckland CBD, as well as performances from the international versions of the show. The New Zealand Top 20 singles and Top 10 albums charts are also featured. Alex Behan stayed as host for two years before Bede Skinner took over. Despite having a sizeable fan base, in 2006 TVNZ announced that Top of the Pops had been axed.
Free-to-air music channel C4 then picked up the UK version of Top of the Pops and aired it on Saturdays at 8 pm with a repeat screening on Thursdays. However, since the weekly UK version was axed itself, this arrangement also ended.
Africa, Asia and the Middle East
An edited version of the UK show was shown on BBC Prime, the weekend after UK transmission.
In addition, a licensed version was shown on the United Arab Emirates-based MBC2 television channel. This version consisted of parts of the UK version, including the Top 10 charts, as well as live performances by Arabic pop singers.
Latin America
A complete version of the UK show was shown on People+Arts, two weeks after the UK transmission.
Brazilian network TV Globo aired a loosely based version of the original format in 2018, labeled as 'Só Toca Top', hosted by singer Luan Santana and actress Fernanda Souza.
Compilation albums
A number of compilation albums using the Top of the Pops brand have been issued over the years. The first one to reach the charts was BBC TV's The Best of Top of the Pops on the Super Beeb record label in 1975, which reached number 21 and in 1986 the BBC released The Wizard by Paul Hardcastle (the 1986-1990 Top of The Pops theme tune) on Vinyl under the BBC Records and Tapes banner.
Starting in 1968 and carrying on through the 1970s a rival series of Top of the Pops albums were produced, however these had no connection with the television series except for its name. They were a series of budget cover albums of current chart hits recorded by anonymous session singers and musicians released on the Hallmark record label. They had initially reached the charts but were later disallowed due to a change in the criteria for entering the charts. These albums continued to be produced until the early 1980s, when the advent of compilation albums featuring the original versions of hits, such as the Now That's What I Call Music! series, led to a steep decline in their popularity.
In the 1990s, the BBC Top of the Pops brand was again licensed for use in a tie-in compilation series. Starting in 1995 with Sony Music's Columbia Records label, these double disc collections moved to the special marketing arm of PolyGram / Universal Music Group TV, before becoming a sister brand of the Now That's What I Call Music! range in the EMI / Virgin / Universal joint venture.
Similarly to the roles of Top of the Pops on BBC One and BBC Two in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the compilation albums range featured current hits for the main series and classic hits (such as '70s Rock) for the "Top of the Pops 2" spin-offs.
The Top of the Pops brand has now been licensed by EMI who released a compilation series in 2007–08, with one CD for each year that Top of the Pops was running. The boxset for the entire series of 43 discs was released 7July 2008. A podcast supporting the release of the boxset featuring interviews with Mark Goodier, Miles Leonard, Malcolm McLaren and David Hepworth is available.
Number One in the Compilation Charts
These albums in the series reached No. 1:
Top of the Pops 1 (Columbia Records, 1995)
Top of the Pops '99 – Volume 2 (Universal Music TV, 1999)
Top of the Pops 2000 – Volume Two (BBC Music / Universal Music TV, 2000)
Top of the Pops magazine
Top of the Pops magazine has been running since February 1995, and filled the void in the BBC magazine portfolio where Number One magazine used to be. It began much in the mould of Q magazine, then changed its editorial policy to directly compete with popular teen celebrity magazines such as Smash Hits and Big, with free sticker giveaways replacing Brett Anderson covers.
A July 1996 feature on the Spice Girls coined the famous "Spice" nicknames for each member (Baby, Ginger, Posh, Scary and Sporty) that stayed with them throughout their career as a group and beyond.
The BBC announced that the magazine would continue in publication despite the end of the television series, and is still running.
An earlier Top of the Pops magazine appeared briefly in the mid-1970s. Mud drummer Dave Mount sat reading an edition throughout a 1975 appearance on the show.
In popular culture
The Number 6 track of the Kinks' 1970 eighth studio album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One is called "Top of the Pops" and narrates the path to stardom by reaching Number1 in the music charts.
Benny Hill did a parody of Top of the Pops in January 1971 called "Top of the Tops". It featured satires of many music acts at the time as well as impersonations of both Jimmy Savile and Tony Blackburn.
The Scottish punk band the Rezillos lampooned the show in their song "Top of the Pops". The band performed the song on the programme twice when it entered the charts in 1978.
In 1984, British Rail HST power car 43002 was named Top of the Pops, by Jimmy Savile. This followed an edition which was broadcast live on a train, which 43002 was one of the power cars for. The nameplates were removed in 1989.
The Smashie and Nicey 1994 TV special Smashie and Nicey: The End of an Era featured doctored and recreated footage of the two fictional DJs hosting a montage of 1970s editions of Top of the Pops, including a "Black music" edition, which the pair presented in Blackface.
In the opening credits of the Spice Girls' 1997 feature film Spiceworld: The Movie, the girls perform their hit single "Too Much" on a fictional episode of the show. They did also perform it on the show in real life when it became their second Christmas number one in the UK that same year.
A 2001 episode of Tweenies featured a parody of Top of the Pops, complete with Max imitating Jimmy Savile. The episode was unintententionally repeated in January 2013, and received 216 complaints.
Licensing
In May 2006, following a special Red Hot Chili Peppers concert recorded in the car park of BBC Television Centre, Hammersmith and Fulham Council (which governs the area the centre is located) informed the BBC that it lacked the necessary public entertainment license (as required by the Licensing Act 2003). Until the BBC could obtain the license, BBC staff stood-in as audience members for live music programmes.
DVDs
In 2004 there was a DVD released called Top of the Pops 40th Anniversary 1964–2004 DVD. It features live performances, containing one song for each year, except 1966. (Two tracks from 1965 are featured instead). Also included as extras are seven opening titles, most notably the one with the flying coloured LP's from 1981. This title sequence had Phil Lynott's song "Yellow Pearl" as the theme. The 1986 and 1989 titles are also featured, with Paul Hardcastle's hit "The Wizard" as the theme. This DVD was to celebrate 40 years since the show started.
There was also a DVD quiz released in 2007 called The Essential Music Quiz. There was also a DVD in 2001 called Summer 2001, a sister DVD to the album of the same name.
See also
Alright Now
The Old Grey Whistle Test
Ready Steady Go!
Revolver (TV series)
Top of the Box
The Tube (TV series)
References
Further reading
Blacknell, Steve. The Story of Top of the Pops. Wellingborough, Northants: Patrick Stephens, 1985
Gittens, Ian. Top Of The Pops: Mishaps, Miming and Music: True Adventures of TV's No.1 Pop Show. London: BBC, 2007
Seaton, Pete with Richard Down. The Kaleidoscope British Television Music & Variety Guide II: Top Pop: 1964–2006. Dudley: Kaleidoscope Publishing, 2007
Simpson, Jeff. Top of the Pops: 1964–2002: it's still number one, its Top of the Pops! London: BBC, 2002
External links
1964 British television series debuts
British music television shows
1964 in British music
1960s British music television series
1970s British music television series
1980s British music television series
1990s British music television series
2000s British music television series
2010s British music television series
1960s in British music
1970s in British music
1980s in British music
1990s in British music
2000s in British music
2010s in British music
BBC Television shows
CBS original programming
Television series by CBS Studios
Television series by BBC Studios
Lost BBC episodes
Pop music television series
British music chart television shows
English-language television shows
Jimmy Savile
British television series revived after cancellation
Television shows shot at BBC Elstree Centre | 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",
"Timothy Patrick Bragg (also known as Tim Bragg) is an English author and musician who has worked in politics. He was a founder member of the cultural publication Steadfast. He has been a vegetarian since late childhood. Currently he is perhaps best known as being a drummer/percussionist.\n\nA singer and songwriter as well as multi-instrumentalist, Bragg's discography includes Fields of England (a CD of 12 revamped and new songs and a digital only five song EP: Fields of England - The Green EP, 2014), Night Ferry (ambient/jazz album featuring flute, 2008), Where is the Fighter? - Songs for Phil Lynott (2009), Stranger Through The Window (2010), Revamped 1 (2011), Revamped Too (2012), Beat Bones & Alchemy (EP 2014), Revamped 3 (2014) Beat Bones & Stone Angels (2016) Been Before (2018) and under Tim Bragg & The Other Side the ambient/dance/electro album, Crossing Over (2013) featuring flute and the EWI (Electric Wind Instrument) and The Way of the Film (2016) ambient/jazz/new age also featuring flute - inspired by an original composition for the short film: Basket Case. The album Authentic co-written with German guitarist Ulrich Hänig was released in the Autumn of 2016. The album Tall Stories on Short Street (co-written with Ross Hemsworth) was released on 31 July 2020. The album Soul on Fire was released on March 30th, 2021. The album Project 21 was released late November 2021. \n\nHe stood as a paper-candidate for the English Democrats Party in the 2004 European Parliament election.\nHe was a member of the English Democrats for a year; he is not and has not been a member of any political party before or since. Bragg is now spokesman for (and founder of) the environmental campaign group English Green. The ethos of English Green is given as: English Green is a group interested in ecology and its relationship with all aspects of human activity. How we co-exist with the flora and fauna and how we conduct ourselves in an ecologically healthy manner and how we achieve a spiritual and material well-being are of particular interest.\n\nBragg read English and American Literature at Warwick University, graduating with a 2:1 (Hons).\n\nBooks\n The English Dragon (2001) \n A Declaration and Philosophy of Progressive Nationalism (With Graham Williamson, 2005)\n Biting Tongues (2005) \n The White Rooms (2005) \n Oak (2006) \n Counter Culture Anthology (Editor, 2006)\n HEAD: And Other Dark Tales (2017)\n Lyrics To Live By: Keys to Self Help - Notes for a Better Life (2018)\n LYRICS TO LIVE BY 2: Further Reflections, Meditations & Life Lessons (2020)\n A Conversation of Trees (2020)\n\nFilm\n Hounds of Rampur - film script co-writer (with Chandran Tattvaraj) and music to be featured in film. See external links: Hounds of Rampur (Production set to begin early 2019.)\nTim Bragg: 'We have a full production team beginning to work on the film. It's taken time - a lot longer than we envisaged - such is the way of the (film) world. Everyone is feeling very upbeat about this project.'\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Tim Bragg at SoundClick\n Rootstime review of Revamped Too - in Dutch\n mwe3 review of Revamped Too - in English\n DC Rock Live - Reviews (Revamped Too) - in English \n RockTimes review of Revamped Too - in German\n Counter-Culture review of Revamped Too - in English\n Musikansich review of Revamped Too - in German\n RockTimes review of Revamped 3 - in German\n Interview and review of Revamped 3 by mwe3 - in English\n Review of Beat Bones & Alchemy - Radio Warwickshire - in English\n Hounds of Rampur - film homepage\n Review of Beat Bones and Stone Angels - in German\n RockTimes review of Authentic - in German\n\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nEnglish Democrats politicians\nLiving people\nEnglish male singer-songwriters\n21st-century English novelists\nEnglish drummers\nBritish male drummers\nEnglish male novelists\n21st-century English male writers"
] |
[
"Top of the Pops",
"1994-1997",
"What happened in 1994?",
"By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone",
"What was year zero?",
"I don't know.",
"What happened in 1995?",
"The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced",
"What else was revamped",
"introduction of a new set."
] | C_4ba6e4aafe884f399b648ba4e20a983e_0 | What happened in 1996 | 5 | What happened in 1996 in Top of the Pops? | Top of the Pops | By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone and the arrival of Ric Blaxill as producer in February 1994 signalled a return to presentation from established Radio 1 DJs Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and Bruno Brookes. Blaxill expanded the use of "via satellite" performances, taking the acts out of studios and concert halls and setting them against landmark backdrops. As a consequence, Bon Jovi performed Always from Niagara Falls and Celine Dion beamed in Think Twice from Miami Beach. The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced (the logo having first been introduced on the new programme Top of the Pops 2 some months previous), coinciding with the introduction of a new set. Blaxill also increasingly experimented with handing presenting duties to celebrities, commonly contemporary comedians and pop stars who were not in the charts at that time. In an attempt to keep the links between acts as fresh as the performances themselves, the so-called "golden mic" was used by, amongst others, Kylie Minogue, Meat Loaf, Des Lynam, Chris Eubank, Damon Albarn, Harry Hill, Jack Dee, Lulu and Jarvis Cocker. Radio 1 DJs still presented occasionally, notably Lisa I'Anson, Steve Lamacq, Jo Whiley and Chris Evans. TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996, originally at 7 pm, but then shifted to 7.30 pm, a change which placed the programme up against the soap opera Coronation Street on ITV. This began a major decline in audience figures as fans were forced to choose between Top of the Pops and an episode of the soap. CANNOTANSWER | TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996, | Top of the Pops (TOTP) is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly between 1January 1964 and 30 July 2006. Top of the Pops was the world's longest running weekly music show. For most of its history, it was broadcast on Thursday evenings on BBC One. Each weekly show consisted of performances from some of that week's best-selling popular music records, usually excluding any tracks moving down the chart, including a rundown of that week's singles chart. This was originally the Top 20, though this varied throughout the show's history. The Official Charts Company states "performing on the show was considered an honour, and it pulled in just about every major player."
Dusty Springfield’s "I Only Want to Be with You" was the first song performed on TOTP, while The Rolling Stones were the first band to perform with "I Wanna Be Your Man". Snow Patrol were the last act to play live on the weekly show when they performed their single "Chasing Cars". In addition to the weekly show there was a special edition of TOTP on Christmas Day (and usually, until 1984, a second edition a few days after Christmas), featuring some of the best-selling singles of the year and the Christmas Number 1. Although the weekly show was cancelled in 2006, the Christmas special has continued. End-of-year round-up editions have also been broadcast on BBC1 on or around New Year's Eve, albeit largely featuring the same acts and tracks as the Christmas Day shows. It also survives as Top of the Pops 2, which began in 1994 and features vintage performances from the Top of the Pops archives. Though TOTP2 ceased producing new episodes since 2017, repeats of older episodes are still shown.
The show has seen seminal performances over its history. The March 1971 TOTP appearance of T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan wearing glitter and satins as he performed "Hot Love" is often seen as the inception of glam rock, and David Bowie's performance of "Starman" inspired future musicians. In the 1990s, the show's format was sold to several foreign broadcasters in the form of a franchise package, and at one point various versions of the show were shown in more than 120 countries. Editions of the programme from 1976 onwards started being repeated on BBC Four in 2011 and are aired on most Friday evenings – as of January 2022 the repeat run has reached 1992. Episodes featuring disgraced presenters and artists such as Jonathan King, Jimmy Savile (who opened the show with its familiar slogan, 'It's Number One, it's Top of the Pops'), Dave Lee Travis, Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter, and R. Kelly are no longer repeated.
History
Johnnie Stewart devised the rules which governed how the show would operate: the programme would always end with the number one record, which was the only record that could appear in consecutive weeks. The show would include the highest new entry and (if not featured in the previous week) the highest climber on the charts, and omit any song going down in the chart. Tracks could be featured in consecutive weeks in different formats. For example, if a song was played over the chart countdown or the closing credits, then it was acceptable for the act to appear in the studio the following week.
These rules were sometimes interpreted flexibly and were more formally relaxed from 1997 when records descending the charts were featured more regularly, possibly as a response to the changing nature of the Top 40 (in the late 1990s and early 2000s climbers in the charts were a rarity, with almost all singles peaking at their debut position).
When the programme's format changed in November 2003, it concentrated increasingly on the top 10. Later, during the BBC Two era, the top 20 was regarded as the main cut-off point, with the exception made for up and coming bands below the top 20. Singles from below the top 40 (within the top 75) were shown if the band were up and coming or had a strong selling album. If a single being performed was below the top 40, just the words "New Entry" were shown and not the chart position.
The show was originally intended to run for only a few programmes but lasted over 42 years, reaching landmark episodes of 500, 1,000, 1,500 and 2,000 in the years 1973, 1983, 1992 and 2002 respectively.
The first show
Top of the Pops was first broadcast on Wednesday, 1January 1964 at 6:35 pm. It was produced in Studio A at Dickenson Road Studios in Rusholme, Manchester.
DJ Jimmy Savile presented the first show live from the Manchester studio (with a brief link to Alan Freeman in London to preview the following week's programme), which featured (in order) Dusty Springfield with "I Only Want to Be with You", the Rolling Stones with "I Wanna Be Your Man", the Dave Clark Five with "Glad All Over", the Hollies with "Stay", the Swinging Blue Jeans with "Hippy Hippy Shake" and the Beatles with "I Want to Hold Your Hand", that week's number one – throughout its history, the programme proper always (with very few exceptions) finished with the best-selling single of the week, although there often was a separate play-out track over the end credits.
1960s and 1970s
Later in 1964, the broadcast time was moved to one hour later, at 7:35 pm, and the show moved from Wednesdays to what became its regular Thursday slot. Additionally its length was extended by 5minutes to 30 minutes.
For the first three years Alan Freeman, David Jacobs, Pete Murray and Jimmy Savile rotated presenting duties, with the following week's presenter also appearing at the end of each show, although this practice ceased from October 1964 onwards. Neville Wortman filled in as director/producer on Johnnie Stewart's holiday break.
In the first few editions, Denise Sampey was the "disc girl", who would be seen to put the record on a turntable before the next act played their track. However, a Mancunian model, Samantha Juste, became the regular disc girl after a few episodes, a role she performed until 1967.
Initially acts performing on the show would mime (lip-sync) to the commercially released record, but in 1966 after discussions with the Musicians' Union, miming was banned. After a few weeks during which some bands' attempts to play as well as on their records were somewhat lacking, a compromise was reached whereby a specially recorded backing track was permitted, as long as all the musicians on the track were present in the studio. As a result, Stewart hired Johnny Pearson to conduct an in-studio orchestra to provide musical backing on select performances, beginning with the 4 August 1966 edition. Later, vocal group The Ladybirds began providing vocal backing with the orchestra.
With the birth of BBC Radio 1 in 1967, new Radio1 DJs were added to the roster – Stuart Henry, Emperor Rosko, Simon Dee and Kenny Everett.
Local photographer Harry Goodwin was hired to provide shots of non-appearing artists, and also to provide backdrops for the chart run-down. He continued in the role until 1973.
After two years at the Manchester Dickenson Road Studios, the show moved to London (considered to be better located for bands to appear), initially for six months at BBC TV Centre Studio2 and then to the larger Studio G at BBC Lime Grove Studios in mid-1966 to provide space for the Top of the Pops Orchestra, which was introduced at this time to provide live instrumentation on some performances (previously, acts had generally mimed to the records). In November 1969, with the introduction of colour, the show returned to BBC TV Centre, where it stayed until 1991, when it moved to Elstree Studios Studio C.
For a while in the early 1970s, non-chart songs were played on a more regular basis, to reflect the perceived growing importance of album sales; there was an album slot featuring three songs from a new LP, as well as a New Release spot and a feature of a new act, dubbed Tip for the Top. These features were dropped after a while, although the programme continued to feature new releases on a regular basis for the rest of the decade.
During its heyday, it attracted 15 million viewers each week. The peak TV audience of 19 million was recorded in 1979, during the ITV strike, with only BBC1 and BBC2 on air.
Christmas Top of the Pops
A year-end Christmas show featuring a review of the year's biggest hits was inaugurated on 24 December 1964, and has continued every year since. From 1965 onward, the special edition was broadcast on Christmas Day (although not in 1966) and from the same year, a second edition was broadcast in the days after Christmas, varying depending on the schedule, but initially regularly on 26 December. The first was shown on 26 December 1965. In 1973, there was just one show, airing on Christmas Day. In place of the traditional second show, Jimmy Savile hosted a look back at the first 10 years of TOTP, broadcast on 27 December. In 1975, the first of the two shows was broadcast prior to Christmas Day, airing on 23 December, followed by the traditional Christmas Day show two days later.
The 1978 Christmas Day show was disrupted due to industrial action at the BBC, requiring a change in format to the broadcast. The first show, due to be screened on 21 December, was not shown at all because BBC1 was off the air. For Christmas Day, Noel Edmonds (presenting his last ever edition of TOTP) hosted the show from the 'TOTP Production Office' with clips taken from various editions of the show broadcast during the year and new studio footage performed without an audience. The format was slightly tweaked for the Christmas Day edition in 1981, with the Radio1 DJs choosing their favourite tracks of the year and the following edition on 31 December featuring the year's number1 hits.
The second programme was discontinued after 1984.
1980s
The year 1980 marked major production changes to Top of the Pops and a hiatus forced by industrial action. Steve Wright made his presenting debut on 7 February 1980. Towards the end of February 1980, facing a £40 million budget deficit, the BBC laid off five orchestras as part of £130 million in cuts. The budget cuts led to a Musicians' Union strike that suspended operations of all 11 BBC orchestras and performances of live music on the BBC; Top of the Pops went out of production between 29 May and 7 August 1980. During the Musicians' Union strike, BBC1 showed repeats of Are You Being Served? in the regular Top of the Pops Thursday night time slot.
Following the strike, Nash was replaced as executive producer by Michael Hurll, who introduced more of a "party" atmosphere to the show, with performances often accompanied by balloons and cheerleaders, and more audible audience noise and cheering. Hurll also laid off the orchestra, as the Musicians' Union was loosening enforcement of the 1966 miming ban.
Guest co-presenters and a music news feature were introduced for a short while, but had ceased by the end of 1980. The chart rundown was split into three sections in the middle of the programme, with the final Top 10 section initially featuring clips of the songs' videos, although this became rarer over the next few years.
An occasional feature showing the American music scene with Jonathan King was introduced in November 1981, and ran every few weeks until February 1985. In January 1985, a Breakers section, featuring short video clips of new tracks in the lower end of the Top 40, was introduced, and this continued for most weeks until March 1994.
Although the programme had been broadcast live in its early editions, it had been recorded on the day before transmission for many years. However, from May 1981, the show was sometimes broadcast live for a few editions each year, and this practice continued on an occasional basis (often in the week of a bank holiday, when the release of the new chart was delayed, and for some special editions) for the rest of the decade.
The programme moved in September 1985 to a new regular half-hour timeslot of 7 pm on Thursdays, where it would remain until June 1996.
The end of 1988 was marked by a special 70-minute edition of the show broadcast on 31 December 1988, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first show. The pre-recorded programme featured the return of the original four presenters (Savile, Freeman, Murray and Jacobs) as well as numerous presenters from the show's history, anchored by Paul Gambaccini and Mike Read. Numerous clips from the history of the show were included in between acts performing in the studio, which included Cliff Richard, Engelbert Humperdinck, Lulu, the Four Tops, David Essex, Mud, Status Quo, Shakin' Stevens, the Tremeloes and from the very first edition, the Swinging Blue Jeans. Sandie Shaw, the Pet Shop Boys and Wet Wet Wet were billed in the Radio Times to appear, but none featured in the show other than Shaw in compilation clips.
Paul Ciani took over as producer in 1988. The following year, in an attempt to fit more songs in the allocated half-hour, he restricted the duration of studio performances to three minutes, and videos to two minutes, a practice which was largely continued until May 1997. In July 1990, he introduced a rundown of the Top5 albums, which continued on a monthly basis until May 1991. Ciani had to step down due to illness in 1991, when Hurll returned as producer to cover for two months (and again for a brief time as holiday cover in 1992).
1991: 'Year Zero' revamp
From 1967, the show had become closely associated with the BBC radio station Radio 1, usually being presented by DJs from the station, and between 1988 and 1991 the programme was simulcast on the radio station in FM stereo (that is, until BBC's launch of NICAM stereo for TV made such simulcasts redundant). However, during the last few years of the 1980s the association became less close, and was severed completely (although not permanently) in a radical shake-up known as the 'Year Zero' revamp.
Following a fall in viewing figures and a general perception that the show had become 'uncool' (acts like the Clash had refused to appear in the show in previous years), a radical new format was introduced by incoming executive producer Stanley Appel (who had worked on the programme since 1966 as cameraman, production assistant, director and stand-in producer) in October 1991, in which the Radio1 DJs were replaced by a team of relative unknowns, such as Claudia Simon and Tony Dortie who had previously worked for Children's BBC, 17-year-old local radio DJ Mark Franklin, Steve Anderson, Adrian Rose and Elayne Smith, who was replaced by Femi Oke in 1992. A brand new theme tune ("Now Get Out of That"), title sequence and logo were introduced, and the entire programme moved from BBC Television Centre in London to BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood.
The new presenting team would take turns hosting (initially usually in pairs but sometimes solo), and would often introduce acts in an out-of-vision voiceover over the song's instrumental introduction. They would sometimes even conduct short informal interviews with the performers, and initially the Top 10 countdown was run without any voiceover. Rules relating to performance were also altered meaning acts had to sing live as opposed to the backing tracks for instruments and mimed vocals for which the show was known. To incorporate the shift of dominance towards American artists, more use was made of out-of-studio performances, with acts in America able to transmit their song to the Top of the Pops audience "via satellite". These changes were widely unpopular and much of the presenting team were axed within a year, leaving the show hosted solely by Dortie and Franklin (apart from the Christmas Day editions, when both presenters appeared) from October 1992, on a week-by-week rotation.
1994–1997
By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone and the arrival of Ric Blaxill as producer in February 1994 signalled a return to presentation from established Radio1 DJs Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and Bruno Brookes. Blaxill expanded the use of "via satellite" performances, taking the acts out of studios and concert halls and setting them against landmark backdrops. As a consequence, Bon Jovi performed Always from Niagara Falls and Celine Dion beamed in Think Twice from Miami Beach.
The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced (the logo having first been introduced on the new programme Top of the Pops 2 some months previously), coinciding with the introduction of a new set. Blaxill also increasingly experimented with handing presenting duties to celebrities, commonly contemporary comedians and pop stars who were not in the charts at that time. In an attempt to keep the links between acts as fresh as the performances themselves, the so-called "golden mic" was used by, amongst others, Kylie Minogue, Meat Loaf, Des Lynam, Chris Eubank, Damon Albarn, Harry Hill, Jack Dee, Lulu, Björk, Jarvis Cocker, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. Radio1 DJs still presented occasionally, including Lisa I'Anson, Steve Lamacq, Jo Whiley and Chris Evans.
TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996, originally at 7 pm, but then shifted to 7.30 pm, a change which placed the programme up against the soap opera Coronation Street on ITV. This began a major decline in audience figures as fans were forced to choose between Top of the Pops and an episode of the soap.
1997–2003
In 1997, incoming producer Chris Cowey phased out the use of celebrities and established a rotating team (similar to the 1991 revamp, although much more warmly received) of former presenters of youth music magazine The O-Zone Jayne Middlemiss and Jamie Theakston as well as Radio1 DJs Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball. The team was later augmented by Kate Thornton and Gail Porter.
Chris Cowey in particular instigated a set of 'back to basics' changes when he took over the show. In 1998, a remixed version of the classic "Whole Lotta Love" theme tune previously used in the 1970s was introduced, accompanied by a new 1960s-inspired logo and title sequence. Cowey also began to export the brand overseas with localised versions of the show on air in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy by 2003. Finally, the programme returned to its previous home of BBC Television Centre in 2001, where it remained until its cancellation in 2006.
2003: All New Top of the Pops
On 28 November 2003 (three months after the appointment of Andi Peters as executive producer), the show saw one of its most radical overhauls since the ill-fated 1991 'Year Zero' revamp in what was widely reported as a make-or-break attempt to revitalise the long-running series. In a break with the previous format, the show played more up-and-coming tracks ahead of any chart success, and also featured interviews with artists and a music news feature called "24/7". Most editions of the show were now broadcast live, for the first time since 1991 (apart from a couple of editions in 1994). The launch show, which was an hour long, was notable for a performance of "Flip Reverse" by Blazin' Squad, featuring hordes of hooded teenagers choreographed to dance around the outside of BBC Television Centre.
Although the first edition premièred to improved ratings, the All New format, hosted by MTV presenter Tim Kash, quickly returned to low ratings and brought about scathing reviews. Kash continued to host the show, but Radio1 DJs Reggie Yates and Fearne Cotton (who had each presented a few shows in 2003, before the revamp) were brought back to co-host alongside him, before Kash was completely dropped by the BBC, later taking up a new contract at MTV. The show continued to be hosted by Reggie Yates and Fearne Cotton (usually together, but occasionally solo) on Friday evenings until 8July 2005.
On 30 July 2004, the show took place outside a studio environment for the first time by broadcasting outside in Gateshead. Girls Aloud, Busted, Will Young and Jamelia were among the performers that night.
2005: The Beginning of the End
Figures had plummeted to below three million, prompting an announcement by the BBC that the show was going to move, again, to Sunday evenings on BBC Two, thus losing the prime-time slot on BBC One that it had maintained for more than forty years.
This move was widely reported as a final "sidelining" of the show, and perhaps signalled its likely cancellation. At the time, it was insisted that this was so the show would air immediately after the official announcement of the new top 40 chart on Radio 1, as it was thought that by the following Friday, the chart seemed out of date. The final Top of the Pops to be shown on BBC One (barring Christmas and New Year specials) was broadcast on Monday 11 July 2005, which was edition number 2,166.
The first edition on BBC Two was broadcast on 17 July 2005 at 7.00 pm with presenter Fearne Cotton. After the move to Sundays, Cotton continued to host with a different guest presenter each week, such as Rufus Hound or Richard Bacon. On a number of occasions, however, Reggie Yates would step in, joined by female guest presenters such as Lulu, Cyndi Lauper and Anastacia. Viewing figures during this period averaged around 1½ million. Shortly after the move to BBC Two, Peters resigned as executive producer. He was replaced by the BBC's Creative Head of Music Entertainment Mark Cooper, while producer Sally Wood remained to oversee the show on a weekly basis.
2006: Cancellation
On 20 June 2006, the show was formally cancelled and it was announced that the last edition would be broadcast on 30 July 2006. Edith Bowman co-presented its hour-long swansong, along with Jimmy Savile (who was the main presenter on the first show), Reggie Yates, Mike Read, Pat Sharp, Sarah Cawood, Dave Lee Travis, Rufus Hound, Tony Blackburn and Janice Long.
The final day of recording was 26 July 2006 and featured archive footage and tributes, including the Rolling Stones – the very first band to appear on Top of the Pops – opening with "The Last Time", the Spice Girls, David Bowie, Wham!, Madonna, Beyoncé, Gnarls Barkley, the Jackson 5, Sonny and Cher and Robbie Williams. The show closed with a final countdown, topped by Shakira, as her track "Hips Don't Lie" (featuring Wyclef Jean) had climbed back up to number one on the UK Singles Chart earlier in the day. The show ended with Savile ultimately turning the lights off in the empty studio.
Fearne Cotton, who was the current presenter, was unavailable to co-host for the final edition due to her filming of ITV's Love Island in Fiji but opened the show with a quick introduction recorded on location, saying "It's still number one, it's Top of the Pops". BARB reported the final show's viewing figures as 3.98 million.
As the last episode featured no live acts in the studio, the last act to actually play live on a weekly episode of TOTP was Snow Patrol, who performed "Chasing Cars" in the penultimate edition; the last act ever featured visually on a weekly Top of the Pops was Girls Aloud, as part of the closing sequence of bands performing on the show throughout the years. They were shown performing "Love Machine".
2006–present: After the end
The magazine and TOTP2 have both survived despite the show's axing, and the Christmas editions also continue after returning to BBC One. However, the TOTP website, which the BBC had originally promised would continue, is now no longer updated, although many of the old features of the site – interviews, music news, reviews – have remained, now in the form of the Radio 1-affiliated TOTP ChartBlog accessible via the remains of the old website.
Calls for its return
In October 2008, British Culture Secretary Andy Burnham and Manchester indie band the Ting Tings called for the show to return.
On 29 October 2008, Simon Cowell stated in an interview that he would be willing to buy the rights to Top of the Pops from the BBC. The corporation responded that they had not been formally approached by Cowell, and that in any case the format was "not up for sale". In November 2008, it was reported by The Times and other newspapers that the weekly programme was to be revived in 2009, but the BBC said there were no such plans.
In July 2009, Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant criticised the BBC for ending the programme, stating that new acts were missing out on "that great moment of being crowned that week's Kings of Pop".
In early 2015 there was increased speculation of a return of the show including rumours that Dermot O'Leary might present alongside Fearne Cotton. According to a report in the Daily Mirror, a BBC insider stated that "some at the highest level are massive supporters of the plan [of a return] and have given the go-ahead." The move of the UK charts to a Friday due to take place in summer 2015 was also said to favour the possibility of a return, making it "the perfect tie-in" and a "perfect start to the weekend", but no weekly return has occurred.
BBC Four reruns
In April 2011, the BBC began to reshow Top of the Pops on Thursday nights on BBC Four beginning with the equivalent show from 35 years earlier in a 7:30 pm–8:00 pm slot approximating to the time the programme was traditionally shown. The first programme shown, 1April 1976, was chosen because it was from approximately this episode onwards that most editions remain in the BBC archive. The repeat programmes come in two versions; the first is edited down to fit in the 30-minute 7:30 slot, the second is shown normally twice overnight in the following weekend, and is usually complete. However both the short and longer editions can be edited for a number of reasons. Potentially offensive content to modern audiences is cut (for example The Barron Knights' in-studio performance of "Food For Thought" on the edition of 13 December 1979 including a segment parodying Chinese takeaways using mannerisms that may now be viewed as offensive), and cinematic film footage can be truncated, replaced or removed entirely due to the costs to the BBC of reshowing such footage. The BBC also makes the repeats available on BBC iPlayer. The repeats are continuing as of January 2022 with episodes from 1992.
Since October 2012, episodes featuring Jimmy Savile have ceased to be broadcast due to the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal and subsequent Operation Yewtree police investigation. Following the arrest of Dave Lee Travis by Operation Yewtree officers, and his subsequent conviction for indecent assault, episodes featuring Travis were also omitted. Following Gary Glitter's conviction for sexual assault, episodes featuring him are not included in the run, or otherwise have Glitter's performances edited out.
Mike Smith decided not to sign the licence extension that would allow the BBC to repeat the Top of the Pops episodes that he presented, with the BBC continuing to respect his wishes following his death. As a result, episodes featuring Smith are also omitted.
In 2021, it was discovered that episodes hosted by Adrian Rose (later Adrian Woolfe) were being skipped, starting with the 28th November 1991 episode featuring Nirvana's famous performance of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (mentioned below).
Other edits that have been made to episodes have included Jonathan King's reports from the US during episodes from the early 1980s, sometimes also resulting in the removal of a performance or video introduced as part of the report, and the removal of The Doors' performance of "Light My Fire" from a 1991 episode, due to The Doors not being covered by the BBC's music licensing agreement (which also resulted in another 1991 episode being skipped).
"Story of" Specials
Prior to the 1976 BBC reruns shown in 2011, the BBC produced a special programme, "The Story of 1976". This comprised excerpts from the 1976 programmes, interspersed with new interviews with people discussing the time period. They have produced similar programmes prior to subsequent annual reruns, "The Story of 1990" being the most recent such programme in October 2020, as 1991 and 1992 reruns started without a 'The Story of...' programme preceding them.
"Big Hits" compilation
A series of "Big Hits" compilations have been broadcast with on-screen captions about artists.In December 2016, a festive special using the format of the "Big Hits" programmes, Top of the Pops: Christmas Hits was broadcast on BBC Four, featuring a mix of Christmas music and non-festive songs which had been hits at Christmas time. This effectively replaced the annual Christmas edition of Top of the Pops 2, which did not run that year.
Christmas and New Year specials
Although the weekly Top of the Pops has been cancelled, the Christmas Specials have continued, hosted by Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates. The Christmas specials are broadcast on Christmas Day afternoon on BBC One. Since 2008 (apart from 2010 and 2011), a New Year special has also been broadcast. A new logo and title sequence were introduced on the 2019 Christmas special. The BBC's Head of Music Television, Mark Cooper, continued to oversee the programme as executive producer until 2019 when he was replaced by Alison Howe. Meanwhile, Stephanie McWhinnie, who had replaced Wood as producer with effect from Christmas 2011, was replaced by Caroline Cullen (who had previously worked as assistant producer on the show) from Christmas 2020, when both festive shows were recorded with new studio performances but no live audience physically in attendance. On 4December 2017, Yates stepped down from hosting Top of the Pops due to comments he made regarding Jewish people and rappers. The BBC later announced Clara Amfo as Yates' replacement, she continues to hold the role. Amfo was joined by Jordan North for the 2021 specials, with him replacing Cotton.
Comic Relief specials
The show was given a one-off revival (of sorts) for Comic Relief 2007 in the form of Top Gear of the Pops, presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. It was filmed at the Top Gear aerodrome studio in Surrey on Sunday, 11 March 2007, although it bore little resemblance to the usual Top of the Pops format.
On 13 March 2009, Top of The Pops was once again revived, this time in its usual format, for a special live Comic Relief edition, airing on BBC Two while the main telethon took a break for the BBC News at Ten on BBC One. As with the Christmas specials the show was presented by Radio1 duo Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates with special guest presenter Noel Fielding and appearances from Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Claudia Winkleman, Jonathan Ross, Davina McCall (dancing in the audience and later as a Flo Rida dancer with Claudia Winkleman and French and Saunders) and David Tennant.
Live performances – interspersed with Comic Relief appeal films – included acts such as Franz Ferdinand, Oasis, Take That, U2, James Morrison and Flo Rida (that week's Number1). Kicking off the show was a performance from Rob Brydon and Ruth Jones in their Gavin & Stacey guises, feat. Tom Jones and Robin Gibb with "(Barry) Islands in the Stream", the Comic Relief single.
Performers, performances and presenters
In its extensive history, Top of the Pops has featured many artists, many of whom have appeared more than once on the show to promote many of their records.
Green Day hold the record for the longest Top of the Pops performance: "Jesus of Suburbia" broadcast on 6November 2005, lasted 9minutes and 10 seconds. There is uncertainty about what was the shortest performance. In 2005, presenter Reggie Yates announced on the show that it was Super Furry Animals with "Do or Die", broadcast on 28 January 2000, clocking in at 95 seconds. However, "It's My Turn" by Angelic was 91 seconds on 16 June 2000 and, according to an August 2012 edition of TOTP2, "Here Comes the Summer" by the Undertones was just 84 seconds on 26 July 1979. Cliff Richard appeared the most times on the show, with almost 160 performances. Status Quo were the most frequent group with 106 performances.
Miming
Throughout the show's history, many artists mimed to backing tracks. Early on, Musicians' Union rules required that groups re-record backing tracks with union members performing when possible. However, as The Guardian recounted in 2001: "In practice, artists pretended to re-record the song, then used their original tapes."
The miming policy also led to the occasional technical hitch. In 1967, as Jimi Hendrix prepared to perform "Burning of the Midnight Lamp", the song "The House That Jack Built" by Alan Price was played in studio instead, prompting Hendrix to respond: "I like the voice...but I don't know the words." In 1988, All About Eve appeared to perform "Martha's Harbour". Although the song was being played on the television broadcast, it was not being played in studio, so lead singer Julianne Regan remained silent on a stool on stage while Tim Bricheno (the only other band member present) did not play his guitar.
Occasionally bands played live, examples in the 1970s and 1980s being the Four Seasons, the Who, Blondie, John Otway, Sham 69, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Jimmy James and the Vagabonds, The Sweet, The Jackson 5, Heavy Metal Kids, Elton John, Typically Tropical, New Order, Whitney Houston and David Bowie. In 1980, heavy metal band Iron Maiden played live on the show when they refused to mime to their single "Running Free". Solo artists and vocal groups were supposed to sing live to the Top of the Pops Orchestra. Billy Ocean, Brotherhood of Man, Anita Ward, Thelma Houston, Deniece Williams, Hylda Baker and the Nolans all performed in this way.
In 1991 the producers of the show allowed artists the option of singing live over a backing track. Miming has resulted in a number of notable moments. In 1991, Nirvana refused to mime to the pre-recorded backing track of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with Kurt Cobain singing in a deliberately low voice and altering lyrics in the song, and bassist Krist Novoselic swinging his bass over his head and drummer Dave Grohl playing randomly on his kit. In 1995, the Gallagher brothers of Oasis switched places while performing "Roll with It". During their performance of "Don't Leave Me This Way" the Communards singers Jimmy Somerville and Sarah Jane Morris swapped lyrics for part of the song towards the end. Another example of whimsy was John Peel's appearance as the mandolin soloist for Rod Stewart on "Maggie May". The new practice also exposed a number of poor live singers, and was dropped as a general rule.
In its final few years miming had become less and less common, especially for bands, as studio technology became more reliable and artists were given the freedom to choose their performance style. Former Executive Producer Andi Peters said there was no policy on miming and that it was entirely up to the performer whether they wanted to sing live or mime.
Orchestra and backing singers
From 1966 to 1980, Top of the Pops had an in-studio orchestra conducted by Johnny Pearson accompany select musical performances, with The Ladybirds (later Maggie Stredder Singers) providing backing vocals. Credited on the show as musical associate, Derek Warne played piano and provided musical arrangements for the orchestra. As The Telegraph recounted, Pearson and the orchestra improvised accompaniments with about 20 minutes of rehearsal time per song, and the musicians, "almost all middle-aged, often struggled with the enormous range of rock and pop tunes with which they were presented." In contrast, The Times said upon Pearson's passing in 2011 that the orchestra "often elicit[ed] excellent performances with barely enough time beforehand for a couple of run-throughs."
Other notable members of the orchestra include drummer Clem Cattini, trombonist Bobby Lamb, and lead trumpeters Leon Calvert and Ian Hamer. From 1971 to 1974, Martin Briley played guitar for the orchestra before joining rock group Greenslade.
Following the 1980 Musicians Union strike, the programme resumed broadcast on 7 August 1980 without its orchestra or backing singers. However, Pearson continued to make occasional contributions as musical director until the 900th episode in the summer of 1981. Afterwards, Warne occasionally made musical arrangements through April 1982. Ronnie Hazlehurst conducted the orchestra from 1982 to 1983.
Music videos
When an artist or group was unavailable to perform in studio, Top of the Pops would show a music video in place. According to Queen guitarist Brian May, the groundbreaking 1975 music video for "Bohemian Rhapsody" was produced so that the band could avoid miming on TOTP since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song.
Dance troupes
January to October 1964 – no dance troupes
In the era before promotional videos were routinely produced for every charting single, the BBC would frequently have neither the band themselves nor alternative footage available for a song selected for the programme. In the first few months of the show in 1964, the director would just scan across the audience dancing in the absence of any other footage, but by October 1964 a decision was made to at least occasionally bring in a dance troupe with a choreographed routine to some of the tracks.
November 1964 to April 1968 – The Go-Jos
An initial candidate troupe was the existing BBC TV Beat Girls, but an ex-dancer from the Beat Girls, Jo Cook, was eventually engaged to create a troupe, the all-female Go-Jos, with Cook as choreographer. The Go-Jos also worked outside of Top of the Pops, notably for two years on the Val Doonican show – Doonican said in 1968 "I thought the Gojos were fabulous, something really new. When I got my own television series I just had to have them with me."
They were initially a three-piece (Pat Hughes for the first edition only, Linda Hotchkin and Jane Bartlett), but their number eventually grew to six (Hotchkin, Bartlett, Lesley Larbey, Wendy Hilhouse, Barbara van der Heyde and Thelma Bignell) with Cook as full-time choreographer. Lulu remembered of their costumes "They mostly wore white boots to the knee and short skirts and the camera would go up the skirt and it was all very risqué."
Cook herself said of working on the Doonican show (of which she was dance director) comparing to Top of the Pops, "Pop steps are limited... With Val we have more scope, and we can work to get more of the feel of ballet into our numbers."
May to June 1968 – Go-Jos/Pan's People transition
In April 1968, a Top of the Pops choreographer, Virginia Mason, auditioned for dancers for a routine on Top of The Pops ("Simon Says" by the 1910 Fruitgum Company); two of whom that were successful (Ruth Pearson and Patricia "Dee Dee" Wilde) were part of the existing six-female dance troupe, Pan's People. Like the Go-Jos, this group was also partly drawn from ex-members of the Beat Girls.
Although this routine did not make it onto the programme itself, in subsequent weeks, members of Pan's People (Louise Clarke, Felicity "Flick" Colby, Barbara "Babs" Lord, Pearson, Andrea "Andi" Rutherford and Wilde) started to appear on the programme separately to the Go-Jos. Pan's People were then selected by the BBC over the Go-Jos when they chose a group to be the resident troupe. The Go-Jos' final Top of the Pops performance was in June 1968 dancing to "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones.
July 1968 to April 1976 – Pan's People
As with the Go-Jos, in the first eighteen months of the Pan's People era the dancers were not a weekly fixture on the programme. However, due to group fan mail and good viewing figures, by 1970 the group was on nearly every week. Pay was not high – they were paid the minimum Equity rate of £56 per week.
One of the original Pan's People dancers, Colby, became the full-time choreographer in 1971.
Colby spoke of the dancing – "They weren't Broadway-standard routines... we were definitely doing watercolours, not oil paintings."
May to October 1976 – Ruby Flipper
In early 1976, the last remaining of the early members of Pan's People, Ruth Pearson announced her retirement, leaving just four members all of whom who had joined within the last four years; Cherry Gillespie, Mary Corpe, Lee Ward and Sue Menhenick. Rather than continue with this line up or add additional members, it was decided by Colby and BBC production staff to replace this group with a male and female group created for the programme, Ruby Flipper, choreographed by Colby and managed by Colby with Pearson. Lee Ward left shortly after this decision was made, reportedly saying regarding the change: "It's a big mistake. Men rush home to watch sexy ladies. They do not want to see other men."
Rehearsals for this new group started in March 1976, and the group began appearing on Top of the Pops in May 1976. Whilst producers were aware of the switch to the new group, Bill Cotton, the then head of the light entertainment unit of which Top of the Pops was part, was not. This group started as a seven-piece with three men (Gavin Trace, Floyd Pearce and Phil Steggles) and four women (Menhenick, Gillespie, Patti Hammond and Lulu Cartwright). Corpe was not invited to join the new troupe. Trace, Pearce, Steggles and Cartwright joined following open auditions, Hammond, an established dancer, was invited to join to complete the "look" following a later individual audition. Colby viewed this gender-mixed group as an opportunity to develop more physical routines including lifts, more duets and generally not have the whole group at each performance.
However, by August the BBC had decided to terminate the group due to perceived unpopularity and being "...out of step with viewers". Their final appearance was in October 1976.
November 1976 to October 1981 – Legs and Co
The group created to replace Ruby Flipper was Legs & Co, reverting to an all-female line-up, and once more choreographed by Colby. Three of the six in the initial line-up (Menhenick, Cartwight and Hammond) were taken from Ruby Flipper. with Rosie Hetherington, Gill Clarke and Pauline Peters making up the six. Despite being an all-female group, on occasion one or more male dancers were brought in, notably Pearce several times.
During their run, the group covered the transition from Disco to Punk, Electronic and Modern Romantic music. Notably, they danced to two Sex Pistols tracks.
December 1981 to September 1983 – Zoo
By late 1981, Legs & Co (by this time Anita Chellamah had replaced Peters) had become more integrated into the studio audience, rather than performing set-piece routines, as a result of the 'party atmosphere' brought in by Michael Hurll. Also by this time Colby was particularly keen to work once more with male dancers; feeling it time for a change, Legs & Co's stint was ended, and a twenty-member dance troupe (ten male, ten female), named Zoo was created, with a set of performers drawn from the pool of twenty each week. Colby was now credited as "Dance Director". Three members of previous troupes, Menhenick, Corpe and Chellamah, made at least one appearance each during the Zoo period. The dancers now chose their own clothes, moving away from the synchronised appearance of previous troupes.
October 1983 to 2006 – After Zoo
By the early 1980s, record companies were offering the BBC free promotional videos, meaning dance troupes no longer fulfilled their original purpose. Zoo's run ended in 1983, and with it the use of dance troupes on Top of the Pops.
After the demise of Zoo, the audience took a more active role, often dancing in more prominent areas such as behind performing acts on the back of the stage, and on podiums. However, the show also employed cheerleaders to lead the dancing.
Dance Troupe chronology
Go-Jos' first performance: 19 November 1964 – Dancing to "Baby Love" by the Supremes
Pan's People first performance (three of the dancers, independently contracted): April 1968 – Dancing to "Young Girl" by Gary Puckett & the Union Gap or "Respect" by Aretha Franklin
Pan's People's first performance (as the six-piece group of early 1968): 30 May 1968 – Dancing to "U.S. Male" by Elvis Presley
Go-Jos' final performance: 27 June 1968 – Dancing to "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones
Pan's People's final performance: 29 April 1976 – Dancing to "Silver Star" by the Four Seasons
Ruby Flipper's first performance: 6 May 1976 – Dancing to "Can't Help Falling In Love" by the Stylistics
Ruby Flipper's final performance: 14 October 1976 – Dancing to "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry
Legs & Co's first performance (credited as Ruby Flipper & Legs & Co): 21 October 1976 – Dancing to "Queen of My Soul" by Average White Band
Legs & Co's first performance (credited as Legs & Co): 11 November 1976 – Dancing to "Spinning Rock Boogie" by Hank C. Burnette
Legs & Co's final performance: 29 October 1981 – Dancing to "Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)" by Haircut 100
Zoo's first performance: 5 November 1981 – Dancing to "Twilight" by E.L.O.
Zoo's final performance: 29 September 1983 – Dancing to "What I Got Is What You Need" by Unique
Theme music
For much of the 1960s, the show's theme music was an organ-based instrumental track, also called "Top of the Pops", by the Dave Davani Four.
1 January 1964 to ?: Instrumental percussion piece written by Johnnie Stewart and Harry Rabinowitz and performed by drummer Bobby Midgly.
1965 to 1966: Dave Davani Four's "Top of the Pops" with the Ladybirds on backing vocal harmonies. Originally the opening theme, this was later played as a closing theme from 1966 up until 1970.
20 January 1966 to 13 November 1969: Unknown instrumental guitar track.
27 November 1969 to 29 October 1970: Unknown brass track played over colour titles with a voiceover proclaiming, "Yes! It's number one! It's Top of the Pops!" There was no TOTP on 20 November 1969 due to the Apollo 12 Moon landing.
5 November 1970 to 14 July 1977: An instrumental version of the Led Zeppelin-Willie Dixon composition "Whole Lotta Love" performed by CCS members.
21 July 1977 to 29 May 1980: No opening theme tune; a contemporary chart song was played over the countdown stills. "Whole Lotta Love" featured only in Christmas editions, the 800th edition from 26 July 1979 and the voice-over only edition from 22 November 1979.
7 August 1980 to 2July 1981: No opening theme tune; the CCS version of "Whole Lotta Love" was played over some of the images of the featured artists and during the countdown stills in the Top 30 and Top 20 sections which were moved later on in the programme. From the edition of 7August 1980 to the edition of 2July 1981, "Whole Lotta Love" was heard only during the chart rundowns.
9 July 1981 to 27 March 1986: "Yellow Pearl" was commissioned as the new theme music. From May 1983 to July 1984, a re-recording of "Yellow Pearl" was played over the chart rundown and a pop rock version from August 1984 to March 1986.
3 April 1986 to 26 September 1991: "The Wizard", a composition by Paul Hardcastle.
3 October 1991 to 26 January 1995: "Now Get Out of That" composed by Tony Gibber.
2 February 1995 to 8 August 1997 (except 27 June & 25 July 1997 and 15 August 1997 to 24 April 1998) and 10 October 1997: the theme was a track called "Red Hot Pop" composed by Vince Clarke of Erasure.
27 June and 25 July 1997 then 15 August 1997 to 24 April 1998 (except 10 October 1997): No theme tune; the opening of the first song of the episode was played under the titles and a song from the top 20 was played under the chart rundown.
1 May 1998 to 21 November 2003: Updated, drum and bass version of "Whole Lotta Love" by Ben Chapman.
28 November 2003 to 30 July 2006 and until 2012 for TOTP2 and Xmas specials: A remixed version of "Now Get Out of That" by Tony Gibber.
25 December 2013 to present for Top of the Pops Christmas and New Year Specials: A mix of both the 1970s "Whole Lotta Love" theme and the 1998 remix.
Lost episodes
Due to the then standard practice of wiping videotape, the vast majority of the episodes from the programme's history prior to 1976 have been lost, including any official recording of the only live appearance by the Beatles.
Of the first 500 episodes (1964–73), only about 20 complete recordings remain in the BBC archives, and the majority of these are from 1969 onwards. The earliest surviving footage dates from 26 February 1964, and consists of performances by Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas and the Dave Clark Five. Some programmes exist only partially (largely performances that were either pre-recorded or re-used in later editions). There are also two examples of rehearsal footage, which are both from 1965, one which includes Alan Freeman introducing the Seekers, and another with Sandie Shaw rehearsing "Long Live Love"—both believed to be for the end-of-year Christmas Special. There are also cases of shows that exist only in their raw, unedited form. The oldest complete episode in existence was originally transmitted on Boxing Day in 1967 (only five complete recordings from the 1960s survive, two of which have mute presenter links). The most recent that is not held is dated 8September 1977. Most editions after this date exist in full, except a few 1981–85 episodes recorded live feature mute presenter links (These episodes were skipped on the BBC Four re-runs).
Some off-air recordings, made by fans at home with a microphone in front of the TV speaker, exist in varying quality, including the Jimi Hendrix Experience performing a live version of "Hey Joe" in December 1966.
Some segments of TOTP which were not retained do survive in some form owing to having been included in other programmes, either by the BBC itself or by foreign broadcasters. What was thought to be the only surviving footage of the Beatles on the programme, for instance, comes from its re-use in episode one of 1965 Doctor Who serial The Chase. Additionally a number of recordings are believed to exist in private collections. However, in 2019, an 11-second clip of the group's only live appearance on TOTP, from 16 June 1966, was unearthed – this was recorded by a viewer using an 8mm camera to film the live transmission on their television. Other individual but complete clips that have surfaced over recent years include The Hollies performing "Bus Stop", and The Jimi Hendrix Experience playing both "Purple Haze" and "The Wind Cries Mary".
Thanks to a deal between the BBC and German television network ZDF around the turn of the 1970s, several TOTP clips were sent over to be shown on Disco, a similar-styled chart show. This meant that performances from the likes of The Kinks (Apeman), The Who (The Seeker) and King Crimson (Cat Food) still exist in German archives.
Two complete episodes from 1967 were discovered in a private collection in 2009, having been recorded at home on an early available open reel to reel video recorder. Whilst the tapes suffered from major damage and degradation of both sound and picture quality, one show featured Pink Floyd with original leader Syd Barrett performing "See Emily Play", whilst the second contained Dave Davies singing his solo hit "Death of a Clown".
The programme was forced off the air for several weeks by industrial action by the Musicians' Union in both 1974 and 1980.
Spin-offs
Top of the Pops has a sister show called TOTP2 which uses archive footage from as early as the late 1960s. It began on 17 September 1994. The early series were narrated by Johnnie Walker, before Steve Wright took over as narrator. In summer 2004 BBC Two's controller, Roly Keating, announced that it was being "rested". Shortly after UKTV G2 began showing re-edited versions of earlier programmes with re-recorded dialogue. Finally after a two-year break TOTP2 returned to the BBC Two schedules for a new series on Saturday, 30 September 2006, in an evening timeslot. It was still narrated by Steve Wright and featured a mixture of performances from the TOTP archive and newly recorded performances. The first edition of this series featured new performances by Razorlight and Nelly Furtado recorded after the final episode of Top of the Pops. In 2009 Mark Radcliffe took over as narrator. TOTP2 continued to receive sporadic new episodes from this point onwards, most notably Christmas specials, until 2017 when the show ceased producing new episodes, though previous episodes are still repeated on both BBC Two and BBC Four.
Aired on BBC Radio 1 between the mid-1990s and late 2001 was Top of the Pops: The Radio Show which went out every Sunday at 3 pm just before the singles chart, and was presented by Jayne Middlemiss and Scott Mills. It later reappeared on the BBC World Service in May 2003 originally presented by Emma B, where it continues to be broadcast weekly in an hourly format, now presented by Kim Robson and produced by former BBC World Service producer Alan Rowett.
The defunct channel Play UK created two spin offs; TOTP+ Plus and TOTP@Play (2000–2001) (until mid-2000, this show was called The Phone Zone and was a spin-off from BBC Two music series The O-Zone). BBC Choice featured a show called TOTP The New Chart (5 December 1999 – 26 March 2000) and on BBC Two TOTP+ (8 October 2000 – 26 August 2001) which featured the TOTP @ Play studio and presenters. This is not to be confused with the UK Play version of the same name. A more recent spin-off (now ended) was Top of the Pops Saturday hosted originally by Fearne Cotton and Simon Grant, and its successor Top of the Pops Reloaded. This was shown on Saturday mornings on BBC One and featured competitions, star interviews, video reviews and some Top of the Pops performances. This was aimed at a younger audience and was part of the CBBC Saturday morning line-up. This was to rival CD:UK at the same time on ITV.
Send-ups
A number of performers have sent up the format in various ways. This was often by performers who disliked the mime format of the show, as a protest against this rather than simply refusing to appear.
When Fairport Convention appeared to promote their 1969 hit "Si Tu Dois Partir", drummer Dave Mattacks wore a T-shirt printed "MIMING".
When the Smiths appeared on the show to perform their single "This Charming Man", lead singer Morrissey was unhappy about having to lip-sync and so held a bunch of gladioli on the stage instead of a microphone.
While performing their 1982 hit "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)", the band Dexy's Midnight Runners were seen performing in front of a projection of the darts player with a similar sounding name (Jocky Wilson instead of soul singer Jackie Wilson). Dexy's frontman Kevin Rowland later said in an interview that the use of the Jocky Wilson picture was his idea and not a mistake by the programme makers as is sometimes stated.
A performance of "Marguerita Time" by Status Quo in early 1984 in which a clearly-refreshed Rick Parfitt walks directly into the drum kit at the end of the song, taking the drummer and whole kit with him as the others continue miming
Frankie Goes To Hollywood performed one of the many 1984 performances of their hit "Two Tribes" with bassist Mark O'Toole playing drums whilst drummer Ped Gill played bass.
When Oasis mimed to "Whatever" on Top of the Pops in 1994, one of the cello players from the symphony was replaced by rhythm guitarist Bonehead, who clearly had no idea how the instrument should be played. Towards the end of the song, he gave up the pretence and started using the bow to conduct. A woman plays his rhythm guitar.
Singer Les Gray of Mud went on stage to perform with a ventriloquist dummy during the performance of "Lonely This Christmas" and had the dummy lip-synch to the voice-over in the middle of the song.
During Mott the Hoople's performance of their single "Roll Away the Stone" in 1973, drummer Dale Griffin plays with oversized drumsticks.
EMF appeared on the show with one of the guitarists strumming along while wearing boxing gloves.
At the end of The Who's performance of "5:15" the band proceeded to destroy their instruments despite the fact the backing track was still playing.
In Blur's performance of "Charmless Man" in 1996, Dave Rowntree decided to play with oversized drumsticks, while Graham Coxon played a mini guitar.
In Green Day's first Top of the Pops appearance in 1994, the band played the song "Welcome to Paradise". Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong wore an otherwise plain white T-shirt with the phrase "Who am I fooling anyway?" handwritten on it, most likely a reference to his own miming during the performance. He could also be seen not playing his guitar during the instrumental bridge in the song.
The performance of "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart and the Faces featured John Peel miming on mandolin. Near the end of the song, Rod and the Faces begin to kick around a football. This is despite the fact that the music can be still heard playing in the background.
The Cure were known for their abhorrence for miming their songs whilst on TOTP and on several occasions made it obvious they were not playing their parts – using such stunts as playing guitar left-handed and miming very badly out of synch.
Ambient house group the Orb sat and played chess while an edited version of their 39:57-minute single "Blue Room" played in the background.
Depeche Mode's performance of "Barrel of a Gun" in 1997 featured Dutch photographer and director Anton Corbijn who mimed playing the drums. Also Tim Simenon (who produced the album the song appeared on) mimed playing keyboards along with Andy Fletcher.
When the Cuban Boys performed "Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia" at the end of 1999, a performance which was reportedly unbroadcast, the band wearing labcoats, covered in cobwebs.
International versions
Europe
The TOTP format was sold to RTL in Germany in the 1990s, and aired on Saturday afternoons. It was very successful for a long time, with a compilation album series and magazine. However, in 2006 it was announced that the German show would be ending. The Italian version (first broadcast on Rai 2 and later on Italia 1) also ended in 2006. In February 2010 the show returned on Rai 2, and was broadcast for two seasons before being cancelled again in October 2011. The French version of the show ended by September 2006 on France 2.
In the Netherlands, TopPop was broadcast by AVRO 1970–1988, and a version of the show continued to run on BNN until the end of December 2006. BBC Prime used to broadcast re-edited episodes of the BBC version, the weekend after it was transmitted in the UK. Ireland began transmitting Top of the Pops in November 1978 on RTÉ2. This was the UK version being transmitted at the same time as on BBC. The broadcasts ceased in late 1993.
United States
Top of the Pops had short-lived fame in the United States. In October 1987, the CBS television network decided to try an American version of the show. It was hosted by Nia Peeples and even showed performances from the BBC version of the programme (and vice versa). The show was presented on late Friday nights as part of CBS Late Night, and lasted almost half a year.
In 2002, BBC America presented the BBC version of Top of the Pops as part of their weekend schedule. The network would get the episodes one week after they were transmitted in the UK. BBC America then tinkered with the show by cutting a few minutes out of each show and moving it to a weekday time slot.
On 23 January 2006, Lou Pearlman made a deal to bring Top of the Pops back to the airwaves in the United States. It was expected to be similar to the 1987 version, but it would also utilise the Billboard magazine music charts, most notably the Hot 100 chart. It was supposed to be planned for a possible 2006 or 2007 launch, but with several lawsuits against Lou and his companies (which resulted in his conviction in 2008), as well as the cancellation of the UK version, the proposed US project never went forward. On 19 August 2006, VH1 aired the UK series' final episode.
The United States had its own similar series, American Bandstand, which aired nationally on ABC from 1957 to 1987 (although it would continue in first-run syndication until 1988 and end its run on USA in 1989). Similar series also included Soul Train (1970–2006, featuring R&B artists), Club MTV (1986–92, featuring dance music acts; hosted by Downtown Julie Brown, an alumnus of TOTP as part of the show's last dance troupe Zoo) and Solid Gold (1980–88; like the early TOTP, it also used dance troupes).
Canada
Canada's version was Electric Circus (1988–2003) on MuchMusic, which was also seen in the USA through MuchMusic USA. It had a national chart (mostly of dance music and some pop) as well as live performances, and was based on a local late '70s programme in Toronto called CITY-TV Boogie.
New Zealand
The Top of the Pops brand has also been exported to New Zealand. Although the British show has been broadcast intermittently in New Zealand, the country historically relied on music video-based shows to demonstrate its own Top 20, as the major international acts, who dominated the local charts, considered New Zealand too small and remote to visit regularly. This changed to an extent in 2002, when the New Zealand government suggested a voluntary New Zealand music quota on radio (essentially a threat that if the stations did not impose a quota themselves then one would be imposed on them). The amount of local music played on radio stations increased, as did the number of local songs in the top 20. Therefore, a new local version of Top of the Pops became feasible for the first time, and the show was commissioned by Television New Zealand. The show was executive produced by David Rose, managing director and owner of Satellite Media, and began airing in early 2004 with host Alex Behan. The hour-long show (as opposed to the 30-minute UK version) which was broadcast at 5 pm on Saturdays on TV2 contained a mixture of performances recorded locally on a sound stage in the Auckland CBD, as well as performances from the international versions of the show. The New Zealand Top 20 singles and Top 10 albums charts are also featured. Alex Behan stayed as host for two years before Bede Skinner took over. Despite having a sizeable fan base, in 2006 TVNZ announced that Top of the Pops had been axed.
Free-to-air music channel C4 then picked up the UK version of Top of the Pops and aired it on Saturdays at 8 pm with a repeat screening on Thursdays. However, since the weekly UK version was axed itself, this arrangement also ended.
Africa, Asia and the Middle East
An edited version of the UK show was shown on BBC Prime, the weekend after UK transmission.
In addition, a licensed version was shown on the United Arab Emirates-based MBC2 television channel. This version consisted of parts of the UK version, including the Top 10 charts, as well as live performances by Arabic pop singers.
Latin America
A complete version of the UK show was shown on People+Arts, two weeks after the UK transmission.
Brazilian network TV Globo aired a loosely based version of the original format in 2018, labeled as 'Só Toca Top', hosted by singer Luan Santana and actress Fernanda Souza.
Compilation albums
A number of compilation albums using the Top of the Pops brand have been issued over the years. The first one to reach the charts was BBC TV's The Best of Top of the Pops on the Super Beeb record label in 1975, which reached number 21 and in 1986 the BBC released The Wizard by Paul Hardcastle (the 1986-1990 Top of The Pops theme tune) on Vinyl under the BBC Records and Tapes banner.
Starting in 1968 and carrying on through the 1970s a rival series of Top of the Pops albums were produced, however these had no connection with the television series except for its name. They were a series of budget cover albums of current chart hits recorded by anonymous session singers and musicians released on the Hallmark record label. They had initially reached the charts but were later disallowed due to a change in the criteria for entering the charts. These albums continued to be produced until the early 1980s, when the advent of compilation albums featuring the original versions of hits, such as the Now That's What I Call Music! series, led to a steep decline in their popularity.
In the 1990s, the BBC Top of the Pops brand was again licensed for use in a tie-in compilation series. Starting in 1995 with Sony Music's Columbia Records label, these double disc collections moved to the special marketing arm of PolyGram / Universal Music Group TV, before becoming a sister brand of the Now That's What I Call Music! range in the EMI / Virgin / Universal joint venture.
Similarly to the roles of Top of the Pops on BBC One and BBC Two in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the compilation albums range featured current hits for the main series and classic hits (such as '70s Rock) for the "Top of the Pops 2" spin-offs.
The Top of the Pops brand has now been licensed by EMI who released a compilation series in 2007–08, with one CD for each year that Top of the Pops was running. The boxset for the entire series of 43 discs was released 7July 2008. A podcast supporting the release of the boxset featuring interviews with Mark Goodier, Miles Leonard, Malcolm McLaren and David Hepworth is available.
Number One in the Compilation Charts
These albums in the series reached No. 1:
Top of the Pops 1 (Columbia Records, 1995)
Top of the Pops '99 – Volume 2 (Universal Music TV, 1999)
Top of the Pops 2000 – Volume Two (BBC Music / Universal Music TV, 2000)
Top of the Pops magazine
Top of the Pops magazine has been running since February 1995, and filled the void in the BBC magazine portfolio where Number One magazine used to be. It began much in the mould of Q magazine, then changed its editorial policy to directly compete with popular teen celebrity magazines such as Smash Hits and Big, with free sticker giveaways replacing Brett Anderson covers.
A July 1996 feature on the Spice Girls coined the famous "Spice" nicknames for each member (Baby, Ginger, Posh, Scary and Sporty) that stayed with them throughout their career as a group and beyond.
The BBC announced that the magazine would continue in publication despite the end of the television series, and is still running.
An earlier Top of the Pops magazine appeared briefly in the mid-1970s. Mud drummer Dave Mount sat reading an edition throughout a 1975 appearance on the show.
In popular culture
The Number 6 track of the Kinks' 1970 eighth studio album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One is called "Top of the Pops" and narrates the path to stardom by reaching Number1 in the music charts.
Benny Hill did a parody of Top of the Pops in January 1971 called "Top of the Tops". It featured satires of many music acts at the time as well as impersonations of both Jimmy Savile and Tony Blackburn.
The Scottish punk band the Rezillos lampooned the show in their song "Top of the Pops". The band performed the song on the programme twice when it entered the charts in 1978.
In 1984, British Rail HST power car 43002 was named Top of the Pops, by Jimmy Savile. This followed an edition which was broadcast live on a train, which 43002 was one of the power cars for. The nameplates were removed in 1989.
The Smashie and Nicey 1994 TV special Smashie and Nicey: The End of an Era featured doctored and recreated footage of the two fictional DJs hosting a montage of 1970s editions of Top of the Pops, including a "Black music" edition, which the pair presented in Blackface.
In the opening credits of the Spice Girls' 1997 feature film Spiceworld: The Movie, the girls perform their hit single "Too Much" on a fictional episode of the show. They did also perform it on the show in real life when it became their second Christmas number one in the UK that same year.
A 2001 episode of Tweenies featured a parody of Top of the Pops, complete with Max imitating Jimmy Savile. The episode was unintententionally repeated in January 2013, and received 216 complaints.
Licensing
In May 2006, following a special Red Hot Chili Peppers concert recorded in the car park of BBC Television Centre, Hammersmith and Fulham Council (which governs the area the centre is located) informed the BBC that it lacked the necessary public entertainment license (as required by the Licensing Act 2003). Until the BBC could obtain the license, BBC staff stood-in as audience members for live music programmes.
DVDs
In 2004 there was a DVD released called Top of the Pops 40th Anniversary 1964–2004 DVD. It features live performances, containing one song for each year, except 1966. (Two tracks from 1965 are featured instead). Also included as extras are seven opening titles, most notably the one with the flying coloured LP's from 1981. This title sequence had Phil Lynott's song "Yellow Pearl" as the theme. The 1986 and 1989 titles are also featured, with Paul Hardcastle's hit "The Wizard" as the theme. This DVD was to celebrate 40 years since the show started.
There was also a DVD quiz released in 2007 called The Essential Music Quiz. There was also a DVD in 2001 called Summer 2001, a sister DVD to the album of the same name.
See also
Alright Now
The Old Grey Whistle Test
Ready Steady Go!
Revolver (TV series)
Top of the Box
The Tube (TV series)
References
Further reading
Blacknell, Steve. The Story of Top of the Pops. Wellingborough, Northants: Patrick Stephens, 1985
Gittens, Ian. Top Of The Pops: Mishaps, Miming and Music: True Adventures of TV's No.1 Pop Show. London: BBC, 2007
Seaton, Pete with Richard Down. The Kaleidoscope British Television Music & Variety Guide II: Top Pop: 1964–2006. Dudley: Kaleidoscope Publishing, 2007
Simpson, Jeff. Top of the Pops: 1964–2002: it's still number one, its Top of the Pops! London: BBC, 2002
External links
1964 British television series debuts
British music television shows
1964 in British music
1960s British music television series
1970s British music television series
1980s British music television series
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Television shows shot at BBC Elstree Centre | true | [
"Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, in Spanish Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio (Book of the Examples of Count Lucanor and of Patronio), also commonly known as El Conde Lucanor, Libro de Patronio, or Libro de los ejemplos (original Old Castilian: Libro de los enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor et de Patronio), is one of the earliest works of prose in Castilian Spanish. It was first written in 1335.\n\nThe book is divided into four parts. The first and most well-known part is a series of 51 short stories (some no more than a page or two) drawn from various sources, such as Aesop and other classical writers, and Arabic folktales.\n\nTales of Count Lucanor was first printed in 1575 when it was published at Seville under the auspices of Argote de Molina. It was again printed at Madrid in 1642, after which it lay forgotten for nearly two centuries.\n\nPurpose and structure\n\nA didactic, moralistic purpose, which would color so much of the Spanish literature to follow (see Novela picaresca), is the mark of this book. Count Lucanor engages in conversation with his advisor Patronio, putting to him a problem (\"Some man has made me a proposition...\" or \"I fear that such and such person intends to...\") and asking for advice. Patronio responds always with the greatest humility, claiming not to wish to offer advice to so illustrious a person as the Count, but offering to tell him a story of which the Count's problem reminds him. (Thus, the stories are \"examples\" [ejemplos] of wise action.) At the end he advises the Count to do as the protagonist of his story did.\n\nEach chapter ends in more or less the same way, with slight variations on: \"And this pleased the Count greatly and he did just so, and found it well. And Don Johán (Juan) saw that this example was very good, and had it written in this book, and composed the following verses.\" A rhymed couplet closes, giving the moral of the story.\n\nOrigin of stories and influence on later literature\nMany of the stories written in the book are the first examples written in a modern European language of various stories, which many other writers would use in the proceeding centuries. Many of the stories he included were themselves derived from other stories, coming from western and Arab sources.\n\nShakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew has the basic elements of Tale 35, \"What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\".\n\nTale 32, \"What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth\" tells the story that Hans Christian Andersen made popular as The Emperor's New Clothes.\n\nStory 7, \"What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana\", a version of Aesop's The Milkmaid and Her Pail, was claimed by Max Müller to originate in the Hindu cycle Panchatantra.\n\nTale 2, \"What happened to a good Man and his Son, leading a beast to market,\" is the familiar fable The miller, his son and the donkey.\n\nIn 2016, Baroque Decay released a game under the name \"The Count Lucanor\". As well as some protagonists' names, certain events from the books inspired past events in the game.\n\nThe stories\n\nThe book opens with a prologue which introduces the characters of the Count and Patronio. The titles in the following list are those given in Keller and Keating's 1977 translation into English. James York's 1868 translation into English gives a significantly different ordering of the stories and omits the fifty-first.\n\n What Happened to a King and His Favorite \n What Happened to a Good Man and His Son \n How King Richard of England Leapt into the Sea against the Moors\n What a Genoese Said to His Soul When He Was about to Die \n What Happened to a Fox and a Crow Who Had a Piece of Cheese in His Beak\n How the Swallow Warned the Other Birds When She Saw Flax Being Sown \n What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana \n What Happened to a Man Whose Liver Had to Be Washed \n What Happened to Two Horses Which Were Thrown to the Lion \n What Happened to a Man Who on Account of Poverty and Lack of Other Food Was Eating Bitter Lentils \n What Happened to a Dean of Santiago de Compostela and Don Yllán, the Grand Master of Toledo\n What Happened to the Fox and the Rooster \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Hunting Partridges \n The Miracle of Saint Dominick When He Preached against the Usurer \n What Happened to Lorenzo Suárez at the Siege of Seville \n The Reply that count Fernán González Gave to His Relative Núño Laynes \n What Happened to a Very Hungry Man Who Was Half-heartedly Invited to Dinner \n What Happened to Pero Meléndez de Valdés When He Broke His Leg \n What Happened to the Crows and the Owls \n What Happened to a King for Whom a Man Promised to Perform Alchemy \n What Happened to a Young King and a Philosopher to Whom his Father Commended Him \n What Happened to the Lion and the Bull \n How the Ants Provide for Themselves \n What Happened to the King Who Wanted to Test His Three Sons \n What Happened to the Count of Provence and How He Was Freed from Prison by the Advice of Saladin\n What Happened to the Tree of Lies \n What Happened to an Emperor and to Don Alvarfáñez Minaya and Their Wives \n What Happened in Granada to Don Lorenzo Suárez Gallinato When He Beheaded the Renegade Chaplain \n What Happened to a Fox Who Lay down in the Street to Play Dead \n What Happened to King Abenabet of Seville and Ramayquía His Wife \n How a Cardinal Judged between the Canons of Paris and the Friars Minor \n What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth \n What Happened to Don Juan Manuel's Saker Falcon and an Eagle and a Heron \n What Happened to a Blind Man Who Was Leading Another \n What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\n What Happened to a Merchant When He Found His Son and His Wife Sleeping Together \n What Happened to Count Fernán González with His Men after He Had Won the Battle of Hacinas \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Loaded down with Precious Stones and Drowned in the River \n What Happened to a Man and a Swallow and a Sparrow \n Why the Seneschal of Carcassonne Lost His Soul \n What Happened to a King of Córdova Named Al-Haquem \n What Happened to a Woman of Sham Piety \n What Happened to Good and Evil and the Wise Man and the Madman \n What Happened to Don Pero Núñez the Loyal, to Don Ruy González de Zavallos, and to Don Gutier Roiz de Blaguiello with Don Rodrigo the Generous \n What Happened to a Man Who Became the Devil's Friend and Vassal \n What Happened to a Philosopher who by Accident Went down a Street Where Prostitutes Lived \n What Befell a Moor and His Sister Who Pretended That She Was Timid \n What Happened to a Man Who Tested His Friends \n What Happened to the Man Whom They Cast out Naked on an Island When They Took away from Him the Kingdom He Ruled \n What Happened to Saladin and a Lady, the Wife of a Knight Who Was His Vassal \n What Happened to a Christian King Who Was Very Powerful and Haughty\n\nReferences\n\nNotes\n\nBibliography\n\n Sturm, Harlan\n\n Wacks, David\n\nExternal links\n\nThe Internet Archive provides free access to the 1868 translation by James York.\nJSTOR has the to the 1977 translation by Keller and Keating.\nSelections in English and Spanish (pedagogical edition) with introduction, notes, and bibliography in Open Iberia/América (open access teaching anthology)\n\n14th-century books\nSpanish literature\n1335 books",
"\"What Happened to Us\" is a song by Australian recording artist Jessica Mauboy, featuring English recording artist Jay Sean. It was written by Sean, Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim and Israel Cruz. \"What Happened to Us\" was leaked online in October 2010, and was released on 10 March 2011, as the third single from Mauboy's second studio album, Get 'Em Girls (2010). The song received positive reviews from critics.\n\nA remix of \"What Happened to Us\" made by production team OFM, was released on 11 April 2011. A different version of the song which features Stan Walker, was released on 29 May 2011. \"What Happened to Us\" charted on the ARIA Singles Chart at number 14 and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). An accompanying music video was directed by Mark Alston, and reminisces on a former relationship between Mauboy and Sean.\n\nProduction and release\n\n\"What Happened to Us\" was written by Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz and Jay Sean. It was produced by Skaller, Cruz, Rohaim and Bobby Bass. The song uses C, D, and B minor chords in the chorus. \"What Happened to Us\" was sent to contemporary hit radio in Australia on 14 February 2011. The cover art for the song was revealed on 22 February on Mauboy's official Facebook page. A CD release was available for purchase via her official website on 10 March, for one week only. It was released digitally the following day.\n\nReception\nMajhid Heath from ABC Online Indigenous called the song a \"Jordin Sparks-esque duet\", and wrote that it \"has a nice innocence to it that rings true to the experience of losing a first love.\" Chris Urankar from Nine to Five wrote that it as a \"mid-tempo duet ballad\" which signifies Mauboy's strength as a global player. On 21 March 2011, \"What Happened to Us\" debuted at number 30 on the ARIA Singles Chart, and peaked at number 14 the following week. The song was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), for selling 70,000 copies. \"What Happened to Us\" spent a total of ten weeks in the ARIA top fifty.\n\nMusic video\n\nBackground\nThe music video for the song was shot in the Elizabeth Bay House in Sydney on 26 November 2010. The video was shot during Sean's visit to Australia for the Summerbeatz tour. During an interview with The Daily Telegraph while on the set of the video, Sean said \"the song is sick! ... Jessica's voice is amazing and we're shooting [the video] in this ridiculously beautiful mansion overlooking the harbour.\" The video was directed by Mark Alston, who had previously directed the video for Mauboy's single \"Let Me Be Me\" (2009). It premiered on YouTube on 10 February 2011.\n\nSynopsis and reception\nThe video begins showing Mauboy who appears to be sitting on a yellow antique couch in a mansion, wearing a purple dress. As the video progresses, scenes of memories are displayed of Mauboy and her love interest, played by Sean, spending time there previously. It then cuts to the scenes where Sean appears in the main entrance room of the mansion. The final scene shows Mauboy outdoors in a gold dress, surrounded by green grass and trees. She is later joined by Sean who appears in a black suit and a white shirt, and together they sing the chorus of the song to each other. David Lim of Feed Limmy wrote that the video is \"easily the best thing our R&B princess has committed to film – ever\" and praised the \"mansion and wondrous interior décor\". He also commended Mauboy for choosing Australian talent to direct the video instead of American directors, which she had used for her previous two music videos. Since its release, the video has received over two million views on Vevo.\n\nLive performances\nMauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" live for the first time during her YouTube Live Sessions program on 4 December 2010. She also appeared on Adam Hills in Gordon Street Tonight on 23 February 2011 for an interview and later performed the song. On 15 March 2011, Mauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Sunrise. She also performed the song with Stan Walker during the Australian leg of Chris Brown's F.A.M.E. Tour in April 2011. Mauboy and Walker later performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Dancing with the Stars Australia on 29 May 2011. From November 2013 to February 2014, \"What Happened to Us\" was part of the set list of the To the End of the Earth Tour, Mauboy's second headlining tour of Australia, with Nathaniel Willemse singing Sean's part.\n\nTrack listing\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Just Witness Remix) – 3:45\n\nCD single\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Album Version) – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:39\n\nDigital download – Remix\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:38\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Stan Walker – 3:20\n\nPersonnel\nSongwriting – Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz, Jay Sean\nProduction – Jeremy Skaller, Bobby Bass\nAdditional production – Israel Cruz, Khaled Rohaim\nLead vocals – Jessica Mauboy, Jay Sean\nMixing – Phil Tan\nAdditional mixing – Damien Lewis\nMastering – Tom Coyne \nSource:\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly chart\n\nYear-end chart\n\nCertification\n\nRadio dates and release history\n\nReferences\n\n2010 songs\n2011 singles\nJessica Mauboy songs\nJay Sean songs\nSongs written by Billy Steinberg\nSongs written by Jay Sean\nSongs written by Josh Alexander\nSongs written by Israel Cruz\nVocal duets\nSony Music Australia singles\nSongs written by Khaled Rohaim"
] |
[
"Top of the Pops",
"1994-1997",
"What happened in 1994?",
"By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone",
"What was year zero?",
"I don't know.",
"What happened in 1995?",
"The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced",
"What else was revamped",
"introduction of a new set.",
"What happened in 1996",
"TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996,"
] | C_4ba6e4aafe884f399b648ba4e20a983e_0 | What happened during 1997 | 6 | What happened during 1997 in Top of the Pops? | Top of the Pops | By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone and the arrival of Ric Blaxill as producer in February 1994 signalled a return to presentation from established Radio 1 DJs Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and Bruno Brookes. Blaxill expanded the use of "via satellite" performances, taking the acts out of studios and concert halls and setting them against landmark backdrops. As a consequence, Bon Jovi performed Always from Niagara Falls and Celine Dion beamed in Think Twice from Miami Beach. The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced (the logo having first been introduced on the new programme Top of the Pops 2 some months previous), coinciding with the introduction of a new set. Blaxill also increasingly experimented with handing presenting duties to celebrities, commonly contemporary comedians and pop stars who were not in the charts at that time. In an attempt to keep the links between acts as fresh as the performances themselves, the so-called "golden mic" was used by, amongst others, Kylie Minogue, Meat Loaf, Des Lynam, Chris Eubank, Damon Albarn, Harry Hill, Jack Dee, Lulu and Jarvis Cocker. Radio 1 DJs still presented occasionally, notably Lisa I'Anson, Steve Lamacq, Jo Whiley and Chris Evans. TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996, originally at 7 pm, but then shifted to 7.30 pm, a change which placed the programme up against the soap opera Coronation Street on ITV. This began a major decline in audience figures as fans were forced to choose between Top of the Pops and an episode of the soap. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Top of the Pops (TOTP) is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly between 1January 1964 and 30 July 2006. Top of the Pops was the world's longest running weekly music show. For most of its history, it was broadcast on Thursday evenings on BBC One. Each weekly show consisted of performances from some of that week's best-selling popular music records, usually excluding any tracks moving down the chart, including a rundown of that week's singles chart. This was originally the Top 20, though this varied throughout the show's history. The Official Charts Company states "performing on the show was considered an honour, and it pulled in just about every major player."
Dusty Springfield’s "I Only Want to Be with You" was the first song performed on TOTP, while The Rolling Stones were the first band to perform with "I Wanna Be Your Man". Snow Patrol were the last act to play live on the weekly show when they performed their single "Chasing Cars". In addition to the weekly show there was a special edition of TOTP on Christmas Day (and usually, until 1984, a second edition a few days after Christmas), featuring some of the best-selling singles of the year and the Christmas Number 1. Although the weekly show was cancelled in 2006, the Christmas special has continued. End-of-year round-up editions have also been broadcast on BBC1 on or around New Year's Eve, albeit largely featuring the same acts and tracks as the Christmas Day shows. It also survives as Top of the Pops 2, which began in 1994 and features vintage performances from the Top of the Pops archives. Though TOTP2 ceased producing new episodes since 2017, repeats of older episodes are still shown.
The show has seen seminal performances over its history. The March 1971 TOTP appearance of T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan wearing glitter and satins as he performed "Hot Love" is often seen as the inception of glam rock, and David Bowie's performance of "Starman" inspired future musicians. In the 1990s, the show's format was sold to several foreign broadcasters in the form of a franchise package, and at one point various versions of the show were shown in more than 120 countries. Editions of the programme from 1976 onwards started being repeated on BBC Four in 2011 and are aired on most Friday evenings – as of January 2022 the repeat run has reached 1992. Episodes featuring disgraced presenters and artists such as Jonathan King, Jimmy Savile (who opened the show with its familiar slogan, 'It's Number One, it's Top of the Pops'), Dave Lee Travis, Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter, and R. Kelly are no longer repeated.
History
Johnnie Stewart devised the rules which governed how the show would operate: the programme would always end with the number one record, which was the only record that could appear in consecutive weeks. The show would include the highest new entry and (if not featured in the previous week) the highest climber on the charts, and omit any song going down in the chart. Tracks could be featured in consecutive weeks in different formats. For example, if a song was played over the chart countdown or the closing credits, then it was acceptable for the act to appear in the studio the following week.
These rules were sometimes interpreted flexibly and were more formally relaxed from 1997 when records descending the charts were featured more regularly, possibly as a response to the changing nature of the Top 40 (in the late 1990s and early 2000s climbers in the charts were a rarity, with almost all singles peaking at their debut position).
When the programme's format changed in November 2003, it concentrated increasingly on the top 10. Later, during the BBC Two era, the top 20 was regarded as the main cut-off point, with the exception made for up and coming bands below the top 20. Singles from below the top 40 (within the top 75) were shown if the band were up and coming or had a strong selling album. If a single being performed was below the top 40, just the words "New Entry" were shown and not the chart position.
The show was originally intended to run for only a few programmes but lasted over 42 years, reaching landmark episodes of 500, 1,000, 1,500 and 2,000 in the years 1973, 1983, 1992 and 2002 respectively.
The first show
Top of the Pops was first broadcast on Wednesday, 1January 1964 at 6:35 pm. It was produced in Studio A at Dickenson Road Studios in Rusholme, Manchester.
DJ Jimmy Savile presented the first show live from the Manchester studio (with a brief link to Alan Freeman in London to preview the following week's programme), which featured (in order) Dusty Springfield with "I Only Want to Be with You", the Rolling Stones with "I Wanna Be Your Man", the Dave Clark Five with "Glad All Over", the Hollies with "Stay", the Swinging Blue Jeans with "Hippy Hippy Shake" and the Beatles with "I Want to Hold Your Hand", that week's number one – throughout its history, the programme proper always (with very few exceptions) finished with the best-selling single of the week, although there often was a separate play-out track over the end credits.
1960s and 1970s
Later in 1964, the broadcast time was moved to one hour later, at 7:35 pm, and the show moved from Wednesdays to what became its regular Thursday slot. Additionally its length was extended by 5minutes to 30 minutes.
For the first three years Alan Freeman, David Jacobs, Pete Murray and Jimmy Savile rotated presenting duties, with the following week's presenter also appearing at the end of each show, although this practice ceased from October 1964 onwards. Neville Wortman filled in as director/producer on Johnnie Stewart's holiday break.
In the first few editions, Denise Sampey was the "disc girl", who would be seen to put the record on a turntable before the next act played their track. However, a Mancunian model, Samantha Juste, became the regular disc girl after a few episodes, a role she performed until 1967.
Initially acts performing on the show would mime (lip-sync) to the commercially released record, but in 1966 after discussions with the Musicians' Union, miming was banned. After a few weeks during which some bands' attempts to play as well as on their records were somewhat lacking, a compromise was reached whereby a specially recorded backing track was permitted, as long as all the musicians on the track were present in the studio. As a result, Stewart hired Johnny Pearson to conduct an in-studio orchestra to provide musical backing on select performances, beginning with the 4 August 1966 edition. Later, vocal group The Ladybirds began providing vocal backing with the orchestra.
With the birth of BBC Radio 1 in 1967, new Radio1 DJs were added to the roster – Stuart Henry, Emperor Rosko, Simon Dee and Kenny Everett.
Local photographer Harry Goodwin was hired to provide shots of non-appearing artists, and also to provide backdrops for the chart run-down. He continued in the role until 1973.
After two years at the Manchester Dickenson Road Studios, the show moved to London (considered to be better located for bands to appear), initially for six months at BBC TV Centre Studio2 and then to the larger Studio G at BBC Lime Grove Studios in mid-1966 to provide space for the Top of the Pops Orchestra, which was introduced at this time to provide live instrumentation on some performances (previously, acts had generally mimed to the records). In November 1969, with the introduction of colour, the show returned to BBC TV Centre, where it stayed until 1991, when it moved to Elstree Studios Studio C.
For a while in the early 1970s, non-chart songs were played on a more regular basis, to reflect the perceived growing importance of album sales; there was an album slot featuring three songs from a new LP, as well as a New Release spot and a feature of a new act, dubbed Tip for the Top. These features were dropped after a while, although the programme continued to feature new releases on a regular basis for the rest of the decade.
During its heyday, it attracted 15 million viewers each week. The peak TV audience of 19 million was recorded in 1979, during the ITV strike, with only BBC1 and BBC2 on air.
Christmas Top of the Pops
A year-end Christmas show featuring a review of the year's biggest hits was inaugurated on 24 December 1964, and has continued every year since. From 1965 onward, the special edition was broadcast on Christmas Day (although not in 1966) and from the same year, a second edition was broadcast in the days after Christmas, varying depending on the schedule, but initially regularly on 26 December. The first was shown on 26 December 1965. In 1973, there was just one show, airing on Christmas Day. In place of the traditional second show, Jimmy Savile hosted a look back at the first 10 years of TOTP, broadcast on 27 December. In 1975, the first of the two shows was broadcast prior to Christmas Day, airing on 23 December, followed by the traditional Christmas Day show two days later.
The 1978 Christmas Day show was disrupted due to industrial action at the BBC, requiring a change in format to the broadcast. The first show, due to be screened on 21 December, was not shown at all because BBC1 was off the air. For Christmas Day, Noel Edmonds (presenting his last ever edition of TOTP) hosted the show from the 'TOTP Production Office' with clips taken from various editions of the show broadcast during the year and new studio footage performed without an audience. The format was slightly tweaked for the Christmas Day edition in 1981, with the Radio1 DJs choosing their favourite tracks of the year and the following edition on 31 December featuring the year's number1 hits.
The second programme was discontinued after 1984.
1980s
The year 1980 marked major production changes to Top of the Pops and a hiatus forced by industrial action. Steve Wright made his presenting debut on 7 February 1980. Towards the end of February 1980, facing a £40 million budget deficit, the BBC laid off five orchestras as part of £130 million in cuts. The budget cuts led to a Musicians' Union strike that suspended operations of all 11 BBC orchestras and performances of live music on the BBC; Top of the Pops went out of production between 29 May and 7 August 1980. During the Musicians' Union strike, BBC1 showed repeats of Are You Being Served? in the regular Top of the Pops Thursday night time slot.
Following the strike, Nash was replaced as executive producer by Michael Hurll, who introduced more of a "party" atmosphere to the show, with performances often accompanied by balloons and cheerleaders, and more audible audience noise and cheering. Hurll also laid off the orchestra, as the Musicians' Union was loosening enforcement of the 1966 miming ban.
Guest co-presenters and a music news feature were introduced for a short while, but had ceased by the end of 1980. The chart rundown was split into three sections in the middle of the programme, with the final Top 10 section initially featuring clips of the songs' videos, although this became rarer over the next few years.
An occasional feature showing the American music scene with Jonathan King was introduced in November 1981, and ran every few weeks until February 1985. In January 1985, a Breakers section, featuring short video clips of new tracks in the lower end of the Top 40, was introduced, and this continued for most weeks until March 1994.
Although the programme had been broadcast live in its early editions, it had been recorded on the day before transmission for many years. However, from May 1981, the show was sometimes broadcast live for a few editions each year, and this practice continued on an occasional basis (often in the week of a bank holiday, when the release of the new chart was delayed, and for some special editions) for the rest of the decade.
The programme moved in September 1985 to a new regular half-hour timeslot of 7 pm on Thursdays, where it would remain until June 1996.
The end of 1988 was marked by a special 70-minute edition of the show broadcast on 31 December 1988, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first show. The pre-recorded programme featured the return of the original four presenters (Savile, Freeman, Murray and Jacobs) as well as numerous presenters from the show's history, anchored by Paul Gambaccini and Mike Read. Numerous clips from the history of the show were included in between acts performing in the studio, which included Cliff Richard, Engelbert Humperdinck, Lulu, the Four Tops, David Essex, Mud, Status Quo, Shakin' Stevens, the Tremeloes and from the very first edition, the Swinging Blue Jeans. Sandie Shaw, the Pet Shop Boys and Wet Wet Wet were billed in the Radio Times to appear, but none featured in the show other than Shaw in compilation clips.
Paul Ciani took over as producer in 1988. The following year, in an attempt to fit more songs in the allocated half-hour, he restricted the duration of studio performances to three minutes, and videos to two minutes, a practice which was largely continued until May 1997. In July 1990, he introduced a rundown of the Top5 albums, which continued on a monthly basis until May 1991. Ciani had to step down due to illness in 1991, when Hurll returned as producer to cover for two months (and again for a brief time as holiday cover in 1992).
1991: 'Year Zero' revamp
From 1967, the show had become closely associated with the BBC radio station Radio 1, usually being presented by DJs from the station, and between 1988 and 1991 the programme was simulcast on the radio station in FM stereo (that is, until BBC's launch of NICAM stereo for TV made such simulcasts redundant). However, during the last few years of the 1980s the association became less close, and was severed completely (although not permanently) in a radical shake-up known as the 'Year Zero' revamp.
Following a fall in viewing figures and a general perception that the show had become 'uncool' (acts like the Clash had refused to appear in the show in previous years), a radical new format was introduced by incoming executive producer Stanley Appel (who had worked on the programme since 1966 as cameraman, production assistant, director and stand-in producer) in October 1991, in which the Radio1 DJs were replaced by a team of relative unknowns, such as Claudia Simon and Tony Dortie who had previously worked for Children's BBC, 17-year-old local radio DJ Mark Franklin, Steve Anderson, Adrian Rose and Elayne Smith, who was replaced by Femi Oke in 1992. A brand new theme tune ("Now Get Out of That"), title sequence and logo were introduced, and the entire programme moved from BBC Television Centre in London to BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood.
The new presenting team would take turns hosting (initially usually in pairs but sometimes solo), and would often introduce acts in an out-of-vision voiceover over the song's instrumental introduction. They would sometimes even conduct short informal interviews with the performers, and initially the Top 10 countdown was run without any voiceover. Rules relating to performance were also altered meaning acts had to sing live as opposed to the backing tracks for instruments and mimed vocals for which the show was known. To incorporate the shift of dominance towards American artists, more use was made of out-of-studio performances, with acts in America able to transmit their song to the Top of the Pops audience "via satellite". These changes were widely unpopular and much of the presenting team were axed within a year, leaving the show hosted solely by Dortie and Franklin (apart from the Christmas Day editions, when both presenters appeared) from October 1992, on a week-by-week rotation.
1994–1997
By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone and the arrival of Ric Blaxill as producer in February 1994 signalled a return to presentation from established Radio1 DJs Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and Bruno Brookes. Blaxill expanded the use of "via satellite" performances, taking the acts out of studios and concert halls and setting them against landmark backdrops. As a consequence, Bon Jovi performed Always from Niagara Falls and Celine Dion beamed in Think Twice from Miami Beach.
The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced (the logo having first been introduced on the new programme Top of the Pops 2 some months previously), coinciding with the introduction of a new set. Blaxill also increasingly experimented with handing presenting duties to celebrities, commonly contemporary comedians and pop stars who were not in the charts at that time. In an attempt to keep the links between acts as fresh as the performances themselves, the so-called "golden mic" was used by, amongst others, Kylie Minogue, Meat Loaf, Des Lynam, Chris Eubank, Damon Albarn, Harry Hill, Jack Dee, Lulu, Björk, Jarvis Cocker, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. Radio1 DJs still presented occasionally, including Lisa I'Anson, Steve Lamacq, Jo Whiley and Chris Evans.
TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996, originally at 7 pm, but then shifted to 7.30 pm, a change which placed the programme up against the soap opera Coronation Street on ITV. This began a major decline in audience figures as fans were forced to choose between Top of the Pops and an episode of the soap.
1997–2003
In 1997, incoming producer Chris Cowey phased out the use of celebrities and established a rotating team (similar to the 1991 revamp, although much more warmly received) of former presenters of youth music magazine The O-Zone Jayne Middlemiss and Jamie Theakston as well as Radio1 DJs Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball. The team was later augmented by Kate Thornton and Gail Porter.
Chris Cowey in particular instigated a set of 'back to basics' changes when he took over the show. In 1998, a remixed version of the classic "Whole Lotta Love" theme tune previously used in the 1970s was introduced, accompanied by a new 1960s-inspired logo and title sequence. Cowey also began to export the brand overseas with localised versions of the show on air in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy by 2003. Finally, the programme returned to its previous home of BBC Television Centre in 2001, where it remained until its cancellation in 2006.
2003: All New Top of the Pops
On 28 November 2003 (three months after the appointment of Andi Peters as executive producer), the show saw one of its most radical overhauls since the ill-fated 1991 'Year Zero' revamp in what was widely reported as a make-or-break attempt to revitalise the long-running series. In a break with the previous format, the show played more up-and-coming tracks ahead of any chart success, and also featured interviews with artists and a music news feature called "24/7". Most editions of the show were now broadcast live, for the first time since 1991 (apart from a couple of editions in 1994). The launch show, which was an hour long, was notable for a performance of "Flip Reverse" by Blazin' Squad, featuring hordes of hooded teenagers choreographed to dance around the outside of BBC Television Centre.
Although the first edition premièred to improved ratings, the All New format, hosted by MTV presenter Tim Kash, quickly returned to low ratings and brought about scathing reviews. Kash continued to host the show, but Radio1 DJs Reggie Yates and Fearne Cotton (who had each presented a few shows in 2003, before the revamp) were brought back to co-host alongside him, before Kash was completely dropped by the BBC, later taking up a new contract at MTV. The show continued to be hosted by Reggie Yates and Fearne Cotton (usually together, but occasionally solo) on Friday evenings until 8July 2005.
On 30 July 2004, the show took place outside a studio environment for the first time by broadcasting outside in Gateshead. Girls Aloud, Busted, Will Young and Jamelia were among the performers that night.
2005: The Beginning of the End
Figures had plummeted to below three million, prompting an announcement by the BBC that the show was going to move, again, to Sunday evenings on BBC Two, thus losing the prime-time slot on BBC One that it had maintained for more than forty years.
This move was widely reported as a final "sidelining" of the show, and perhaps signalled its likely cancellation. At the time, it was insisted that this was so the show would air immediately after the official announcement of the new top 40 chart on Radio 1, as it was thought that by the following Friday, the chart seemed out of date. The final Top of the Pops to be shown on BBC One (barring Christmas and New Year specials) was broadcast on Monday 11 July 2005, which was edition number 2,166.
The first edition on BBC Two was broadcast on 17 July 2005 at 7.00 pm with presenter Fearne Cotton. After the move to Sundays, Cotton continued to host with a different guest presenter each week, such as Rufus Hound or Richard Bacon. On a number of occasions, however, Reggie Yates would step in, joined by female guest presenters such as Lulu, Cyndi Lauper and Anastacia. Viewing figures during this period averaged around 1½ million. Shortly after the move to BBC Two, Peters resigned as executive producer. He was replaced by the BBC's Creative Head of Music Entertainment Mark Cooper, while producer Sally Wood remained to oversee the show on a weekly basis.
2006: Cancellation
On 20 June 2006, the show was formally cancelled and it was announced that the last edition would be broadcast on 30 July 2006. Edith Bowman co-presented its hour-long swansong, along with Jimmy Savile (who was the main presenter on the first show), Reggie Yates, Mike Read, Pat Sharp, Sarah Cawood, Dave Lee Travis, Rufus Hound, Tony Blackburn and Janice Long.
The final day of recording was 26 July 2006 and featured archive footage and tributes, including the Rolling Stones – the very first band to appear on Top of the Pops – opening with "The Last Time", the Spice Girls, David Bowie, Wham!, Madonna, Beyoncé, Gnarls Barkley, the Jackson 5, Sonny and Cher and Robbie Williams. The show closed with a final countdown, topped by Shakira, as her track "Hips Don't Lie" (featuring Wyclef Jean) had climbed back up to number one on the UK Singles Chart earlier in the day. The show ended with Savile ultimately turning the lights off in the empty studio.
Fearne Cotton, who was the current presenter, was unavailable to co-host for the final edition due to her filming of ITV's Love Island in Fiji but opened the show with a quick introduction recorded on location, saying "It's still number one, it's Top of the Pops". BARB reported the final show's viewing figures as 3.98 million.
As the last episode featured no live acts in the studio, the last act to actually play live on a weekly episode of TOTP was Snow Patrol, who performed "Chasing Cars" in the penultimate edition; the last act ever featured visually on a weekly Top of the Pops was Girls Aloud, as part of the closing sequence of bands performing on the show throughout the years. They were shown performing "Love Machine".
2006–present: After the end
The magazine and TOTP2 have both survived despite the show's axing, and the Christmas editions also continue after returning to BBC One. However, the TOTP website, which the BBC had originally promised would continue, is now no longer updated, although many of the old features of the site – interviews, music news, reviews – have remained, now in the form of the Radio 1-affiliated TOTP ChartBlog accessible via the remains of the old website.
Calls for its return
In October 2008, British Culture Secretary Andy Burnham and Manchester indie band the Ting Tings called for the show to return.
On 29 October 2008, Simon Cowell stated in an interview that he would be willing to buy the rights to Top of the Pops from the BBC. The corporation responded that they had not been formally approached by Cowell, and that in any case the format was "not up for sale". In November 2008, it was reported by The Times and other newspapers that the weekly programme was to be revived in 2009, but the BBC said there were no such plans.
In July 2009, Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant criticised the BBC for ending the programme, stating that new acts were missing out on "that great moment of being crowned that week's Kings of Pop".
In early 2015 there was increased speculation of a return of the show including rumours that Dermot O'Leary might present alongside Fearne Cotton. According to a report in the Daily Mirror, a BBC insider stated that "some at the highest level are massive supporters of the plan [of a return] and have given the go-ahead." The move of the UK charts to a Friday due to take place in summer 2015 was also said to favour the possibility of a return, making it "the perfect tie-in" and a "perfect start to the weekend", but no weekly return has occurred.
BBC Four reruns
In April 2011, the BBC began to reshow Top of the Pops on Thursday nights on BBC Four beginning with the equivalent show from 35 years earlier in a 7:30 pm–8:00 pm slot approximating to the time the programme was traditionally shown. The first programme shown, 1April 1976, was chosen because it was from approximately this episode onwards that most editions remain in the BBC archive. The repeat programmes come in two versions; the first is edited down to fit in the 30-minute 7:30 slot, the second is shown normally twice overnight in the following weekend, and is usually complete. However both the short and longer editions can be edited for a number of reasons. Potentially offensive content to modern audiences is cut (for example The Barron Knights' in-studio performance of "Food For Thought" on the edition of 13 December 1979 including a segment parodying Chinese takeaways using mannerisms that may now be viewed as offensive), and cinematic film footage can be truncated, replaced or removed entirely due to the costs to the BBC of reshowing such footage. The BBC also makes the repeats available on BBC iPlayer. The repeats are continuing as of January 2022 with episodes from 1992.
Since October 2012, episodes featuring Jimmy Savile have ceased to be broadcast due to the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal and subsequent Operation Yewtree police investigation. Following the arrest of Dave Lee Travis by Operation Yewtree officers, and his subsequent conviction for indecent assault, episodes featuring Travis were also omitted. Following Gary Glitter's conviction for sexual assault, episodes featuring him are not included in the run, or otherwise have Glitter's performances edited out.
Mike Smith decided not to sign the licence extension that would allow the BBC to repeat the Top of the Pops episodes that he presented, with the BBC continuing to respect his wishes following his death. As a result, episodes featuring Smith are also omitted.
In 2021, it was discovered that episodes hosted by Adrian Rose (later Adrian Woolfe) were being skipped, starting with the 28th November 1991 episode featuring Nirvana's famous performance of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (mentioned below).
Other edits that have been made to episodes have included Jonathan King's reports from the US during episodes from the early 1980s, sometimes also resulting in the removal of a performance or video introduced as part of the report, and the removal of The Doors' performance of "Light My Fire" from a 1991 episode, due to The Doors not being covered by the BBC's music licensing agreement (which also resulted in another 1991 episode being skipped).
"Story of" Specials
Prior to the 1976 BBC reruns shown in 2011, the BBC produced a special programme, "The Story of 1976". This comprised excerpts from the 1976 programmes, interspersed with new interviews with people discussing the time period. They have produced similar programmes prior to subsequent annual reruns, "The Story of 1990" being the most recent such programme in October 2020, as 1991 and 1992 reruns started without a 'The Story of...' programme preceding them.
"Big Hits" compilation
A series of "Big Hits" compilations have been broadcast with on-screen captions about artists.In December 2016, a festive special using the format of the "Big Hits" programmes, Top of the Pops: Christmas Hits was broadcast on BBC Four, featuring a mix of Christmas music and non-festive songs which had been hits at Christmas time. This effectively replaced the annual Christmas edition of Top of the Pops 2, which did not run that year.
Christmas and New Year specials
Although the weekly Top of the Pops has been cancelled, the Christmas Specials have continued, hosted by Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates. The Christmas specials are broadcast on Christmas Day afternoon on BBC One. Since 2008 (apart from 2010 and 2011), a New Year special has also been broadcast. A new logo and title sequence were introduced on the 2019 Christmas special. The BBC's Head of Music Television, Mark Cooper, continued to oversee the programme as executive producer until 2019 when he was replaced by Alison Howe. Meanwhile, Stephanie McWhinnie, who had replaced Wood as producer with effect from Christmas 2011, was replaced by Caroline Cullen (who had previously worked as assistant producer on the show) from Christmas 2020, when both festive shows were recorded with new studio performances but no live audience physically in attendance. On 4December 2017, Yates stepped down from hosting Top of the Pops due to comments he made regarding Jewish people and rappers. The BBC later announced Clara Amfo as Yates' replacement, she continues to hold the role. Amfo was joined by Jordan North for the 2021 specials, with him replacing Cotton.
Comic Relief specials
The show was given a one-off revival (of sorts) for Comic Relief 2007 in the form of Top Gear of the Pops, presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. It was filmed at the Top Gear aerodrome studio in Surrey on Sunday, 11 March 2007, although it bore little resemblance to the usual Top of the Pops format.
On 13 March 2009, Top of The Pops was once again revived, this time in its usual format, for a special live Comic Relief edition, airing on BBC Two while the main telethon took a break for the BBC News at Ten on BBC One. As with the Christmas specials the show was presented by Radio1 duo Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates with special guest presenter Noel Fielding and appearances from Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Claudia Winkleman, Jonathan Ross, Davina McCall (dancing in the audience and later as a Flo Rida dancer with Claudia Winkleman and French and Saunders) and David Tennant.
Live performances – interspersed with Comic Relief appeal films – included acts such as Franz Ferdinand, Oasis, Take That, U2, James Morrison and Flo Rida (that week's Number1). Kicking off the show was a performance from Rob Brydon and Ruth Jones in their Gavin & Stacey guises, feat. Tom Jones and Robin Gibb with "(Barry) Islands in the Stream", the Comic Relief single.
Performers, performances and presenters
In its extensive history, Top of the Pops has featured many artists, many of whom have appeared more than once on the show to promote many of their records.
Green Day hold the record for the longest Top of the Pops performance: "Jesus of Suburbia" broadcast on 6November 2005, lasted 9minutes and 10 seconds. There is uncertainty about what was the shortest performance. In 2005, presenter Reggie Yates announced on the show that it was Super Furry Animals with "Do or Die", broadcast on 28 January 2000, clocking in at 95 seconds. However, "It's My Turn" by Angelic was 91 seconds on 16 June 2000 and, according to an August 2012 edition of TOTP2, "Here Comes the Summer" by the Undertones was just 84 seconds on 26 July 1979. Cliff Richard appeared the most times on the show, with almost 160 performances. Status Quo were the most frequent group with 106 performances.
Miming
Throughout the show's history, many artists mimed to backing tracks. Early on, Musicians' Union rules required that groups re-record backing tracks with union members performing when possible. However, as The Guardian recounted in 2001: "In practice, artists pretended to re-record the song, then used their original tapes."
The miming policy also led to the occasional technical hitch. In 1967, as Jimi Hendrix prepared to perform "Burning of the Midnight Lamp", the song "The House That Jack Built" by Alan Price was played in studio instead, prompting Hendrix to respond: "I like the voice...but I don't know the words." In 1988, All About Eve appeared to perform "Martha's Harbour". Although the song was being played on the television broadcast, it was not being played in studio, so lead singer Julianne Regan remained silent on a stool on stage while Tim Bricheno (the only other band member present) did not play his guitar.
Occasionally bands played live, examples in the 1970s and 1980s being the Four Seasons, the Who, Blondie, John Otway, Sham 69, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Jimmy James and the Vagabonds, The Sweet, The Jackson 5, Heavy Metal Kids, Elton John, Typically Tropical, New Order, Whitney Houston and David Bowie. In 1980, heavy metal band Iron Maiden played live on the show when they refused to mime to their single "Running Free". Solo artists and vocal groups were supposed to sing live to the Top of the Pops Orchestra. Billy Ocean, Brotherhood of Man, Anita Ward, Thelma Houston, Deniece Williams, Hylda Baker and the Nolans all performed in this way.
In 1991 the producers of the show allowed artists the option of singing live over a backing track. Miming has resulted in a number of notable moments. In 1991, Nirvana refused to mime to the pre-recorded backing track of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with Kurt Cobain singing in a deliberately low voice and altering lyrics in the song, and bassist Krist Novoselic swinging his bass over his head and drummer Dave Grohl playing randomly on his kit. In 1995, the Gallagher brothers of Oasis switched places while performing "Roll with It". During their performance of "Don't Leave Me This Way" the Communards singers Jimmy Somerville and Sarah Jane Morris swapped lyrics for part of the song towards the end. Another example of whimsy was John Peel's appearance as the mandolin soloist for Rod Stewart on "Maggie May". The new practice also exposed a number of poor live singers, and was dropped as a general rule.
In its final few years miming had become less and less common, especially for bands, as studio technology became more reliable and artists were given the freedom to choose their performance style. Former Executive Producer Andi Peters said there was no policy on miming and that it was entirely up to the performer whether they wanted to sing live or mime.
Orchestra and backing singers
From 1966 to 1980, Top of the Pops had an in-studio orchestra conducted by Johnny Pearson accompany select musical performances, with The Ladybirds (later Maggie Stredder Singers) providing backing vocals. Credited on the show as musical associate, Derek Warne played piano and provided musical arrangements for the orchestra. As The Telegraph recounted, Pearson and the orchestra improvised accompaniments with about 20 minutes of rehearsal time per song, and the musicians, "almost all middle-aged, often struggled with the enormous range of rock and pop tunes with which they were presented." In contrast, The Times said upon Pearson's passing in 2011 that the orchestra "often elicit[ed] excellent performances with barely enough time beforehand for a couple of run-throughs."
Other notable members of the orchestra include drummer Clem Cattini, trombonist Bobby Lamb, and lead trumpeters Leon Calvert and Ian Hamer. From 1971 to 1974, Martin Briley played guitar for the orchestra before joining rock group Greenslade.
Following the 1980 Musicians Union strike, the programme resumed broadcast on 7 August 1980 without its orchestra or backing singers. However, Pearson continued to make occasional contributions as musical director until the 900th episode in the summer of 1981. Afterwards, Warne occasionally made musical arrangements through April 1982. Ronnie Hazlehurst conducted the orchestra from 1982 to 1983.
Music videos
When an artist or group was unavailable to perform in studio, Top of the Pops would show a music video in place. According to Queen guitarist Brian May, the groundbreaking 1975 music video for "Bohemian Rhapsody" was produced so that the band could avoid miming on TOTP since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song.
Dance troupes
January to October 1964 – no dance troupes
In the era before promotional videos were routinely produced for every charting single, the BBC would frequently have neither the band themselves nor alternative footage available for a song selected for the programme. In the first few months of the show in 1964, the director would just scan across the audience dancing in the absence of any other footage, but by October 1964 a decision was made to at least occasionally bring in a dance troupe with a choreographed routine to some of the tracks.
November 1964 to April 1968 – The Go-Jos
An initial candidate troupe was the existing BBC TV Beat Girls, but an ex-dancer from the Beat Girls, Jo Cook, was eventually engaged to create a troupe, the all-female Go-Jos, with Cook as choreographer. The Go-Jos also worked outside of Top of the Pops, notably for two years on the Val Doonican show – Doonican said in 1968 "I thought the Gojos were fabulous, something really new. When I got my own television series I just had to have them with me."
They were initially a three-piece (Pat Hughes for the first edition only, Linda Hotchkin and Jane Bartlett), but their number eventually grew to six (Hotchkin, Bartlett, Lesley Larbey, Wendy Hilhouse, Barbara van der Heyde and Thelma Bignell) with Cook as full-time choreographer. Lulu remembered of their costumes "They mostly wore white boots to the knee and short skirts and the camera would go up the skirt and it was all very risqué."
Cook herself said of working on the Doonican show (of which she was dance director) comparing to Top of the Pops, "Pop steps are limited... With Val we have more scope, and we can work to get more of the feel of ballet into our numbers."
May to June 1968 – Go-Jos/Pan's People transition
In April 1968, a Top of the Pops choreographer, Virginia Mason, auditioned for dancers for a routine on Top of The Pops ("Simon Says" by the 1910 Fruitgum Company); two of whom that were successful (Ruth Pearson and Patricia "Dee Dee" Wilde) were part of the existing six-female dance troupe, Pan's People. Like the Go-Jos, this group was also partly drawn from ex-members of the Beat Girls.
Although this routine did not make it onto the programme itself, in subsequent weeks, members of Pan's People (Louise Clarke, Felicity "Flick" Colby, Barbara "Babs" Lord, Pearson, Andrea "Andi" Rutherford and Wilde) started to appear on the programme separately to the Go-Jos. Pan's People were then selected by the BBC over the Go-Jos when they chose a group to be the resident troupe. The Go-Jos' final Top of the Pops performance was in June 1968 dancing to "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones.
July 1968 to April 1976 – Pan's People
As with the Go-Jos, in the first eighteen months of the Pan's People era the dancers were not a weekly fixture on the programme. However, due to group fan mail and good viewing figures, by 1970 the group was on nearly every week. Pay was not high – they were paid the minimum Equity rate of £56 per week.
One of the original Pan's People dancers, Colby, became the full-time choreographer in 1971.
Colby spoke of the dancing – "They weren't Broadway-standard routines... we were definitely doing watercolours, not oil paintings."
May to October 1976 – Ruby Flipper
In early 1976, the last remaining of the early members of Pan's People, Ruth Pearson announced her retirement, leaving just four members all of whom who had joined within the last four years; Cherry Gillespie, Mary Corpe, Lee Ward and Sue Menhenick. Rather than continue with this line up or add additional members, it was decided by Colby and BBC production staff to replace this group with a male and female group created for the programme, Ruby Flipper, choreographed by Colby and managed by Colby with Pearson. Lee Ward left shortly after this decision was made, reportedly saying regarding the change: "It's a big mistake. Men rush home to watch sexy ladies. They do not want to see other men."
Rehearsals for this new group started in March 1976, and the group began appearing on Top of the Pops in May 1976. Whilst producers were aware of the switch to the new group, Bill Cotton, the then head of the light entertainment unit of which Top of the Pops was part, was not. This group started as a seven-piece with three men (Gavin Trace, Floyd Pearce and Phil Steggles) and four women (Menhenick, Gillespie, Patti Hammond and Lulu Cartwright). Corpe was not invited to join the new troupe. Trace, Pearce, Steggles and Cartwright joined following open auditions, Hammond, an established dancer, was invited to join to complete the "look" following a later individual audition. Colby viewed this gender-mixed group as an opportunity to develop more physical routines including lifts, more duets and generally not have the whole group at each performance.
However, by August the BBC had decided to terminate the group due to perceived unpopularity and being "...out of step with viewers". Their final appearance was in October 1976.
November 1976 to October 1981 – Legs and Co
The group created to replace Ruby Flipper was Legs & Co, reverting to an all-female line-up, and once more choreographed by Colby. Three of the six in the initial line-up (Menhenick, Cartwight and Hammond) were taken from Ruby Flipper. with Rosie Hetherington, Gill Clarke and Pauline Peters making up the six. Despite being an all-female group, on occasion one or more male dancers were brought in, notably Pearce several times.
During their run, the group covered the transition from Disco to Punk, Electronic and Modern Romantic music. Notably, they danced to two Sex Pistols tracks.
December 1981 to September 1983 – Zoo
By late 1981, Legs & Co (by this time Anita Chellamah had replaced Peters) had become more integrated into the studio audience, rather than performing set-piece routines, as a result of the 'party atmosphere' brought in by Michael Hurll. Also by this time Colby was particularly keen to work once more with male dancers; feeling it time for a change, Legs & Co's stint was ended, and a twenty-member dance troupe (ten male, ten female), named Zoo was created, with a set of performers drawn from the pool of twenty each week. Colby was now credited as "Dance Director". Three members of previous troupes, Menhenick, Corpe and Chellamah, made at least one appearance each during the Zoo period. The dancers now chose their own clothes, moving away from the synchronised appearance of previous troupes.
October 1983 to 2006 – After Zoo
By the early 1980s, record companies were offering the BBC free promotional videos, meaning dance troupes no longer fulfilled their original purpose. Zoo's run ended in 1983, and with it the use of dance troupes on Top of the Pops.
After the demise of Zoo, the audience took a more active role, often dancing in more prominent areas such as behind performing acts on the back of the stage, and on podiums. However, the show also employed cheerleaders to lead the dancing.
Dance Troupe chronology
Go-Jos' first performance: 19 November 1964 – Dancing to "Baby Love" by the Supremes
Pan's People first performance (three of the dancers, independently contracted): April 1968 – Dancing to "Young Girl" by Gary Puckett & the Union Gap or "Respect" by Aretha Franklin
Pan's People's first performance (as the six-piece group of early 1968): 30 May 1968 – Dancing to "U.S. Male" by Elvis Presley
Go-Jos' final performance: 27 June 1968 – Dancing to "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones
Pan's People's final performance: 29 April 1976 – Dancing to "Silver Star" by the Four Seasons
Ruby Flipper's first performance: 6 May 1976 – Dancing to "Can't Help Falling In Love" by the Stylistics
Ruby Flipper's final performance: 14 October 1976 – Dancing to "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry
Legs & Co's first performance (credited as Ruby Flipper & Legs & Co): 21 October 1976 – Dancing to "Queen of My Soul" by Average White Band
Legs & Co's first performance (credited as Legs & Co): 11 November 1976 – Dancing to "Spinning Rock Boogie" by Hank C. Burnette
Legs & Co's final performance: 29 October 1981 – Dancing to "Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)" by Haircut 100
Zoo's first performance: 5 November 1981 – Dancing to "Twilight" by E.L.O.
Zoo's final performance: 29 September 1983 – Dancing to "What I Got Is What You Need" by Unique
Theme music
For much of the 1960s, the show's theme music was an organ-based instrumental track, also called "Top of the Pops", by the Dave Davani Four.
1 January 1964 to ?: Instrumental percussion piece written by Johnnie Stewart and Harry Rabinowitz and performed by drummer Bobby Midgly.
1965 to 1966: Dave Davani Four's "Top of the Pops" with the Ladybirds on backing vocal harmonies. Originally the opening theme, this was later played as a closing theme from 1966 up until 1970.
20 January 1966 to 13 November 1969: Unknown instrumental guitar track.
27 November 1969 to 29 October 1970: Unknown brass track played over colour titles with a voiceover proclaiming, "Yes! It's number one! It's Top of the Pops!" There was no TOTP on 20 November 1969 due to the Apollo 12 Moon landing.
5 November 1970 to 14 July 1977: An instrumental version of the Led Zeppelin-Willie Dixon composition "Whole Lotta Love" performed by CCS members.
21 July 1977 to 29 May 1980: No opening theme tune; a contemporary chart song was played over the countdown stills. "Whole Lotta Love" featured only in Christmas editions, the 800th edition from 26 July 1979 and the voice-over only edition from 22 November 1979.
7 August 1980 to 2July 1981: No opening theme tune; the CCS version of "Whole Lotta Love" was played over some of the images of the featured artists and during the countdown stills in the Top 30 and Top 20 sections which were moved later on in the programme. From the edition of 7August 1980 to the edition of 2July 1981, "Whole Lotta Love" was heard only during the chart rundowns.
9 July 1981 to 27 March 1986: "Yellow Pearl" was commissioned as the new theme music. From May 1983 to July 1984, a re-recording of "Yellow Pearl" was played over the chart rundown and a pop rock version from August 1984 to March 1986.
3 April 1986 to 26 September 1991: "The Wizard", a composition by Paul Hardcastle.
3 October 1991 to 26 January 1995: "Now Get Out of That" composed by Tony Gibber.
2 February 1995 to 8 August 1997 (except 27 June & 25 July 1997 and 15 August 1997 to 24 April 1998) and 10 October 1997: the theme was a track called "Red Hot Pop" composed by Vince Clarke of Erasure.
27 June and 25 July 1997 then 15 August 1997 to 24 April 1998 (except 10 October 1997): No theme tune; the opening of the first song of the episode was played under the titles and a song from the top 20 was played under the chart rundown.
1 May 1998 to 21 November 2003: Updated, drum and bass version of "Whole Lotta Love" by Ben Chapman.
28 November 2003 to 30 July 2006 and until 2012 for TOTP2 and Xmas specials: A remixed version of "Now Get Out of That" by Tony Gibber.
25 December 2013 to present for Top of the Pops Christmas and New Year Specials: A mix of both the 1970s "Whole Lotta Love" theme and the 1998 remix.
Lost episodes
Due to the then standard practice of wiping videotape, the vast majority of the episodes from the programme's history prior to 1976 have been lost, including any official recording of the only live appearance by the Beatles.
Of the first 500 episodes (1964–73), only about 20 complete recordings remain in the BBC archives, and the majority of these are from 1969 onwards. The earliest surviving footage dates from 26 February 1964, and consists of performances by Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas and the Dave Clark Five. Some programmes exist only partially (largely performances that were either pre-recorded or re-used in later editions). There are also two examples of rehearsal footage, which are both from 1965, one which includes Alan Freeman introducing the Seekers, and another with Sandie Shaw rehearsing "Long Live Love"—both believed to be for the end-of-year Christmas Special. There are also cases of shows that exist only in their raw, unedited form. The oldest complete episode in existence was originally transmitted on Boxing Day in 1967 (only five complete recordings from the 1960s survive, two of which have mute presenter links). The most recent that is not held is dated 8September 1977. Most editions after this date exist in full, except a few 1981–85 episodes recorded live feature mute presenter links (These episodes were skipped on the BBC Four re-runs).
Some off-air recordings, made by fans at home with a microphone in front of the TV speaker, exist in varying quality, including the Jimi Hendrix Experience performing a live version of "Hey Joe" in December 1966.
Some segments of TOTP which were not retained do survive in some form owing to having been included in other programmes, either by the BBC itself or by foreign broadcasters. What was thought to be the only surviving footage of the Beatles on the programme, for instance, comes from its re-use in episode one of 1965 Doctor Who serial The Chase. Additionally a number of recordings are believed to exist in private collections. However, in 2019, an 11-second clip of the group's only live appearance on TOTP, from 16 June 1966, was unearthed – this was recorded by a viewer using an 8mm camera to film the live transmission on their television. Other individual but complete clips that have surfaced over recent years include The Hollies performing "Bus Stop", and The Jimi Hendrix Experience playing both "Purple Haze" and "The Wind Cries Mary".
Thanks to a deal between the BBC and German television network ZDF around the turn of the 1970s, several TOTP clips were sent over to be shown on Disco, a similar-styled chart show. This meant that performances from the likes of The Kinks (Apeman), The Who (The Seeker) and King Crimson (Cat Food) still exist in German archives.
Two complete episodes from 1967 were discovered in a private collection in 2009, having been recorded at home on an early available open reel to reel video recorder. Whilst the tapes suffered from major damage and degradation of both sound and picture quality, one show featured Pink Floyd with original leader Syd Barrett performing "See Emily Play", whilst the second contained Dave Davies singing his solo hit "Death of a Clown".
The programme was forced off the air for several weeks by industrial action by the Musicians' Union in both 1974 and 1980.
Spin-offs
Top of the Pops has a sister show called TOTP2 which uses archive footage from as early as the late 1960s. It began on 17 September 1994. The early series were narrated by Johnnie Walker, before Steve Wright took over as narrator. In summer 2004 BBC Two's controller, Roly Keating, announced that it was being "rested". Shortly after UKTV G2 began showing re-edited versions of earlier programmes with re-recorded dialogue. Finally after a two-year break TOTP2 returned to the BBC Two schedules for a new series on Saturday, 30 September 2006, in an evening timeslot. It was still narrated by Steve Wright and featured a mixture of performances from the TOTP archive and newly recorded performances. The first edition of this series featured new performances by Razorlight and Nelly Furtado recorded after the final episode of Top of the Pops. In 2009 Mark Radcliffe took over as narrator. TOTP2 continued to receive sporadic new episodes from this point onwards, most notably Christmas specials, until 2017 when the show ceased producing new episodes, though previous episodes are still repeated on both BBC Two and BBC Four.
Aired on BBC Radio 1 between the mid-1990s and late 2001 was Top of the Pops: The Radio Show which went out every Sunday at 3 pm just before the singles chart, and was presented by Jayne Middlemiss and Scott Mills. It later reappeared on the BBC World Service in May 2003 originally presented by Emma B, where it continues to be broadcast weekly in an hourly format, now presented by Kim Robson and produced by former BBC World Service producer Alan Rowett.
The defunct channel Play UK created two spin offs; TOTP+ Plus and TOTP@Play (2000–2001) (until mid-2000, this show was called The Phone Zone and was a spin-off from BBC Two music series The O-Zone). BBC Choice featured a show called TOTP The New Chart (5 December 1999 – 26 March 2000) and on BBC Two TOTP+ (8 October 2000 – 26 August 2001) which featured the TOTP @ Play studio and presenters. This is not to be confused with the UK Play version of the same name. A more recent spin-off (now ended) was Top of the Pops Saturday hosted originally by Fearne Cotton and Simon Grant, and its successor Top of the Pops Reloaded. This was shown on Saturday mornings on BBC One and featured competitions, star interviews, video reviews and some Top of the Pops performances. This was aimed at a younger audience and was part of the CBBC Saturday morning line-up. This was to rival CD:UK at the same time on ITV.
Send-ups
A number of performers have sent up the format in various ways. This was often by performers who disliked the mime format of the show, as a protest against this rather than simply refusing to appear.
When Fairport Convention appeared to promote their 1969 hit "Si Tu Dois Partir", drummer Dave Mattacks wore a T-shirt printed "MIMING".
When the Smiths appeared on the show to perform their single "This Charming Man", lead singer Morrissey was unhappy about having to lip-sync and so held a bunch of gladioli on the stage instead of a microphone.
While performing their 1982 hit "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)", the band Dexy's Midnight Runners were seen performing in front of a projection of the darts player with a similar sounding name (Jocky Wilson instead of soul singer Jackie Wilson). Dexy's frontman Kevin Rowland later said in an interview that the use of the Jocky Wilson picture was his idea and not a mistake by the programme makers as is sometimes stated.
A performance of "Marguerita Time" by Status Quo in early 1984 in which a clearly-refreshed Rick Parfitt walks directly into the drum kit at the end of the song, taking the drummer and whole kit with him as the others continue miming
Frankie Goes To Hollywood performed one of the many 1984 performances of their hit "Two Tribes" with bassist Mark O'Toole playing drums whilst drummer Ped Gill played bass.
When Oasis mimed to "Whatever" on Top of the Pops in 1994, one of the cello players from the symphony was replaced by rhythm guitarist Bonehead, who clearly had no idea how the instrument should be played. Towards the end of the song, he gave up the pretence and started using the bow to conduct. A woman plays his rhythm guitar.
Singer Les Gray of Mud went on stage to perform with a ventriloquist dummy during the performance of "Lonely This Christmas" and had the dummy lip-synch to the voice-over in the middle of the song.
During Mott the Hoople's performance of their single "Roll Away the Stone" in 1973, drummer Dale Griffin plays with oversized drumsticks.
EMF appeared on the show with one of the guitarists strumming along while wearing boxing gloves.
At the end of The Who's performance of "5:15" the band proceeded to destroy their instruments despite the fact the backing track was still playing.
In Blur's performance of "Charmless Man" in 1996, Dave Rowntree decided to play with oversized drumsticks, while Graham Coxon played a mini guitar.
In Green Day's first Top of the Pops appearance in 1994, the band played the song "Welcome to Paradise". Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong wore an otherwise plain white T-shirt with the phrase "Who am I fooling anyway?" handwritten on it, most likely a reference to his own miming during the performance. He could also be seen not playing his guitar during the instrumental bridge in the song.
The performance of "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart and the Faces featured John Peel miming on mandolin. Near the end of the song, Rod and the Faces begin to kick around a football. This is despite the fact that the music can be still heard playing in the background.
The Cure were known for their abhorrence for miming their songs whilst on TOTP and on several occasions made it obvious they were not playing their parts – using such stunts as playing guitar left-handed and miming very badly out of synch.
Ambient house group the Orb sat and played chess while an edited version of their 39:57-minute single "Blue Room" played in the background.
Depeche Mode's performance of "Barrel of a Gun" in 1997 featured Dutch photographer and director Anton Corbijn who mimed playing the drums. Also Tim Simenon (who produced the album the song appeared on) mimed playing keyboards along with Andy Fletcher.
When the Cuban Boys performed "Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia" at the end of 1999, a performance which was reportedly unbroadcast, the band wearing labcoats, covered in cobwebs.
International versions
Europe
The TOTP format was sold to RTL in Germany in the 1990s, and aired on Saturday afternoons. It was very successful for a long time, with a compilation album series and magazine. However, in 2006 it was announced that the German show would be ending. The Italian version (first broadcast on Rai 2 and later on Italia 1) also ended in 2006. In February 2010 the show returned on Rai 2, and was broadcast for two seasons before being cancelled again in October 2011. The French version of the show ended by September 2006 on France 2.
In the Netherlands, TopPop was broadcast by AVRO 1970–1988, and a version of the show continued to run on BNN until the end of December 2006. BBC Prime used to broadcast re-edited episodes of the BBC version, the weekend after it was transmitted in the UK. Ireland began transmitting Top of the Pops in November 1978 on RTÉ2. This was the UK version being transmitted at the same time as on BBC. The broadcasts ceased in late 1993.
United States
Top of the Pops had short-lived fame in the United States. In October 1987, the CBS television network decided to try an American version of the show. It was hosted by Nia Peeples and even showed performances from the BBC version of the programme (and vice versa). The show was presented on late Friday nights as part of CBS Late Night, and lasted almost half a year.
In 2002, BBC America presented the BBC version of Top of the Pops as part of their weekend schedule. The network would get the episodes one week after they were transmitted in the UK. BBC America then tinkered with the show by cutting a few minutes out of each show and moving it to a weekday time slot.
On 23 January 2006, Lou Pearlman made a deal to bring Top of the Pops back to the airwaves in the United States. It was expected to be similar to the 1987 version, but it would also utilise the Billboard magazine music charts, most notably the Hot 100 chart. It was supposed to be planned for a possible 2006 or 2007 launch, but with several lawsuits against Lou and his companies (which resulted in his conviction in 2008), as well as the cancellation of the UK version, the proposed US project never went forward. On 19 August 2006, VH1 aired the UK series' final episode.
The United States had its own similar series, American Bandstand, which aired nationally on ABC from 1957 to 1987 (although it would continue in first-run syndication until 1988 and end its run on USA in 1989). Similar series also included Soul Train (1970–2006, featuring R&B artists), Club MTV (1986–92, featuring dance music acts; hosted by Downtown Julie Brown, an alumnus of TOTP as part of the show's last dance troupe Zoo) and Solid Gold (1980–88; like the early TOTP, it also used dance troupes).
Canada
Canada's version was Electric Circus (1988–2003) on MuchMusic, which was also seen in the USA through MuchMusic USA. It had a national chart (mostly of dance music and some pop) as well as live performances, and was based on a local late '70s programme in Toronto called CITY-TV Boogie.
New Zealand
The Top of the Pops brand has also been exported to New Zealand. Although the British show has been broadcast intermittently in New Zealand, the country historically relied on music video-based shows to demonstrate its own Top 20, as the major international acts, who dominated the local charts, considered New Zealand too small and remote to visit regularly. This changed to an extent in 2002, when the New Zealand government suggested a voluntary New Zealand music quota on radio (essentially a threat that if the stations did not impose a quota themselves then one would be imposed on them). The amount of local music played on radio stations increased, as did the number of local songs in the top 20. Therefore, a new local version of Top of the Pops became feasible for the first time, and the show was commissioned by Television New Zealand. The show was executive produced by David Rose, managing director and owner of Satellite Media, and began airing in early 2004 with host Alex Behan. The hour-long show (as opposed to the 30-minute UK version) which was broadcast at 5 pm on Saturdays on TV2 contained a mixture of performances recorded locally on a sound stage in the Auckland CBD, as well as performances from the international versions of the show. The New Zealand Top 20 singles and Top 10 albums charts are also featured. Alex Behan stayed as host for two years before Bede Skinner took over. Despite having a sizeable fan base, in 2006 TVNZ announced that Top of the Pops had been axed.
Free-to-air music channel C4 then picked up the UK version of Top of the Pops and aired it on Saturdays at 8 pm with a repeat screening on Thursdays. However, since the weekly UK version was axed itself, this arrangement also ended.
Africa, Asia and the Middle East
An edited version of the UK show was shown on BBC Prime, the weekend after UK transmission.
In addition, a licensed version was shown on the United Arab Emirates-based MBC2 television channel. This version consisted of parts of the UK version, including the Top 10 charts, as well as live performances by Arabic pop singers.
Latin America
A complete version of the UK show was shown on People+Arts, two weeks after the UK transmission.
Brazilian network TV Globo aired a loosely based version of the original format in 2018, labeled as 'Só Toca Top', hosted by singer Luan Santana and actress Fernanda Souza.
Compilation albums
A number of compilation albums using the Top of the Pops brand have been issued over the years. The first one to reach the charts was BBC TV's The Best of Top of the Pops on the Super Beeb record label in 1975, which reached number 21 and in 1986 the BBC released The Wizard by Paul Hardcastle (the 1986-1990 Top of The Pops theme tune) on Vinyl under the BBC Records and Tapes banner.
Starting in 1968 and carrying on through the 1970s a rival series of Top of the Pops albums were produced, however these had no connection with the television series except for its name. They were a series of budget cover albums of current chart hits recorded by anonymous session singers and musicians released on the Hallmark record label. They had initially reached the charts but were later disallowed due to a change in the criteria for entering the charts. These albums continued to be produced until the early 1980s, when the advent of compilation albums featuring the original versions of hits, such as the Now That's What I Call Music! series, led to a steep decline in their popularity.
In the 1990s, the BBC Top of the Pops brand was again licensed for use in a tie-in compilation series. Starting in 1995 with Sony Music's Columbia Records label, these double disc collections moved to the special marketing arm of PolyGram / Universal Music Group TV, before becoming a sister brand of the Now That's What I Call Music! range in the EMI / Virgin / Universal joint venture.
Similarly to the roles of Top of the Pops on BBC One and BBC Two in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the compilation albums range featured current hits for the main series and classic hits (such as '70s Rock) for the "Top of the Pops 2" spin-offs.
The Top of the Pops brand has now been licensed by EMI who released a compilation series in 2007–08, with one CD for each year that Top of the Pops was running. The boxset for the entire series of 43 discs was released 7July 2008. A podcast supporting the release of the boxset featuring interviews with Mark Goodier, Miles Leonard, Malcolm McLaren and David Hepworth is available.
Number One in the Compilation Charts
These albums in the series reached No. 1:
Top of the Pops 1 (Columbia Records, 1995)
Top of the Pops '99 – Volume 2 (Universal Music TV, 1999)
Top of the Pops 2000 – Volume Two (BBC Music / Universal Music TV, 2000)
Top of the Pops magazine
Top of the Pops magazine has been running since February 1995, and filled the void in the BBC magazine portfolio where Number One magazine used to be. It began much in the mould of Q magazine, then changed its editorial policy to directly compete with popular teen celebrity magazines such as Smash Hits and Big, with free sticker giveaways replacing Brett Anderson covers.
A July 1996 feature on the Spice Girls coined the famous "Spice" nicknames for each member (Baby, Ginger, Posh, Scary and Sporty) that stayed with them throughout their career as a group and beyond.
The BBC announced that the magazine would continue in publication despite the end of the television series, and is still running.
An earlier Top of the Pops magazine appeared briefly in the mid-1970s. Mud drummer Dave Mount sat reading an edition throughout a 1975 appearance on the show.
In popular culture
The Number 6 track of the Kinks' 1970 eighth studio album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One is called "Top of the Pops" and narrates the path to stardom by reaching Number1 in the music charts.
Benny Hill did a parody of Top of the Pops in January 1971 called "Top of the Tops". It featured satires of many music acts at the time as well as impersonations of both Jimmy Savile and Tony Blackburn.
The Scottish punk band the Rezillos lampooned the show in their song "Top of the Pops". The band performed the song on the programme twice when it entered the charts in 1978.
In 1984, British Rail HST power car 43002 was named Top of the Pops, by Jimmy Savile. This followed an edition which was broadcast live on a train, which 43002 was one of the power cars for. The nameplates were removed in 1989.
The Smashie and Nicey 1994 TV special Smashie and Nicey: The End of an Era featured doctored and recreated footage of the two fictional DJs hosting a montage of 1970s editions of Top of the Pops, including a "Black music" edition, which the pair presented in Blackface.
In the opening credits of the Spice Girls' 1997 feature film Spiceworld: The Movie, the girls perform their hit single "Too Much" on a fictional episode of the show. They did also perform it on the show in real life when it became their second Christmas number one in the UK that same year.
A 2001 episode of Tweenies featured a parody of Top of the Pops, complete with Max imitating Jimmy Savile. The episode was unintententionally repeated in January 2013, and received 216 complaints.
Licensing
In May 2006, following a special Red Hot Chili Peppers concert recorded in the car park of BBC Television Centre, Hammersmith and Fulham Council (which governs the area the centre is located) informed the BBC that it lacked the necessary public entertainment license (as required by the Licensing Act 2003). Until the BBC could obtain the license, BBC staff stood-in as audience members for live music programmes.
DVDs
In 2004 there was a DVD released called Top of the Pops 40th Anniversary 1964–2004 DVD. It features live performances, containing one song for each year, except 1966. (Two tracks from 1965 are featured instead). Also included as extras are seven opening titles, most notably the one with the flying coloured LP's from 1981. This title sequence had Phil Lynott's song "Yellow Pearl" as the theme. The 1986 and 1989 titles are also featured, with Paul Hardcastle's hit "The Wizard" as the theme. This DVD was to celebrate 40 years since the show started.
There was also a DVD quiz released in 2007 called The Essential Music Quiz. There was also a DVD in 2001 called Summer 2001, a sister DVD to the album of the same name.
See also
Alright Now
The Old Grey Whistle Test
Ready Steady Go!
Revolver (TV series)
Top of the Box
The Tube (TV series)
References
Further reading
Blacknell, Steve. The Story of Top of the Pops. Wellingborough, Northants: Patrick Stephens, 1985
Gittens, Ian. Top Of The Pops: Mishaps, Miming and Music: True Adventures of TV's No.1 Pop Show. London: BBC, 2007
Seaton, Pete with Richard Down. The Kaleidoscope British Television Music & Variety Guide II: Top Pop: 1964–2006. Dudley: Kaleidoscope Publishing, 2007
Simpson, Jeff. Top of the Pops: 1964–2002: it's still number one, its Top of the Pops! London: BBC, 2002
External links
1964 British television series debuts
British music television shows
1964 in British music
1960s British music television series
1970s British music television series
1980s British music television series
1990s British music television series
2000s British music television series
2010s British music television series
1960s in British music
1970s in British music
1980s in British music
1990s in British music
2000s in British music
2010s in British music
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Television series by CBS Studios
Television series by BBC Studios
Lost BBC episodes
Pop music television series
British music chart television shows
English-language television shows
Jimmy Savile
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Television shows shot at BBC Elstree Centre | false | [
"What Happened to Jones may refer to:\n What Happened to Jones (1897 play), a play by George Broadhurst\n What Happened to Jones (1915 film), a lost silent film\n What Happened to Jones (1920 film), a lost silent film\n What Happened to Jones (1926 film), a silent film comedy",
"What Happened may refer to:\n\n What Happened (Clinton book), 2017 book by Hillary Clinton\n What Happened (McClellan book), 2008 autobiography by Scott McClellan\n \"What Happened\", a song by Sublime from the album 40oz. to Freedom\n \"What Happened\", an episode of One Day at a Time (2017 TV series)\n\nSee also\nWhat's Happening (disambiguation)"
] |
[
"Top of the Pops",
"1994-1997",
"What happened in 1994?",
"By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone",
"What was year zero?",
"I don't know.",
"What happened in 1995?",
"The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced",
"What else was revamped",
"introduction of a new set.",
"What happened in 1996",
"TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996,",
"What happened during 1997",
"I don't know."
] | C_4ba6e4aafe884f399b648ba4e20a983e_0 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 7 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article in addition to replacing "Year Zero's" revamp with a new set and moving TOTP to Fridays?? | Top of the Pops | By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone and the arrival of Ric Blaxill as producer in February 1994 signalled a return to presentation from established Radio 1 DJs Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and Bruno Brookes. Blaxill expanded the use of "via satellite" performances, taking the acts out of studios and concert halls and setting them against landmark backdrops. As a consequence, Bon Jovi performed Always from Niagara Falls and Celine Dion beamed in Think Twice from Miami Beach. The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced (the logo having first been introduced on the new programme Top of the Pops 2 some months previous), coinciding with the introduction of a new set. Blaxill also increasingly experimented with handing presenting duties to celebrities, commonly contemporary comedians and pop stars who were not in the charts at that time. In an attempt to keep the links between acts as fresh as the performances themselves, the so-called "golden mic" was used by, amongst others, Kylie Minogue, Meat Loaf, Des Lynam, Chris Eubank, Damon Albarn, Harry Hill, Jack Dee, Lulu and Jarvis Cocker. Radio 1 DJs still presented occasionally, notably Lisa I'Anson, Steve Lamacq, Jo Whiley and Chris Evans. TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996, originally at 7 pm, but then shifted to 7.30 pm, a change which placed the programme up against the soap opera Coronation Street on ITV. This began a major decline in audience figures as fans were forced to choose between Top of the Pops and an episode of the soap. CANNOTANSWER | Blaxill expanded the use of "via satellite" performances, taking the acts out of studios and concert halls and setting them against landmark backdrops. | Top of the Pops (TOTP) is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly between 1January 1964 and 30 July 2006. Top of the Pops was the world's longest running weekly music show. For most of its history, it was broadcast on Thursday evenings on BBC One. Each weekly show consisted of performances from some of that week's best-selling popular music records, usually excluding any tracks moving down the chart, including a rundown of that week's singles chart. This was originally the Top 20, though this varied throughout the show's history. The Official Charts Company states "performing on the show was considered an honour, and it pulled in just about every major player."
Dusty Springfield’s "I Only Want to Be with You" was the first song performed on TOTP, while The Rolling Stones were the first band to perform with "I Wanna Be Your Man". Snow Patrol were the last act to play live on the weekly show when they performed their single "Chasing Cars". In addition to the weekly show there was a special edition of TOTP on Christmas Day (and usually, until 1984, a second edition a few days after Christmas), featuring some of the best-selling singles of the year and the Christmas Number 1. Although the weekly show was cancelled in 2006, the Christmas special has continued. End-of-year round-up editions have also been broadcast on BBC1 on or around New Year's Eve, albeit largely featuring the same acts and tracks as the Christmas Day shows. It also survives as Top of the Pops 2, which began in 1994 and features vintage performances from the Top of the Pops archives. Though TOTP2 ceased producing new episodes since 2017, repeats of older episodes are still shown.
The show has seen seminal performances over its history. The March 1971 TOTP appearance of T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan wearing glitter and satins as he performed "Hot Love" is often seen as the inception of glam rock, and David Bowie's performance of "Starman" inspired future musicians. In the 1990s, the show's format was sold to several foreign broadcasters in the form of a franchise package, and at one point various versions of the show were shown in more than 120 countries. Editions of the programme from 1976 onwards started being repeated on BBC Four in 2011 and are aired on most Friday evenings – as of January 2022 the repeat run has reached 1992. Episodes featuring disgraced presenters and artists such as Jonathan King, Jimmy Savile (who opened the show with its familiar slogan, 'It's Number One, it's Top of the Pops'), Dave Lee Travis, Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter, and R. Kelly are no longer repeated.
History
Johnnie Stewart devised the rules which governed how the show would operate: the programme would always end with the number one record, which was the only record that could appear in consecutive weeks. The show would include the highest new entry and (if not featured in the previous week) the highest climber on the charts, and omit any song going down in the chart. Tracks could be featured in consecutive weeks in different formats. For example, if a song was played over the chart countdown or the closing credits, then it was acceptable for the act to appear in the studio the following week.
These rules were sometimes interpreted flexibly and were more formally relaxed from 1997 when records descending the charts were featured more regularly, possibly as a response to the changing nature of the Top 40 (in the late 1990s and early 2000s climbers in the charts were a rarity, with almost all singles peaking at their debut position).
When the programme's format changed in November 2003, it concentrated increasingly on the top 10. Later, during the BBC Two era, the top 20 was regarded as the main cut-off point, with the exception made for up and coming bands below the top 20. Singles from below the top 40 (within the top 75) were shown if the band were up and coming or had a strong selling album. If a single being performed was below the top 40, just the words "New Entry" were shown and not the chart position.
The show was originally intended to run for only a few programmes but lasted over 42 years, reaching landmark episodes of 500, 1,000, 1,500 and 2,000 in the years 1973, 1983, 1992 and 2002 respectively.
The first show
Top of the Pops was first broadcast on Wednesday, 1January 1964 at 6:35 pm. It was produced in Studio A at Dickenson Road Studios in Rusholme, Manchester.
DJ Jimmy Savile presented the first show live from the Manchester studio (with a brief link to Alan Freeman in London to preview the following week's programme), which featured (in order) Dusty Springfield with "I Only Want to Be with You", the Rolling Stones with "I Wanna Be Your Man", the Dave Clark Five with "Glad All Over", the Hollies with "Stay", the Swinging Blue Jeans with "Hippy Hippy Shake" and the Beatles with "I Want to Hold Your Hand", that week's number one – throughout its history, the programme proper always (with very few exceptions) finished with the best-selling single of the week, although there often was a separate play-out track over the end credits.
1960s and 1970s
Later in 1964, the broadcast time was moved to one hour later, at 7:35 pm, and the show moved from Wednesdays to what became its regular Thursday slot. Additionally its length was extended by 5minutes to 30 minutes.
For the first three years Alan Freeman, David Jacobs, Pete Murray and Jimmy Savile rotated presenting duties, with the following week's presenter also appearing at the end of each show, although this practice ceased from October 1964 onwards. Neville Wortman filled in as director/producer on Johnnie Stewart's holiday break.
In the first few editions, Denise Sampey was the "disc girl", who would be seen to put the record on a turntable before the next act played their track. However, a Mancunian model, Samantha Juste, became the regular disc girl after a few episodes, a role she performed until 1967.
Initially acts performing on the show would mime (lip-sync) to the commercially released record, but in 1966 after discussions with the Musicians' Union, miming was banned. After a few weeks during which some bands' attempts to play as well as on their records were somewhat lacking, a compromise was reached whereby a specially recorded backing track was permitted, as long as all the musicians on the track were present in the studio. As a result, Stewart hired Johnny Pearson to conduct an in-studio orchestra to provide musical backing on select performances, beginning with the 4 August 1966 edition. Later, vocal group The Ladybirds began providing vocal backing with the orchestra.
With the birth of BBC Radio 1 in 1967, new Radio1 DJs were added to the roster – Stuart Henry, Emperor Rosko, Simon Dee and Kenny Everett.
Local photographer Harry Goodwin was hired to provide shots of non-appearing artists, and also to provide backdrops for the chart run-down. He continued in the role until 1973.
After two years at the Manchester Dickenson Road Studios, the show moved to London (considered to be better located for bands to appear), initially for six months at BBC TV Centre Studio2 and then to the larger Studio G at BBC Lime Grove Studios in mid-1966 to provide space for the Top of the Pops Orchestra, which was introduced at this time to provide live instrumentation on some performances (previously, acts had generally mimed to the records). In November 1969, with the introduction of colour, the show returned to BBC TV Centre, where it stayed until 1991, when it moved to Elstree Studios Studio C.
For a while in the early 1970s, non-chart songs were played on a more regular basis, to reflect the perceived growing importance of album sales; there was an album slot featuring three songs from a new LP, as well as a New Release spot and a feature of a new act, dubbed Tip for the Top. These features were dropped after a while, although the programme continued to feature new releases on a regular basis for the rest of the decade.
During its heyday, it attracted 15 million viewers each week. The peak TV audience of 19 million was recorded in 1979, during the ITV strike, with only BBC1 and BBC2 on air.
Christmas Top of the Pops
A year-end Christmas show featuring a review of the year's biggest hits was inaugurated on 24 December 1964, and has continued every year since. From 1965 onward, the special edition was broadcast on Christmas Day (although not in 1966) and from the same year, a second edition was broadcast in the days after Christmas, varying depending on the schedule, but initially regularly on 26 December. The first was shown on 26 December 1965. In 1973, there was just one show, airing on Christmas Day. In place of the traditional second show, Jimmy Savile hosted a look back at the first 10 years of TOTP, broadcast on 27 December. In 1975, the first of the two shows was broadcast prior to Christmas Day, airing on 23 December, followed by the traditional Christmas Day show two days later.
The 1978 Christmas Day show was disrupted due to industrial action at the BBC, requiring a change in format to the broadcast. The first show, due to be screened on 21 December, was not shown at all because BBC1 was off the air. For Christmas Day, Noel Edmonds (presenting his last ever edition of TOTP) hosted the show from the 'TOTP Production Office' with clips taken from various editions of the show broadcast during the year and new studio footage performed without an audience. The format was slightly tweaked for the Christmas Day edition in 1981, with the Radio1 DJs choosing their favourite tracks of the year and the following edition on 31 December featuring the year's number1 hits.
The second programme was discontinued after 1984.
1980s
The year 1980 marked major production changes to Top of the Pops and a hiatus forced by industrial action. Steve Wright made his presenting debut on 7 February 1980. Towards the end of February 1980, facing a £40 million budget deficit, the BBC laid off five orchestras as part of £130 million in cuts. The budget cuts led to a Musicians' Union strike that suspended operations of all 11 BBC orchestras and performances of live music on the BBC; Top of the Pops went out of production between 29 May and 7 August 1980. During the Musicians' Union strike, BBC1 showed repeats of Are You Being Served? in the regular Top of the Pops Thursday night time slot.
Following the strike, Nash was replaced as executive producer by Michael Hurll, who introduced more of a "party" atmosphere to the show, with performances often accompanied by balloons and cheerleaders, and more audible audience noise and cheering. Hurll also laid off the orchestra, as the Musicians' Union was loosening enforcement of the 1966 miming ban.
Guest co-presenters and a music news feature were introduced for a short while, but had ceased by the end of 1980. The chart rundown was split into three sections in the middle of the programme, with the final Top 10 section initially featuring clips of the songs' videos, although this became rarer over the next few years.
An occasional feature showing the American music scene with Jonathan King was introduced in November 1981, and ran every few weeks until February 1985. In January 1985, a Breakers section, featuring short video clips of new tracks in the lower end of the Top 40, was introduced, and this continued for most weeks until March 1994.
Although the programme had been broadcast live in its early editions, it had been recorded on the day before transmission for many years. However, from May 1981, the show was sometimes broadcast live for a few editions each year, and this practice continued on an occasional basis (often in the week of a bank holiday, when the release of the new chart was delayed, and for some special editions) for the rest of the decade.
The programme moved in September 1985 to a new regular half-hour timeslot of 7 pm on Thursdays, where it would remain until June 1996.
The end of 1988 was marked by a special 70-minute edition of the show broadcast on 31 December 1988, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first show. The pre-recorded programme featured the return of the original four presenters (Savile, Freeman, Murray and Jacobs) as well as numerous presenters from the show's history, anchored by Paul Gambaccini and Mike Read. Numerous clips from the history of the show were included in between acts performing in the studio, which included Cliff Richard, Engelbert Humperdinck, Lulu, the Four Tops, David Essex, Mud, Status Quo, Shakin' Stevens, the Tremeloes and from the very first edition, the Swinging Blue Jeans. Sandie Shaw, the Pet Shop Boys and Wet Wet Wet were billed in the Radio Times to appear, but none featured in the show other than Shaw in compilation clips.
Paul Ciani took over as producer in 1988. The following year, in an attempt to fit more songs in the allocated half-hour, he restricted the duration of studio performances to three minutes, and videos to two minutes, a practice which was largely continued until May 1997. In July 1990, he introduced a rundown of the Top5 albums, which continued on a monthly basis until May 1991. Ciani had to step down due to illness in 1991, when Hurll returned as producer to cover for two months (and again for a brief time as holiday cover in 1992).
1991: 'Year Zero' revamp
From 1967, the show had become closely associated with the BBC radio station Radio 1, usually being presented by DJs from the station, and between 1988 and 1991 the programme was simulcast on the radio station in FM stereo (that is, until BBC's launch of NICAM stereo for TV made such simulcasts redundant). However, during the last few years of the 1980s the association became less close, and was severed completely (although not permanently) in a radical shake-up known as the 'Year Zero' revamp.
Following a fall in viewing figures and a general perception that the show had become 'uncool' (acts like the Clash had refused to appear in the show in previous years), a radical new format was introduced by incoming executive producer Stanley Appel (who had worked on the programme since 1966 as cameraman, production assistant, director and stand-in producer) in October 1991, in which the Radio1 DJs were replaced by a team of relative unknowns, such as Claudia Simon and Tony Dortie who had previously worked for Children's BBC, 17-year-old local radio DJ Mark Franklin, Steve Anderson, Adrian Rose and Elayne Smith, who was replaced by Femi Oke in 1992. A brand new theme tune ("Now Get Out of That"), title sequence and logo were introduced, and the entire programme moved from BBC Television Centre in London to BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood.
The new presenting team would take turns hosting (initially usually in pairs but sometimes solo), and would often introduce acts in an out-of-vision voiceover over the song's instrumental introduction. They would sometimes even conduct short informal interviews with the performers, and initially the Top 10 countdown was run without any voiceover. Rules relating to performance were also altered meaning acts had to sing live as opposed to the backing tracks for instruments and mimed vocals for which the show was known. To incorporate the shift of dominance towards American artists, more use was made of out-of-studio performances, with acts in America able to transmit their song to the Top of the Pops audience "via satellite". These changes were widely unpopular and much of the presenting team were axed within a year, leaving the show hosted solely by Dortie and Franklin (apart from the Christmas Day editions, when both presenters appeared) from October 1992, on a week-by-week rotation.
1994–1997
By 1994, much of the 'Year Zero' revamp was quickly undone and the arrival of Ric Blaxill as producer in February 1994 signalled a return to presentation from established Radio1 DJs Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier, Nicky Campbell and Bruno Brookes. Blaxill expanded the use of "via satellite" performances, taking the acts out of studios and concert halls and setting them against landmark backdrops. As a consequence, Bon Jovi performed Always from Niagara Falls and Celine Dion beamed in Think Twice from Miami Beach.
The last remnants of the Year Zero revamp were replaced in 1995, when a new title sequence, logo and theme tune were introduced (the logo having first been introduced on the new programme Top of the Pops 2 some months previously), coinciding with the introduction of a new set. Blaxill also increasingly experimented with handing presenting duties to celebrities, commonly contemporary comedians and pop stars who were not in the charts at that time. In an attempt to keep the links between acts as fresh as the performances themselves, the so-called "golden mic" was used by, amongst others, Kylie Minogue, Meat Loaf, Des Lynam, Chris Eubank, Damon Albarn, Harry Hill, Jack Dee, Lulu, Björk, Jarvis Cocker, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. Radio1 DJs still presented occasionally, including Lisa I'Anson, Steve Lamacq, Jo Whiley and Chris Evans.
TOTP was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday starting on 14 June 1996, originally at 7 pm, but then shifted to 7.30 pm, a change which placed the programme up against the soap opera Coronation Street on ITV. This began a major decline in audience figures as fans were forced to choose between Top of the Pops and an episode of the soap.
1997–2003
In 1997, incoming producer Chris Cowey phased out the use of celebrities and established a rotating team (similar to the 1991 revamp, although much more warmly received) of former presenters of youth music magazine The O-Zone Jayne Middlemiss and Jamie Theakston as well as Radio1 DJs Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball. The team was later augmented by Kate Thornton and Gail Porter.
Chris Cowey in particular instigated a set of 'back to basics' changes when he took over the show. In 1998, a remixed version of the classic "Whole Lotta Love" theme tune previously used in the 1970s was introduced, accompanied by a new 1960s-inspired logo and title sequence. Cowey also began to export the brand overseas with localised versions of the show on air in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy by 2003. Finally, the programme returned to its previous home of BBC Television Centre in 2001, where it remained until its cancellation in 2006.
2003: All New Top of the Pops
On 28 November 2003 (three months after the appointment of Andi Peters as executive producer), the show saw one of its most radical overhauls since the ill-fated 1991 'Year Zero' revamp in what was widely reported as a make-or-break attempt to revitalise the long-running series. In a break with the previous format, the show played more up-and-coming tracks ahead of any chart success, and also featured interviews with artists and a music news feature called "24/7". Most editions of the show were now broadcast live, for the first time since 1991 (apart from a couple of editions in 1994). The launch show, which was an hour long, was notable for a performance of "Flip Reverse" by Blazin' Squad, featuring hordes of hooded teenagers choreographed to dance around the outside of BBC Television Centre.
Although the first edition premièred to improved ratings, the All New format, hosted by MTV presenter Tim Kash, quickly returned to low ratings and brought about scathing reviews. Kash continued to host the show, but Radio1 DJs Reggie Yates and Fearne Cotton (who had each presented a few shows in 2003, before the revamp) were brought back to co-host alongside him, before Kash was completely dropped by the BBC, later taking up a new contract at MTV. The show continued to be hosted by Reggie Yates and Fearne Cotton (usually together, but occasionally solo) on Friday evenings until 8July 2005.
On 30 July 2004, the show took place outside a studio environment for the first time by broadcasting outside in Gateshead. Girls Aloud, Busted, Will Young and Jamelia were among the performers that night.
2005: The Beginning of the End
Figures had plummeted to below three million, prompting an announcement by the BBC that the show was going to move, again, to Sunday evenings on BBC Two, thus losing the prime-time slot on BBC One that it had maintained for more than forty years.
This move was widely reported as a final "sidelining" of the show, and perhaps signalled its likely cancellation. At the time, it was insisted that this was so the show would air immediately after the official announcement of the new top 40 chart on Radio 1, as it was thought that by the following Friday, the chart seemed out of date. The final Top of the Pops to be shown on BBC One (barring Christmas and New Year specials) was broadcast on Monday 11 July 2005, which was edition number 2,166.
The first edition on BBC Two was broadcast on 17 July 2005 at 7.00 pm with presenter Fearne Cotton. After the move to Sundays, Cotton continued to host with a different guest presenter each week, such as Rufus Hound or Richard Bacon. On a number of occasions, however, Reggie Yates would step in, joined by female guest presenters such as Lulu, Cyndi Lauper and Anastacia. Viewing figures during this period averaged around 1½ million. Shortly after the move to BBC Two, Peters resigned as executive producer. He was replaced by the BBC's Creative Head of Music Entertainment Mark Cooper, while producer Sally Wood remained to oversee the show on a weekly basis.
2006: Cancellation
On 20 June 2006, the show was formally cancelled and it was announced that the last edition would be broadcast on 30 July 2006. Edith Bowman co-presented its hour-long swansong, along with Jimmy Savile (who was the main presenter on the first show), Reggie Yates, Mike Read, Pat Sharp, Sarah Cawood, Dave Lee Travis, Rufus Hound, Tony Blackburn and Janice Long.
The final day of recording was 26 July 2006 and featured archive footage and tributes, including the Rolling Stones – the very first band to appear on Top of the Pops – opening with "The Last Time", the Spice Girls, David Bowie, Wham!, Madonna, Beyoncé, Gnarls Barkley, the Jackson 5, Sonny and Cher and Robbie Williams. The show closed with a final countdown, topped by Shakira, as her track "Hips Don't Lie" (featuring Wyclef Jean) had climbed back up to number one on the UK Singles Chart earlier in the day. The show ended with Savile ultimately turning the lights off in the empty studio.
Fearne Cotton, who was the current presenter, was unavailable to co-host for the final edition due to her filming of ITV's Love Island in Fiji but opened the show with a quick introduction recorded on location, saying "It's still number one, it's Top of the Pops". BARB reported the final show's viewing figures as 3.98 million.
As the last episode featured no live acts in the studio, the last act to actually play live on a weekly episode of TOTP was Snow Patrol, who performed "Chasing Cars" in the penultimate edition; the last act ever featured visually on a weekly Top of the Pops was Girls Aloud, as part of the closing sequence of bands performing on the show throughout the years. They were shown performing "Love Machine".
2006–present: After the end
The magazine and TOTP2 have both survived despite the show's axing, and the Christmas editions also continue after returning to BBC One. However, the TOTP website, which the BBC had originally promised would continue, is now no longer updated, although many of the old features of the site – interviews, music news, reviews – have remained, now in the form of the Radio 1-affiliated TOTP ChartBlog accessible via the remains of the old website.
Calls for its return
In October 2008, British Culture Secretary Andy Burnham and Manchester indie band the Ting Tings called for the show to return.
On 29 October 2008, Simon Cowell stated in an interview that he would be willing to buy the rights to Top of the Pops from the BBC. The corporation responded that they had not been formally approached by Cowell, and that in any case the format was "not up for sale". In November 2008, it was reported by The Times and other newspapers that the weekly programme was to be revived in 2009, but the BBC said there were no such plans.
In July 2009, Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant criticised the BBC for ending the programme, stating that new acts were missing out on "that great moment of being crowned that week's Kings of Pop".
In early 2015 there was increased speculation of a return of the show including rumours that Dermot O'Leary might present alongside Fearne Cotton. According to a report in the Daily Mirror, a BBC insider stated that "some at the highest level are massive supporters of the plan [of a return] and have given the go-ahead." The move of the UK charts to a Friday due to take place in summer 2015 was also said to favour the possibility of a return, making it "the perfect tie-in" and a "perfect start to the weekend", but no weekly return has occurred.
BBC Four reruns
In April 2011, the BBC began to reshow Top of the Pops on Thursday nights on BBC Four beginning with the equivalent show from 35 years earlier in a 7:30 pm–8:00 pm slot approximating to the time the programme was traditionally shown. The first programme shown, 1April 1976, was chosen because it was from approximately this episode onwards that most editions remain in the BBC archive. The repeat programmes come in two versions; the first is edited down to fit in the 30-minute 7:30 slot, the second is shown normally twice overnight in the following weekend, and is usually complete. However both the short and longer editions can be edited for a number of reasons. Potentially offensive content to modern audiences is cut (for example The Barron Knights' in-studio performance of "Food For Thought" on the edition of 13 December 1979 including a segment parodying Chinese takeaways using mannerisms that may now be viewed as offensive), and cinematic film footage can be truncated, replaced or removed entirely due to the costs to the BBC of reshowing such footage. The BBC also makes the repeats available on BBC iPlayer. The repeats are continuing as of January 2022 with episodes from 1992.
Since October 2012, episodes featuring Jimmy Savile have ceased to be broadcast due to the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal and subsequent Operation Yewtree police investigation. Following the arrest of Dave Lee Travis by Operation Yewtree officers, and his subsequent conviction for indecent assault, episodes featuring Travis were also omitted. Following Gary Glitter's conviction for sexual assault, episodes featuring him are not included in the run, or otherwise have Glitter's performances edited out.
Mike Smith decided not to sign the licence extension that would allow the BBC to repeat the Top of the Pops episodes that he presented, with the BBC continuing to respect his wishes following his death. As a result, episodes featuring Smith are also omitted.
In 2021, it was discovered that episodes hosted by Adrian Rose (later Adrian Woolfe) were being skipped, starting with the 28th November 1991 episode featuring Nirvana's famous performance of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (mentioned below).
Other edits that have been made to episodes have included Jonathan King's reports from the US during episodes from the early 1980s, sometimes also resulting in the removal of a performance or video introduced as part of the report, and the removal of The Doors' performance of "Light My Fire" from a 1991 episode, due to The Doors not being covered by the BBC's music licensing agreement (which also resulted in another 1991 episode being skipped).
"Story of" Specials
Prior to the 1976 BBC reruns shown in 2011, the BBC produced a special programme, "The Story of 1976". This comprised excerpts from the 1976 programmes, interspersed with new interviews with people discussing the time period. They have produced similar programmes prior to subsequent annual reruns, "The Story of 1990" being the most recent such programme in October 2020, as 1991 and 1992 reruns started without a 'The Story of...' programme preceding them.
"Big Hits" compilation
A series of "Big Hits" compilations have been broadcast with on-screen captions about artists.In December 2016, a festive special using the format of the "Big Hits" programmes, Top of the Pops: Christmas Hits was broadcast on BBC Four, featuring a mix of Christmas music and non-festive songs which had been hits at Christmas time. This effectively replaced the annual Christmas edition of Top of the Pops 2, which did not run that year.
Christmas and New Year specials
Although the weekly Top of the Pops has been cancelled, the Christmas Specials have continued, hosted by Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates. The Christmas specials are broadcast on Christmas Day afternoon on BBC One. Since 2008 (apart from 2010 and 2011), a New Year special has also been broadcast. A new logo and title sequence were introduced on the 2019 Christmas special. The BBC's Head of Music Television, Mark Cooper, continued to oversee the programme as executive producer until 2019 when he was replaced by Alison Howe. Meanwhile, Stephanie McWhinnie, who had replaced Wood as producer with effect from Christmas 2011, was replaced by Caroline Cullen (who had previously worked as assistant producer on the show) from Christmas 2020, when both festive shows were recorded with new studio performances but no live audience physically in attendance. On 4December 2017, Yates stepped down from hosting Top of the Pops due to comments he made regarding Jewish people and rappers. The BBC later announced Clara Amfo as Yates' replacement, she continues to hold the role. Amfo was joined by Jordan North for the 2021 specials, with him replacing Cotton.
Comic Relief specials
The show was given a one-off revival (of sorts) for Comic Relief 2007 in the form of Top Gear of the Pops, presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. It was filmed at the Top Gear aerodrome studio in Surrey on Sunday, 11 March 2007, although it bore little resemblance to the usual Top of the Pops format.
On 13 March 2009, Top of The Pops was once again revived, this time in its usual format, for a special live Comic Relief edition, airing on BBC Two while the main telethon took a break for the BBC News at Ten on BBC One. As with the Christmas specials the show was presented by Radio1 duo Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates with special guest presenter Noel Fielding and appearances from Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Claudia Winkleman, Jonathan Ross, Davina McCall (dancing in the audience and later as a Flo Rida dancer with Claudia Winkleman and French and Saunders) and David Tennant.
Live performances – interspersed with Comic Relief appeal films – included acts such as Franz Ferdinand, Oasis, Take That, U2, James Morrison and Flo Rida (that week's Number1). Kicking off the show was a performance from Rob Brydon and Ruth Jones in their Gavin & Stacey guises, feat. Tom Jones and Robin Gibb with "(Barry) Islands in the Stream", the Comic Relief single.
Performers, performances and presenters
In its extensive history, Top of the Pops has featured many artists, many of whom have appeared more than once on the show to promote many of their records.
Green Day hold the record for the longest Top of the Pops performance: "Jesus of Suburbia" broadcast on 6November 2005, lasted 9minutes and 10 seconds. There is uncertainty about what was the shortest performance. In 2005, presenter Reggie Yates announced on the show that it was Super Furry Animals with "Do or Die", broadcast on 28 January 2000, clocking in at 95 seconds. However, "It's My Turn" by Angelic was 91 seconds on 16 June 2000 and, according to an August 2012 edition of TOTP2, "Here Comes the Summer" by the Undertones was just 84 seconds on 26 July 1979. Cliff Richard appeared the most times on the show, with almost 160 performances. Status Quo were the most frequent group with 106 performances.
Miming
Throughout the show's history, many artists mimed to backing tracks. Early on, Musicians' Union rules required that groups re-record backing tracks with union members performing when possible. However, as The Guardian recounted in 2001: "In practice, artists pretended to re-record the song, then used their original tapes."
The miming policy also led to the occasional technical hitch. In 1967, as Jimi Hendrix prepared to perform "Burning of the Midnight Lamp", the song "The House That Jack Built" by Alan Price was played in studio instead, prompting Hendrix to respond: "I like the voice...but I don't know the words." In 1988, All About Eve appeared to perform "Martha's Harbour". Although the song was being played on the television broadcast, it was not being played in studio, so lead singer Julianne Regan remained silent on a stool on stage while Tim Bricheno (the only other band member present) did not play his guitar.
Occasionally bands played live, examples in the 1970s and 1980s being the Four Seasons, the Who, Blondie, John Otway, Sham 69, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Jimmy James and the Vagabonds, The Sweet, The Jackson 5, Heavy Metal Kids, Elton John, Typically Tropical, New Order, Whitney Houston and David Bowie. In 1980, heavy metal band Iron Maiden played live on the show when they refused to mime to their single "Running Free". Solo artists and vocal groups were supposed to sing live to the Top of the Pops Orchestra. Billy Ocean, Brotherhood of Man, Anita Ward, Thelma Houston, Deniece Williams, Hylda Baker and the Nolans all performed in this way.
In 1991 the producers of the show allowed artists the option of singing live over a backing track. Miming has resulted in a number of notable moments. In 1991, Nirvana refused to mime to the pre-recorded backing track of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with Kurt Cobain singing in a deliberately low voice and altering lyrics in the song, and bassist Krist Novoselic swinging his bass over his head and drummer Dave Grohl playing randomly on his kit. In 1995, the Gallagher brothers of Oasis switched places while performing "Roll with It". During their performance of "Don't Leave Me This Way" the Communards singers Jimmy Somerville and Sarah Jane Morris swapped lyrics for part of the song towards the end. Another example of whimsy was John Peel's appearance as the mandolin soloist for Rod Stewart on "Maggie May". The new practice also exposed a number of poor live singers, and was dropped as a general rule.
In its final few years miming had become less and less common, especially for bands, as studio technology became more reliable and artists were given the freedom to choose their performance style. Former Executive Producer Andi Peters said there was no policy on miming and that it was entirely up to the performer whether they wanted to sing live or mime.
Orchestra and backing singers
From 1966 to 1980, Top of the Pops had an in-studio orchestra conducted by Johnny Pearson accompany select musical performances, with The Ladybirds (later Maggie Stredder Singers) providing backing vocals. Credited on the show as musical associate, Derek Warne played piano and provided musical arrangements for the orchestra. As The Telegraph recounted, Pearson and the orchestra improvised accompaniments with about 20 minutes of rehearsal time per song, and the musicians, "almost all middle-aged, often struggled with the enormous range of rock and pop tunes with which they were presented." In contrast, The Times said upon Pearson's passing in 2011 that the orchestra "often elicit[ed] excellent performances with barely enough time beforehand for a couple of run-throughs."
Other notable members of the orchestra include drummer Clem Cattini, trombonist Bobby Lamb, and lead trumpeters Leon Calvert and Ian Hamer. From 1971 to 1974, Martin Briley played guitar for the orchestra before joining rock group Greenslade.
Following the 1980 Musicians Union strike, the programme resumed broadcast on 7 August 1980 without its orchestra or backing singers. However, Pearson continued to make occasional contributions as musical director until the 900th episode in the summer of 1981. Afterwards, Warne occasionally made musical arrangements through April 1982. Ronnie Hazlehurst conducted the orchestra from 1982 to 1983.
Music videos
When an artist or group was unavailable to perform in studio, Top of the Pops would show a music video in place. According to Queen guitarist Brian May, the groundbreaking 1975 music video for "Bohemian Rhapsody" was produced so that the band could avoid miming on TOTP since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song.
Dance troupes
January to October 1964 – no dance troupes
In the era before promotional videos were routinely produced for every charting single, the BBC would frequently have neither the band themselves nor alternative footage available for a song selected for the programme. In the first few months of the show in 1964, the director would just scan across the audience dancing in the absence of any other footage, but by October 1964 a decision was made to at least occasionally bring in a dance troupe with a choreographed routine to some of the tracks.
November 1964 to April 1968 – The Go-Jos
An initial candidate troupe was the existing BBC TV Beat Girls, but an ex-dancer from the Beat Girls, Jo Cook, was eventually engaged to create a troupe, the all-female Go-Jos, with Cook as choreographer. The Go-Jos also worked outside of Top of the Pops, notably for two years on the Val Doonican show – Doonican said in 1968 "I thought the Gojos were fabulous, something really new. When I got my own television series I just had to have them with me."
They were initially a three-piece (Pat Hughes for the first edition only, Linda Hotchkin and Jane Bartlett), but their number eventually grew to six (Hotchkin, Bartlett, Lesley Larbey, Wendy Hilhouse, Barbara van der Heyde and Thelma Bignell) with Cook as full-time choreographer. Lulu remembered of their costumes "They mostly wore white boots to the knee and short skirts and the camera would go up the skirt and it was all very risqué."
Cook herself said of working on the Doonican show (of which she was dance director) comparing to Top of the Pops, "Pop steps are limited... With Val we have more scope, and we can work to get more of the feel of ballet into our numbers."
May to June 1968 – Go-Jos/Pan's People transition
In April 1968, a Top of the Pops choreographer, Virginia Mason, auditioned for dancers for a routine on Top of The Pops ("Simon Says" by the 1910 Fruitgum Company); two of whom that were successful (Ruth Pearson and Patricia "Dee Dee" Wilde) were part of the existing six-female dance troupe, Pan's People. Like the Go-Jos, this group was also partly drawn from ex-members of the Beat Girls.
Although this routine did not make it onto the programme itself, in subsequent weeks, members of Pan's People (Louise Clarke, Felicity "Flick" Colby, Barbara "Babs" Lord, Pearson, Andrea "Andi" Rutherford and Wilde) started to appear on the programme separately to the Go-Jos. Pan's People were then selected by the BBC over the Go-Jos when they chose a group to be the resident troupe. The Go-Jos' final Top of the Pops performance was in June 1968 dancing to "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones.
July 1968 to April 1976 – Pan's People
As with the Go-Jos, in the first eighteen months of the Pan's People era the dancers were not a weekly fixture on the programme. However, due to group fan mail and good viewing figures, by 1970 the group was on nearly every week. Pay was not high – they were paid the minimum Equity rate of £56 per week.
One of the original Pan's People dancers, Colby, became the full-time choreographer in 1971.
Colby spoke of the dancing – "They weren't Broadway-standard routines... we were definitely doing watercolours, not oil paintings."
May to October 1976 – Ruby Flipper
In early 1976, the last remaining of the early members of Pan's People, Ruth Pearson announced her retirement, leaving just four members all of whom who had joined within the last four years; Cherry Gillespie, Mary Corpe, Lee Ward and Sue Menhenick. Rather than continue with this line up or add additional members, it was decided by Colby and BBC production staff to replace this group with a male and female group created for the programme, Ruby Flipper, choreographed by Colby and managed by Colby with Pearson. Lee Ward left shortly after this decision was made, reportedly saying regarding the change: "It's a big mistake. Men rush home to watch sexy ladies. They do not want to see other men."
Rehearsals for this new group started in March 1976, and the group began appearing on Top of the Pops in May 1976. Whilst producers were aware of the switch to the new group, Bill Cotton, the then head of the light entertainment unit of which Top of the Pops was part, was not. This group started as a seven-piece with three men (Gavin Trace, Floyd Pearce and Phil Steggles) and four women (Menhenick, Gillespie, Patti Hammond and Lulu Cartwright). Corpe was not invited to join the new troupe. Trace, Pearce, Steggles and Cartwright joined following open auditions, Hammond, an established dancer, was invited to join to complete the "look" following a later individual audition. Colby viewed this gender-mixed group as an opportunity to develop more physical routines including lifts, more duets and generally not have the whole group at each performance.
However, by August the BBC had decided to terminate the group due to perceived unpopularity and being "...out of step with viewers". Their final appearance was in October 1976.
November 1976 to October 1981 – Legs and Co
The group created to replace Ruby Flipper was Legs & Co, reverting to an all-female line-up, and once more choreographed by Colby. Three of the six in the initial line-up (Menhenick, Cartwight and Hammond) were taken from Ruby Flipper. with Rosie Hetherington, Gill Clarke and Pauline Peters making up the six. Despite being an all-female group, on occasion one or more male dancers were brought in, notably Pearce several times.
During their run, the group covered the transition from Disco to Punk, Electronic and Modern Romantic music. Notably, they danced to two Sex Pistols tracks.
December 1981 to September 1983 – Zoo
By late 1981, Legs & Co (by this time Anita Chellamah had replaced Peters) had become more integrated into the studio audience, rather than performing set-piece routines, as a result of the 'party atmosphere' brought in by Michael Hurll. Also by this time Colby was particularly keen to work once more with male dancers; feeling it time for a change, Legs & Co's stint was ended, and a twenty-member dance troupe (ten male, ten female), named Zoo was created, with a set of performers drawn from the pool of twenty each week. Colby was now credited as "Dance Director". Three members of previous troupes, Menhenick, Corpe and Chellamah, made at least one appearance each during the Zoo period. The dancers now chose their own clothes, moving away from the synchronised appearance of previous troupes.
October 1983 to 2006 – After Zoo
By the early 1980s, record companies were offering the BBC free promotional videos, meaning dance troupes no longer fulfilled their original purpose. Zoo's run ended in 1983, and with it the use of dance troupes on Top of the Pops.
After the demise of Zoo, the audience took a more active role, often dancing in more prominent areas such as behind performing acts on the back of the stage, and on podiums. However, the show also employed cheerleaders to lead the dancing.
Dance Troupe chronology
Go-Jos' first performance: 19 November 1964 – Dancing to "Baby Love" by the Supremes
Pan's People first performance (three of the dancers, independently contracted): April 1968 – Dancing to "Young Girl" by Gary Puckett & the Union Gap or "Respect" by Aretha Franklin
Pan's People's first performance (as the six-piece group of early 1968): 30 May 1968 – Dancing to "U.S. Male" by Elvis Presley
Go-Jos' final performance: 27 June 1968 – Dancing to "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones
Pan's People's final performance: 29 April 1976 – Dancing to "Silver Star" by the Four Seasons
Ruby Flipper's first performance: 6 May 1976 – Dancing to "Can't Help Falling In Love" by the Stylistics
Ruby Flipper's final performance: 14 October 1976 – Dancing to "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry
Legs & Co's first performance (credited as Ruby Flipper & Legs & Co): 21 October 1976 – Dancing to "Queen of My Soul" by Average White Band
Legs & Co's first performance (credited as Legs & Co): 11 November 1976 – Dancing to "Spinning Rock Boogie" by Hank C. Burnette
Legs & Co's final performance: 29 October 1981 – Dancing to "Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)" by Haircut 100
Zoo's first performance: 5 November 1981 – Dancing to "Twilight" by E.L.O.
Zoo's final performance: 29 September 1983 – Dancing to "What I Got Is What You Need" by Unique
Theme music
For much of the 1960s, the show's theme music was an organ-based instrumental track, also called "Top of the Pops", by the Dave Davani Four.
1 January 1964 to ?: Instrumental percussion piece written by Johnnie Stewart and Harry Rabinowitz and performed by drummer Bobby Midgly.
1965 to 1966: Dave Davani Four's "Top of the Pops" with the Ladybirds on backing vocal harmonies. Originally the opening theme, this was later played as a closing theme from 1966 up until 1970.
20 January 1966 to 13 November 1969: Unknown instrumental guitar track.
27 November 1969 to 29 October 1970: Unknown brass track played over colour titles with a voiceover proclaiming, "Yes! It's number one! It's Top of the Pops!" There was no TOTP on 20 November 1969 due to the Apollo 12 Moon landing.
5 November 1970 to 14 July 1977: An instrumental version of the Led Zeppelin-Willie Dixon composition "Whole Lotta Love" performed by CCS members.
21 July 1977 to 29 May 1980: No opening theme tune; a contemporary chart song was played over the countdown stills. "Whole Lotta Love" featured only in Christmas editions, the 800th edition from 26 July 1979 and the voice-over only edition from 22 November 1979.
7 August 1980 to 2July 1981: No opening theme tune; the CCS version of "Whole Lotta Love" was played over some of the images of the featured artists and during the countdown stills in the Top 30 and Top 20 sections which were moved later on in the programme. From the edition of 7August 1980 to the edition of 2July 1981, "Whole Lotta Love" was heard only during the chart rundowns.
9 July 1981 to 27 March 1986: "Yellow Pearl" was commissioned as the new theme music. From May 1983 to July 1984, a re-recording of "Yellow Pearl" was played over the chart rundown and a pop rock version from August 1984 to March 1986.
3 April 1986 to 26 September 1991: "The Wizard", a composition by Paul Hardcastle.
3 October 1991 to 26 January 1995: "Now Get Out of That" composed by Tony Gibber.
2 February 1995 to 8 August 1997 (except 27 June & 25 July 1997 and 15 August 1997 to 24 April 1998) and 10 October 1997: the theme was a track called "Red Hot Pop" composed by Vince Clarke of Erasure.
27 June and 25 July 1997 then 15 August 1997 to 24 April 1998 (except 10 October 1997): No theme tune; the opening of the first song of the episode was played under the titles and a song from the top 20 was played under the chart rundown.
1 May 1998 to 21 November 2003: Updated, drum and bass version of "Whole Lotta Love" by Ben Chapman.
28 November 2003 to 30 July 2006 and until 2012 for TOTP2 and Xmas specials: A remixed version of "Now Get Out of That" by Tony Gibber.
25 December 2013 to present for Top of the Pops Christmas and New Year Specials: A mix of both the 1970s "Whole Lotta Love" theme and the 1998 remix.
Lost episodes
Due to the then standard practice of wiping videotape, the vast majority of the episodes from the programme's history prior to 1976 have been lost, including any official recording of the only live appearance by the Beatles.
Of the first 500 episodes (1964–73), only about 20 complete recordings remain in the BBC archives, and the majority of these are from 1969 onwards. The earliest surviving footage dates from 26 February 1964, and consists of performances by Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas and the Dave Clark Five. Some programmes exist only partially (largely performances that were either pre-recorded or re-used in later editions). There are also two examples of rehearsal footage, which are both from 1965, one which includes Alan Freeman introducing the Seekers, and another with Sandie Shaw rehearsing "Long Live Love"—both believed to be for the end-of-year Christmas Special. There are also cases of shows that exist only in their raw, unedited form. The oldest complete episode in existence was originally transmitted on Boxing Day in 1967 (only five complete recordings from the 1960s survive, two of which have mute presenter links). The most recent that is not held is dated 8September 1977. Most editions after this date exist in full, except a few 1981–85 episodes recorded live feature mute presenter links (These episodes were skipped on the BBC Four re-runs).
Some off-air recordings, made by fans at home with a microphone in front of the TV speaker, exist in varying quality, including the Jimi Hendrix Experience performing a live version of "Hey Joe" in December 1966.
Some segments of TOTP which were not retained do survive in some form owing to having been included in other programmes, either by the BBC itself or by foreign broadcasters. What was thought to be the only surviving footage of the Beatles on the programme, for instance, comes from its re-use in episode one of 1965 Doctor Who serial The Chase. Additionally a number of recordings are believed to exist in private collections. However, in 2019, an 11-second clip of the group's only live appearance on TOTP, from 16 June 1966, was unearthed – this was recorded by a viewer using an 8mm camera to film the live transmission on their television. Other individual but complete clips that have surfaced over recent years include The Hollies performing "Bus Stop", and The Jimi Hendrix Experience playing both "Purple Haze" and "The Wind Cries Mary".
Thanks to a deal between the BBC and German television network ZDF around the turn of the 1970s, several TOTP clips were sent over to be shown on Disco, a similar-styled chart show. This meant that performances from the likes of The Kinks (Apeman), The Who (The Seeker) and King Crimson (Cat Food) still exist in German archives.
Two complete episodes from 1967 were discovered in a private collection in 2009, having been recorded at home on an early available open reel to reel video recorder. Whilst the tapes suffered from major damage and degradation of both sound and picture quality, one show featured Pink Floyd with original leader Syd Barrett performing "See Emily Play", whilst the second contained Dave Davies singing his solo hit "Death of a Clown".
The programme was forced off the air for several weeks by industrial action by the Musicians' Union in both 1974 and 1980.
Spin-offs
Top of the Pops has a sister show called TOTP2 which uses archive footage from as early as the late 1960s. It began on 17 September 1994. The early series were narrated by Johnnie Walker, before Steve Wright took over as narrator. In summer 2004 BBC Two's controller, Roly Keating, announced that it was being "rested". Shortly after UKTV G2 began showing re-edited versions of earlier programmes with re-recorded dialogue. Finally after a two-year break TOTP2 returned to the BBC Two schedules for a new series on Saturday, 30 September 2006, in an evening timeslot. It was still narrated by Steve Wright and featured a mixture of performances from the TOTP archive and newly recorded performances. The first edition of this series featured new performances by Razorlight and Nelly Furtado recorded after the final episode of Top of the Pops. In 2009 Mark Radcliffe took over as narrator. TOTP2 continued to receive sporadic new episodes from this point onwards, most notably Christmas specials, until 2017 when the show ceased producing new episodes, though previous episodes are still repeated on both BBC Two and BBC Four.
Aired on BBC Radio 1 between the mid-1990s and late 2001 was Top of the Pops: The Radio Show which went out every Sunday at 3 pm just before the singles chart, and was presented by Jayne Middlemiss and Scott Mills. It later reappeared on the BBC World Service in May 2003 originally presented by Emma B, where it continues to be broadcast weekly in an hourly format, now presented by Kim Robson and produced by former BBC World Service producer Alan Rowett.
The defunct channel Play UK created two spin offs; TOTP+ Plus and TOTP@Play (2000–2001) (until mid-2000, this show was called The Phone Zone and was a spin-off from BBC Two music series The O-Zone). BBC Choice featured a show called TOTP The New Chart (5 December 1999 – 26 March 2000) and on BBC Two TOTP+ (8 October 2000 – 26 August 2001) which featured the TOTP @ Play studio and presenters. This is not to be confused with the UK Play version of the same name. A more recent spin-off (now ended) was Top of the Pops Saturday hosted originally by Fearne Cotton and Simon Grant, and its successor Top of the Pops Reloaded. This was shown on Saturday mornings on BBC One and featured competitions, star interviews, video reviews and some Top of the Pops performances. This was aimed at a younger audience and was part of the CBBC Saturday morning line-up. This was to rival CD:UK at the same time on ITV.
Send-ups
A number of performers have sent up the format in various ways. This was often by performers who disliked the mime format of the show, as a protest against this rather than simply refusing to appear.
When Fairport Convention appeared to promote their 1969 hit "Si Tu Dois Partir", drummer Dave Mattacks wore a T-shirt printed "MIMING".
When the Smiths appeared on the show to perform their single "This Charming Man", lead singer Morrissey was unhappy about having to lip-sync and so held a bunch of gladioli on the stage instead of a microphone.
While performing their 1982 hit "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)", the band Dexy's Midnight Runners were seen performing in front of a projection of the darts player with a similar sounding name (Jocky Wilson instead of soul singer Jackie Wilson). Dexy's frontman Kevin Rowland later said in an interview that the use of the Jocky Wilson picture was his idea and not a mistake by the programme makers as is sometimes stated.
A performance of "Marguerita Time" by Status Quo in early 1984 in which a clearly-refreshed Rick Parfitt walks directly into the drum kit at the end of the song, taking the drummer and whole kit with him as the others continue miming
Frankie Goes To Hollywood performed one of the many 1984 performances of their hit "Two Tribes" with bassist Mark O'Toole playing drums whilst drummer Ped Gill played bass.
When Oasis mimed to "Whatever" on Top of the Pops in 1994, one of the cello players from the symphony was replaced by rhythm guitarist Bonehead, who clearly had no idea how the instrument should be played. Towards the end of the song, he gave up the pretence and started using the bow to conduct. A woman plays his rhythm guitar.
Singer Les Gray of Mud went on stage to perform with a ventriloquist dummy during the performance of "Lonely This Christmas" and had the dummy lip-synch to the voice-over in the middle of the song.
During Mott the Hoople's performance of their single "Roll Away the Stone" in 1973, drummer Dale Griffin plays with oversized drumsticks.
EMF appeared on the show with one of the guitarists strumming along while wearing boxing gloves.
At the end of The Who's performance of "5:15" the band proceeded to destroy their instruments despite the fact the backing track was still playing.
In Blur's performance of "Charmless Man" in 1996, Dave Rowntree decided to play with oversized drumsticks, while Graham Coxon played a mini guitar.
In Green Day's first Top of the Pops appearance in 1994, the band played the song "Welcome to Paradise". Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong wore an otherwise plain white T-shirt with the phrase "Who am I fooling anyway?" handwritten on it, most likely a reference to his own miming during the performance. He could also be seen not playing his guitar during the instrumental bridge in the song.
The performance of "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart and the Faces featured John Peel miming on mandolin. Near the end of the song, Rod and the Faces begin to kick around a football. This is despite the fact that the music can be still heard playing in the background.
The Cure were known for their abhorrence for miming their songs whilst on TOTP and on several occasions made it obvious they were not playing their parts – using such stunts as playing guitar left-handed and miming very badly out of synch.
Ambient house group the Orb sat and played chess while an edited version of their 39:57-minute single "Blue Room" played in the background.
Depeche Mode's performance of "Barrel of a Gun" in 1997 featured Dutch photographer and director Anton Corbijn who mimed playing the drums. Also Tim Simenon (who produced the album the song appeared on) mimed playing keyboards along with Andy Fletcher.
When the Cuban Boys performed "Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia" at the end of 1999, a performance which was reportedly unbroadcast, the band wearing labcoats, covered in cobwebs.
International versions
Europe
The TOTP format was sold to RTL in Germany in the 1990s, and aired on Saturday afternoons. It was very successful for a long time, with a compilation album series and magazine. However, in 2006 it was announced that the German show would be ending. The Italian version (first broadcast on Rai 2 and later on Italia 1) also ended in 2006. In February 2010 the show returned on Rai 2, and was broadcast for two seasons before being cancelled again in October 2011. The French version of the show ended by September 2006 on France 2.
In the Netherlands, TopPop was broadcast by AVRO 1970–1988, and a version of the show continued to run on BNN until the end of December 2006. BBC Prime used to broadcast re-edited episodes of the BBC version, the weekend after it was transmitted in the UK. Ireland began transmitting Top of the Pops in November 1978 on RTÉ2. This was the UK version being transmitted at the same time as on BBC. The broadcasts ceased in late 1993.
United States
Top of the Pops had short-lived fame in the United States. In October 1987, the CBS television network decided to try an American version of the show. It was hosted by Nia Peeples and even showed performances from the BBC version of the programme (and vice versa). The show was presented on late Friday nights as part of CBS Late Night, and lasted almost half a year.
In 2002, BBC America presented the BBC version of Top of the Pops as part of their weekend schedule. The network would get the episodes one week after they were transmitted in the UK. BBC America then tinkered with the show by cutting a few minutes out of each show and moving it to a weekday time slot.
On 23 January 2006, Lou Pearlman made a deal to bring Top of the Pops back to the airwaves in the United States. It was expected to be similar to the 1987 version, but it would also utilise the Billboard magazine music charts, most notably the Hot 100 chart. It was supposed to be planned for a possible 2006 or 2007 launch, but with several lawsuits against Lou and his companies (which resulted in his conviction in 2008), as well as the cancellation of the UK version, the proposed US project never went forward. On 19 August 2006, VH1 aired the UK series' final episode.
The United States had its own similar series, American Bandstand, which aired nationally on ABC from 1957 to 1987 (although it would continue in first-run syndication until 1988 and end its run on USA in 1989). Similar series also included Soul Train (1970–2006, featuring R&B artists), Club MTV (1986–92, featuring dance music acts; hosted by Downtown Julie Brown, an alumnus of TOTP as part of the show's last dance troupe Zoo) and Solid Gold (1980–88; like the early TOTP, it also used dance troupes).
Canada
Canada's version was Electric Circus (1988–2003) on MuchMusic, which was also seen in the USA through MuchMusic USA. It had a national chart (mostly of dance music and some pop) as well as live performances, and was based on a local late '70s programme in Toronto called CITY-TV Boogie.
New Zealand
The Top of the Pops brand has also been exported to New Zealand. Although the British show has been broadcast intermittently in New Zealand, the country historically relied on music video-based shows to demonstrate its own Top 20, as the major international acts, who dominated the local charts, considered New Zealand too small and remote to visit regularly. This changed to an extent in 2002, when the New Zealand government suggested a voluntary New Zealand music quota on radio (essentially a threat that if the stations did not impose a quota themselves then one would be imposed on them). The amount of local music played on radio stations increased, as did the number of local songs in the top 20. Therefore, a new local version of Top of the Pops became feasible for the first time, and the show was commissioned by Television New Zealand. The show was executive produced by David Rose, managing director and owner of Satellite Media, and began airing in early 2004 with host Alex Behan. The hour-long show (as opposed to the 30-minute UK version) which was broadcast at 5 pm on Saturdays on TV2 contained a mixture of performances recorded locally on a sound stage in the Auckland CBD, as well as performances from the international versions of the show. The New Zealand Top 20 singles and Top 10 albums charts are also featured. Alex Behan stayed as host for two years before Bede Skinner took over. Despite having a sizeable fan base, in 2006 TVNZ announced that Top of the Pops had been axed.
Free-to-air music channel C4 then picked up the UK version of Top of the Pops and aired it on Saturdays at 8 pm with a repeat screening on Thursdays. However, since the weekly UK version was axed itself, this arrangement also ended.
Africa, Asia and the Middle East
An edited version of the UK show was shown on BBC Prime, the weekend after UK transmission.
In addition, a licensed version was shown on the United Arab Emirates-based MBC2 television channel. This version consisted of parts of the UK version, including the Top 10 charts, as well as live performances by Arabic pop singers.
Latin America
A complete version of the UK show was shown on People+Arts, two weeks after the UK transmission.
Brazilian network TV Globo aired a loosely based version of the original format in 2018, labeled as 'Só Toca Top', hosted by singer Luan Santana and actress Fernanda Souza.
Compilation albums
A number of compilation albums using the Top of the Pops brand have been issued over the years. The first one to reach the charts was BBC TV's The Best of Top of the Pops on the Super Beeb record label in 1975, which reached number 21 and in 1986 the BBC released The Wizard by Paul Hardcastle (the 1986-1990 Top of The Pops theme tune) on Vinyl under the BBC Records and Tapes banner.
Starting in 1968 and carrying on through the 1970s a rival series of Top of the Pops albums were produced, however these had no connection with the television series except for its name. They were a series of budget cover albums of current chart hits recorded by anonymous session singers and musicians released on the Hallmark record label. They had initially reached the charts but were later disallowed due to a change in the criteria for entering the charts. These albums continued to be produced until the early 1980s, when the advent of compilation albums featuring the original versions of hits, such as the Now That's What I Call Music! series, led to a steep decline in their popularity.
In the 1990s, the BBC Top of the Pops brand was again licensed for use in a tie-in compilation series. Starting in 1995 with Sony Music's Columbia Records label, these double disc collections moved to the special marketing arm of PolyGram / Universal Music Group TV, before becoming a sister brand of the Now That's What I Call Music! range in the EMI / Virgin / Universal joint venture.
Similarly to the roles of Top of the Pops on BBC One and BBC Two in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the compilation albums range featured current hits for the main series and classic hits (such as '70s Rock) for the "Top of the Pops 2" spin-offs.
The Top of the Pops brand has now been licensed by EMI who released a compilation series in 2007–08, with one CD for each year that Top of the Pops was running. The boxset for the entire series of 43 discs was released 7July 2008. A podcast supporting the release of the boxset featuring interviews with Mark Goodier, Miles Leonard, Malcolm McLaren and David Hepworth is available.
Number One in the Compilation Charts
These albums in the series reached No. 1:
Top of the Pops 1 (Columbia Records, 1995)
Top of the Pops '99 – Volume 2 (Universal Music TV, 1999)
Top of the Pops 2000 – Volume Two (BBC Music / Universal Music TV, 2000)
Top of the Pops magazine
Top of the Pops magazine has been running since February 1995, and filled the void in the BBC magazine portfolio where Number One magazine used to be. It began much in the mould of Q magazine, then changed its editorial policy to directly compete with popular teen celebrity magazines such as Smash Hits and Big, with free sticker giveaways replacing Brett Anderson covers.
A July 1996 feature on the Spice Girls coined the famous "Spice" nicknames for each member (Baby, Ginger, Posh, Scary and Sporty) that stayed with them throughout their career as a group and beyond.
The BBC announced that the magazine would continue in publication despite the end of the television series, and is still running.
An earlier Top of the Pops magazine appeared briefly in the mid-1970s. Mud drummer Dave Mount sat reading an edition throughout a 1975 appearance on the show.
In popular culture
The Number 6 track of the Kinks' 1970 eighth studio album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One is called "Top of the Pops" and narrates the path to stardom by reaching Number1 in the music charts.
Benny Hill did a parody of Top of the Pops in January 1971 called "Top of the Tops". It featured satires of many music acts at the time as well as impersonations of both Jimmy Savile and Tony Blackburn.
The Scottish punk band the Rezillos lampooned the show in their song "Top of the Pops". The band performed the song on the programme twice when it entered the charts in 1978.
In 1984, British Rail HST power car 43002 was named Top of the Pops, by Jimmy Savile. This followed an edition which was broadcast live on a train, which 43002 was one of the power cars for. The nameplates were removed in 1989.
The Smashie and Nicey 1994 TV special Smashie and Nicey: The End of an Era featured doctored and recreated footage of the two fictional DJs hosting a montage of 1970s editions of Top of the Pops, including a "Black music" edition, which the pair presented in Blackface.
In the opening credits of the Spice Girls' 1997 feature film Spiceworld: The Movie, the girls perform their hit single "Too Much" on a fictional episode of the show. They did also perform it on the show in real life when it became their second Christmas number one in the UK that same year.
A 2001 episode of Tweenies featured a parody of Top of the Pops, complete with Max imitating Jimmy Savile. The episode was unintententionally repeated in January 2013, and received 216 complaints.
Licensing
In May 2006, following a special Red Hot Chili Peppers concert recorded in the car park of BBC Television Centre, Hammersmith and Fulham Council (which governs the area the centre is located) informed the BBC that it lacked the necessary public entertainment license (as required by the Licensing Act 2003). Until the BBC could obtain the license, BBC staff stood-in as audience members for live music programmes.
DVDs
In 2004 there was a DVD released called Top of the Pops 40th Anniversary 1964–2004 DVD. It features live performances, containing one song for each year, except 1966. (Two tracks from 1965 are featured instead). Also included as extras are seven opening titles, most notably the one with the flying coloured LP's from 1981. This title sequence had Phil Lynott's song "Yellow Pearl" as the theme. The 1986 and 1989 titles are also featured, with Paul Hardcastle's hit "The Wizard" as the theme. This DVD was to celebrate 40 years since the show started.
There was also a DVD quiz released in 2007 called The Essential Music Quiz. There was also a DVD in 2001 called Summer 2001, a sister DVD to the album of the same name.
See also
Alright Now
The Old Grey Whistle Test
Ready Steady Go!
Revolver (TV series)
Top of the Box
The Tube (TV series)
References
Further reading
Blacknell, Steve. The Story of Top of the Pops. Wellingborough, Northants: Patrick Stephens, 1985
Gittens, Ian. Top Of The Pops: Mishaps, Miming and Music: True Adventures of TV's No.1 Pop Show. London: BBC, 2007
Seaton, Pete with Richard Down. The Kaleidoscope British Television Music & Variety Guide II: Top Pop: 1964–2006. Dudley: Kaleidoscope Publishing, 2007
Simpson, Jeff. Top of the Pops: 1964–2002: it's still number one, its Top of the Pops! London: BBC, 2002
External links
1964 British television series debuts
British music television shows
1964 in British music
1960s British music television series
1970s British music television series
1980s British music television series
1990s British music television series
2000s British music television series
2010s British music television series
1960s in British music
1970s in British music
1980s in British music
1990s in British music
2000s in British music
2010s in British music
BBC Television shows
CBS original programming
Television series by CBS Studios
Television series by BBC Studios
Lost BBC episodes
Pop music television series
British music chart television shows
English-language television shows
Jimmy Savile
British television series revived after cancellation
Television shows shot at BBC Elstree Centre | 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"
] |
[
"Johnny Unitas",
"Baltimore Colts"
] | C_2ba58216460d43aa986fc0e897537239_1 | When did Johnny get drafted into the Colts? | 1 | When did Johnny get drafted into the Colts? | Johnny Unitas | In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, after being asked at the last minute to join Bloomfield Rams lineman Jim Deglau, a Croatian steel worker with a life much like Unitas', at the latter's scheduled Colts tryout. The pair borrowed money from friends to pay for the gas to make the trip. Deglau later told a reporter after Unitas' death, "[His] uncle told him not to come. [He] was worried that if he came down and the Colts passed on him, it would look bad (to other NFL teams)." The Colts signed Unitas, much to the chagrin of the Cleveland Browns, who had hoped to claim the rejected Steeler quarterback. Unitas made his NFL debut with an inauspicious "mop-up" appearance against Detroit, going 0-2 with one interception. Two weeks later, starting quarterback George Shaw suffered a broken leg against the Chicago Bears. In his first serious action, Unitas' initial pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Then he botched a hand-off on his next play, a fumble recovered by the Bears. Unitas rebounded quickly from that 58-27 loss, leading the Colts to an upset of Green Bay and their first win over Cleveland. He threw nine touchdown passes that year, including one in the season finale that started his record 47-game streak. His 55.6-percent completion mark was a rookie record. In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24) as he helped lead the Colts to a 7-5 record, the first winning record in franchise history. At season's end, Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA). CANNOTANSWER | In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, | John Constantine Unitas (; May 7, 1933 – September 11, 2002) was an American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 18 seasons, primarily with the Baltimore Colts. Following a career that spanned from 1956 to 1973, he has been consistently listed as one of the greatest NFL players of all time.
Unitas set many NFL records and was named Most Valuable Player three times in 1959, 1964, and 1967, in addition to receiving 10 Pro Bowl and five first-team All-Pro honors. He helped lead the Colts to four championship titles; three pre-merger era in 1958, 1959, 1968, and one Super Bowl era in Super Bowl V. His first championship victory is regarded as one of the league's greatest games and credited with helping popularize the NFL. Between 1956 and 1960, he set the record for most consecutive games with a touchdown pass at 47, which held for 52 years.
Nicknamed "Johnny U" and the "Golden Arm", Unitas was considered the prototype of the modern era marquee quarterback. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.
Early life
John Constantine Unitas was born in Pittsburgh in 1933 to Francis J. Unitas and Helen Superfisky, both of Lithuanian descent; he grew up in the Mount Washington neighborhood in a Roman Catholic upbringing. When Unitas was five years old, his father died of cardiovascular renal disease complicated by pneumonia, leaving the young boy to be raised by his mother, who worked two jobs to support the family. His surname was a result of a phonetic transliteration of a common Lithuanian last name Jonaitis. Attending St. Justin's High School in Pittsburgh, Unitas played halfback and quarterback.
College career
In his younger years, Unitas dreamed about being part of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team, but when he tried out for the team, coach Frank Leahy said that he was just too skinny and he would "get murdered" if he was put on the field.
Instead, he attended the University of Louisville. In his four-year career as a Louisville Cardinal, Unitas completed 245 passes for 3,139 yards and 27 touchdowns. Reportedly, the Unitas weighed on his first day of practice. His first start was in the fifth game of the 1951 season against St. Bonaventure, where he threw 11 consecutive passes and three touchdowns to give the Cardinals a 21–19 lead. Louisville ended up losing the game 22–21 on a disputed field goal, but found a new starting quarterback. Unitas completed 12 of 19 passes for 240 yards and four touchdowns in a 35–28 victory over Houston. The team finished the season 5–5 overall and 4–1 with Unitas starting. He completed 46 of 99 passes for 602 yards and nine touchdowns (44).
By the 1952 season, the university decided to de-emphasize sports. The new president at Louisville, Dr. Philip Grant Davidson, reduced the amount of athletic aid, and tightened academic standards for athletes. As a result, 15 returning players could not meet the new standards and lost their scholarships. Unitas maintained his by taking on a new elective: square dancing. In 1952, coach Frank Camp switched the team to two-way football. Unitas not only played safety or linebacker on defense and quarterback on offense, but also returned kicks and punts on special teams. The Cardinals won their first game against Wayne State, and then Florida State in the second game. Unitas completed 16 of 21 passes for 198 yards and three touchdowns. It was said that Unitas put on such a show at the Florida State game that he threw a pass under his legs for 15 yards. The rest of the season was a struggle for the Cardinals, who finished 3–5. Unitas completed 106 of 198 passes for 1,540 yards and 12 touchdowns.
The team won their first game in 1953, against Murray State, and lost the rest for a record of 1–7. One of the most memorable games of the season came in a 59–6 loss against Tennessee. Unitas completed 9 out of 19 passes for 73 yards, rushed 9 times for 52 yards, returned six kickoffs for 85 yards, one punt for three yards, and had 86 percent of the team's tackles. The only touchdown the team scored was in the fourth quarter when Unitas made a fake pitch to the running back and ran the ball 23 yards for a touchdown. Unitas was hurt later in the fourth quarter while trying to run the ball. On his way off the field, he received a standing ovation. When he got to the locker room he was so tired that his jersey and shoulder pads had to be cut off because he could not lift his arms. Louisville ended the season with a 20–13 loss to Eastern Kentucky. Unitas completed 49 of 95 passes for 470 yards and three touchdowns.
Unitas was elected captain for the 1954 season, but due to an early injury did not see much playing time. His first start was the third game of the season, against Florida State. Of the 34-man team, 21 were freshmen. The 1954 Cardinals went 3–6, with their last win at home against Morehead State. Unitas was slowed by so many injuries his senior year his 527 passing yards ended second to Jim Houser's 560.
Professional career
Pittsburgh Steelers
After his collegiate career, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL drafted Unitas in the ninth round. However, he was released before the season began as the odd man out among four quarterbacks trying to fill three spots. Steelers' head coach Walt Kiesling had made up his mind about Unitas; he thought he was not smart enough to quarterback an NFL team, and he was not given any snaps in practice with the Steelers. Among those edging out Unitas was Ted Marchibroda, future longtime NFL head coach. Out of pro football, Unitas—by this time married—worked in construction in Pittsburgh to support his family. On the weekends, he played quarterback, safety and punter on a local semi-professional team called the Bloomfield Rams for $6 a game.
Baltimore Colts
In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, after being asked at the last minute to join Bloomfield Rams lineman Jim Deglau, a Croatian steelworker with a life much like Unitas, at the latter's scheduled Colts tryout. The pair borrowed money from friends to pay for the gas to make the trip. Deglau later told a reporter after Unitas's death, "[His] uncle told him not to come. [He] was worried that if he came down and the Colts passed on him, it would look bad (to other NFL teams)." The Colts signed Unitas, much to the chagrin of the Cleveland Browns, who had hoped to claim the former Steeler quarterback.
Unitas made his NFL debut with an inauspicious "mop-up" appearance against Detroit, going 0–2 with one interception. Two weeks later, starting quarterback George Shaw suffered a broken leg against the Chicago Bears. In his first serious action, Unitas's initial pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Then he botched a hand-off on his next play, a fumble recovered by the Bears. Unitas rebounded quickly from that 58–27 loss, leading the Colts to an upset of Green Bay and their first win over Cleveland. He threw nine touchdown passes that year, including one in the season finale that started his record 47-game streak. His 55.6-percent completion mark was a rookie record.
In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24) as he helped lead the Colts to a 7–5 record, the first winning record in franchise history. At season's end, Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA).
1958: "The Greatest Game Ever Played"
Unitas continued his prowess in 1958 passing for 2,007 yards and 19 touchdowns as the Colts won the Western Conference title. The Colts won the NFL championship under his leadership on December 28, 1958, by defeating the New York Giants 23–17 in sudden death overtime on a touchdown by fullback Alan Ameche. It was the first overtime game in NFL history, and is often referred to as the "greatest game ever played". The game, nationally televised by NBC, has been credited for sparking the rise in popularity of professional football during the 1960s.
1959 MVP season
In 1959, Unitas was named the NFL's MVP by the Associated Press (AP) for the first time, as well as United Press International's player of the year, after leading the NFL in passing yards (2,899), touchdown passes (32), and completions (193). He then led the Colts to a repeat championship, beating the Giants again 31–16 in the title game.
Beginning of the 1960s
As the 1960s began, the Colts' fortunes (and win totals) declined. Injuries to key players such as Alan Ameche, Raymond Berry, and Lenny Moore were a contributing factor. Unitas's streak of 47 straight games with at least one touchdown pass ended against the Los Angeles Rams in week 11 of the 1960 season. In spite of this, he topped the 3,000-yard passing mark for the first time and led the league in touchdown passes for the fourth consecutive season.
After three middle-of-the-pack seasons, Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom fired Weeb Ewbank and replaced him with Don Shula, who at the time was the youngest head coach in NFL history (33 years of age when he was hired). The Colts finished 8–6 in Shula's first season at the helm, good enough for only third place in the NFL's Western Conference, but they did end the season on a strong note by winning their final three games. The season was very successful for Unitas personally, as he led the NFL in passing yards with a career-best total of 3,481 and also led in completions with 237.
1964 MVP season
In the 1964 season the Colts returned to the top of the Western Conference. After dropping their season opener to the Minnesota Vikings, the Colts ran off 10 straight victories to finish with a 12–2 record. The season was one of Unitas's best as he finished with 2,824 yards passing, a league-best 9.26 yards per pass attempt, 19 touchdown passes and only 6 interceptions. He was named the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the AP and UPI for a second time. However, the season ended on a disappointing note for the Colts as they were upset by the Cleveland Browns in the 1964 NFL Championship Game, losing 27–0.
Unitas resumed his torrid passing in 1965, throwing for 2,530 yards, 23 touchdowns and finishing with a league-high and career-best 97.1 passer rating. But he was lost for the balance of the season due to a knee injury in a week 12 loss to the Bears. Backup quarterback Gary Cuozzo also suffered a season-ending injury the following week, and running back Tom Matte filled in as the emergency quarterback for the regular season finale and in a playoff loss to the Packers. The Colts and Packers finished in a tie for first place in the Western Conference and a one-game playoff was played in Green Bay to decide who would be the conference representative in the 1965 NFL Championship Game. The Colts lost in overtime 13–10 due in large part to a game-tying field goal by Don Chandler that many say was incorrectly ruled good.
Unitas, healthy once more, threw for 2,748 yards and 22 touchdowns in 1966 in a return to Pro Bowl form. However, he posted a league-high 24 interceptions.
1967 MVP season
After once again finishing second in the Western Conference in 1966, the Colts rebounded to finish 11–1–2 in 1967 tying the Los Angeles Rams for the NFL's best record. In winning his third MVP award from the AP and UPI in 1967 (and his second from the NEA), Unitas had a league-high 58.5 completion percentage and passed for 3,428 yards and 20 touchdowns. He openly complained about having tennis elbow and he threw eight interceptions and only three touchdown passes in the final five games. Once again, the season ended in loss for the Colts, as they were shut out of the newly instituted four-team NFL playoff after losing the divisional tiebreaker to the Rams, a 34–10 rout in the regular season finale.
Super Bowls and final Colt years
In the final game of the 1968 preseason, the muscles in Unitas's arm were torn when he was hit by a member of the Dallas Cowboys defense. Unitas wrote in his autobiography that he felt his arm was initially injured by the use of the "night ball" that the NFL was testing for better TV visibility during night games. In a post-game interview the previous year, he noted having constant pain in his elbow for several years prior. He would spend most of the season sitting on the bench. The Colts still marched to a league-best 13–1 record behind backup quarterback and ultimate 1968 NFL MVP Earl Morrall. Although he was injured through most of the season, Unitas came off the bench to play in Super Bowl III, the famous game where Joe Namath guaranteed a New York Jets win despite conventional wisdom. Unitas's insertion was a desperation move in an attempt to retrieve dominance of the NFL over the upstart AFL. Although the Colts won an NFL Championship in 1968, they lost the Super Bowl to the AFL Champion New York Jets, thus becoming the first-ever NFL champions that were not also deemed world champions. Unitas helped put together the Colts' only score, a touchdown late in the game. Unitas also drove the Colts into scoring position following the touchdown and successful onside kick, but head coach Don Shula eschewed a field goal attempt, which (if successful) would have cut the Jets' lead to 16–10. Despite not playing until late in the third quarter, he still finished the game with more passing yards than the team's starter, Earl Morrall.
After an off-season of rehabilitation on his elbow, Unitas rebounded in 1969, passing for 2,342 yards and 12 touchdowns with 20 interceptions. But the Colts finished with a disappointing 8–5–1 record, and missed the playoffs.
In 1970, the NFL and AFL had merged into one league, and the Colts moved to the new American Football Conference, along with the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers. He threw for 2,213 yards and 14 touchdowns while leading the Colts to an 11–2–1 season. In their first rematch with the Jets, Unitas and Namath threw a combined nine interceptions in a 29–22 Colts win. Namath threw 62 passes and broke his hand on the final play of the game, ending his season.
Unitas threw for 390 yards, three touchdowns, and no interceptions in AFC playoff victories over the Cincinnati Bengals and the Oakland Raiders. In Super Bowl V against the Dallas Cowboys, he was knocked out of the game with a rib injury in the second quarter, soon after throwing a 75-yard touchdown pass (setting a then-Super Bowl record) to John Mackey. However, he had also tossed two interceptions before his departure from the game. Earl Morrall came in to lead the team to a last-second, 16–13 victory.
In 1971, Unitas split playing time with Morrall, throwing only three touchdown passes. He started both playoff games, a win over the Cleveland Browns that sent the Colts to the AFC Championship game against the Miami Dolphins, which they lost by a score of 21–0. Unitas threw three interceptions in the game, one of which was returned for a touchdown by safety Dick Anderson.
The 1972 season saw the Colts declining. After losing the season opener, Unitas was involved in the second and final regular season head-to-head meeting with "Broadway" Joe Namath. The first was in 1970 (won by the Colts, 29–22). The last meeting took place on September 24, 1972 at Memorial Stadium. He threw for 376 yards and three touchdowns, but Namath upstaged him again, bombing the Colts for 496 yards and six touchdowns in a 44–34 Jets victory – their first over Baltimore since the 1970 merger. After losing four of their first five games, the Colts fired head coach Don McCafferty, and benched Unitas.
One of the more memorable moments in football history came on Unitas's last game in a Colts uniform at Memorial Stadium, in a game against the Buffalo Bills. He was not the starter for this game, but the Colts were blowing the Bills out by a score of 28–0 behind Marty Domres; Unitas entered the game due to the fans chanting, "We want Unitas!!!", and a plan devised by head coach John Sandusky to convince Unitas that the starting quarterback was injured. Unitas came onto the field, and threw two passes, one of which was a long touchdown to wide receiver Eddie Hinton which would be his last pass as a Colt. The Colts won the game by the score of 35–7.
San Diego, retirement, and records
Unitas was traded from the Colts to the San Diego Chargers on January 20, 1973, in a transaction that originally had future considerations returning to Baltimore. The deal's only obstacle was the personal services contract he had signed with the Colts in 1970 which would've kept him employed within the organization on an annual salary of $30,000 over ten years once his career as an active player ended. The pact had been signed when the ballclub was owned by Carroll Rosenbloom who subsequently acquired the Los Angeles Rams on July 13, 1972, in a franchise swap with Robert Irsay. The deal was completed when the Chargers purchased that contract. Eager to sever all ties with the Colts, Unitas signed a new two-year contract with the Chargers on June 8, 1973. He succeeded John Hadl who had requested and was granted a trade to the Rams.
Unitas started the season with a 38–0 loss to the Washington Redskins. He threw for just 55 yards and 3 interceptions, and was sacked 8 times. His final victory as a starter came against the Buffalo Bills in week two. Unitas was 10–18 for 175 yards, two touchdown passes, and no interceptions in a 34–7 Chargers rout. Many were questioning his role as a starter after a loss to the Bengals in week three. Two weeks later, he threw two first-half interceptions, passed for only 19 yards, and went 2-for-9 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was then replaced by rookie quarterback, future Hall of Famer Dan Fouts. After having posted a 1–3 record as a starter, Unitas retired in the preseason of 1974.
Unitas finished his 18 NFL seasons with 2,830 completions in 5,186 attempts for 40,239 yards and 290 touchdowns, with 253 interceptions. He also rushed for 1,777 yards and 13 touchdowns. Plagued by arm trouble in his later seasons, he threw more interceptions (64) than touchdowns (38) in 1968–1973. After averaging 215.8 yards per game in his first 12 seasons, his production fell to 124.4 in his final six. His passer rating plummeted from 82.9 to 60.4 for the same periods. Even so, Unitas set many passing records during his career. He was the first quarterback to throw for more than 40,000 yards, despite playing during an era when NFL teams played shorter seasons of 12 or 14 games (as opposed to today's 17-game seasons) and prior to modern passing-friendly rules implemented in 1978. His 32 touchdown passes in 1959 were a record at the time, making Unitas the first quarterback to hit the 30 touchdown mark in a season. His 47-game consecutive touchdown streak between 1956 and 1960 was a record considered by many to be unbreakable. The streak stood for 52 years before being broken by New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees in a game against the San Diego Chargers on October 7, 2012.
Post-playing days
After his playing days were finished, Unitas settled in Baltimore where he raised his family while also pursuing a career in broadcasting, doing color commentary for NFL games on CBS in the 1970s. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979. After Robert Irsay moved the Colts franchise to Indianapolis in 1984, a move known to this day in Baltimore as "Bob Irsay's Midnight Ride," he was so outraged that he cut all ties to the relocated team (though his No. 19 jersey is still retired by the Colts), declaring himself strictly a Baltimore Colt for the remainder of his life. Some other prominent old-time Colts followed his lead, although many attended the 1975 team's reunion at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in 2009. A total of 39 Colts players from that 1975 team attended said reunion in Indianapolis, including Bert Jones and Lydell Mitchell. Unitas asked the Pro Football Hall of Fame on numerous occasions (including on Roy Firestone's Up Close) to remove his display unless it was listed as belonging to the Baltimore Colts. The Hall of Fame has never complied with the request. Unitas donated his Colts memorabilia to the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore; they are now on display in the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards.
Unitas was inducted into the American Football Association's Semi Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987.
Unitas actively lobbied for another NFL team to come to Baltimore. After the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996 and changed their name to the Ravens, he and some of the other old-time Colts attended the Ravens' first game ever against the Raiders on Opening Day at Memorial Stadium. He was frequently seen on the Ravens' sidelines at home games (most prominently in 1998 when the now-Indianapolis Colts played the Ravens in Baltimore) and received a thunderous ovation every time he was pictured on each of the huge widescreens at M&T Bank Stadium. He was often seen on the 30-yard line on the Ravens side. When the NFL celebrated its first 50 years, Unitas was voted the league's best player. Retired Bears quarterback Sid Luckman said of Unitas, "He was better than me, better than Sammy Baugh, better than anyone."
Unitas lived most of the final years of his life severely hobbled. Due to an elbow injury suffered during his playing career, he had only very limited use of his right hand, and could not perform any physical activity more strenuous than golf due to his artificial knees.
NFL career statistics
Source:
In 1957, Unitas was named MVP by the Newspaper Enterprise Association.
Personal life
At the age of 21 on November 20, 1954, Unitas married his high school sweetheart Dorothy Hoelle; they lived in Towson and had five children before divorcing. Unitas's second wife was Sandra Lemon, whom he married on June 26, 1972; they had three children, lived in Baldwin, and remained married until his death.
Towson University, where Unitas was a major fund-raiser and which his children attended, named its football and lacrosse complex Johnny Unitas Stadium in recognition of both his football career and service to the university.
Toward the end of his life, Unitas brought media attention to the many permanent physical disabilities that he and his fellow players suffered during their careers before heavy padding and other safety features became popular. Unitas himself lost almost total use of his right hand, with the middle finger and thumb noticeably disfigured from being repeatedly broken during games.
On September 11, 2002, Unitas died from a heart attack while working out at the Kernan Physical Therapy Center (now The University of Maryland Rehabilitation & Orthopaedic Institute) in Baltimore. His funeral was held at Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore, Maryland. Between his death and October 4, 2002, 56,934 people signed an online petition urging the Baltimore Ravens to rename the Ravens' home stadium (owned by the State of Maryland) after Unitas. These requests were unsuccessful since the lucrative naming rights had already been leased by the Ravens to Buffalo-based M&T Bank. However, on October 20, 2002, the Ravens dedicated the front area of the stadium's main entrance as Unitas Plaza and unveiled a statue of Unitas as the centerpiece of the plaza.
Unitas is buried at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium, Maryland.
Legacy
Unitas held the record for most Pro Bowl appearances (10) by a quarterback until Brett Favre broke his record in 2009.
Unitas set the original standard for most wins as a starting quarterback with 118 regular season victories (since surpassed by multiple quarterbacks).
Unitas was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.
Unitas is 11th in all-time number of regular season games won by an NFL starting quarterback with 118 wins.
Unitas is 16th in all-time percentage of regular season games won by an NFL starting quarterback with a percentage of 64.5.
1987 American Football Association Semi Pro Hall of Fame
Unitas's no. 16 is the first number retired by the football program at the University of Louisville.
Unitas Tower, a dormitory at the University of Louisville, is named for Johnny Unitas.
A statue of Unitas sits in the north end zone of Cardinal Stadium at the University of Louisville. It is a tradition for each Cardinal player to touch the statue as he enters the field.
Since 1987, the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award has been awarded to the top senior quarterback of the current year in college football. The award is presented annually in Louisville.
In 1999, he was ranked No. 5 on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Football Players, behind only Joe Montana among quarterbacks.
In 2004, The Sporting News ranked Unitas No. 1 among the NFL's 50 Greatest Quarterbacks, with Joe Montana at No. 2.
In 1999, ESPN's Sportscentury: 50 Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century ranked Unitas No. 32.
Just before his death, Johnny Unitas became the community liaison for athletics in Towson, Maryland. The football stadium at Towson University was renamed Johnny Unitas Stadium in 2002. Unitas died less than a week after throwing his last pass in the grand opening of the stadium.
Set the record for consecutive games with at least one touchdown pass at 47 games. This record was surpassed by Drew Brees in 2012.
Set the record for consecutive games with at least two touchdown passes at 12 games. This record was surpassed by Don Meredith, Peyton Manning (twice), Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Philip Rivers, and Patrick Mahomes.
Set the record for most consecutive games with at least a 120 passer rating (4); this record was later matched by Kurt Warner
For the game following his death, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning asked to wear a pair of black cleats as a tribute to Johnny's signature black boots. The league denied his request and threatened Manning with a US$25,000 fine; Manning decided not to wear them. Despite the threatened fine, Chris Redman, a Louisville alum like Unitas, and then quarterback of the Baltimore Ravens, decided to pay homage by wearing the signature cleats during a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In 2013, a movie project was announced by The Baltimore Sun called Unitas We Stand, which will feature Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco as Unitas during the 1958 NFL Championship.
19th Street in Ocean City, Maryland is named "Johnny Unitas Way" in his honor.
Johnny Unitas Stadium on the campus of Towson University in Towson, Maryland, home of the Towson Tigers football and Towson Tigers men's lacrosse teams is named in his honor.
Unitas was posthumously inducted into the National Lithuanian American Hall of Fame on August 24, 2013.
See also
List of most consecutive starts by a National Football League quarterback
Most wins by a starting quarterback (NFL)
Notes
References
Sources
Bolus, Jim, and Billy Reed. Cardinal Football. Champaign, IL: Sports Pub Inc., 1999.
Callahan, Tom. Johnny U: the life and times of John Unitas. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006.
Lazenby, Roland. Johnny Unitas: the best there ever was. Chicago: Triumph Books, 2002.
Schaap, Dick (1999). "Johnny Unitas: Sunday's Best". In ESPN SportsCentury. Michael MacCambridge, Editor. New York: ESPN-Hyperion Books. pp. 154–65.
Cavanaugh, Jack (2008), Giants Among Men. New York:Random House.
MacCambridge, Michael (2005), America's Game. New York:Anchor Books.
External links
1933 births
2002 deaths
American football quarterbacks
American people of Lithuanian descent
Baltimore Colts players
Burials at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens
Catholics from Maryland
Catholics from Pennsylvania
Louisville Cardinals football players
National Football League announcers
National Football League Most Valuable Player Award winners
National Football League players with retired numbers
People from Timonium, Maryland
People from Towson, Maryland
Pittsburgh Steelers players
Players of American football from Baltimore
Players of American football from Pittsburgh
Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees
San Diego Chargers players
Sportspeople from Baltimore County, Maryland
Western Conference Pro Bowl players | true | [
"Steve Myhra (April 2, 1934 – August 4, 1994) was a professional American football player who played offensive line and placekicker for six seasons for the Baltimore Colts.\n\nFootball career\n\nAfter playing at the University of North Dakota, Myhra was drafted in the 12th round of the 1956 NFL Draft by the Colts as an offensive guard and linebacker. In 1957, Myhra became the Colts' placekicker, and was successful on 88% of his extra point attempts (14 of 16) and 4 of 6 on field goals. The next season, Myhra was only 4 for 10 on field goal attempts, which many have speculated may be why Johnny Unitas and the Colts went for the touchdown in overtime of the championship game rather than line up for a game-winning field goal attempt.\n\nMyhra is known for kicking the game-tying field goal for the Baltimore Colts with seven seconds to go in the fourth quarter of the 1958 NFL Championship Game. His field goal pushed the game into overtime, marking the first occasion in professional football history that any game had moved into an extra period. The game was eventually won by the Colts on a touchdown by Alan Ameche, and has since become referred to as \"The Greatest Game Ever Played\".\n\nMyhra kicked for the Colts for three more seasons. He finished 180 for 189 on extra points, and 41 for 91 on field goal attempts.\n\nPersonal\nMyhra died of a heart attack in 1994 at age 60.\n\nReferences\n\n1934 births\n1994 deaths\nPeople from Wahpeton, North Dakota\nPeople from Richland County, North Dakota\nPlayers of American football from North Dakota\nAmerican football offensive linemen\nAmerican football placekickers\nNorth Dakota Fighting Hawks football players\nBaltimore Colts players",
"The Baltimore Colts season was the fifteenth season for the team in the National Football League. They finished the regular season with a record of 11 wins, 1 loss, and 2 ties, the same record in the Western Conference's Coastal division with the Los Angeles Rams, who defeated them in the regular season finale; the two had tied in mid-October. The Colts lost the new tiebreaker (point differential in head-to-head games) and thus did not make the playoffs, which included only the four division winners.\n\nThe Colts' official winning percentage of (based on the NFL's non-counting of ties for such purposes prior to ) is the best in North American professional sports history for a non-playoff-qualifying team. It is also remarkable that the Colts entered the final game undefeated and yet did not qualify for the playoffs.\n\nPersonnel\n\nStaff/Coaches\n\nRoster\n\nRegular season\n\nSchedule\n\n1967\n\nNote: Intra-division opponents are in bold text.\n\nGame summaries\n\nWeek 14\n\nStandings\n\nAwards and honors \n Johnny Unitas, Bert Bell Award\n\nReferences\n\nSee also \n History of the Indianapolis Colts\n Indianapolis Colts seasons\n\nBaltimore Colts\n1967\nBaltimore Colts"
] |
[
"Johnny Unitas",
"Baltimore Colts",
"When did Johnny get drafted into the Colts?",
"In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank,"
] | C_2ba58216460d43aa986fc0e897537239_1 | Did he do well? | 2 | Did Johnny do well with the Baltimore Colts ? | Johnny Unitas | In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, after being asked at the last minute to join Bloomfield Rams lineman Jim Deglau, a Croatian steel worker with a life much like Unitas', at the latter's scheduled Colts tryout. The pair borrowed money from friends to pay for the gas to make the trip. Deglau later told a reporter after Unitas' death, "[His] uncle told him not to come. [He] was worried that if he came down and the Colts passed on him, it would look bad (to other NFL teams)." The Colts signed Unitas, much to the chagrin of the Cleveland Browns, who had hoped to claim the rejected Steeler quarterback. Unitas made his NFL debut with an inauspicious "mop-up" appearance against Detroit, going 0-2 with one interception. Two weeks later, starting quarterback George Shaw suffered a broken leg against the Chicago Bears. In his first serious action, Unitas' initial pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Then he botched a hand-off on his next play, a fumble recovered by the Bears. Unitas rebounded quickly from that 58-27 loss, leading the Colts to an upset of Green Bay and their first win over Cleveland. He threw nine touchdown passes that year, including one in the season finale that started his record 47-game streak. His 55.6-percent completion mark was a rookie record. In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24) as he helped lead the Colts to a 7-5 record, the first winning record in franchise history. At season's end, Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA). CANNOTANSWER | In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24) | John Constantine Unitas (; May 7, 1933 – September 11, 2002) was an American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 18 seasons, primarily with the Baltimore Colts. Following a career that spanned from 1956 to 1973, he has been consistently listed as one of the greatest NFL players of all time.
Unitas set many NFL records and was named Most Valuable Player three times in 1959, 1964, and 1967, in addition to receiving 10 Pro Bowl and five first-team All-Pro honors. He helped lead the Colts to four championship titles; three pre-merger era in 1958, 1959, 1968, and one Super Bowl era in Super Bowl V. His first championship victory is regarded as one of the league's greatest games and credited with helping popularize the NFL. Between 1956 and 1960, he set the record for most consecutive games with a touchdown pass at 47, which held for 52 years.
Nicknamed "Johnny U" and the "Golden Arm", Unitas was considered the prototype of the modern era marquee quarterback. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.
Early life
John Constantine Unitas was born in Pittsburgh in 1933 to Francis J. Unitas and Helen Superfisky, both of Lithuanian descent; he grew up in the Mount Washington neighborhood in a Roman Catholic upbringing. When Unitas was five years old, his father died of cardiovascular renal disease complicated by pneumonia, leaving the young boy to be raised by his mother, who worked two jobs to support the family. His surname was a result of a phonetic transliteration of a common Lithuanian last name Jonaitis. Attending St. Justin's High School in Pittsburgh, Unitas played halfback and quarterback.
College career
In his younger years, Unitas dreamed about being part of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team, but when he tried out for the team, coach Frank Leahy said that he was just too skinny and he would "get murdered" if he was put on the field.
Instead, he attended the University of Louisville. In his four-year career as a Louisville Cardinal, Unitas completed 245 passes for 3,139 yards and 27 touchdowns. Reportedly, the Unitas weighed on his first day of practice. His first start was in the fifth game of the 1951 season against St. Bonaventure, where he threw 11 consecutive passes and three touchdowns to give the Cardinals a 21–19 lead. Louisville ended up losing the game 22–21 on a disputed field goal, but found a new starting quarterback. Unitas completed 12 of 19 passes for 240 yards and four touchdowns in a 35–28 victory over Houston. The team finished the season 5–5 overall and 4–1 with Unitas starting. He completed 46 of 99 passes for 602 yards and nine touchdowns (44).
By the 1952 season, the university decided to de-emphasize sports. The new president at Louisville, Dr. Philip Grant Davidson, reduced the amount of athletic aid, and tightened academic standards for athletes. As a result, 15 returning players could not meet the new standards and lost their scholarships. Unitas maintained his by taking on a new elective: square dancing. In 1952, coach Frank Camp switched the team to two-way football. Unitas not only played safety or linebacker on defense and quarterback on offense, but also returned kicks and punts on special teams. The Cardinals won their first game against Wayne State, and then Florida State in the second game. Unitas completed 16 of 21 passes for 198 yards and three touchdowns. It was said that Unitas put on such a show at the Florida State game that he threw a pass under his legs for 15 yards. The rest of the season was a struggle for the Cardinals, who finished 3–5. Unitas completed 106 of 198 passes for 1,540 yards and 12 touchdowns.
The team won their first game in 1953, against Murray State, and lost the rest for a record of 1–7. One of the most memorable games of the season came in a 59–6 loss against Tennessee. Unitas completed 9 out of 19 passes for 73 yards, rushed 9 times for 52 yards, returned six kickoffs for 85 yards, one punt for three yards, and had 86 percent of the team's tackles. The only touchdown the team scored was in the fourth quarter when Unitas made a fake pitch to the running back and ran the ball 23 yards for a touchdown. Unitas was hurt later in the fourth quarter while trying to run the ball. On his way off the field, he received a standing ovation. When he got to the locker room he was so tired that his jersey and shoulder pads had to be cut off because he could not lift his arms. Louisville ended the season with a 20–13 loss to Eastern Kentucky. Unitas completed 49 of 95 passes for 470 yards and three touchdowns.
Unitas was elected captain for the 1954 season, but due to an early injury did not see much playing time. His first start was the third game of the season, against Florida State. Of the 34-man team, 21 were freshmen. The 1954 Cardinals went 3–6, with their last win at home against Morehead State. Unitas was slowed by so many injuries his senior year his 527 passing yards ended second to Jim Houser's 560.
Professional career
Pittsburgh Steelers
After his collegiate career, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL drafted Unitas in the ninth round. However, he was released before the season began as the odd man out among four quarterbacks trying to fill three spots. Steelers' head coach Walt Kiesling had made up his mind about Unitas; he thought he was not smart enough to quarterback an NFL team, and he was not given any snaps in practice with the Steelers. Among those edging out Unitas was Ted Marchibroda, future longtime NFL head coach. Out of pro football, Unitas—by this time married—worked in construction in Pittsburgh to support his family. On the weekends, he played quarterback, safety and punter on a local semi-professional team called the Bloomfield Rams for $6 a game.
Baltimore Colts
In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, after being asked at the last minute to join Bloomfield Rams lineman Jim Deglau, a Croatian steelworker with a life much like Unitas, at the latter's scheduled Colts tryout. The pair borrowed money from friends to pay for the gas to make the trip. Deglau later told a reporter after Unitas's death, "[His] uncle told him not to come. [He] was worried that if he came down and the Colts passed on him, it would look bad (to other NFL teams)." The Colts signed Unitas, much to the chagrin of the Cleveland Browns, who had hoped to claim the former Steeler quarterback.
Unitas made his NFL debut with an inauspicious "mop-up" appearance against Detroit, going 0–2 with one interception. Two weeks later, starting quarterback George Shaw suffered a broken leg against the Chicago Bears. In his first serious action, Unitas's initial pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Then he botched a hand-off on his next play, a fumble recovered by the Bears. Unitas rebounded quickly from that 58–27 loss, leading the Colts to an upset of Green Bay and their first win over Cleveland. He threw nine touchdown passes that year, including one in the season finale that started his record 47-game streak. His 55.6-percent completion mark was a rookie record.
In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24) as he helped lead the Colts to a 7–5 record, the first winning record in franchise history. At season's end, Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA).
1958: "The Greatest Game Ever Played"
Unitas continued his prowess in 1958 passing for 2,007 yards and 19 touchdowns as the Colts won the Western Conference title. The Colts won the NFL championship under his leadership on December 28, 1958, by defeating the New York Giants 23–17 in sudden death overtime on a touchdown by fullback Alan Ameche. It was the first overtime game in NFL history, and is often referred to as the "greatest game ever played". The game, nationally televised by NBC, has been credited for sparking the rise in popularity of professional football during the 1960s.
1959 MVP season
In 1959, Unitas was named the NFL's MVP by the Associated Press (AP) for the first time, as well as United Press International's player of the year, after leading the NFL in passing yards (2,899), touchdown passes (32), and completions (193). He then led the Colts to a repeat championship, beating the Giants again 31–16 in the title game.
Beginning of the 1960s
As the 1960s began, the Colts' fortunes (and win totals) declined. Injuries to key players such as Alan Ameche, Raymond Berry, and Lenny Moore were a contributing factor. Unitas's streak of 47 straight games with at least one touchdown pass ended against the Los Angeles Rams in week 11 of the 1960 season. In spite of this, he topped the 3,000-yard passing mark for the first time and led the league in touchdown passes for the fourth consecutive season.
After three middle-of-the-pack seasons, Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom fired Weeb Ewbank and replaced him with Don Shula, who at the time was the youngest head coach in NFL history (33 years of age when he was hired). The Colts finished 8–6 in Shula's first season at the helm, good enough for only third place in the NFL's Western Conference, but they did end the season on a strong note by winning their final three games. The season was very successful for Unitas personally, as he led the NFL in passing yards with a career-best total of 3,481 and also led in completions with 237.
1964 MVP season
In the 1964 season the Colts returned to the top of the Western Conference. After dropping their season opener to the Minnesota Vikings, the Colts ran off 10 straight victories to finish with a 12–2 record. The season was one of Unitas's best as he finished with 2,824 yards passing, a league-best 9.26 yards per pass attempt, 19 touchdown passes and only 6 interceptions. He was named the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the AP and UPI for a second time. However, the season ended on a disappointing note for the Colts as they were upset by the Cleveland Browns in the 1964 NFL Championship Game, losing 27–0.
Unitas resumed his torrid passing in 1965, throwing for 2,530 yards, 23 touchdowns and finishing with a league-high and career-best 97.1 passer rating. But he was lost for the balance of the season due to a knee injury in a week 12 loss to the Bears. Backup quarterback Gary Cuozzo also suffered a season-ending injury the following week, and running back Tom Matte filled in as the emergency quarterback for the regular season finale and in a playoff loss to the Packers. The Colts and Packers finished in a tie for first place in the Western Conference and a one-game playoff was played in Green Bay to decide who would be the conference representative in the 1965 NFL Championship Game. The Colts lost in overtime 13–10 due in large part to a game-tying field goal by Don Chandler that many say was incorrectly ruled good.
Unitas, healthy once more, threw for 2,748 yards and 22 touchdowns in 1966 in a return to Pro Bowl form. However, he posted a league-high 24 interceptions.
1967 MVP season
After once again finishing second in the Western Conference in 1966, the Colts rebounded to finish 11–1–2 in 1967 tying the Los Angeles Rams for the NFL's best record. In winning his third MVP award from the AP and UPI in 1967 (and his second from the NEA), Unitas had a league-high 58.5 completion percentage and passed for 3,428 yards and 20 touchdowns. He openly complained about having tennis elbow and he threw eight interceptions and only three touchdown passes in the final five games. Once again, the season ended in loss for the Colts, as they were shut out of the newly instituted four-team NFL playoff after losing the divisional tiebreaker to the Rams, a 34–10 rout in the regular season finale.
Super Bowls and final Colt years
In the final game of the 1968 preseason, the muscles in Unitas's arm were torn when he was hit by a member of the Dallas Cowboys defense. Unitas wrote in his autobiography that he felt his arm was initially injured by the use of the "night ball" that the NFL was testing for better TV visibility during night games. In a post-game interview the previous year, he noted having constant pain in his elbow for several years prior. He would spend most of the season sitting on the bench. The Colts still marched to a league-best 13–1 record behind backup quarterback and ultimate 1968 NFL MVP Earl Morrall. Although he was injured through most of the season, Unitas came off the bench to play in Super Bowl III, the famous game where Joe Namath guaranteed a New York Jets win despite conventional wisdom. Unitas's insertion was a desperation move in an attempt to retrieve dominance of the NFL over the upstart AFL. Although the Colts won an NFL Championship in 1968, they lost the Super Bowl to the AFL Champion New York Jets, thus becoming the first-ever NFL champions that were not also deemed world champions. Unitas helped put together the Colts' only score, a touchdown late in the game. Unitas also drove the Colts into scoring position following the touchdown and successful onside kick, but head coach Don Shula eschewed a field goal attempt, which (if successful) would have cut the Jets' lead to 16–10. Despite not playing until late in the third quarter, he still finished the game with more passing yards than the team's starter, Earl Morrall.
After an off-season of rehabilitation on his elbow, Unitas rebounded in 1969, passing for 2,342 yards and 12 touchdowns with 20 interceptions. But the Colts finished with a disappointing 8–5–1 record, and missed the playoffs.
In 1970, the NFL and AFL had merged into one league, and the Colts moved to the new American Football Conference, along with the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers. He threw for 2,213 yards and 14 touchdowns while leading the Colts to an 11–2–1 season. In their first rematch with the Jets, Unitas and Namath threw a combined nine interceptions in a 29–22 Colts win. Namath threw 62 passes and broke his hand on the final play of the game, ending his season.
Unitas threw for 390 yards, three touchdowns, and no interceptions in AFC playoff victories over the Cincinnati Bengals and the Oakland Raiders. In Super Bowl V against the Dallas Cowboys, he was knocked out of the game with a rib injury in the second quarter, soon after throwing a 75-yard touchdown pass (setting a then-Super Bowl record) to John Mackey. However, he had also tossed two interceptions before his departure from the game. Earl Morrall came in to lead the team to a last-second, 16–13 victory.
In 1971, Unitas split playing time with Morrall, throwing only three touchdown passes. He started both playoff games, a win over the Cleveland Browns that sent the Colts to the AFC Championship game against the Miami Dolphins, which they lost by a score of 21–0. Unitas threw three interceptions in the game, one of which was returned for a touchdown by safety Dick Anderson.
The 1972 season saw the Colts declining. After losing the season opener, Unitas was involved in the second and final regular season head-to-head meeting with "Broadway" Joe Namath. The first was in 1970 (won by the Colts, 29–22). The last meeting took place on September 24, 1972 at Memorial Stadium. He threw for 376 yards and three touchdowns, but Namath upstaged him again, bombing the Colts for 496 yards and six touchdowns in a 44–34 Jets victory – their first over Baltimore since the 1970 merger. After losing four of their first five games, the Colts fired head coach Don McCafferty, and benched Unitas.
One of the more memorable moments in football history came on Unitas's last game in a Colts uniform at Memorial Stadium, in a game against the Buffalo Bills. He was not the starter for this game, but the Colts were blowing the Bills out by a score of 28–0 behind Marty Domres; Unitas entered the game due to the fans chanting, "We want Unitas!!!", and a plan devised by head coach John Sandusky to convince Unitas that the starting quarterback was injured. Unitas came onto the field, and threw two passes, one of which was a long touchdown to wide receiver Eddie Hinton which would be his last pass as a Colt. The Colts won the game by the score of 35–7.
San Diego, retirement, and records
Unitas was traded from the Colts to the San Diego Chargers on January 20, 1973, in a transaction that originally had future considerations returning to Baltimore. The deal's only obstacle was the personal services contract he had signed with the Colts in 1970 which would've kept him employed within the organization on an annual salary of $30,000 over ten years once his career as an active player ended. The pact had been signed when the ballclub was owned by Carroll Rosenbloom who subsequently acquired the Los Angeles Rams on July 13, 1972, in a franchise swap with Robert Irsay. The deal was completed when the Chargers purchased that contract. Eager to sever all ties with the Colts, Unitas signed a new two-year contract with the Chargers on June 8, 1973. He succeeded John Hadl who had requested and was granted a trade to the Rams.
Unitas started the season with a 38–0 loss to the Washington Redskins. He threw for just 55 yards and 3 interceptions, and was sacked 8 times. His final victory as a starter came against the Buffalo Bills in week two. Unitas was 10–18 for 175 yards, two touchdown passes, and no interceptions in a 34–7 Chargers rout. Many were questioning his role as a starter after a loss to the Bengals in week three. Two weeks later, he threw two first-half interceptions, passed for only 19 yards, and went 2-for-9 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was then replaced by rookie quarterback, future Hall of Famer Dan Fouts. After having posted a 1–3 record as a starter, Unitas retired in the preseason of 1974.
Unitas finished his 18 NFL seasons with 2,830 completions in 5,186 attempts for 40,239 yards and 290 touchdowns, with 253 interceptions. He also rushed for 1,777 yards and 13 touchdowns. Plagued by arm trouble in his later seasons, he threw more interceptions (64) than touchdowns (38) in 1968–1973. After averaging 215.8 yards per game in his first 12 seasons, his production fell to 124.4 in his final six. His passer rating plummeted from 82.9 to 60.4 for the same periods. Even so, Unitas set many passing records during his career. He was the first quarterback to throw for more than 40,000 yards, despite playing during an era when NFL teams played shorter seasons of 12 or 14 games (as opposed to today's 17-game seasons) and prior to modern passing-friendly rules implemented in 1978. His 32 touchdown passes in 1959 were a record at the time, making Unitas the first quarterback to hit the 30 touchdown mark in a season. His 47-game consecutive touchdown streak between 1956 and 1960 was a record considered by many to be unbreakable. The streak stood for 52 years before being broken by New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees in a game against the San Diego Chargers on October 7, 2012.
Post-playing days
After his playing days were finished, Unitas settled in Baltimore where he raised his family while also pursuing a career in broadcasting, doing color commentary for NFL games on CBS in the 1970s. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979. After Robert Irsay moved the Colts franchise to Indianapolis in 1984, a move known to this day in Baltimore as "Bob Irsay's Midnight Ride," he was so outraged that he cut all ties to the relocated team (though his No. 19 jersey is still retired by the Colts), declaring himself strictly a Baltimore Colt for the remainder of his life. Some other prominent old-time Colts followed his lead, although many attended the 1975 team's reunion at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in 2009. A total of 39 Colts players from that 1975 team attended said reunion in Indianapolis, including Bert Jones and Lydell Mitchell. Unitas asked the Pro Football Hall of Fame on numerous occasions (including on Roy Firestone's Up Close) to remove his display unless it was listed as belonging to the Baltimore Colts. The Hall of Fame has never complied with the request. Unitas donated his Colts memorabilia to the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore; they are now on display in the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards.
Unitas was inducted into the American Football Association's Semi Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987.
Unitas actively lobbied for another NFL team to come to Baltimore. After the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996 and changed their name to the Ravens, he and some of the other old-time Colts attended the Ravens' first game ever against the Raiders on Opening Day at Memorial Stadium. He was frequently seen on the Ravens' sidelines at home games (most prominently in 1998 when the now-Indianapolis Colts played the Ravens in Baltimore) and received a thunderous ovation every time he was pictured on each of the huge widescreens at M&T Bank Stadium. He was often seen on the 30-yard line on the Ravens side. When the NFL celebrated its first 50 years, Unitas was voted the league's best player. Retired Bears quarterback Sid Luckman said of Unitas, "He was better than me, better than Sammy Baugh, better than anyone."
Unitas lived most of the final years of his life severely hobbled. Due to an elbow injury suffered during his playing career, he had only very limited use of his right hand, and could not perform any physical activity more strenuous than golf due to his artificial knees.
NFL career statistics
Source:
In 1957, Unitas was named MVP by the Newspaper Enterprise Association.
Personal life
At the age of 21 on November 20, 1954, Unitas married his high school sweetheart Dorothy Hoelle; they lived in Towson and had five children before divorcing. Unitas's second wife was Sandra Lemon, whom he married on June 26, 1972; they had three children, lived in Baldwin, and remained married until his death.
Towson University, where Unitas was a major fund-raiser and which his children attended, named its football and lacrosse complex Johnny Unitas Stadium in recognition of both his football career and service to the university.
Toward the end of his life, Unitas brought media attention to the many permanent physical disabilities that he and his fellow players suffered during their careers before heavy padding and other safety features became popular. Unitas himself lost almost total use of his right hand, with the middle finger and thumb noticeably disfigured from being repeatedly broken during games.
On September 11, 2002, Unitas died from a heart attack while working out at the Kernan Physical Therapy Center (now The University of Maryland Rehabilitation & Orthopaedic Institute) in Baltimore. His funeral was held at Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore, Maryland. Between his death and October 4, 2002, 56,934 people signed an online petition urging the Baltimore Ravens to rename the Ravens' home stadium (owned by the State of Maryland) after Unitas. These requests were unsuccessful since the lucrative naming rights had already been leased by the Ravens to Buffalo-based M&T Bank. However, on October 20, 2002, the Ravens dedicated the front area of the stadium's main entrance as Unitas Plaza and unveiled a statue of Unitas as the centerpiece of the plaza.
Unitas is buried at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium, Maryland.
Legacy
Unitas held the record for most Pro Bowl appearances (10) by a quarterback until Brett Favre broke his record in 2009.
Unitas set the original standard for most wins as a starting quarterback with 118 regular season victories (since surpassed by multiple quarterbacks).
Unitas was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.
Unitas is 11th in all-time number of regular season games won by an NFL starting quarterback with 118 wins.
Unitas is 16th in all-time percentage of regular season games won by an NFL starting quarterback with a percentage of 64.5.
1987 American Football Association Semi Pro Hall of Fame
Unitas's no. 16 is the first number retired by the football program at the University of Louisville.
Unitas Tower, a dormitory at the University of Louisville, is named for Johnny Unitas.
A statue of Unitas sits in the north end zone of Cardinal Stadium at the University of Louisville. It is a tradition for each Cardinal player to touch the statue as he enters the field.
Since 1987, the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award has been awarded to the top senior quarterback of the current year in college football. The award is presented annually in Louisville.
In 1999, he was ranked No. 5 on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Football Players, behind only Joe Montana among quarterbacks.
In 2004, The Sporting News ranked Unitas No. 1 among the NFL's 50 Greatest Quarterbacks, with Joe Montana at No. 2.
In 1999, ESPN's Sportscentury: 50 Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century ranked Unitas No. 32.
Just before his death, Johnny Unitas became the community liaison for athletics in Towson, Maryland. The football stadium at Towson University was renamed Johnny Unitas Stadium in 2002. Unitas died less than a week after throwing his last pass in the grand opening of the stadium.
Set the record for consecutive games with at least one touchdown pass at 47 games. This record was surpassed by Drew Brees in 2012.
Set the record for consecutive games with at least two touchdown passes at 12 games. This record was surpassed by Don Meredith, Peyton Manning (twice), Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Philip Rivers, and Patrick Mahomes.
Set the record for most consecutive games with at least a 120 passer rating (4); this record was later matched by Kurt Warner
For the game following his death, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning asked to wear a pair of black cleats as a tribute to Johnny's signature black boots. The league denied his request and threatened Manning with a US$25,000 fine; Manning decided not to wear them. Despite the threatened fine, Chris Redman, a Louisville alum like Unitas, and then quarterback of the Baltimore Ravens, decided to pay homage by wearing the signature cleats during a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In 2013, a movie project was announced by The Baltimore Sun called Unitas We Stand, which will feature Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco as Unitas during the 1958 NFL Championship.
19th Street in Ocean City, Maryland is named "Johnny Unitas Way" in his honor.
Johnny Unitas Stadium on the campus of Towson University in Towson, Maryland, home of the Towson Tigers football and Towson Tigers men's lacrosse teams is named in his honor.
Unitas was posthumously inducted into the National Lithuanian American Hall of Fame on August 24, 2013.
See also
List of most consecutive starts by a National Football League quarterback
Most wins by a starting quarterback (NFL)
Notes
References
Sources
Bolus, Jim, and Billy Reed. Cardinal Football. Champaign, IL: Sports Pub Inc., 1999.
Callahan, Tom. Johnny U: the life and times of John Unitas. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006.
Lazenby, Roland. Johnny Unitas: the best there ever was. Chicago: Triumph Books, 2002.
Schaap, Dick (1999). "Johnny Unitas: Sunday's Best". In ESPN SportsCentury. Michael MacCambridge, Editor. New York: ESPN-Hyperion Books. pp. 154–65.
Cavanaugh, Jack (2008), Giants Among Men. New York:Random House.
MacCambridge, Michael (2005), America's Game. New York:Anchor Books.
External links
1933 births
2002 deaths
American football quarterbacks
American people of Lithuanian descent
Baltimore Colts players
Burials at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens
Catholics from Maryland
Catholics from Pennsylvania
Louisville Cardinals football players
National Football League announcers
National Football League Most Valuable Player Award winners
National Football League players with retired numbers
People from Timonium, Maryland
People from Towson, Maryland
Pittsburgh Steelers players
Players of American football from Baltimore
Players of American football from Pittsburgh
Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees
San Diego Chargers players
Sportspeople from Baltimore County, Maryland
Western Conference Pro Bowl players | true | [
"Do-support (or do-insertion), in English grammar, is the use of the auxiliary verb do, including its inflected forms does and did, to form negated clauses and questions as well as other constructions in which subject–auxiliary inversion is required.\n\nThe verb \"do\" can be used as an auxiliary even in simple declarative sentences, and it usually serves to add emphasis, as in \"I did shut the fridge.\" However, in the negated and inverted clauses referred to above, it is used because the conventions of Modern English syntax permit these constructions only when an auxiliary is present. It is not idiomatic in Modern English to add the negating word not to a lexical verb with finite form; not can be added only to an auxiliary or copular verb. For example, the sentence I am not with the copula be is fully idiomatic, but I know not with a finite lexical verb, while grammatical, is archaic. If there is no other auxiliary present when negation is required, the auxiliary do is used to produce a form like I do not (don't) know. The same applies in clauses requiring inversion, including most questions: inversion must involve the subject and an auxiliary verb so it is not idiomatic to say Know you him?; today's English usually substitutes Do you know him?\n\nDo-support is not used when there is already an auxiliary or copular verb present or with non-finite verb forms (infinitives and participles). It is sometimes used with subjunctive forms. Furthermore, the use of do as an auxiliary should be distinguished from the use of do as a normal lexical verb, as in They do their homework.\n\nCommon uses\nDo-support appears to accommodate a number of varying grammatical constructions:\nquestion formation,\nthe appearance of the negation not, and\nnegative inversion.\nThese constructions often cannot occur without do-support or the presence of some other auxiliary verb.\n\nIn questions\nThe presence of an auxiliary (or copular) verb allows subject–auxiliary inversion to take place, as is required in most interrogative sentences in English. If there is already an auxiliary or copula present, do-support is not required when forming questions:\n\n He will laugh. → Will he laugh? (the auxiliary will inverts with the subject he)\n She is at home. → Is she at home? (the copula is inverts with the subject she)\n\nThis applies not only in yes–no questions but also in questions formed using interrogative words:\n\n When will he laugh?\n\nHowever, if there is no auxiliary or copula present, inversion requires the introduction of an auxiliary in the form of do-support:\n\n I know. → Do I know? (Compare: *Know I?)\n He laughs. → Does he laugh? (Compare: *Laughs he?)\n She came home. → Did she come home? (Compare: *Came she home?)\n\nThe finite (inflected) verb is now the auxiliary do; the following verb is a bare infinitive which does not inflect: does he laugh? (not laughs); did she come? (not came).\n\nIn negated questions, the negating word not may appear either following the subject, or attached to the auxiliary in the contracted form n't. That applies both to do-support and to other auxiliaries:\n\n Why are you not playing? / Why aren't you playing?\n Do you not want to try? / Don't you want to try?\n\nThe above principles do not apply to wh-questions if the interrogative word is the subject or part of the subject. Then, there is no inversion and so there is no need for do-support: Who lives here?, Whose dog bit you?\n\nThe verb have, in the sense of possession, is sometimes used without do-support as if it were an auxiliary, but this is considered dated. The version with do-support is also correct:\n\n Have you any idea what is going on here?\n Do you have any idea what is going on here?\n (Have you got any idea what is going on here? – the order is similar to the first example, but have is an auxiliary verb here)\n\nFor elliptical questions and tag questions, see the elliptical sentences section below.\n\nWith not\nIn the same way that the presence of an auxiliary allows question formation, the appearance of the negating word not is allowed as well. Then too, if no other auxiliary or copular verb is present, do-support is required.\n\n He will laugh. → He will not laugh. (not attaches to the auxiliary will)\n She laughs. → She does not laugh. (not attaches to the added auxiliary does)\n\nIn the second sentence, do-support is required because idiomatic Modern English does not allow forms like *She laughs not. The verb have, in the sense of possession, is sometimes negated thus:\n\n I haven't the foggiest idea.\n\nMost combinations of auxiliary/copula plus not have a contracted form ending in -n't, such as isn't, won't, etc. The relevant contractions for negations formed using do-support are don't, doesn't and didn't. Such forms are used very frequently in informal English.\n\nDo-support is required for negated imperatives even when the verb is the copula be:\n\nDo not do that.\nDon't be silly.\n\nHowever, there is no do-support with non-finite, as they are negated by a preceding not:\n\nIt would be a crime not to help him (the infinitive to help is negated)\nNot knowing what else to do, I stood my ground (the present participle knowing is negated)\nNot eating vegetables can harm your health (the gerund eating is negated)\n\nWith subjunctive verb forms, as a present subjunctive, do is infrequently used for negation, which is frequently considered ambiguous or incorrect because it resembles the indicative. The usual method to negate the present subjunctive is to precede the verb with a not, especially if the verb is be (as do-support with it, whether it be indicative or subjunctive, is ungrammatical):\n\nI suggest that he not receive any more funding (the present subjunctive receive is negated)\nIt is important that he not be there (the present subjunctive be is negated)\n\nAs a past subjunctive, however, did is needed for negation (unless the verb is be, whose past subjunctive is were):\n\nI wish that he did not know it\nI wish that he were not here\n\nThe negation in the examples negates the non-finite predicate. Compare the following competing formulations:\n\nI did not try to laugh. vs. I tried not to laugh.\nThey do not want to go. vs. They want not to go.\n\nThere are two predicates in each of the verb chains in the sentences. Do-support is needed when the higher of the two is negated; it is not needed to negate the lower nonfinite predicate.\n\nFor negated questions, see the questions section above. For negated elliptical sentences, see the elliptical sentences section below.\n\nNegative inversion\nThe same principles as for question formation apply to other clauses in which subject–auxiliary inversion is required, particularly after negative expressions and expressions involving only (negative inversion):\n\n Never did he run that fast again. (wrong: *Never he did run that fast again. *Never ran he that fast again.)\n Only here do I feel at home. (wrong: *Only here feel I at home.)\n\nFurther uses\nIn addition to providing do-support in questions and negated clauses as described above, the auxiliary verb do can also be used in clauses that do not require do-support. In such cases, do-support may appear for pragmatic reasons.\n\nFor emphasis\nThe auxiliary generally appears for purposes of emphasis, for instance to establish a contrast or to express a correction:\n Did Bill eat his breakfast? Yes, he did eat his breakfast (did emphasizes the positive answer, which may be unexpected).\n Bill doesn't sing, then. No, he does sing (does emphasizes the correction of the previous statement).\n\nAs before, the main verb following the auxiliary becomes a bare infinitive, which is not inflected (one cannot say *did ate or *does sings in the above examples).\n\nAs with typical do-support, that usage of do does not occur with other auxiliaries or a copular verb. Then, emphasis can be obtained by adding stress to the auxiliary or copular:\n\n Would you take the risk? Yes, I would take the risk.\n Bill isn't singing, then. No, he is singing.\n\n(Some auxiliaries, such as can, change their pronunciation when stressed; see Weak and strong forms in English.)\n\nIn negative sentences, emphasis can be obtained by adding stress either to the negating word (if used in full) or to the contracted form ending in n't. That applies whether or not do-support is used:\n\n I wouldn't (or would not) take the risk.\n They don't (or do not) appear on the list.\n\nEmphatic do can also be used with imperatives, including with the copula be:\n\n Do take care! Do be careful!\n\nIn elliptical sentences\nThe auxiliary do is also used in various types of elliptical sentences, where the main verb is omitted (it can be said to be \"understood\", usually because it would be the same verb as was used in a preceding sentence or clause). That includes the following types:\n\nTag questions:\n He plays well, doesn't he?\n You don't like Sara, do you?\nElliptical questions:\n I like pasta. Do you?\n I went to the party. Why didn't you?\nElliptical statements:\n They swam, but I didn't.\n He looks smart, and so do you.\n You fell asleep, and I did, too.\n\nSuch uses include cases that do-support would have been used in a complete clause (questions, negatives, inversion) but also cases that (as in the last example) the complete clause would normally have been constructed without do (I fell asleep too). In such instances do may be said to be acting as a pro-verb since it effectively takes the place of a verb or verb phrase: did substitutes for fell asleep.\n\nAs in the principal cases of do-support, do does not normally occur when there is already an auxiliary or copula present; the auxiliary or copula is retained in the elliptical sentence:\n\nHe is playing well, isn't he?\nI can cook pasta. Can you?\nYou should get some sleep, and I should too.\n\nHowever, it is possible to use do as a pro-verb (see below section #Pro-verbs & Do-so Substitution even after auxiliaries in some dialects:\n\nHave you put the shelf up yet? I haven't done (or I haven't), but I will do (or I will).\n(However it is not normally used in this way as a to-infinitive: Have you put the shelf up? I plan to, rather than *I plan to do; or as a passive participle: Was it built? Yes, it was, not *Yes, it was done.)\n\nPro-verbal uses of do are also found in the imperative: Please do. Don't!\n\nPro-verbs and do-so substitution\nThe phrases do so and do what for questions are pro-verb forms in English. They can be used as substitutes for verbs in x-bar theory grammar to test verb phrase completeness. Bare infinitives forms often are used in place of the missing pro-verb forms.\n\nExamples from Santorini and Kroch:\n\nTests for constituenthood of a verb-phrase in X'-grammar\nThe do so construction can be used to test if a verb-phrase is a constituent phrase in X'-grammar by substitution similarly to how other pro-forms can be used to test for noun-phrases, etc.\n\nIn X-bar theory, the verb-phrase projects three bar-levels such as this:\n\n VP\n / \\\n ZP X'\n / \\\n X' YP\n |\n X \n |\n head\n\nWith a simple sentence:\n\n S\n |\n VP\n / \\\n / \\\n / \\\n / \\\n NP \\\n / \\ \\ \n DP N' V'\n | | / \\\nThe children / \\\n / \\\n V' PP\n / \\ /_\\\n / \\ with gusto\n V NP\n | /_\\\n ate the pizza\n\nHere again exemplified by Santorini and Kroch, do so substitution for testing constituent verb phrases in the above sample sentence:\n\n S\n |\n VP\n / \\\n / \\\n / \\\n / \\\n NP \\\n / \\ \\ \n DP N' V'\n | | / \\\nThe children / \\\n / \\\n V' PP\n / \\ /_\\\n / \\ with gusto\n V NP\n | /_\\\n did so the pizza\n\nUse of do as main verb\nApart from its uses as an auxiliary, the verb do (with its inflected forms does, did, done, doing) can be used as an ordinary lexical verb (main verb):\n\nDo your homework!\nWhat are you doing?\n\nLike other non-auxiliary verbs, do cannot be directly negated with not and cannot participate in inversion so it may itself require do-support, with both auxiliary and lexical instances of do appearing together:\n\n They didn't do the laundry on Sunday. (did is the auxiliary, do is the main verb)\n Why do you do karate? (the first do is the auxiliary, the second is the main verb)\n How do you do? (a set phrase used as a polite greeting)\n\nMeaning contribution\nIn the various cases seen above that require do-support, the auxiliary verb do makes no apparent contribution to the meaning of the sentence so it is sometimes called a dummy auxiliary. Historically, however, in Middle English, auxiliary do apparently had a meaning contribution, serving as a marker of aspect (probably perfective aspect, but in some cases, the meaning may have been imperfective). In Early Modern English, the semantic value was lost, and the usage of forms with do began to approximate that found today.\n\nOrigins\n\nSome form of auxiliary \"do\" occurs in all West Germanic languages except Afrikaans. It is generally accepted that the past tense of Germanic weak verbs (in English, -ed) was formed from a combination of the infinitive with a past tense form of \"do\", as exemplified in Gothic. The origins of the construction in English are debated: some scholars argue it was already present in Old English, but not written due to stigmatization. Scholars disagree whether the construction arose from the use of \"do\" as a lexical verb in its own right, or whether periphrastic \"do\" arose from a causative meaning of the verb or vice versa. Examples of auxiliary \"do\" in Old English writing appear to be limited to its use in a causative sense, which is parallel to the earliest uses in other West Germanic languages. Others argue that the construction arose either via the influence of Celtic speakers or that the construction arose as a form of creolization when native speakers addressed foreigners and children.\n\nSee also\n\nEnglish verbs\nEnglish clause syntax\nIntensifier\n\nReferences\n\nEnglish grammar\nWord order\nSyntax\nGenerative syntax",
"Zhou Xiaoping (; born 24 April 1981) is a Chinese essayist and popular blogger. His most well-known works are Please Do Not Fail This Era!, Young, do you really know about this country?, Where did our heroes go?, and Nine Tricks of the United States Cultural Cold War. He is a supporter of communist party rule and has expressed nationalist, anti-American and anti-Western sentiment. Zhou is noted for praising by Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping at a conference on art and literature. Xi lauded Zhou for spreading \"positive energy\" in 2014.\n\nLife\nZhou was born and raised in Zigong, Sichuan, after junior high school, he started to publish works in 1996. \"Cutlassfish Zhou\" () became the nickname for his nationalist, pro-Communist, pro-Chinese government and anti-American writing. Zhou has been praised by General Secretary Xi Jinping for his \"positive energy\".\n\nWorks\n Please Do Not Fail This Era! ()\n Young, do you really know about this country? ()\n Where did our heroes go? ()\n Nine Tricks of the United States Cultural Cold War ()\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1981 births\nWriters from Zigong\nLiving people\nArchibald Prize Salon des Refusés People's Choice Award winners\nPeople's Republic of China writers\nChinese bloggers"
] |
[
"Johnny Unitas",
"Baltimore Colts",
"When did Johnny get drafted into the Colts?",
"In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank,",
"Did he do well?",
"In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24)"
] | C_2ba58216460d43aa986fc0e897537239_1 | Did he continue his winning streak after that? | 3 | Did Johnny continue his winning streak after the first season with the Colts? | Johnny Unitas | In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, after being asked at the last minute to join Bloomfield Rams lineman Jim Deglau, a Croatian steel worker with a life much like Unitas', at the latter's scheduled Colts tryout. The pair borrowed money from friends to pay for the gas to make the trip. Deglau later told a reporter after Unitas' death, "[His] uncle told him not to come. [He] was worried that if he came down and the Colts passed on him, it would look bad (to other NFL teams)." The Colts signed Unitas, much to the chagrin of the Cleveland Browns, who had hoped to claim the rejected Steeler quarterback. Unitas made his NFL debut with an inauspicious "mop-up" appearance against Detroit, going 0-2 with one interception. Two weeks later, starting quarterback George Shaw suffered a broken leg against the Chicago Bears. In his first serious action, Unitas' initial pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Then he botched a hand-off on his next play, a fumble recovered by the Bears. Unitas rebounded quickly from that 58-27 loss, leading the Colts to an upset of Green Bay and their first win over Cleveland. He threw nine touchdown passes that year, including one in the season finale that started his record 47-game streak. His 55.6-percent completion mark was a rookie record. In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24) as he helped lead the Colts to a 7-5 record, the first winning record in franchise history. At season's end, Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA). CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | John Constantine Unitas (; May 7, 1933 – September 11, 2002) was an American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 18 seasons, primarily with the Baltimore Colts. Following a career that spanned from 1956 to 1973, he has been consistently listed as one of the greatest NFL players of all time.
Unitas set many NFL records and was named Most Valuable Player three times in 1959, 1964, and 1967, in addition to receiving 10 Pro Bowl and five first-team All-Pro honors. He helped lead the Colts to four championship titles; three pre-merger era in 1958, 1959, 1968, and one Super Bowl era in Super Bowl V. His first championship victory is regarded as one of the league's greatest games and credited with helping popularize the NFL. Between 1956 and 1960, he set the record for most consecutive games with a touchdown pass at 47, which held for 52 years.
Nicknamed "Johnny U" and the "Golden Arm", Unitas was considered the prototype of the modern era marquee quarterback. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.
Early life
John Constantine Unitas was born in Pittsburgh in 1933 to Francis J. Unitas and Helen Superfisky, both of Lithuanian descent; he grew up in the Mount Washington neighborhood in a Roman Catholic upbringing. When Unitas was five years old, his father died of cardiovascular renal disease complicated by pneumonia, leaving the young boy to be raised by his mother, who worked two jobs to support the family. His surname was a result of a phonetic transliteration of a common Lithuanian last name Jonaitis. Attending St. Justin's High School in Pittsburgh, Unitas played halfback and quarterback.
College career
In his younger years, Unitas dreamed about being part of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team, but when he tried out for the team, coach Frank Leahy said that he was just too skinny and he would "get murdered" if he was put on the field.
Instead, he attended the University of Louisville. In his four-year career as a Louisville Cardinal, Unitas completed 245 passes for 3,139 yards and 27 touchdowns. Reportedly, the Unitas weighed on his first day of practice. His first start was in the fifth game of the 1951 season against St. Bonaventure, where he threw 11 consecutive passes and three touchdowns to give the Cardinals a 21–19 lead. Louisville ended up losing the game 22–21 on a disputed field goal, but found a new starting quarterback. Unitas completed 12 of 19 passes for 240 yards and four touchdowns in a 35–28 victory over Houston. The team finished the season 5–5 overall and 4–1 with Unitas starting. He completed 46 of 99 passes for 602 yards and nine touchdowns (44).
By the 1952 season, the university decided to de-emphasize sports. The new president at Louisville, Dr. Philip Grant Davidson, reduced the amount of athletic aid, and tightened academic standards for athletes. As a result, 15 returning players could not meet the new standards and lost their scholarships. Unitas maintained his by taking on a new elective: square dancing. In 1952, coach Frank Camp switched the team to two-way football. Unitas not only played safety or linebacker on defense and quarterback on offense, but also returned kicks and punts on special teams. The Cardinals won their first game against Wayne State, and then Florida State in the second game. Unitas completed 16 of 21 passes for 198 yards and three touchdowns. It was said that Unitas put on such a show at the Florida State game that he threw a pass under his legs for 15 yards. The rest of the season was a struggle for the Cardinals, who finished 3–5. Unitas completed 106 of 198 passes for 1,540 yards and 12 touchdowns.
The team won their first game in 1953, against Murray State, and lost the rest for a record of 1–7. One of the most memorable games of the season came in a 59–6 loss against Tennessee. Unitas completed 9 out of 19 passes for 73 yards, rushed 9 times for 52 yards, returned six kickoffs for 85 yards, one punt for three yards, and had 86 percent of the team's tackles. The only touchdown the team scored was in the fourth quarter when Unitas made a fake pitch to the running back and ran the ball 23 yards for a touchdown. Unitas was hurt later in the fourth quarter while trying to run the ball. On his way off the field, he received a standing ovation. When he got to the locker room he was so tired that his jersey and shoulder pads had to be cut off because he could not lift his arms. Louisville ended the season with a 20–13 loss to Eastern Kentucky. Unitas completed 49 of 95 passes for 470 yards and three touchdowns.
Unitas was elected captain for the 1954 season, but due to an early injury did not see much playing time. His first start was the third game of the season, against Florida State. Of the 34-man team, 21 were freshmen. The 1954 Cardinals went 3–6, with their last win at home against Morehead State. Unitas was slowed by so many injuries his senior year his 527 passing yards ended second to Jim Houser's 560.
Professional career
Pittsburgh Steelers
After his collegiate career, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL drafted Unitas in the ninth round. However, he was released before the season began as the odd man out among four quarterbacks trying to fill three spots. Steelers' head coach Walt Kiesling had made up his mind about Unitas; he thought he was not smart enough to quarterback an NFL team, and he was not given any snaps in practice with the Steelers. Among those edging out Unitas was Ted Marchibroda, future longtime NFL head coach. Out of pro football, Unitas—by this time married—worked in construction in Pittsburgh to support his family. On the weekends, he played quarterback, safety and punter on a local semi-professional team called the Bloomfield Rams for $6 a game.
Baltimore Colts
In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, after being asked at the last minute to join Bloomfield Rams lineman Jim Deglau, a Croatian steelworker with a life much like Unitas, at the latter's scheduled Colts tryout. The pair borrowed money from friends to pay for the gas to make the trip. Deglau later told a reporter after Unitas's death, "[His] uncle told him not to come. [He] was worried that if he came down and the Colts passed on him, it would look bad (to other NFL teams)." The Colts signed Unitas, much to the chagrin of the Cleveland Browns, who had hoped to claim the former Steeler quarterback.
Unitas made his NFL debut with an inauspicious "mop-up" appearance against Detroit, going 0–2 with one interception. Two weeks later, starting quarterback George Shaw suffered a broken leg against the Chicago Bears. In his first serious action, Unitas's initial pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Then he botched a hand-off on his next play, a fumble recovered by the Bears. Unitas rebounded quickly from that 58–27 loss, leading the Colts to an upset of Green Bay and their first win over Cleveland. He threw nine touchdown passes that year, including one in the season finale that started his record 47-game streak. His 55.6-percent completion mark was a rookie record.
In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24) as he helped lead the Colts to a 7–5 record, the first winning record in franchise history. At season's end, Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA).
1958: "The Greatest Game Ever Played"
Unitas continued his prowess in 1958 passing for 2,007 yards and 19 touchdowns as the Colts won the Western Conference title. The Colts won the NFL championship under his leadership on December 28, 1958, by defeating the New York Giants 23–17 in sudden death overtime on a touchdown by fullback Alan Ameche. It was the first overtime game in NFL history, and is often referred to as the "greatest game ever played". The game, nationally televised by NBC, has been credited for sparking the rise in popularity of professional football during the 1960s.
1959 MVP season
In 1959, Unitas was named the NFL's MVP by the Associated Press (AP) for the first time, as well as United Press International's player of the year, after leading the NFL in passing yards (2,899), touchdown passes (32), and completions (193). He then led the Colts to a repeat championship, beating the Giants again 31–16 in the title game.
Beginning of the 1960s
As the 1960s began, the Colts' fortunes (and win totals) declined. Injuries to key players such as Alan Ameche, Raymond Berry, and Lenny Moore were a contributing factor. Unitas's streak of 47 straight games with at least one touchdown pass ended against the Los Angeles Rams in week 11 of the 1960 season. In spite of this, he topped the 3,000-yard passing mark for the first time and led the league in touchdown passes for the fourth consecutive season.
After three middle-of-the-pack seasons, Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom fired Weeb Ewbank and replaced him with Don Shula, who at the time was the youngest head coach in NFL history (33 years of age when he was hired). The Colts finished 8–6 in Shula's first season at the helm, good enough for only third place in the NFL's Western Conference, but they did end the season on a strong note by winning their final three games. The season was very successful for Unitas personally, as he led the NFL in passing yards with a career-best total of 3,481 and also led in completions with 237.
1964 MVP season
In the 1964 season the Colts returned to the top of the Western Conference. After dropping their season opener to the Minnesota Vikings, the Colts ran off 10 straight victories to finish with a 12–2 record. The season was one of Unitas's best as he finished with 2,824 yards passing, a league-best 9.26 yards per pass attempt, 19 touchdown passes and only 6 interceptions. He was named the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the AP and UPI for a second time. However, the season ended on a disappointing note for the Colts as they were upset by the Cleveland Browns in the 1964 NFL Championship Game, losing 27–0.
Unitas resumed his torrid passing in 1965, throwing for 2,530 yards, 23 touchdowns and finishing with a league-high and career-best 97.1 passer rating. But he was lost for the balance of the season due to a knee injury in a week 12 loss to the Bears. Backup quarterback Gary Cuozzo also suffered a season-ending injury the following week, and running back Tom Matte filled in as the emergency quarterback for the regular season finale and in a playoff loss to the Packers. The Colts and Packers finished in a tie for first place in the Western Conference and a one-game playoff was played in Green Bay to decide who would be the conference representative in the 1965 NFL Championship Game. The Colts lost in overtime 13–10 due in large part to a game-tying field goal by Don Chandler that many say was incorrectly ruled good.
Unitas, healthy once more, threw for 2,748 yards and 22 touchdowns in 1966 in a return to Pro Bowl form. However, he posted a league-high 24 interceptions.
1967 MVP season
After once again finishing second in the Western Conference in 1966, the Colts rebounded to finish 11–1–2 in 1967 tying the Los Angeles Rams for the NFL's best record. In winning his third MVP award from the AP and UPI in 1967 (and his second from the NEA), Unitas had a league-high 58.5 completion percentage and passed for 3,428 yards and 20 touchdowns. He openly complained about having tennis elbow and he threw eight interceptions and only three touchdown passes in the final five games. Once again, the season ended in loss for the Colts, as they were shut out of the newly instituted four-team NFL playoff after losing the divisional tiebreaker to the Rams, a 34–10 rout in the regular season finale.
Super Bowls and final Colt years
In the final game of the 1968 preseason, the muscles in Unitas's arm were torn when he was hit by a member of the Dallas Cowboys defense. Unitas wrote in his autobiography that he felt his arm was initially injured by the use of the "night ball" that the NFL was testing for better TV visibility during night games. In a post-game interview the previous year, he noted having constant pain in his elbow for several years prior. He would spend most of the season sitting on the bench. The Colts still marched to a league-best 13–1 record behind backup quarterback and ultimate 1968 NFL MVP Earl Morrall. Although he was injured through most of the season, Unitas came off the bench to play in Super Bowl III, the famous game where Joe Namath guaranteed a New York Jets win despite conventional wisdom. Unitas's insertion was a desperation move in an attempt to retrieve dominance of the NFL over the upstart AFL. Although the Colts won an NFL Championship in 1968, they lost the Super Bowl to the AFL Champion New York Jets, thus becoming the first-ever NFL champions that were not also deemed world champions. Unitas helped put together the Colts' only score, a touchdown late in the game. Unitas also drove the Colts into scoring position following the touchdown and successful onside kick, but head coach Don Shula eschewed a field goal attempt, which (if successful) would have cut the Jets' lead to 16–10. Despite not playing until late in the third quarter, he still finished the game with more passing yards than the team's starter, Earl Morrall.
After an off-season of rehabilitation on his elbow, Unitas rebounded in 1969, passing for 2,342 yards and 12 touchdowns with 20 interceptions. But the Colts finished with a disappointing 8–5–1 record, and missed the playoffs.
In 1970, the NFL and AFL had merged into one league, and the Colts moved to the new American Football Conference, along with the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers. He threw for 2,213 yards and 14 touchdowns while leading the Colts to an 11–2–1 season. In their first rematch with the Jets, Unitas and Namath threw a combined nine interceptions in a 29–22 Colts win. Namath threw 62 passes and broke his hand on the final play of the game, ending his season.
Unitas threw for 390 yards, three touchdowns, and no interceptions in AFC playoff victories over the Cincinnati Bengals and the Oakland Raiders. In Super Bowl V against the Dallas Cowboys, he was knocked out of the game with a rib injury in the second quarter, soon after throwing a 75-yard touchdown pass (setting a then-Super Bowl record) to John Mackey. However, he had also tossed two interceptions before his departure from the game. Earl Morrall came in to lead the team to a last-second, 16–13 victory.
In 1971, Unitas split playing time with Morrall, throwing only three touchdown passes. He started both playoff games, a win over the Cleveland Browns that sent the Colts to the AFC Championship game against the Miami Dolphins, which they lost by a score of 21–0. Unitas threw three interceptions in the game, one of which was returned for a touchdown by safety Dick Anderson.
The 1972 season saw the Colts declining. After losing the season opener, Unitas was involved in the second and final regular season head-to-head meeting with "Broadway" Joe Namath. The first was in 1970 (won by the Colts, 29–22). The last meeting took place on September 24, 1972 at Memorial Stadium. He threw for 376 yards and three touchdowns, but Namath upstaged him again, bombing the Colts for 496 yards and six touchdowns in a 44–34 Jets victory – their first over Baltimore since the 1970 merger. After losing four of their first five games, the Colts fired head coach Don McCafferty, and benched Unitas.
One of the more memorable moments in football history came on Unitas's last game in a Colts uniform at Memorial Stadium, in a game against the Buffalo Bills. He was not the starter for this game, but the Colts were blowing the Bills out by a score of 28–0 behind Marty Domres; Unitas entered the game due to the fans chanting, "We want Unitas!!!", and a plan devised by head coach John Sandusky to convince Unitas that the starting quarterback was injured. Unitas came onto the field, and threw two passes, one of which was a long touchdown to wide receiver Eddie Hinton which would be his last pass as a Colt. The Colts won the game by the score of 35–7.
San Diego, retirement, and records
Unitas was traded from the Colts to the San Diego Chargers on January 20, 1973, in a transaction that originally had future considerations returning to Baltimore. The deal's only obstacle was the personal services contract he had signed with the Colts in 1970 which would've kept him employed within the organization on an annual salary of $30,000 over ten years once his career as an active player ended. The pact had been signed when the ballclub was owned by Carroll Rosenbloom who subsequently acquired the Los Angeles Rams on July 13, 1972, in a franchise swap with Robert Irsay. The deal was completed when the Chargers purchased that contract. Eager to sever all ties with the Colts, Unitas signed a new two-year contract with the Chargers on June 8, 1973. He succeeded John Hadl who had requested and was granted a trade to the Rams.
Unitas started the season with a 38–0 loss to the Washington Redskins. He threw for just 55 yards and 3 interceptions, and was sacked 8 times. His final victory as a starter came against the Buffalo Bills in week two. Unitas was 10–18 for 175 yards, two touchdown passes, and no interceptions in a 34–7 Chargers rout. Many were questioning his role as a starter after a loss to the Bengals in week three. Two weeks later, he threw two first-half interceptions, passed for only 19 yards, and went 2-for-9 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was then replaced by rookie quarterback, future Hall of Famer Dan Fouts. After having posted a 1–3 record as a starter, Unitas retired in the preseason of 1974.
Unitas finished his 18 NFL seasons with 2,830 completions in 5,186 attempts for 40,239 yards and 290 touchdowns, with 253 interceptions. He also rushed for 1,777 yards and 13 touchdowns. Plagued by arm trouble in his later seasons, he threw more interceptions (64) than touchdowns (38) in 1968–1973. After averaging 215.8 yards per game in his first 12 seasons, his production fell to 124.4 in his final six. His passer rating plummeted from 82.9 to 60.4 for the same periods. Even so, Unitas set many passing records during his career. He was the first quarterback to throw for more than 40,000 yards, despite playing during an era when NFL teams played shorter seasons of 12 or 14 games (as opposed to today's 17-game seasons) and prior to modern passing-friendly rules implemented in 1978. His 32 touchdown passes in 1959 were a record at the time, making Unitas the first quarterback to hit the 30 touchdown mark in a season. His 47-game consecutive touchdown streak between 1956 and 1960 was a record considered by many to be unbreakable. The streak stood for 52 years before being broken by New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees in a game against the San Diego Chargers on October 7, 2012.
Post-playing days
After his playing days were finished, Unitas settled in Baltimore where he raised his family while also pursuing a career in broadcasting, doing color commentary for NFL games on CBS in the 1970s. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979. After Robert Irsay moved the Colts franchise to Indianapolis in 1984, a move known to this day in Baltimore as "Bob Irsay's Midnight Ride," he was so outraged that he cut all ties to the relocated team (though his No. 19 jersey is still retired by the Colts), declaring himself strictly a Baltimore Colt for the remainder of his life. Some other prominent old-time Colts followed his lead, although many attended the 1975 team's reunion at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in 2009. A total of 39 Colts players from that 1975 team attended said reunion in Indianapolis, including Bert Jones and Lydell Mitchell. Unitas asked the Pro Football Hall of Fame on numerous occasions (including on Roy Firestone's Up Close) to remove his display unless it was listed as belonging to the Baltimore Colts. The Hall of Fame has never complied with the request. Unitas donated his Colts memorabilia to the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore; they are now on display in the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards.
Unitas was inducted into the American Football Association's Semi Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987.
Unitas actively lobbied for another NFL team to come to Baltimore. After the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996 and changed their name to the Ravens, he and some of the other old-time Colts attended the Ravens' first game ever against the Raiders on Opening Day at Memorial Stadium. He was frequently seen on the Ravens' sidelines at home games (most prominently in 1998 when the now-Indianapolis Colts played the Ravens in Baltimore) and received a thunderous ovation every time he was pictured on each of the huge widescreens at M&T Bank Stadium. He was often seen on the 30-yard line on the Ravens side. When the NFL celebrated its first 50 years, Unitas was voted the league's best player. Retired Bears quarterback Sid Luckman said of Unitas, "He was better than me, better than Sammy Baugh, better than anyone."
Unitas lived most of the final years of his life severely hobbled. Due to an elbow injury suffered during his playing career, he had only very limited use of his right hand, and could not perform any physical activity more strenuous than golf due to his artificial knees.
NFL career statistics
Source:
In 1957, Unitas was named MVP by the Newspaper Enterprise Association.
Personal life
At the age of 21 on November 20, 1954, Unitas married his high school sweetheart Dorothy Hoelle; they lived in Towson and had five children before divorcing. Unitas's second wife was Sandra Lemon, whom he married on June 26, 1972; they had three children, lived in Baldwin, and remained married until his death.
Towson University, where Unitas was a major fund-raiser and which his children attended, named its football and lacrosse complex Johnny Unitas Stadium in recognition of both his football career and service to the university.
Toward the end of his life, Unitas brought media attention to the many permanent physical disabilities that he and his fellow players suffered during their careers before heavy padding and other safety features became popular. Unitas himself lost almost total use of his right hand, with the middle finger and thumb noticeably disfigured from being repeatedly broken during games.
On September 11, 2002, Unitas died from a heart attack while working out at the Kernan Physical Therapy Center (now The University of Maryland Rehabilitation & Orthopaedic Institute) in Baltimore. His funeral was held at Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore, Maryland. Between his death and October 4, 2002, 56,934 people signed an online petition urging the Baltimore Ravens to rename the Ravens' home stadium (owned by the State of Maryland) after Unitas. These requests were unsuccessful since the lucrative naming rights had already been leased by the Ravens to Buffalo-based M&T Bank. However, on October 20, 2002, the Ravens dedicated the front area of the stadium's main entrance as Unitas Plaza and unveiled a statue of Unitas as the centerpiece of the plaza.
Unitas is buried at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium, Maryland.
Legacy
Unitas held the record for most Pro Bowl appearances (10) by a quarterback until Brett Favre broke his record in 2009.
Unitas set the original standard for most wins as a starting quarterback with 118 regular season victories (since surpassed by multiple quarterbacks).
Unitas was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.
Unitas is 11th in all-time number of regular season games won by an NFL starting quarterback with 118 wins.
Unitas is 16th in all-time percentage of regular season games won by an NFL starting quarterback with a percentage of 64.5.
1987 American Football Association Semi Pro Hall of Fame
Unitas's no. 16 is the first number retired by the football program at the University of Louisville.
Unitas Tower, a dormitory at the University of Louisville, is named for Johnny Unitas.
A statue of Unitas sits in the north end zone of Cardinal Stadium at the University of Louisville. It is a tradition for each Cardinal player to touch the statue as he enters the field.
Since 1987, the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award has been awarded to the top senior quarterback of the current year in college football. The award is presented annually in Louisville.
In 1999, he was ranked No. 5 on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Football Players, behind only Joe Montana among quarterbacks.
In 2004, The Sporting News ranked Unitas No. 1 among the NFL's 50 Greatest Quarterbacks, with Joe Montana at No. 2.
In 1999, ESPN's Sportscentury: 50 Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century ranked Unitas No. 32.
Just before his death, Johnny Unitas became the community liaison for athletics in Towson, Maryland. The football stadium at Towson University was renamed Johnny Unitas Stadium in 2002. Unitas died less than a week after throwing his last pass in the grand opening of the stadium.
Set the record for consecutive games with at least one touchdown pass at 47 games. This record was surpassed by Drew Brees in 2012.
Set the record for consecutive games with at least two touchdown passes at 12 games. This record was surpassed by Don Meredith, Peyton Manning (twice), Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Philip Rivers, and Patrick Mahomes.
Set the record for most consecutive games with at least a 120 passer rating (4); this record was later matched by Kurt Warner
For the game following his death, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning asked to wear a pair of black cleats as a tribute to Johnny's signature black boots. The league denied his request and threatened Manning with a US$25,000 fine; Manning decided not to wear them. Despite the threatened fine, Chris Redman, a Louisville alum like Unitas, and then quarterback of the Baltimore Ravens, decided to pay homage by wearing the signature cleats during a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In 2013, a movie project was announced by The Baltimore Sun called Unitas We Stand, which will feature Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco as Unitas during the 1958 NFL Championship.
19th Street in Ocean City, Maryland is named "Johnny Unitas Way" in his honor.
Johnny Unitas Stadium on the campus of Towson University in Towson, Maryland, home of the Towson Tigers football and Towson Tigers men's lacrosse teams is named in his honor.
Unitas was posthumously inducted into the National Lithuanian American Hall of Fame on August 24, 2013.
See also
List of most consecutive starts by a National Football League quarterback
Most wins by a starting quarterback (NFL)
Notes
References
Sources
Bolus, Jim, and Billy Reed. Cardinal Football. Champaign, IL: Sports Pub Inc., 1999.
Callahan, Tom. Johnny U: the life and times of John Unitas. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006.
Lazenby, Roland. Johnny Unitas: the best there ever was. Chicago: Triumph Books, 2002.
Schaap, Dick (1999). "Johnny Unitas: Sunday's Best". In ESPN SportsCentury. Michael MacCambridge, Editor. New York: ESPN-Hyperion Books. pp. 154–65.
Cavanaugh, Jack (2008), Giants Among Men. New York:Random House.
MacCambridge, Michael (2005), America's Game. New York:Anchor Books.
External links
1933 births
2002 deaths
American football quarterbacks
American people of Lithuanian descent
Baltimore Colts players
Burials at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens
Catholics from Maryland
Catholics from Pennsylvania
Louisville Cardinals football players
National Football League announcers
National Football League Most Valuable Player Award winners
National Football League players with retired numbers
People from Timonium, Maryland
People from Towson, Maryland
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Western Conference Pro Bowl players | false | [
"Winning Streak may refer to:\n Winning streak, an uninterrupted sequence of success in a game, sport, or other endeavor\n Winning Streak (film), a 2012 Spanish comedy-drama film\n Winning Streak (American game show)\n Winning Streak (Irish game show)\n \"Winning Streak\", a 2015 song by Glen Hansard from Didn't He Ramble\n \"Winning Streak\", a 2015 song by Ashley Monroe from The Blade\n\nSee also",
"In American college football, the longest NCAA Division I winning streak is held by the Oklahoma Sooners, who won 47 consecutive games between 1953 and 1957. The longest FCS winning streak is held by the North Dakota State Bison, who had a winning streak of 39 consecutive wins between 2017 and 2021.\n\nNCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision\nThe following is a list of the longest winning streaks in NCAA Division I FBS of 25 games or more through the 2019 season.\n\n^ Streak was part of Division I's longest unbeaten streak of 64 games (60–0–4) between 1907 and 1917.\n† Indicates a streak ended by a tie.\n‡ Indicates a streak ended in a bowl game.\n# Indicates a streak ended in CFP National Championship.\n\n(USC initially had a 34 game winning streak from 2003 to 2005, of which 14 of those wins were later vacated by the NCAA.)\n\nNCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision\n\nThe following is a list of the longest winning streaks in NCAA Division I FCS. Only schools that have been FCS members for five years are eligible for inclusion.\n\n tie ended the winning streak\n\nReferences\n\nLists of college football team records"
] |
[
"Johnny Unitas",
"Baltimore Colts",
"When did Johnny get drafted into the Colts?",
"In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank,",
"Did he do well?",
"In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24)",
"Did he continue his winning streak after that?",
"I don't know."
] | C_2ba58216460d43aa986fc0e897537239_1 | Did he sustain any injuries in his career? | 4 | Did Johnny sustain any injuries in his career? | Johnny Unitas | In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, after being asked at the last minute to join Bloomfield Rams lineman Jim Deglau, a Croatian steel worker with a life much like Unitas', at the latter's scheduled Colts tryout. The pair borrowed money from friends to pay for the gas to make the trip. Deglau later told a reporter after Unitas' death, "[His] uncle told him not to come. [He] was worried that if he came down and the Colts passed on him, it would look bad (to other NFL teams)." The Colts signed Unitas, much to the chagrin of the Cleveland Browns, who had hoped to claim the rejected Steeler quarterback. Unitas made his NFL debut with an inauspicious "mop-up" appearance against Detroit, going 0-2 with one interception. Two weeks later, starting quarterback George Shaw suffered a broken leg against the Chicago Bears. In his first serious action, Unitas' initial pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Then he botched a hand-off on his next play, a fumble recovered by the Bears. Unitas rebounded quickly from that 58-27 loss, leading the Colts to an upset of Green Bay and their first win over Cleveland. He threw nine touchdown passes that year, including one in the season finale that started his record 47-game streak. His 55.6-percent completion mark was a rookie record. In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24) as he helped lead the Colts to a 7-5 record, the first winning record in franchise history. At season's end, Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA). CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | John Constantine Unitas (; May 7, 1933 – September 11, 2002) was an American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 18 seasons, primarily with the Baltimore Colts. Following a career that spanned from 1956 to 1973, he has been consistently listed as one of the greatest NFL players of all time.
Unitas set many NFL records and was named Most Valuable Player three times in 1959, 1964, and 1967, in addition to receiving 10 Pro Bowl and five first-team All-Pro honors. He helped lead the Colts to four championship titles; three pre-merger era in 1958, 1959, 1968, and one Super Bowl era in Super Bowl V. His first championship victory is regarded as one of the league's greatest games and credited with helping popularize the NFL. Between 1956 and 1960, he set the record for most consecutive games with a touchdown pass at 47, which held for 52 years.
Nicknamed "Johnny U" and the "Golden Arm", Unitas was considered the prototype of the modern era marquee quarterback. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.
Early life
John Constantine Unitas was born in Pittsburgh in 1933 to Francis J. Unitas and Helen Superfisky, both of Lithuanian descent; he grew up in the Mount Washington neighborhood in a Roman Catholic upbringing. When Unitas was five years old, his father died of cardiovascular renal disease complicated by pneumonia, leaving the young boy to be raised by his mother, who worked two jobs to support the family. His surname was a result of a phonetic transliteration of a common Lithuanian last name Jonaitis. Attending St. Justin's High School in Pittsburgh, Unitas played halfback and quarterback.
College career
In his younger years, Unitas dreamed about being part of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team, but when he tried out for the team, coach Frank Leahy said that he was just too skinny and he would "get murdered" if he was put on the field.
Instead, he attended the University of Louisville. In his four-year career as a Louisville Cardinal, Unitas completed 245 passes for 3,139 yards and 27 touchdowns. Reportedly, the Unitas weighed on his first day of practice. His first start was in the fifth game of the 1951 season against St. Bonaventure, where he threw 11 consecutive passes and three touchdowns to give the Cardinals a 21–19 lead. Louisville ended up losing the game 22–21 on a disputed field goal, but found a new starting quarterback. Unitas completed 12 of 19 passes for 240 yards and four touchdowns in a 35–28 victory over Houston. The team finished the season 5–5 overall and 4–1 with Unitas starting. He completed 46 of 99 passes for 602 yards and nine touchdowns (44).
By the 1952 season, the university decided to de-emphasize sports. The new president at Louisville, Dr. Philip Grant Davidson, reduced the amount of athletic aid, and tightened academic standards for athletes. As a result, 15 returning players could not meet the new standards and lost their scholarships. Unitas maintained his by taking on a new elective: square dancing. In 1952, coach Frank Camp switched the team to two-way football. Unitas not only played safety or linebacker on defense and quarterback on offense, but also returned kicks and punts on special teams. The Cardinals won their first game against Wayne State, and then Florida State in the second game. Unitas completed 16 of 21 passes for 198 yards and three touchdowns. It was said that Unitas put on such a show at the Florida State game that he threw a pass under his legs for 15 yards. The rest of the season was a struggle for the Cardinals, who finished 3–5. Unitas completed 106 of 198 passes for 1,540 yards and 12 touchdowns.
The team won their first game in 1953, against Murray State, and lost the rest for a record of 1–7. One of the most memorable games of the season came in a 59–6 loss against Tennessee. Unitas completed 9 out of 19 passes for 73 yards, rushed 9 times for 52 yards, returned six kickoffs for 85 yards, one punt for three yards, and had 86 percent of the team's tackles. The only touchdown the team scored was in the fourth quarter when Unitas made a fake pitch to the running back and ran the ball 23 yards for a touchdown. Unitas was hurt later in the fourth quarter while trying to run the ball. On his way off the field, he received a standing ovation. When he got to the locker room he was so tired that his jersey and shoulder pads had to be cut off because he could not lift his arms. Louisville ended the season with a 20–13 loss to Eastern Kentucky. Unitas completed 49 of 95 passes for 470 yards and three touchdowns.
Unitas was elected captain for the 1954 season, but due to an early injury did not see much playing time. His first start was the third game of the season, against Florida State. Of the 34-man team, 21 were freshmen. The 1954 Cardinals went 3–6, with their last win at home against Morehead State. Unitas was slowed by so many injuries his senior year his 527 passing yards ended second to Jim Houser's 560.
Professional career
Pittsburgh Steelers
After his collegiate career, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL drafted Unitas in the ninth round. However, he was released before the season began as the odd man out among four quarterbacks trying to fill three spots. Steelers' head coach Walt Kiesling had made up his mind about Unitas; he thought he was not smart enough to quarterback an NFL team, and he was not given any snaps in practice with the Steelers. Among those edging out Unitas was Ted Marchibroda, future longtime NFL head coach. Out of pro football, Unitas—by this time married—worked in construction in Pittsburgh to support his family. On the weekends, he played quarterback, safety and punter on a local semi-professional team called the Bloomfield Rams for $6 a game.
Baltimore Colts
In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, after being asked at the last minute to join Bloomfield Rams lineman Jim Deglau, a Croatian steelworker with a life much like Unitas, at the latter's scheduled Colts tryout. The pair borrowed money from friends to pay for the gas to make the trip. Deglau later told a reporter after Unitas's death, "[His] uncle told him not to come. [He] was worried that if he came down and the Colts passed on him, it would look bad (to other NFL teams)." The Colts signed Unitas, much to the chagrin of the Cleveland Browns, who had hoped to claim the former Steeler quarterback.
Unitas made his NFL debut with an inauspicious "mop-up" appearance against Detroit, going 0–2 with one interception. Two weeks later, starting quarterback George Shaw suffered a broken leg against the Chicago Bears. In his first serious action, Unitas's initial pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Then he botched a hand-off on his next play, a fumble recovered by the Bears. Unitas rebounded quickly from that 58–27 loss, leading the Colts to an upset of Green Bay and their first win over Cleveland. He threw nine touchdown passes that year, including one in the season finale that started his record 47-game streak. His 55.6-percent completion mark was a rookie record.
In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24) as he helped lead the Colts to a 7–5 record, the first winning record in franchise history. At season's end, Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA).
1958: "The Greatest Game Ever Played"
Unitas continued his prowess in 1958 passing for 2,007 yards and 19 touchdowns as the Colts won the Western Conference title. The Colts won the NFL championship under his leadership on December 28, 1958, by defeating the New York Giants 23–17 in sudden death overtime on a touchdown by fullback Alan Ameche. It was the first overtime game in NFL history, and is often referred to as the "greatest game ever played". The game, nationally televised by NBC, has been credited for sparking the rise in popularity of professional football during the 1960s.
1959 MVP season
In 1959, Unitas was named the NFL's MVP by the Associated Press (AP) for the first time, as well as United Press International's player of the year, after leading the NFL in passing yards (2,899), touchdown passes (32), and completions (193). He then led the Colts to a repeat championship, beating the Giants again 31–16 in the title game.
Beginning of the 1960s
As the 1960s began, the Colts' fortunes (and win totals) declined. Injuries to key players such as Alan Ameche, Raymond Berry, and Lenny Moore were a contributing factor. Unitas's streak of 47 straight games with at least one touchdown pass ended against the Los Angeles Rams in week 11 of the 1960 season. In spite of this, he topped the 3,000-yard passing mark for the first time and led the league in touchdown passes for the fourth consecutive season.
After three middle-of-the-pack seasons, Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom fired Weeb Ewbank and replaced him with Don Shula, who at the time was the youngest head coach in NFL history (33 years of age when he was hired). The Colts finished 8–6 in Shula's first season at the helm, good enough for only third place in the NFL's Western Conference, but they did end the season on a strong note by winning their final three games. The season was very successful for Unitas personally, as he led the NFL in passing yards with a career-best total of 3,481 and also led in completions with 237.
1964 MVP season
In the 1964 season the Colts returned to the top of the Western Conference. After dropping their season opener to the Minnesota Vikings, the Colts ran off 10 straight victories to finish with a 12–2 record. The season was one of Unitas's best as he finished with 2,824 yards passing, a league-best 9.26 yards per pass attempt, 19 touchdown passes and only 6 interceptions. He was named the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the AP and UPI for a second time. However, the season ended on a disappointing note for the Colts as they were upset by the Cleveland Browns in the 1964 NFL Championship Game, losing 27–0.
Unitas resumed his torrid passing in 1965, throwing for 2,530 yards, 23 touchdowns and finishing with a league-high and career-best 97.1 passer rating. But he was lost for the balance of the season due to a knee injury in a week 12 loss to the Bears. Backup quarterback Gary Cuozzo also suffered a season-ending injury the following week, and running back Tom Matte filled in as the emergency quarterback for the regular season finale and in a playoff loss to the Packers. The Colts and Packers finished in a tie for first place in the Western Conference and a one-game playoff was played in Green Bay to decide who would be the conference representative in the 1965 NFL Championship Game. The Colts lost in overtime 13–10 due in large part to a game-tying field goal by Don Chandler that many say was incorrectly ruled good.
Unitas, healthy once more, threw for 2,748 yards and 22 touchdowns in 1966 in a return to Pro Bowl form. However, he posted a league-high 24 interceptions.
1967 MVP season
After once again finishing second in the Western Conference in 1966, the Colts rebounded to finish 11–1–2 in 1967 tying the Los Angeles Rams for the NFL's best record. In winning his third MVP award from the AP and UPI in 1967 (and his second from the NEA), Unitas had a league-high 58.5 completion percentage and passed for 3,428 yards and 20 touchdowns. He openly complained about having tennis elbow and he threw eight interceptions and only three touchdown passes in the final five games. Once again, the season ended in loss for the Colts, as they were shut out of the newly instituted four-team NFL playoff after losing the divisional tiebreaker to the Rams, a 34–10 rout in the regular season finale.
Super Bowls and final Colt years
In the final game of the 1968 preseason, the muscles in Unitas's arm were torn when he was hit by a member of the Dallas Cowboys defense. Unitas wrote in his autobiography that he felt his arm was initially injured by the use of the "night ball" that the NFL was testing for better TV visibility during night games. In a post-game interview the previous year, he noted having constant pain in his elbow for several years prior. He would spend most of the season sitting on the bench. The Colts still marched to a league-best 13–1 record behind backup quarterback and ultimate 1968 NFL MVP Earl Morrall. Although he was injured through most of the season, Unitas came off the bench to play in Super Bowl III, the famous game where Joe Namath guaranteed a New York Jets win despite conventional wisdom. Unitas's insertion was a desperation move in an attempt to retrieve dominance of the NFL over the upstart AFL. Although the Colts won an NFL Championship in 1968, they lost the Super Bowl to the AFL Champion New York Jets, thus becoming the first-ever NFL champions that were not also deemed world champions. Unitas helped put together the Colts' only score, a touchdown late in the game. Unitas also drove the Colts into scoring position following the touchdown and successful onside kick, but head coach Don Shula eschewed a field goal attempt, which (if successful) would have cut the Jets' lead to 16–10. Despite not playing until late in the third quarter, he still finished the game with more passing yards than the team's starter, Earl Morrall.
After an off-season of rehabilitation on his elbow, Unitas rebounded in 1969, passing for 2,342 yards and 12 touchdowns with 20 interceptions. But the Colts finished with a disappointing 8–5–1 record, and missed the playoffs.
In 1970, the NFL and AFL had merged into one league, and the Colts moved to the new American Football Conference, along with the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers. He threw for 2,213 yards and 14 touchdowns while leading the Colts to an 11–2–1 season. In their first rematch with the Jets, Unitas and Namath threw a combined nine interceptions in a 29–22 Colts win. Namath threw 62 passes and broke his hand on the final play of the game, ending his season.
Unitas threw for 390 yards, three touchdowns, and no interceptions in AFC playoff victories over the Cincinnati Bengals and the Oakland Raiders. In Super Bowl V against the Dallas Cowboys, he was knocked out of the game with a rib injury in the second quarter, soon after throwing a 75-yard touchdown pass (setting a then-Super Bowl record) to John Mackey. However, he had also tossed two interceptions before his departure from the game. Earl Morrall came in to lead the team to a last-second, 16–13 victory.
In 1971, Unitas split playing time with Morrall, throwing only three touchdown passes. He started both playoff games, a win over the Cleveland Browns that sent the Colts to the AFC Championship game against the Miami Dolphins, which they lost by a score of 21–0. Unitas threw three interceptions in the game, one of which was returned for a touchdown by safety Dick Anderson.
The 1972 season saw the Colts declining. After losing the season opener, Unitas was involved in the second and final regular season head-to-head meeting with "Broadway" Joe Namath. The first was in 1970 (won by the Colts, 29–22). The last meeting took place on September 24, 1972 at Memorial Stadium. He threw for 376 yards and three touchdowns, but Namath upstaged him again, bombing the Colts for 496 yards and six touchdowns in a 44–34 Jets victory – their first over Baltimore since the 1970 merger. After losing four of their first five games, the Colts fired head coach Don McCafferty, and benched Unitas.
One of the more memorable moments in football history came on Unitas's last game in a Colts uniform at Memorial Stadium, in a game against the Buffalo Bills. He was not the starter for this game, but the Colts were blowing the Bills out by a score of 28–0 behind Marty Domres; Unitas entered the game due to the fans chanting, "We want Unitas!!!", and a plan devised by head coach John Sandusky to convince Unitas that the starting quarterback was injured. Unitas came onto the field, and threw two passes, one of which was a long touchdown to wide receiver Eddie Hinton which would be his last pass as a Colt. The Colts won the game by the score of 35–7.
San Diego, retirement, and records
Unitas was traded from the Colts to the San Diego Chargers on January 20, 1973, in a transaction that originally had future considerations returning to Baltimore. The deal's only obstacle was the personal services contract he had signed with the Colts in 1970 which would've kept him employed within the organization on an annual salary of $30,000 over ten years once his career as an active player ended. The pact had been signed when the ballclub was owned by Carroll Rosenbloom who subsequently acquired the Los Angeles Rams on July 13, 1972, in a franchise swap with Robert Irsay. The deal was completed when the Chargers purchased that contract. Eager to sever all ties with the Colts, Unitas signed a new two-year contract with the Chargers on June 8, 1973. He succeeded John Hadl who had requested and was granted a trade to the Rams.
Unitas started the season with a 38–0 loss to the Washington Redskins. He threw for just 55 yards and 3 interceptions, and was sacked 8 times. His final victory as a starter came against the Buffalo Bills in week two. Unitas was 10–18 for 175 yards, two touchdown passes, and no interceptions in a 34–7 Chargers rout. Many were questioning his role as a starter after a loss to the Bengals in week three. Two weeks later, he threw two first-half interceptions, passed for only 19 yards, and went 2-for-9 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was then replaced by rookie quarterback, future Hall of Famer Dan Fouts. After having posted a 1–3 record as a starter, Unitas retired in the preseason of 1974.
Unitas finished his 18 NFL seasons with 2,830 completions in 5,186 attempts for 40,239 yards and 290 touchdowns, with 253 interceptions. He also rushed for 1,777 yards and 13 touchdowns. Plagued by arm trouble in his later seasons, he threw more interceptions (64) than touchdowns (38) in 1968–1973. After averaging 215.8 yards per game in his first 12 seasons, his production fell to 124.4 in his final six. His passer rating plummeted from 82.9 to 60.4 for the same periods. Even so, Unitas set many passing records during his career. He was the first quarterback to throw for more than 40,000 yards, despite playing during an era when NFL teams played shorter seasons of 12 or 14 games (as opposed to today's 17-game seasons) and prior to modern passing-friendly rules implemented in 1978. His 32 touchdown passes in 1959 were a record at the time, making Unitas the first quarterback to hit the 30 touchdown mark in a season. His 47-game consecutive touchdown streak between 1956 and 1960 was a record considered by many to be unbreakable. The streak stood for 52 years before being broken by New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees in a game against the San Diego Chargers on October 7, 2012.
Post-playing days
After his playing days were finished, Unitas settled in Baltimore where he raised his family while also pursuing a career in broadcasting, doing color commentary for NFL games on CBS in the 1970s. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979. After Robert Irsay moved the Colts franchise to Indianapolis in 1984, a move known to this day in Baltimore as "Bob Irsay's Midnight Ride," he was so outraged that he cut all ties to the relocated team (though his No. 19 jersey is still retired by the Colts), declaring himself strictly a Baltimore Colt for the remainder of his life. Some other prominent old-time Colts followed his lead, although many attended the 1975 team's reunion at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in 2009. A total of 39 Colts players from that 1975 team attended said reunion in Indianapolis, including Bert Jones and Lydell Mitchell. Unitas asked the Pro Football Hall of Fame on numerous occasions (including on Roy Firestone's Up Close) to remove his display unless it was listed as belonging to the Baltimore Colts. The Hall of Fame has never complied with the request. Unitas donated his Colts memorabilia to the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore; they are now on display in the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards.
Unitas was inducted into the American Football Association's Semi Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987.
Unitas actively lobbied for another NFL team to come to Baltimore. After the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996 and changed their name to the Ravens, he and some of the other old-time Colts attended the Ravens' first game ever against the Raiders on Opening Day at Memorial Stadium. He was frequently seen on the Ravens' sidelines at home games (most prominently in 1998 when the now-Indianapolis Colts played the Ravens in Baltimore) and received a thunderous ovation every time he was pictured on each of the huge widescreens at M&T Bank Stadium. He was often seen on the 30-yard line on the Ravens side. When the NFL celebrated its first 50 years, Unitas was voted the league's best player. Retired Bears quarterback Sid Luckman said of Unitas, "He was better than me, better than Sammy Baugh, better than anyone."
Unitas lived most of the final years of his life severely hobbled. Due to an elbow injury suffered during his playing career, he had only very limited use of his right hand, and could not perform any physical activity more strenuous than golf due to his artificial knees.
NFL career statistics
Source:
In 1957, Unitas was named MVP by the Newspaper Enterprise Association.
Personal life
At the age of 21 on November 20, 1954, Unitas married his high school sweetheart Dorothy Hoelle; they lived in Towson and had five children before divorcing. Unitas's second wife was Sandra Lemon, whom he married on June 26, 1972; they had three children, lived in Baldwin, and remained married until his death.
Towson University, where Unitas was a major fund-raiser and which his children attended, named its football and lacrosse complex Johnny Unitas Stadium in recognition of both his football career and service to the university.
Toward the end of his life, Unitas brought media attention to the many permanent physical disabilities that he and his fellow players suffered during their careers before heavy padding and other safety features became popular. Unitas himself lost almost total use of his right hand, with the middle finger and thumb noticeably disfigured from being repeatedly broken during games.
On September 11, 2002, Unitas died from a heart attack while working out at the Kernan Physical Therapy Center (now The University of Maryland Rehabilitation & Orthopaedic Institute) in Baltimore. His funeral was held at Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore, Maryland. Between his death and October 4, 2002, 56,934 people signed an online petition urging the Baltimore Ravens to rename the Ravens' home stadium (owned by the State of Maryland) after Unitas. These requests were unsuccessful since the lucrative naming rights had already been leased by the Ravens to Buffalo-based M&T Bank. However, on October 20, 2002, the Ravens dedicated the front area of the stadium's main entrance as Unitas Plaza and unveiled a statue of Unitas as the centerpiece of the plaza.
Unitas is buried at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium, Maryland.
Legacy
Unitas held the record for most Pro Bowl appearances (10) by a quarterback until Brett Favre broke his record in 2009.
Unitas set the original standard for most wins as a starting quarterback with 118 regular season victories (since surpassed by multiple quarterbacks).
Unitas was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.
Unitas is 11th in all-time number of regular season games won by an NFL starting quarterback with 118 wins.
Unitas is 16th in all-time percentage of regular season games won by an NFL starting quarterback with a percentage of 64.5.
1987 American Football Association Semi Pro Hall of Fame
Unitas's no. 16 is the first number retired by the football program at the University of Louisville.
Unitas Tower, a dormitory at the University of Louisville, is named for Johnny Unitas.
A statue of Unitas sits in the north end zone of Cardinal Stadium at the University of Louisville. It is a tradition for each Cardinal player to touch the statue as he enters the field.
Since 1987, the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award has been awarded to the top senior quarterback of the current year in college football. The award is presented annually in Louisville.
In 1999, he was ranked No. 5 on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Football Players, behind only Joe Montana among quarterbacks.
In 2004, The Sporting News ranked Unitas No. 1 among the NFL's 50 Greatest Quarterbacks, with Joe Montana at No. 2.
In 1999, ESPN's Sportscentury: 50 Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century ranked Unitas No. 32.
Just before his death, Johnny Unitas became the community liaison for athletics in Towson, Maryland. The football stadium at Towson University was renamed Johnny Unitas Stadium in 2002. Unitas died less than a week after throwing his last pass in the grand opening of the stadium.
Set the record for consecutive games with at least one touchdown pass at 47 games. This record was surpassed by Drew Brees in 2012.
Set the record for consecutive games with at least two touchdown passes at 12 games. This record was surpassed by Don Meredith, Peyton Manning (twice), Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Philip Rivers, and Patrick Mahomes.
Set the record for most consecutive games with at least a 120 passer rating (4); this record was later matched by Kurt Warner
For the game following his death, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning asked to wear a pair of black cleats as a tribute to Johnny's signature black boots. The league denied his request and threatened Manning with a US$25,000 fine; Manning decided not to wear them. Despite the threatened fine, Chris Redman, a Louisville alum like Unitas, and then quarterback of the Baltimore Ravens, decided to pay homage by wearing the signature cleats during a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In 2013, a movie project was announced by The Baltimore Sun called Unitas We Stand, which will feature Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco as Unitas during the 1958 NFL Championship.
19th Street in Ocean City, Maryland is named "Johnny Unitas Way" in his honor.
Johnny Unitas Stadium on the campus of Towson University in Towson, Maryland, home of the Towson Tigers football and Towson Tigers men's lacrosse teams is named in his honor.
Unitas was posthumously inducted into the National Lithuanian American Hall of Fame on August 24, 2013.
See also
List of most consecutive starts by a National Football League quarterback
Most wins by a starting quarterback (NFL)
Notes
References
Sources
Bolus, Jim, and Billy Reed. Cardinal Football. Champaign, IL: Sports Pub Inc., 1999.
Callahan, Tom. Johnny U: the life and times of John Unitas. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006.
Lazenby, Roland. Johnny Unitas: the best there ever was. Chicago: Triumph Books, 2002.
Schaap, Dick (1999). "Johnny Unitas: Sunday's Best". In ESPN SportsCentury. Michael MacCambridge, Editor. New York: ESPN-Hyperion Books. pp. 154–65.
Cavanaugh, Jack (2008), Giants Among Men. New York:Random House.
MacCambridge, Michael (2005), America's Game. New York:Anchor Books.
External links
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Burials at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens
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National Football League announcers
National Football League Most Valuable Player Award winners
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Western Conference Pro Bowl players | false | [
"Eric Branford Powell (born November 16, 1979) is a former American football defensive end. He was signed by the Green Bay Packers as an undrafted free agent in 2003. He played college football at Florida State.\n\nPowell has also been a member of the Cologne Centurions, Detroit Lions, Buffalo Bills, and Houston Texans.\n\nCollege career\nAfter graduation from Jones High School in Orlando, Powell attended Southwest Mississippi Community College. While at Southwest, Powell was named the number one junior college defensive end in the country by ESPN the Magazine. His success at Southwest led to a scholarship to play at Florida State. In Orlando, September, 2001, Powell was shot by a small caliber handgun. He did not sustain any life-threatening injuries. He returned to Florida State to continue his academic and athletic career.\n\nProfessional career\n\nGreen Bay Packers\nAfter going undrafted in the 2003 NFL Draft, Powell signed with the Green Bay Packers on May 2, 2003.\n\nIn 2004, he was allocated to NFL Europe and played for the Cologne Centurions.\n\nCologne Centurions\nPowell was drafted by the Cologne Centurions in the fourth round of the 2005 NFL Europe Free Agent Draft.\n\nFlorida Tuskers\nPowell was drafted by the Florida Tuskers on the UFL Premiere Season Draft in 2009 and signed with the team on September 3. He was released on September 29. He was originally re-signed to the teams' practice squad. Before the first game of the season the UFL abolished the practice squad and Powell became a member of the Tuskers' active roster.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nJust Sports Stats\nFlorida State Seminoles bio\nHouston Texans bio\n\n1979 births\nLiving people\nJones High School (Orlando, Florida) alumni\nPlayers of American football from Orlando, Florida\nAmerican football defensive ends\nFlorida State Seminoles football players\nGreen Bay Packers players\nCologne Centurions players\nDetroit Lions players\nBuffalo Bills players\nHouston Texans players\nFlorida Tuskers players",
"In gridiron football, spearing is a tackling technique in which a player makes initial contact with the crown of their helmet by using their body as a spear (head out, arms by their side). An offensive player or a defensive player can be penalized for spear tackling. Spearing from an offensive player will result in a 15-yard penalty, whereas spearing from a defensive player will result in an automatic first-down for the offense.\n\n1976 Rule Change \nIn the year 1976, the tackling technique known as spearing was banned across the board. Associations such as the National Football League (NFL), the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFSHSA) made it illegal to perform any kind of spearing or head down contact to another player. This is mainly due to the severe injuries players would sustain upon using the spearing technique. Although this ban might have decreased the number of head injuries, players' use of spearing still persists.\n\nInjury Risks \nWithin the sport of gridiron football, the spearing technique was responsible for most of the catastrophic cervical spinal cord injuries and concussions, which is a result of axial loading. Recognition of such injuries resulted in rule changes in 1976, banning such tackles for high school and college football, after which incidence of these injuries dropped significantly. For example, incidence of quadriplegia decreased from 2.24 and 10.66 per 100,000 participants in high school and college football in 1976, to 1.30 and 2.66 per 100,000 participants in 1977.\n\nReferences\n\nBanned sports tactics\nAmerican football terminology\nCanadian football terminology"
] |
[
"Johnny Unitas",
"Baltimore Colts",
"When did Johnny get drafted into the Colts?",
"In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank,",
"Did he do well?",
"In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24)",
"Did he continue his winning streak after that?",
"I don't know.",
"Did he sustain any injuries in his career?",
"I don't know."
] | C_2ba58216460d43aa986fc0e897537239_1 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 5 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article other than Johnny's career with the Colts? | Johnny Unitas | In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, after being asked at the last minute to join Bloomfield Rams lineman Jim Deglau, a Croatian steel worker with a life much like Unitas', at the latter's scheduled Colts tryout. The pair borrowed money from friends to pay for the gas to make the trip. Deglau later told a reporter after Unitas' death, "[His] uncle told him not to come. [He] was worried that if he came down and the Colts passed on him, it would look bad (to other NFL teams)." The Colts signed Unitas, much to the chagrin of the Cleveland Browns, who had hoped to claim the rejected Steeler quarterback. Unitas made his NFL debut with an inauspicious "mop-up" appearance against Detroit, going 0-2 with one interception. Two weeks later, starting quarterback George Shaw suffered a broken leg against the Chicago Bears. In his first serious action, Unitas' initial pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Then he botched a hand-off on his next play, a fumble recovered by the Bears. Unitas rebounded quickly from that 58-27 loss, leading the Colts to an upset of Green Bay and their first win over Cleveland. He threw nine touchdown passes that year, including one in the season finale that started his record 47-game streak. His 55.6-percent completion mark was a rookie record. In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24) as he helped lead the Colts to a 7-5 record, the first winning record in franchise history. At season's end, Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA). CANNOTANSWER | Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA). | John Constantine Unitas (; May 7, 1933 – September 11, 2002) was an American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 18 seasons, primarily with the Baltimore Colts. Following a career that spanned from 1956 to 1973, he has been consistently listed as one of the greatest NFL players of all time.
Unitas set many NFL records and was named Most Valuable Player three times in 1959, 1964, and 1967, in addition to receiving 10 Pro Bowl and five first-team All-Pro honors. He helped lead the Colts to four championship titles; three pre-merger era in 1958, 1959, 1968, and one Super Bowl era in Super Bowl V. His first championship victory is regarded as one of the league's greatest games and credited with helping popularize the NFL. Between 1956 and 1960, he set the record for most consecutive games with a touchdown pass at 47, which held for 52 years.
Nicknamed "Johnny U" and the "Golden Arm", Unitas was considered the prototype of the modern era marquee quarterback. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.
Early life
John Constantine Unitas was born in Pittsburgh in 1933 to Francis J. Unitas and Helen Superfisky, both of Lithuanian descent; he grew up in the Mount Washington neighborhood in a Roman Catholic upbringing. When Unitas was five years old, his father died of cardiovascular renal disease complicated by pneumonia, leaving the young boy to be raised by his mother, who worked two jobs to support the family. His surname was a result of a phonetic transliteration of a common Lithuanian last name Jonaitis. Attending St. Justin's High School in Pittsburgh, Unitas played halfback and quarterback.
College career
In his younger years, Unitas dreamed about being part of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team, but when he tried out for the team, coach Frank Leahy said that he was just too skinny and he would "get murdered" if he was put on the field.
Instead, he attended the University of Louisville. In his four-year career as a Louisville Cardinal, Unitas completed 245 passes for 3,139 yards and 27 touchdowns. Reportedly, the Unitas weighed on his first day of practice. His first start was in the fifth game of the 1951 season against St. Bonaventure, where he threw 11 consecutive passes and three touchdowns to give the Cardinals a 21–19 lead. Louisville ended up losing the game 22–21 on a disputed field goal, but found a new starting quarterback. Unitas completed 12 of 19 passes for 240 yards and four touchdowns in a 35–28 victory over Houston. The team finished the season 5–5 overall and 4–1 with Unitas starting. He completed 46 of 99 passes for 602 yards and nine touchdowns (44).
By the 1952 season, the university decided to de-emphasize sports. The new president at Louisville, Dr. Philip Grant Davidson, reduced the amount of athletic aid, and tightened academic standards for athletes. As a result, 15 returning players could not meet the new standards and lost their scholarships. Unitas maintained his by taking on a new elective: square dancing. In 1952, coach Frank Camp switched the team to two-way football. Unitas not only played safety or linebacker on defense and quarterback on offense, but also returned kicks and punts on special teams. The Cardinals won their first game against Wayne State, and then Florida State in the second game. Unitas completed 16 of 21 passes for 198 yards and three touchdowns. It was said that Unitas put on such a show at the Florida State game that he threw a pass under his legs for 15 yards. The rest of the season was a struggle for the Cardinals, who finished 3–5. Unitas completed 106 of 198 passes for 1,540 yards and 12 touchdowns.
The team won their first game in 1953, against Murray State, and lost the rest for a record of 1–7. One of the most memorable games of the season came in a 59–6 loss against Tennessee. Unitas completed 9 out of 19 passes for 73 yards, rushed 9 times for 52 yards, returned six kickoffs for 85 yards, one punt for three yards, and had 86 percent of the team's tackles. The only touchdown the team scored was in the fourth quarter when Unitas made a fake pitch to the running back and ran the ball 23 yards for a touchdown. Unitas was hurt later in the fourth quarter while trying to run the ball. On his way off the field, he received a standing ovation. When he got to the locker room he was so tired that his jersey and shoulder pads had to be cut off because he could not lift his arms. Louisville ended the season with a 20–13 loss to Eastern Kentucky. Unitas completed 49 of 95 passes for 470 yards and three touchdowns.
Unitas was elected captain for the 1954 season, but due to an early injury did not see much playing time. His first start was the third game of the season, against Florida State. Of the 34-man team, 21 were freshmen. The 1954 Cardinals went 3–6, with their last win at home against Morehead State. Unitas was slowed by so many injuries his senior year his 527 passing yards ended second to Jim Houser's 560.
Professional career
Pittsburgh Steelers
After his collegiate career, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL drafted Unitas in the ninth round. However, he was released before the season began as the odd man out among four quarterbacks trying to fill three spots. Steelers' head coach Walt Kiesling had made up his mind about Unitas; he thought he was not smart enough to quarterback an NFL team, and he was not given any snaps in practice with the Steelers. Among those edging out Unitas was Ted Marchibroda, future longtime NFL head coach. Out of pro football, Unitas—by this time married—worked in construction in Pittsburgh to support his family. On the weekends, he played quarterback, safety and punter on a local semi-professional team called the Bloomfield Rams for $6 a game.
Baltimore Colts
In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, after being asked at the last minute to join Bloomfield Rams lineman Jim Deglau, a Croatian steelworker with a life much like Unitas, at the latter's scheduled Colts tryout. The pair borrowed money from friends to pay for the gas to make the trip. Deglau later told a reporter after Unitas's death, "[His] uncle told him not to come. [He] was worried that if he came down and the Colts passed on him, it would look bad (to other NFL teams)." The Colts signed Unitas, much to the chagrin of the Cleveland Browns, who had hoped to claim the former Steeler quarterback.
Unitas made his NFL debut with an inauspicious "mop-up" appearance against Detroit, going 0–2 with one interception. Two weeks later, starting quarterback George Shaw suffered a broken leg against the Chicago Bears. In his first serious action, Unitas's initial pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Then he botched a hand-off on his next play, a fumble recovered by the Bears. Unitas rebounded quickly from that 58–27 loss, leading the Colts to an upset of Green Bay and their first win over Cleveland. He threw nine touchdown passes that year, including one in the season finale that started his record 47-game streak. His 55.6-percent completion mark was a rookie record.
In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24) as he helped lead the Colts to a 7–5 record, the first winning record in franchise history. At season's end, Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA).
1958: "The Greatest Game Ever Played"
Unitas continued his prowess in 1958 passing for 2,007 yards and 19 touchdowns as the Colts won the Western Conference title. The Colts won the NFL championship under his leadership on December 28, 1958, by defeating the New York Giants 23–17 in sudden death overtime on a touchdown by fullback Alan Ameche. It was the first overtime game in NFL history, and is often referred to as the "greatest game ever played". The game, nationally televised by NBC, has been credited for sparking the rise in popularity of professional football during the 1960s.
1959 MVP season
In 1959, Unitas was named the NFL's MVP by the Associated Press (AP) for the first time, as well as United Press International's player of the year, after leading the NFL in passing yards (2,899), touchdown passes (32), and completions (193). He then led the Colts to a repeat championship, beating the Giants again 31–16 in the title game.
Beginning of the 1960s
As the 1960s began, the Colts' fortunes (and win totals) declined. Injuries to key players such as Alan Ameche, Raymond Berry, and Lenny Moore were a contributing factor. Unitas's streak of 47 straight games with at least one touchdown pass ended against the Los Angeles Rams in week 11 of the 1960 season. In spite of this, he topped the 3,000-yard passing mark for the first time and led the league in touchdown passes for the fourth consecutive season.
After three middle-of-the-pack seasons, Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom fired Weeb Ewbank and replaced him with Don Shula, who at the time was the youngest head coach in NFL history (33 years of age when he was hired). The Colts finished 8–6 in Shula's first season at the helm, good enough for only third place in the NFL's Western Conference, but they did end the season on a strong note by winning their final three games. The season was very successful for Unitas personally, as he led the NFL in passing yards with a career-best total of 3,481 and also led in completions with 237.
1964 MVP season
In the 1964 season the Colts returned to the top of the Western Conference. After dropping their season opener to the Minnesota Vikings, the Colts ran off 10 straight victories to finish with a 12–2 record. The season was one of Unitas's best as he finished with 2,824 yards passing, a league-best 9.26 yards per pass attempt, 19 touchdown passes and only 6 interceptions. He was named the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the AP and UPI for a second time. However, the season ended on a disappointing note for the Colts as they were upset by the Cleveland Browns in the 1964 NFL Championship Game, losing 27–0.
Unitas resumed his torrid passing in 1965, throwing for 2,530 yards, 23 touchdowns and finishing with a league-high and career-best 97.1 passer rating. But he was lost for the balance of the season due to a knee injury in a week 12 loss to the Bears. Backup quarterback Gary Cuozzo also suffered a season-ending injury the following week, and running back Tom Matte filled in as the emergency quarterback for the regular season finale and in a playoff loss to the Packers. The Colts and Packers finished in a tie for first place in the Western Conference and a one-game playoff was played in Green Bay to decide who would be the conference representative in the 1965 NFL Championship Game. The Colts lost in overtime 13–10 due in large part to a game-tying field goal by Don Chandler that many say was incorrectly ruled good.
Unitas, healthy once more, threw for 2,748 yards and 22 touchdowns in 1966 in a return to Pro Bowl form. However, he posted a league-high 24 interceptions.
1967 MVP season
After once again finishing second in the Western Conference in 1966, the Colts rebounded to finish 11–1–2 in 1967 tying the Los Angeles Rams for the NFL's best record. In winning his third MVP award from the AP and UPI in 1967 (and his second from the NEA), Unitas had a league-high 58.5 completion percentage and passed for 3,428 yards and 20 touchdowns. He openly complained about having tennis elbow and he threw eight interceptions and only three touchdown passes in the final five games. Once again, the season ended in loss for the Colts, as they were shut out of the newly instituted four-team NFL playoff after losing the divisional tiebreaker to the Rams, a 34–10 rout in the regular season finale.
Super Bowls and final Colt years
In the final game of the 1968 preseason, the muscles in Unitas's arm were torn when he was hit by a member of the Dallas Cowboys defense. Unitas wrote in his autobiography that he felt his arm was initially injured by the use of the "night ball" that the NFL was testing for better TV visibility during night games. In a post-game interview the previous year, he noted having constant pain in his elbow for several years prior. He would spend most of the season sitting on the bench. The Colts still marched to a league-best 13–1 record behind backup quarterback and ultimate 1968 NFL MVP Earl Morrall. Although he was injured through most of the season, Unitas came off the bench to play in Super Bowl III, the famous game where Joe Namath guaranteed a New York Jets win despite conventional wisdom. Unitas's insertion was a desperation move in an attempt to retrieve dominance of the NFL over the upstart AFL. Although the Colts won an NFL Championship in 1968, they lost the Super Bowl to the AFL Champion New York Jets, thus becoming the first-ever NFL champions that were not also deemed world champions. Unitas helped put together the Colts' only score, a touchdown late in the game. Unitas also drove the Colts into scoring position following the touchdown and successful onside kick, but head coach Don Shula eschewed a field goal attempt, which (if successful) would have cut the Jets' lead to 16–10. Despite not playing until late in the third quarter, he still finished the game with more passing yards than the team's starter, Earl Morrall.
After an off-season of rehabilitation on his elbow, Unitas rebounded in 1969, passing for 2,342 yards and 12 touchdowns with 20 interceptions. But the Colts finished with a disappointing 8–5–1 record, and missed the playoffs.
In 1970, the NFL and AFL had merged into one league, and the Colts moved to the new American Football Conference, along with the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers. He threw for 2,213 yards and 14 touchdowns while leading the Colts to an 11–2–1 season. In their first rematch with the Jets, Unitas and Namath threw a combined nine interceptions in a 29–22 Colts win. Namath threw 62 passes and broke his hand on the final play of the game, ending his season.
Unitas threw for 390 yards, three touchdowns, and no interceptions in AFC playoff victories over the Cincinnati Bengals and the Oakland Raiders. In Super Bowl V against the Dallas Cowboys, he was knocked out of the game with a rib injury in the second quarter, soon after throwing a 75-yard touchdown pass (setting a then-Super Bowl record) to John Mackey. However, he had also tossed two interceptions before his departure from the game. Earl Morrall came in to lead the team to a last-second, 16–13 victory.
In 1971, Unitas split playing time with Morrall, throwing only three touchdown passes. He started both playoff games, a win over the Cleveland Browns that sent the Colts to the AFC Championship game against the Miami Dolphins, which they lost by a score of 21–0. Unitas threw three interceptions in the game, one of which was returned for a touchdown by safety Dick Anderson.
The 1972 season saw the Colts declining. After losing the season opener, Unitas was involved in the second and final regular season head-to-head meeting with "Broadway" Joe Namath. The first was in 1970 (won by the Colts, 29–22). The last meeting took place on September 24, 1972 at Memorial Stadium. He threw for 376 yards and three touchdowns, but Namath upstaged him again, bombing the Colts for 496 yards and six touchdowns in a 44–34 Jets victory – their first over Baltimore since the 1970 merger. After losing four of their first five games, the Colts fired head coach Don McCafferty, and benched Unitas.
One of the more memorable moments in football history came on Unitas's last game in a Colts uniform at Memorial Stadium, in a game against the Buffalo Bills. He was not the starter for this game, but the Colts were blowing the Bills out by a score of 28–0 behind Marty Domres; Unitas entered the game due to the fans chanting, "We want Unitas!!!", and a plan devised by head coach John Sandusky to convince Unitas that the starting quarterback was injured. Unitas came onto the field, and threw two passes, one of which was a long touchdown to wide receiver Eddie Hinton which would be his last pass as a Colt. The Colts won the game by the score of 35–7.
San Diego, retirement, and records
Unitas was traded from the Colts to the San Diego Chargers on January 20, 1973, in a transaction that originally had future considerations returning to Baltimore. The deal's only obstacle was the personal services contract he had signed with the Colts in 1970 which would've kept him employed within the organization on an annual salary of $30,000 over ten years once his career as an active player ended. The pact had been signed when the ballclub was owned by Carroll Rosenbloom who subsequently acquired the Los Angeles Rams on July 13, 1972, in a franchise swap with Robert Irsay. The deal was completed when the Chargers purchased that contract. Eager to sever all ties with the Colts, Unitas signed a new two-year contract with the Chargers on June 8, 1973. He succeeded John Hadl who had requested and was granted a trade to the Rams.
Unitas started the season with a 38–0 loss to the Washington Redskins. He threw for just 55 yards and 3 interceptions, and was sacked 8 times. His final victory as a starter came against the Buffalo Bills in week two. Unitas was 10–18 for 175 yards, two touchdown passes, and no interceptions in a 34–7 Chargers rout. Many were questioning his role as a starter after a loss to the Bengals in week three. Two weeks later, he threw two first-half interceptions, passed for only 19 yards, and went 2-for-9 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was then replaced by rookie quarterback, future Hall of Famer Dan Fouts. After having posted a 1–3 record as a starter, Unitas retired in the preseason of 1974.
Unitas finished his 18 NFL seasons with 2,830 completions in 5,186 attempts for 40,239 yards and 290 touchdowns, with 253 interceptions. He also rushed for 1,777 yards and 13 touchdowns. Plagued by arm trouble in his later seasons, he threw more interceptions (64) than touchdowns (38) in 1968–1973. After averaging 215.8 yards per game in his first 12 seasons, his production fell to 124.4 in his final six. His passer rating plummeted from 82.9 to 60.4 for the same periods. Even so, Unitas set many passing records during his career. He was the first quarterback to throw for more than 40,000 yards, despite playing during an era when NFL teams played shorter seasons of 12 or 14 games (as opposed to today's 17-game seasons) and prior to modern passing-friendly rules implemented in 1978. His 32 touchdown passes in 1959 were a record at the time, making Unitas the first quarterback to hit the 30 touchdown mark in a season. His 47-game consecutive touchdown streak between 1956 and 1960 was a record considered by many to be unbreakable. The streak stood for 52 years before being broken by New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees in a game against the San Diego Chargers on October 7, 2012.
Post-playing days
After his playing days were finished, Unitas settled in Baltimore where he raised his family while also pursuing a career in broadcasting, doing color commentary for NFL games on CBS in the 1970s. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979. After Robert Irsay moved the Colts franchise to Indianapolis in 1984, a move known to this day in Baltimore as "Bob Irsay's Midnight Ride," he was so outraged that he cut all ties to the relocated team (though his No. 19 jersey is still retired by the Colts), declaring himself strictly a Baltimore Colt for the remainder of his life. Some other prominent old-time Colts followed his lead, although many attended the 1975 team's reunion at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in 2009. A total of 39 Colts players from that 1975 team attended said reunion in Indianapolis, including Bert Jones and Lydell Mitchell. Unitas asked the Pro Football Hall of Fame on numerous occasions (including on Roy Firestone's Up Close) to remove his display unless it was listed as belonging to the Baltimore Colts. The Hall of Fame has never complied with the request. Unitas donated his Colts memorabilia to the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore; they are now on display in the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards.
Unitas was inducted into the American Football Association's Semi Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987.
Unitas actively lobbied for another NFL team to come to Baltimore. After the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996 and changed their name to the Ravens, he and some of the other old-time Colts attended the Ravens' first game ever against the Raiders on Opening Day at Memorial Stadium. He was frequently seen on the Ravens' sidelines at home games (most prominently in 1998 when the now-Indianapolis Colts played the Ravens in Baltimore) and received a thunderous ovation every time he was pictured on each of the huge widescreens at M&T Bank Stadium. He was often seen on the 30-yard line on the Ravens side. When the NFL celebrated its first 50 years, Unitas was voted the league's best player. Retired Bears quarterback Sid Luckman said of Unitas, "He was better than me, better than Sammy Baugh, better than anyone."
Unitas lived most of the final years of his life severely hobbled. Due to an elbow injury suffered during his playing career, he had only very limited use of his right hand, and could not perform any physical activity more strenuous than golf due to his artificial knees.
NFL career statistics
Source:
In 1957, Unitas was named MVP by the Newspaper Enterprise Association.
Personal life
At the age of 21 on November 20, 1954, Unitas married his high school sweetheart Dorothy Hoelle; they lived in Towson and had five children before divorcing. Unitas's second wife was Sandra Lemon, whom he married on June 26, 1972; they had three children, lived in Baldwin, and remained married until his death.
Towson University, where Unitas was a major fund-raiser and which his children attended, named its football and lacrosse complex Johnny Unitas Stadium in recognition of both his football career and service to the university.
Toward the end of his life, Unitas brought media attention to the many permanent physical disabilities that he and his fellow players suffered during their careers before heavy padding and other safety features became popular. Unitas himself lost almost total use of his right hand, with the middle finger and thumb noticeably disfigured from being repeatedly broken during games.
On September 11, 2002, Unitas died from a heart attack while working out at the Kernan Physical Therapy Center (now The University of Maryland Rehabilitation & Orthopaedic Institute) in Baltimore. His funeral was held at Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore, Maryland. Between his death and October 4, 2002, 56,934 people signed an online petition urging the Baltimore Ravens to rename the Ravens' home stadium (owned by the State of Maryland) after Unitas. These requests were unsuccessful since the lucrative naming rights had already been leased by the Ravens to Buffalo-based M&T Bank. However, on October 20, 2002, the Ravens dedicated the front area of the stadium's main entrance as Unitas Plaza and unveiled a statue of Unitas as the centerpiece of the plaza.
Unitas is buried at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium, Maryland.
Legacy
Unitas held the record for most Pro Bowl appearances (10) by a quarterback until Brett Favre broke his record in 2009.
Unitas set the original standard for most wins as a starting quarterback with 118 regular season victories (since surpassed by multiple quarterbacks).
Unitas was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.
Unitas is 11th in all-time number of regular season games won by an NFL starting quarterback with 118 wins.
Unitas is 16th in all-time percentage of regular season games won by an NFL starting quarterback with a percentage of 64.5.
1987 American Football Association Semi Pro Hall of Fame
Unitas's no. 16 is the first number retired by the football program at the University of Louisville.
Unitas Tower, a dormitory at the University of Louisville, is named for Johnny Unitas.
A statue of Unitas sits in the north end zone of Cardinal Stadium at the University of Louisville. It is a tradition for each Cardinal player to touch the statue as he enters the field.
Since 1987, the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award has been awarded to the top senior quarterback of the current year in college football. The award is presented annually in Louisville.
In 1999, he was ranked No. 5 on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Football Players, behind only Joe Montana among quarterbacks.
In 2004, The Sporting News ranked Unitas No. 1 among the NFL's 50 Greatest Quarterbacks, with Joe Montana at No. 2.
In 1999, ESPN's Sportscentury: 50 Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century ranked Unitas No. 32.
Just before his death, Johnny Unitas became the community liaison for athletics in Towson, Maryland. The football stadium at Towson University was renamed Johnny Unitas Stadium in 2002. Unitas died less than a week after throwing his last pass in the grand opening of the stadium.
Set the record for consecutive games with at least one touchdown pass at 47 games. This record was surpassed by Drew Brees in 2012.
Set the record for consecutive games with at least two touchdown passes at 12 games. This record was surpassed by Don Meredith, Peyton Manning (twice), Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Philip Rivers, and Patrick Mahomes.
Set the record for most consecutive games with at least a 120 passer rating (4); this record was later matched by Kurt Warner
For the game following his death, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning asked to wear a pair of black cleats as a tribute to Johnny's signature black boots. The league denied his request and threatened Manning with a US$25,000 fine; Manning decided not to wear them. Despite the threatened fine, Chris Redman, a Louisville alum like Unitas, and then quarterback of the Baltimore Ravens, decided to pay homage by wearing the signature cleats during a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In 2013, a movie project was announced by The Baltimore Sun called Unitas We Stand, which will feature Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco as Unitas during the 1958 NFL Championship.
19th Street in Ocean City, Maryland is named "Johnny Unitas Way" in his honor.
Johnny Unitas Stadium on the campus of Towson University in Towson, Maryland, home of the Towson Tigers football and Towson Tigers men's lacrosse teams is named in his honor.
Unitas was posthumously inducted into the National Lithuanian American Hall of Fame on August 24, 2013.
See also
List of most consecutive starts by a National Football League quarterback
Most wins by a starting quarterback (NFL)
Notes
References
Sources
Bolus, Jim, and Billy Reed. Cardinal Football. Champaign, IL: Sports Pub Inc., 1999.
Callahan, Tom. Johnny U: the life and times of John Unitas. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006.
Lazenby, Roland. Johnny Unitas: the best there ever was. Chicago: Triumph Books, 2002.
Schaap, Dick (1999). "Johnny Unitas: Sunday's Best". In ESPN SportsCentury. Michael MacCambridge, Editor. New York: ESPN-Hyperion Books. pp. 154–65.
Cavanaugh, Jack (2008), Giants Among Men. New York:Random House.
MacCambridge, Michael (2005), America's Game. New York:Anchor Books.
External links
1933 births
2002 deaths
American football quarterbacks
American people of Lithuanian descent
Baltimore Colts players
Burials at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens
Catholics from Maryland
Catholics from Pennsylvania
Louisville Cardinals football players
National Football League announcers
National Football League Most Valuable Player Award winners
National Football League players with retired numbers
People from Timonium, Maryland
People from Towson, Maryland
Pittsburgh Steelers players
Players of American football from Baltimore
Players of American football from Pittsburgh
Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees
San Diego Chargers players
Sportspeople from Baltimore County, Maryland
Western Conference Pro Bowl players | 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"
] |
[
"Johnny Unitas",
"Baltimore Colts",
"When did Johnny get drafted into the Colts?",
"In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank,",
"Did he do well?",
"In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24)",
"Did he continue his winning streak after that?",
"I don't know.",
"Did he sustain any injuries in his career?",
"I don't know.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA)."
] | C_2ba58216460d43aa986fc0e897537239_1 | Did he receive any other awards? | 6 | Did Johnny receive any other awards other than the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player? | Johnny Unitas | In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, after being asked at the last minute to join Bloomfield Rams lineman Jim Deglau, a Croatian steel worker with a life much like Unitas', at the latter's scheduled Colts tryout. The pair borrowed money from friends to pay for the gas to make the trip. Deglau later told a reporter after Unitas' death, "[His] uncle told him not to come. [He] was worried that if he came down and the Colts passed on him, it would look bad (to other NFL teams)." The Colts signed Unitas, much to the chagrin of the Cleveland Browns, who had hoped to claim the rejected Steeler quarterback. Unitas made his NFL debut with an inauspicious "mop-up" appearance against Detroit, going 0-2 with one interception. Two weeks later, starting quarterback George Shaw suffered a broken leg against the Chicago Bears. In his first serious action, Unitas' initial pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Then he botched a hand-off on his next play, a fumble recovered by the Bears. Unitas rebounded quickly from that 58-27 loss, leading the Colts to an upset of Green Bay and their first win over Cleveland. He threw nine touchdown passes that year, including one in the season finale that started his record 47-game streak. His 55.6-percent completion mark was a rookie record. In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24) as he helped lead the Colts to a 7-5 record, the first winning record in franchise history. At season's end, Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA). CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | John Constantine Unitas (; May 7, 1933 – September 11, 2002) was an American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 18 seasons, primarily with the Baltimore Colts. Following a career that spanned from 1956 to 1973, he has been consistently listed as one of the greatest NFL players of all time.
Unitas set many NFL records and was named Most Valuable Player three times in 1959, 1964, and 1967, in addition to receiving 10 Pro Bowl and five first-team All-Pro honors. He helped lead the Colts to four championship titles; three pre-merger era in 1958, 1959, 1968, and one Super Bowl era in Super Bowl V. His first championship victory is regarded as one of the league's greatest games and credited with helping popularize the NFL. Between 1956 and 1960, he set the record for most consecutive games with a touchdown pass at 47, which held for 52 years.
Nicknamed "Johnny U" and the "Golden Arm", Unitas was considered the prototype of the modern era marquee quarterback. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.
Early life
John Constantine Unitas was born in Pittsburgh in 1933 to Francis J. Unitas and Helen Superfisky, both of Lithuanian descent; he grew up in the Mount Washington neighborhood in a Roman Catholic upbringing. When Unitas was five years old, his father died of cardiovascular renal disease complicated by pneumonia, leaving the young boy to be raised by his mother, who worked two jobs to support the family. His surname was a result of a phonetic transliteration of a common Lithuanian last name Jonaitis. Attending St. Justin's High School in Pittsburgh, Unitas played halfback and quarterback.
College career
In his younger years, Unitas dreamed about being part of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team, but when he tried out for the team, coach Frank Leahy said that he was just too skinny and he would "get murdered" if he was put on the field.
Instead, he attended the University of Louisville. In his four-year career as a Louisville Cardinal, Unitas completed 245 passes for 3,139 yards and 27 touchdowns. Reportedly, the Unitas weighed on his first day of practice. His first start was in the fifth game of the 1951 season against St. Bonaventure, where he threw 11 consecutive passes and three touchdowns to give the Cardinals a 21–19 lead. Louisville ended up losing the game 22–21 on a disputed field goal, but found a new starting quarterback. Unitas completed 12 of 19 passes for 240 yards and four touchdowns in a 35–28 victory over Houston. The team finished the season 5–5 overall and 4–1 with Unitas starting. He completed 46 of 99 passes for 602 yards and nine touchdowns (44).
By the 1952 season, the university decided to de-emphasize sports. The new president at Louisville, Dr. Philip Grant Davidson, reduced the amount of athletic aid, and tightened academic standards for athletes. As a result, 15 returning players could not meet the new standards and lost their scholarships. Unitas maintained his by taking on a new elective: square dancing. In 1952, coach Frank Camp switched the team to two-way football. Unitas not only played safety or linebacker on defense and quarterback on offense, but also returned kicks and punts on special teams. The Cardinals won their first game against Wayne State, and then Florida State in the second game. Unitas completed 16 of 21 passes for 198 yards and three touchdowns. It was said that Unitas put on such a show at the Florida State game that he threw a pass under his legs for 15 yards. The rest of the season was a struggle for the Cardinals, who finished 3–5. Unitas completed 106 of 198 passes for 1,540 yards and 12 touchdowns.
The team won their first game in 1953, against Murray State, and lost the rest for a record of 1–7. One of the most memorable games of the season came in a 59–6 loss against Tennessee. Unitas completed 9 out of 19 passes for 73 yards, rushed 9 times for 52 yards, returned six kickoffs for 85 yards, one punt for three yards, and had 86 percent of the team's tackles. The only touchdown the team scored was in the fourth quarter when Unitas made a fake pitch to the running back and ran the ball 23 yards for a touchdown. Unitas was hurt later in the fourth quarter while trying to run the ball. On his way off the field, he received a standing ovation. When he got to the locker room he was so tired that his jersey and shoulder pads had to be cut off because he could not lift his arms. Louisville ended the season with a 20–13 loss to Eastern Kentucky. Unitas completed 49 of 95 passes for 470 yards and three touchdowns.
Unitas was elected captain for the 1954 season, but due to an early injury did not see much playing time. His first start was the third game of the season, against Florida State. Of the 34-man team, 21 were freshmen. The 1954 Cardinals went 3–6, with their last win at home against Morehead State. Unitas was slowed by so many injuries his senior year his 527 passing yards ended second to Jim Houser's 560.
Professional career
Pittsburgh Steelers
After his collegiate career, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL drafted Unitas in the ninth round. However, he was released before the season began as the odd man out among four quarterbacks trying to fill three spots. Steelers' head coach Walt Kiesling had made up his mind about Unitas; he thought he was not smart enough to quarterback an NFL team, and he was not given any snaps in practice with the Steelers. Among those edging out Unitas was Ted Marchibroda, future longtime NFL head coach. Out of pro football, Unitas—by this time married—worked in construction in Pittsburgh to support his family. On the weekends, he played quarterback, safety and punter on a local semi-professional team called the Bloomfield Rams for $6 a game.
Baltimore Colts
In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, after being asked at the last minute to join Bloomfield Rams lineman Jim Deglau, a Croatian steelworker with a life much like Unitas, at the latter's scheduled Colts tryout. The pair borrowed money from friends to pay for the gas to make the trip. Deglau later told a reporter after Unitas's death, "[His] uncle told him not to come. [He] was worried that if he came down and the Colts passed on him, it would look bad (to other NFL teams)." The Colts signed Unitas, much to the chagrin of the Cleveland Browns, who had hoped to claim the former Steeler quarterback.
Unitas made his NFL debut with an inauspicious "mop-up" appearance against Detroit, going 0–2 with one interception. Two weeks later, starting quarterback George Shaw suffered a broken leg against the Chicago Bears. In his first serious action, Unitas's initial pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Then he botched a hand-off on his next play, a fumble recovered by the Bears. Unitas rebounded quickly from that 58–27 loss, leading the Colts to an upset of Green Bay and their first win over Cleveland. He threw nine touchdown passes that year, including one in the season finale that started his record 47-game streak. His 55.6-percent completion mark was a rookie record.
In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes (24) as he helped lead the Colts to a 7–5 record, the first winning record in franchise history. At season's end, Unitas received the Jim Thorpe Trophy as the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA).
1958: "The Greatest Game Ever Played"
Unitas continued his prowess in 1958 passing for 2,007 yards and 19 touchdowns as the Colts won the Western Conference title. The Colts won the NFL championship under his leadership on December 28, 1958, by defeating the New York Giants 23–17 in sudden death overtime on a touchdown by fullback Alan Ameche. It was the first overtime game in NFL history, and is often referred to as the "greatest game ever played". The game, nationally televised by NBC, has been credited for sparking the rise in popularity of professional football during the 1960s.
1959 MVP season
In 1959, Unitas was named the NFL's MVP by the Associated Press (AP) for the first time, as well as United Press International's player of the year, after leading the NFL in passing yards (2,899), touchdown passes (32), and completions (193). He then led the Colts to a repeat championship, beating the Giants again 31–16 in the title game.
Beginning of the 1960s
As the 1960s began, the Colts' fortunes (and win totals) declined. Injuries to key players such as Alan Ameche, Raymond Berry, and Lenny Moore were a contributing factor. Unitas's streak of 47 straight games with at least one touchdown pass ended against the Los Angeles Rams in week 11 of the 1960 season. In spite of this, he topped the 3,000-yard passing mark for the first time and led the league in touchdown passes for the fourth consecutive season.
After three middle-of-the-pack seasons, Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom fired Weeb Ewbank and replaced him with Don Shula, who at the time was the youngest head coach in NFL history (33 years of age when he was hired). The Colts finished 8–6 in Shula's first season at the helm, good enough for only third place in the NFL's Western Conference, but they did end the season on a strong note by winning their final three games. The season was very successful for Unitas personally, as he led the NFL in passing yards with a career-best total of 3,481 and also led in completions with 237.
1964 MVP season
In the 1964 season the Colts returned to the top of the Western Conference. After dropping their season opener to the Minnesota Vikings, the Colts ran off 10 straight victories to finish with a 12–2 record. The season was one of Unitas's best as he finished with 2,824 yards passing, a league-best 9.26 yards per pass attempt, 19 touchdown passes and only 6 interceptions. He was named the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the AP and UPI for a second time. However, the season ended on a disappointing note for the Colts as they were upset by the Cleveland Browns in the 1964 NFL Championship Game, losing 27–0.
Unitas resumed his torrid passing in 1965, throwing for 2,530 yards, 23 touchdowns and finishing with a league-high and career-best 97.1 passer rating. But he was lost for the balance of the season due to a knee injury in a week 12 loss to the Bears. Backup quarterback Gary Cuozzo also suffered a season-ending injury the following week, and running back Tom Matte filled in as the emergency quarterback for the regular season finale and in a playoff loss to the Packers. The Colts and Packers finished in a tie for first place in the Western Conference and a one-game playoff was played in Green Bay to decide who would be the conference representative in the 1965 NFL Championship Game. The Colts lost in overtime 13–10 due in large part to a game-tying field goal by Don Chandler that many say was incorrectly ruled good.
Unitas, healthy once more, threw for 2,748 yards and 22 touchdowns in 1966 in a return to Pro Bowl form. However, he posted a league-high 24 interceptions.
1967 MVP season
After once again finishing second in the Western Conference in 1966, the Colts rebounded to finish 11–1–2 in 1967 tying the Los Angeles Rams for the NFL's best record. In winning his third MVP award from the AP and UPI in 1967 (and his second from the NEA), Unitas had a league-high 58.5 completion percentage and passed for 3,428 yards and 20 touchdowns. He openly complained about having tennis elbow and he threw eight interceptions and only three touchdown passes in the final five games. Once again, the season ended in loss for the Colts, as they were shut out of the newly instituted four-team NFL playoff after losing the divisional tiebreaker to the Rams, a 34–10 rout in the regular season finale.
Super Bowls and final Colt years
In the final game of the 1968 preseason, the muscles in Unitas's arm were torn when he was hit by a member of the Dallas Cowboys defense. Unitas wrote in his autobiography that he felt his arm was initially injured by the use of the "night ball" that the NFL was testing for better TV visibility during night games. In a post-game interview the previous year, he noted having constant pain in his elbow for several years prior. He would spend most of the season sitting on the bench. The Colts still marched to a league-best 13–1 record behind backup quarterback and ultimate 1968 NFL MVP Earl Morrall. Although he was injured through most of the season, Unitas came off the bench to play in Super Bowl III, the famous game where Joe Namath guaranteed a New York Jets win despite conventional wisdom. Unitas's insertion was a desperation move in an attempt to retrieve dominance of the NFL over the upstart AFL. Although the Colts won an NFL Championship in 1968, they lost the Super Bowl to the AFL Champion New York Jets, thus becoming the first-ever NFL champions that were not also deemed world champions. Unitas helped put together the Colts' only score, a touchdown late in the game. Unitas also drove the Colts into scoring position following the touchdown and successful onside kick, but head coach Don Shula eschewed a field goal attempt, which (if successful) would have cut the Jets' lead to 16–10. Despite not playing until late in the third quarter, he still finished the game with more passing yards than the team's starter, Earl Morrall.
After an off-season of rehabilitation on his elbow, Unitas rebounded in 1969, passing for 2,342 yards and 12 touchdowns with 20 interceptions. But the Colts finished with a disappointing 8–5–1 record, and missed the playoffs.
In 1970, the NFL and AFL had merged into one league, and the Colts moved to the new American Football Conference, along with the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers. He threw for 2,213 yards and 14 touchdowns while leading the Colts to an 11–2–1 season. In their first rematch with the Jets, Unitas and Namath threw a combined nine interceptions in a 29–22 Colts win. Namath threw 62 passes and broke his hand on the final play of the game, ending his season.
Unitas threw for 390 yards, three touchdowns, and no interceptions in AFC playoff victories over the Cincinnati Bengals and the Oakland Raiders. In Super Bowl V against the Dallas Cowboys, he was knocked out of the game with a rib injury in the second quarter, soon after throwing a 75-yard touchdown pass (setting a then-Super Bowl record) to John Mackey. However, he had also tossed two interceptions before his departure from the game. Earl Morrall came in to lead the team to a last-second, 16–13 victory.
In 1971, Unitas split playing time with Morrall, throwing only three touchdown passes. He started both playoff games, a win over the Cleveland Browns that sent the Colts to the AFC Championship game against the Miami Dolphins, which they lost by a score of 21–0. Unitas threw three interceptions in the game, one of which was returned for a touchdown by safety Dick Anderson.
The 1972 season saw the Colts declining. After losing the season opener, Unitas was involved in the second and final regular season head-to-head meeting with "Broadway" Joe Namath. The first was in 1970 (won by the Colts, 29–22). The last meeting took place on September 24, 1972 at Memorial Stadium. He threw for 376 yards and three touchdowns, but Namath upstaged him again, bombing the Colts for 496 yards and six touchdowns in a 44–34 Jets victory – their first over Baltimore since the 1970 merger. After losing four of their first five games, the Colts fired head coach Don McCafferty, and benched Unitas.
One of the more memorable moments in football history came on Unitas's last game in a Colts uniform at Memorial Stadium, in a game against the Buffalo Bills. He was not the starter for this game, but the Colts were blowing the Bills out by a score of 28–0 behind Marty Domres; Unitas entered the game due to the fans chanting, "We want Unitas!!!", and a plan devised by head coach John Sandusky to convince Unitas that the starting quarterback was injured. Unitas came onto the field, and threw two passes, one of which was a long touchdown to wide receiver Eddie Hinton which would be his last pass as a Colt. The Colts won the game by the score of 35–7.
San Diego, retirement, and records
Unitas was traded from the Colts to the San Diego Chargers on January 20, 1973, in a transaction that originally had future considerations returning to Baltimore. The deal's only obstacle was the personal services contract he had signed with the Colts in 1970 which would've kept him employed within the organization on an annual salary of $30,000 over ten years once his career as an active player ended. The pact had been signed when the ballclub was owned by Carroll Rosenbloom who subsequently acquired the Los Angeles Rams on July 13, 1972, in a franchise swap with Robert Irsay. The deal was completed when the Chargers purchased that contract. Eager to sever all ties with the Colts, Unitas signed a new two-year contract with the Chargers on June 8, 1973. He succeeded John Hadl who had requested and was granted a trade to the Rams.
Unitas started the season with a 38–0 loss to the Washington Redskins. He threw for just 55 yards and 3 interceptions, and was sacked 8 times. His final victory as a starter came against the Buffalo Bills in week two. Unitas was 10–18 for 175 yards, two touchdown passes, and no interceptions in a 34–7 Chargers rout. Many were questioning his role as a starter after a loss to the Bengals in week three. Two weeks later, he threw two first-half interceptions, passed for only 19 yards, and went 2-for-9 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was then replaced by rookie quarterback, future Hall of Famer Dan Fouts. After having posted a 1–3 record as a starter, Unitas retired in the preseason of 1974.
Unitas finished his 18 NFL seasons with 2,830 completions in 5,186 attempts for 40,239 yards and 290 touchdowns, with 253 interceptions. He also rushed for 1,777 yards and 13 touchdowns. Plagued by arm trouble in his later seasons, he threw more interceptions (64) than touchdowns (38) in 1968–1973. After averaging 215.8 yards per game in his first 12 seasons, his production fell to 124.4 in his final six. His passer rating plummeted from 82.9 to 60.4 for the same periods. Even so, Unitas set many passing records during his career. He was the first quarterback to throw for more than 40,000 yards, despite playing during an era when NFL teams played shorter seasons of 12 or 14 games (as opposed to today's 17-game seasons) and prior to modern passing-friendly rules implemented in 1978. His 32 touchdown passes in 1959 were a record at the time, making Unitas the first quarterback to hit the 30 touchdown mark in a season. His 47-game consecutive touchdown streak between 1956 and 1960 was a record considered by many to be unbreakable. The streak stood for 52 years before being broken by New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees in a game against the San Diego Chargers on October 7, 2012.
Post-playing days
After his playing days were finished, Unitas settled in Baltimore where he raised his family while also pursuing a career in broadcasting, doing color commentary for NFL games on CBS in the 1970s. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979. After Robert Irsay moved the Colts franchise to Indianapolis in 1984, a move known to this day in Baltimore as "Bob Irsay's Midnight Ride," he was so outraged that he cut all ties to the relocated team (though his No. 19 jersey is still retired by the Colts), declaring himself strictly a Baltimore Colt for the remainder of his life. Some other prominent old-time Colts followed his lead, although many attended the 1975 team's reunion at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in 2009. A total of 39 Colts players from that 1975 team attended said reunion in Indianapolis, including Bert Jones and Lydell Mitchell. Unitas asked the Pro Football Hall of Fame on numerous occasions (including on Roy Firestone's Up Close) to remove his display unless it was listed as belonging to the Baltimore Colts. The Hall of Fame has never complied with the request. Unitas donated his Colts memorabilia to the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore; they are now on display in the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards.
Unitas was inducted into the American Football Association's Semi Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987.
Unitas actively lobbied for another NFL team to come to Baltimore. After the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996 and changed their name to the Ravens, he and some of the other old-time Colts attended the Ravens' first game ever against the Raiders on Opening Day at Memorial Stadium. He was frequently seen on the Ravens' sidelines at home games (most prominently in 1998 when the now-Indianapolis Colts played the Ravens in Baltimore) and received a thunderous ovation every time he was pictured on each of the huge widescreens at M&T Bank Stadium. He was often seen on the 30-yard line on the Ravens side. When the NFL celebrated its first 50 years, Unitas was voted the league's best player. Retired Bears quarterback Sid Luckman said of Unitas, "He was better than me, better than Sammy Baugh, better than anyone."
Unitas lived most of the final years of his life severely hobbled. Due to an elbow injury suffered during his playing career, he had only very limited use of his right hand, and could not perform any physical activity more strenuous than golf due to his artificial knees.
NFL career statistics
Source:
In 1957, Unitas was named MVP by the Newspaper Enterprise Association.
Personal life
At the age of 21 on November 20, 1954, Unitas married his high school sweetheart Dorothy Hoelle; they lived in Towson and had five children before divorcing. Unitas's second wife was Sandra Lemon, whom he married on June 26, 1972; they had three children, lived in Baldwin, and remained married until his death.
Towson University, where Unitas was a major fund-raiser and which his children attended, named its football and lacrosse complex Johnny Unitas Stadium in recognition of both his football career and service to the university.
Toward the end of his life, Unitas brought media attention to the many permanent physical disabilities that he and his fellow players suffered during their careers before heavy padding and other safety features became popular. Unitas himself lost almost total use of his right hand, with the middle finger and thumb noticeably disfigured from being repeatedly broken during games.
On September 11, 2002, Unitas died from a heart attack while working out at the Kernan Physical Therapy Center (now The University of Maryland Rehabilitation & Orthopaedic Institute) in Baltimore. His funeral was held at Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore, Maryland. Between his death and October 4, 2002, 56,934 people signed an online petition urging the Baltimore Ravens to rename the Ravens' home stadium (owned by the State of Maryland) after Unitas. These requests were unsuccessful since the lucrative naming rights had already been leased by the Ravens to Buffalo-based M&T Bank. However, on October 20, 2002, the Ravens dedicated the front area of the stadium's main entrance as Unitas Plaza and unveiled a statue of Unitas as the centerpiece of the plaza.
Unitas is buried at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium, Maryland.
Legacy
Unitas held the record for most Pro Bowl appearances (10) by a quarterback until Brett Favre broke his record in 2009.
Unitas set the original standard for most wins as a starting quarterback with 118 regular season victories (since surpassed by multiple quarterbacks).
Unitas was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979.
Unitas is 11th in all-time number of regular season games won by an NFL starting quarterback with 118 wins.
Unitas is 16th in all-time percentage of regular season games won by an NFL starting quarterback with a percentage of 64.5.
1987 American Football Association Semi Pro Hall of Fame
Unitas's no. 16 is the first number retired by the football program at the University of Louisville.
Unitas Tower, a dormitory at the University of Louisville, is named for Johnny Unitas.
A statue of Unitas sits in the north end zone of Cardinal Stadium at the University of Louisville. It is a tradition for each Cardinal player to touch the statue as he enters the field.
Since 1987, the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award has been awarded to the top senior quarterback of the current year in college football. The award is presented annually in Louisville.
In 1999, he was ranked No. 5 on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Football Players, behind only Joe Montana among quarterbacks.
In 2004, The Sporting News ranked Unitas No. 1 among the NFL's 50 Greatest Quarterbacks, with Joe Montana at No. 2.
In 1999, ESPN's Sportscentury: 50 Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century ranked Unitas No. 32.
Just before his death, Johnny Unitas became the community liaison for athletics in Towson, Maryland. The football stadium at Towson University was renamed Johnny Unitas Stadium in 2002. Unitas died less than a week after throwing his last pass in the grand opening of the stadium.
Set the record for consecutive games with at least one touchdown pass at 47 games. This record was surpassed by Drew Brees in 2012.
Set the record for consecutive games with at least two touchdown passes at 12 games. This record was surpassed by Don Meredith, Peyton Manning (twice), Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Philip Rivers, and Patrick Mahomes.
Set the record for most consecutive games with at least a 120 passer rating (4); this record was later matched by Kurt Warner
For the game following his death, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning asked to wear a pair of black cleats as a tribute to Johnny's signature black boots. The league denied his request and threatened Manning with a US$25,000 fine; Manning decided not to wear them. Despite the threatened fine, Chris Redman, a Louisville alum like Unitas, and then quarterback of the Baltimore Ravens, decided to pay homage by wearing the signature cleats during a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In 2013, a movie project was announced by The Baltimore Sun called Unitas We Stand, which will feature Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco as Unitas during the 1958 NFL Championship.
19th Street in Ocean City, Maryland is named "Johnny Unitas Way" in his honor.
Johnny Unitas Stadium on the campus of Towson University in Towson, Maryland, home of the Towson Tigers football and Towson Tigers men's lacrosse teams is named in his honor.
Unitas was posthumously inducted into the National Lithuanian American Hall of Fame on August 24, 2013.
See also
List of most consecutive starts by a National Football League quarterback
Most wins by a starting quarterback (NFL)
Notes
References
Sources
Bolus, Jim, and Billy Reed. Cardinal Football. Champaign, IL: Sports Pub Inc., 1999.
Callahan, Tom. Johnny U: the life and times of John Unitas. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006.
Lazenby, Roland. Johnny Unitas: the best there ever was. Chicago: Triumph Books, 2002.
Schaap, Dick (1999). "Johnny Unitas: Sunday's Best". In ESPN SportsCentury. Michael MacCambridge, Editor. New York: ESPN-Hyperion Books. pp. 154–65.
Cavanaugh, Jack (2008), Giants Among Men. New York:Random House.
MacCambridge, Michael (2005), America's Game. New York:Anchor Books.
External links
1933 births
2002 deaths
American football quarterbacks
American people of Lithuanian descent
Baltimore Colts players
Burials at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens
Catholics from Maryland
Catholics from Pennsylvania
Louisville Cardinals football players
National Football League announcers
National Football League Most Valuable Player Award winners
National Football League players with retired numbers
People from Timonium, Maryland
People from Towson, Maryland
Pittsburgh Steelers players
Players of American football from Baltimore
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Western Conference Pro Bowl players | false | [
"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",
"The Drama-Logue Award was an American theater award established in 1977, given by the publishers of Drama-Logue newspaper, a weekly west-coast theater trade publication. Winners were selected by the publication's theater critics, and would receive a certificate at an annual awards ceremony hosted by Drama-Logue founder Bill Bordy. The awards did not require any voting or agreement among critics; each critic could select as many award winners as they wished. As a result, many awards were issued each year. In some years, the number of winners was larger than the seating capacity of the venue where the ceremony was conducted.\n\nThe award categories included Production, Direction, Musical Direction, Choreography, Writing, Performance, Ensemble Performance, Scenic Design, Sound Design, Lighting Design, Costume Design and Hair & Makeup Design.\n\nAcquisition \nIn May 1998, Backstage West bought the Drama-Logue publication, and the two publications merged. The Drama-Logue Awards were subsequently retired and replaced by the Back Stage West Garland Awards.\n\nReferences\n\nAmerican theater awards\nAwards established in 1977\nAwards disestablished in 1998"
] |
[
"Narendra Modi",
"2014 Indian general election"
] | C_b6a0c764bf0c443b9768973ff08ca8fb_0 | in what month was the election? | 1 | In what month was the 2014 Indian general election? | Narendra Modi | In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi. During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development. Although the BJP avoided issues of Hindu nationalism to an extent, Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately Rs50 billion (US$770 million), and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances. The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism. Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by 570,128 votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat. CANNOTANSWER | the 2014 Lok Sabha election. | Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from Varanasi. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organisation. He is the first prime minister to have been born after India's independence in 1947 and the second prime minister not belonging to the Indian National Congress to have won two consecutive majorities in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Indian of parliament.
Born and raised in Vadnagar, a small town in northeastern Gujarat, Modi completed his secondary education there. He was introduced to the RSS at age eight. He has drawn attention to having to work as a child in his father's tea stall on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that has not been reliably corroborated. At age 18, Modi was married to Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, whom he abandoned soon after. He left his parental home where she had come to live. He first publicly acknowledged her as his wife more than four decades later when required to do so by Indian law, but has made no contact with her since. Modi has asserted he had travelled in northern India for two years after leaving his parental home, visiting a number of religious centres, but few details of his travels have emerged. Upon his return to Gujarat in 1971, he became a full-time worker for the RSS. After the state of emergency declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, Modi went into hiding. The RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985 and he held several positions within the party hierarchy until 2001, rising to the rank of general secretary.
Modi was appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001 due to Keshubhai Patel's failing health and poor public image following the earthquake in Bhuj. Modi was elected to the legislative assembly soon after. His administration has been considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots in which 1044 people were killed, three-quarters of whom were Muslim, or otherwise criticised for its management of the crisis. The Supreme Court remarked that Narendra Modi was like a Modern-day Nero, looking the other way as innocent women and children were burning. A Supreme Court of India-appointed Special Investigation Team found no evidence to initiate prosecution proceedings against Modi personally. While his policies as chief minister—credited with encouraging economic growth—have received praise, his administration has been criticised for failing to significantly improve health, poverty and education indices in the state.
Modi led the BJP in the 2014 general election which gave the party a majority in the Indian lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, the first time for any single party since 1984. Modi's administration has tried to raise foreign direct investment in the Indian economy and reduced spending on healthcare and social welfare programmes. Modi has attempted to improve efficiency in the bureaucracy; he has centralised power by abolishing the Planning Commission. He began a high-profile sanitation campaign, controversially initiated a demonetisation of high-denomination banknotes and transformation of taxation regime, and weakened or abolished environmental and labour laws.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. Following his party's victory in the 2019 general election, his administration revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and also introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act, which resulted in widespread protests across the country. Described as engineering a political realignment towards right-wing politics, Modi remains a figure of controversy domestically and internationally over his Hindu nationalist beliefs and his handling of the 2002 Gujarat riots, cited as evidence of an exclusionary social agenda.
Early life and education
Narendra Damodardas Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a Gujarati Hindu family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district, Bombay State (present-day Gujarat). He was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi () and Hiraben Modi (born ). Modi's family belonged to the Modh-Ghanchi-Teli (oil-presser) community, which is categorised as an Other Backward Class by the Indian government.
Modi had only infrequently spoken of his family background during his 13 years as chief minister of Gujarat. In the run up to the 2014 national elections, he began to regularly draw attention to his low-ranking social origins and to having to work as a child in his father's tea shop on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that the evidence of neighbours does not entirely corroborate. Modi completed his higher secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where teachers described him as an average student and a keen gifted debater, with interest in theatre. Modi preferred playing larger-than-life characters in theatrical productions, which has influenced his political image.
When eight years old, Modi was introduced to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and began attending its local shakhas (training sessions). There, Modi met Lakshmanrao Inamdar, popularly known as Vakil Saheb, who inducted him as a balswayamsevak (junior cadet) in the RSS and became his political mentor. While Modi was training with the RSS, he also met Vasant Gajendragadkar and Nathalal Jaghda, Bharatiya Jana Sangh leaders who were founding members of the BJP's Gujarat unit in 1980.
In a custom traditional to Narendra Modi's caste, his family arranged a betrothal to a girl, Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, leading to their marriage when she was 17 and he was 18. Soon afterwards, he abandoned his bride, and left home, never divorcing her, but the marriage remaining unmentioned in Modi's public pronouncements for many decades. In April 2014, shortly before the national elections that swept him to power, Modi publicly affirmed that he was married and his spouse was Jashodaben; the couple has remained married, but estranged.
Modi spent the ensuing two years travelling across Northern and North-eastern India, though few details of where he went have emerged. In interviews, Modi has described visiting Hindu ashrams founded by Swami Vivekananda: the Belur Math near Kolkata, followed by the Advaita Ashrama in Almora and the Ramakrishna Mission in Rajkot. Modi remained only a short time at each, since he lacked the required college education. Vivekananda has been described as a large influence in Modi's life.
In the early summer of 1968, Modi reached the Belur Math but was turned away, after which Modi wandered through Calcutta, West Bengal and Assam, stopping in Siliguri and Guwahati. Modi then went to the Ramakrishna Ashram in Almora, where he was again rejected, before travelling back to Gujarat via Delhi and Rajasthan in 1968–69. Sometime in late 1969 or early 1970, Modi returned to Vadnagar for a brief visit before leaving again for Ahmedabad. There, Modi lived with his uncle, working in the latter's canteen at the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation.
In Ahmedabad, Modi renewed his acquaintance with Inamdar, who was based at the Hedgewar Bhavan (RSS headquarters) in the city. Modi's first known political activity as an adult was in 1971 when he, as per his remarks, joined a Jana Sangh Satyagraha in Delhi led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee to enlist for the battlefield during the Bangladesh Liberation War. But the Indira Gandhi-led central government disallowed open support for the Mukti Bahini and Modi, according to his own claim, was put in Tihar Jail for a short period. After the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he stopped working for his uncle and became a full-time pracharak (campaigner) for the RSS, working under Inamdar. Shortly before the war, Modi took part in a non-violent protest against the Indian government in New Delhi, for which he was arrested (as per his claim); this has been cited as a reason for Inamdar electing to mentor him. Many years later Modi would co-author a biography of Inamdar, published in 2001. Modi's claim that he was part of a Satyagraha led to a political war. Applications were filed with the PMO under the RTI Act seeking details of his arrest. In reply, the PMO claimed that it maintains official records on Modi only since he took charge as the Prime Minister of India in 2014. Despite this claim, the official website of the PMO contains specific information about Modi which dates back to the 1950s.
In 1978 Modi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the School of Open Learning (SOL) at the University of Delhi, graduating with a third class. Five years later, in 1983, he received a Master of Arts degree in political science from Gujarat University, graduating with a first class as an external distance learning student. But there is a big controversy surrounding his educational qualification. Replying to an RTI query, the SOL said it did not have any data of students who received a BA degree in 1978. Jayantibhai Patel, a former political science professor of Gujarat University, claimed that the subjects listed in Modi's MA degree were not offered by the university when Modi was studying there.
Early political career
In June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India which lasted until 1977. During this period, known as "The Emergency", many of her political opponents were jailed and opposition groups were banned. Modi was appointed general secretary of the "Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti", an RSS committee co-ordinating opposition to the Emergency in Gujarat. Shortly afterwards, the RSS was banned. Modi was forced to go underground in Gujarat and frequently travelled in disguise to avoid arrest. He became involved in printing pamphlets opposing the government, sending them to Delhi and organising demonstrations. Modi was also involved with creating a network of safe houses for individuals wanted by the government, and in raising funds for political refugees and activists. During this period, Modi wrote a book in Gujarati, Sangharsh Ma Gujarat (In The Struggles of Gujarat), describing events during the Emergency. Among the people he met in this role was trade unionist and socialist activist George Fernandes, as well as several other national political figures. In his travels during the Emergency, Modi was often forced to move in disguise, once dressing as a monk, and once as a Sikh.
Modi became an RSS sambhag pracharak (regional organiser) in 1978, overseeing RSS activities in the areas of Surat and Vadodara, and in 1979 he went to work for the RSS in Delhi, where he was put to work researching and writing the RSS's version of the history of the Emergency. He returned to Gujarat a short while later, and was assigned by the RSS to the BJP in 1985. In 1987 Modi helped organise the BJP's campaign in the Ahmedabad municipal election, which the BJP won comfortably; Modi's planning has been described as the reason for that result by biographers. After L. K. Advani became president of the BJP in 1986, the RSS decided to place its members in important positions within the BJP; Modi's work during the Ahmedabad election led to his selection for this role, and Modi was elected organising secretary of the BJP's Gujarat unit later in 1987.
Modi rose within the party and was named a member of the BJP's National Election Committee in 1990, helping organise L. K. Advani's 1990 Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 and Murli Manohar Joshi's 1991–92 Ekta Yatra (Journey for Unity). However, he took a brief break from politics in 1992, instead establishing a school in Ahmedabad; friction with Shankersinh Vaghela, a BJP MP from Gujarat at the time, also played a part in this decision. Modi returned to electoral politics in 1994, partly at the insistence of Advani, and as party secretary, Modi's electoral strategy was considered central to the BJP victory in the 1995 state assembly elections. In November of that year Modi was appointed BJP national secretary and transferred to New Delhi, where he assumed responsibility for party activities in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The following year, Shankersinh Vaghela, a prominent BJP leader from Gujarat, defected to the Indian National Congress (Congress, INC) after losing his parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha elections. Modi, on the selection committee for the 1998 Assembly elections in Gujarat, favoured supporters of BJP leader Keshubhai Patel over those supporting Vaghela to end factional division in the party. His strategy was credited as key to the BJP winning an overall majority in the 1998 elections, and Modi was promoted to BJP general secretary (organisation) in May of that year.
Chief Minister of Gujarat
Taking office
In 2001, Keshubhai Patel's health was failing and the BJP lost a few state assembly seats in by-elections. Allegations of abuse of power, corruption and poor administration were made, and Patel's standing had been damaged by his administration's handling of the earthquake in Bhuj in 2001. The BJP national leadership sought a new candidate for the chief ministership, and Modi, who had expressed misgivings about Patel's administration, was chosen as a replacement. Although BJP leader L. K. Advani did not want to ostracise Patel and was concerned about Modi's lack of experience in government, Modi declined an offer to be Patel's deputy chief minister, telling Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee that he was "going to be fully responsible for Gujarat or not at all". On 3 October 2001 he replaced Patel as Chief Minister of Gujarat, with the responsibility of preparing the BJP for the December 2002 elections. Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister on 7 October 2001, and entered the Gujarat state legislature on 24 February 2002 by winning a by-election to the Rajkot – II constituency, defeating Ashwin Mehta of the INC by 14,728 votes.
2002 Gujarat riots
On 27 February 2002, a train with several hundred passengers burned near Godhra, killing approximately 60 people. The train carried a large number of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya after a religious ceremony at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid. In making a public statement after the incident, Modi declared it a terrorist attack planned and orchestrated by local Muslims. The next day, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for a bandh across the state. Riots began during the bandh, and anti-Muslim violence spread through Gujarat. The government's decision to move the bodies of the train victims from Godhra to Ahmedabad further inflamed the violence. The state government stated later that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed. Independent sources put the death toll at over 2000, the vast majority Muslims Approximately 150,000 people were driven to refugee camps. Numerous women and children were among the victims; the violence included mass rapes and mutilations of women.
The government of Gujarat itself is generally considered by scholars to have been complicit in the riots, (with some blaming chief minister Modi explicitly) and has otherwise received heavy criticism for its handling of the situation. Several scholars have described the violence as a pogrom, while others have called it an example of state terrorism. Summarising academic views on the subject, Martha Nussbaum said: "There is by now a broad consensus that the Gujarat violence was a form of ethnic cleansing, that in many ways it was premeditated, and that it was carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law." The Modi government imposed a curfew in 26 major cities, issued shoot-at-sight orders and called for the army to patrol the streets, but was unable to prevent the violence from escalating. The president of the state unit of the BJP expressed support for the bandh, despite such actions being illegal at the time. State officials later prevented riot victims from leaving the refugee camps, and the camps were often unable to meet the needs of those living there. Muslim victims of the riots were subject to further discrimination when the state government announced that compensation for Muslim victims would be half of that offered to Hindus, although this decision was later reversed after the issue was taken to court. During the riots, police officers often did not intervene in situations where they were able.
Modi's personal involvement in the 2002 events has continued to be debated. During the riots, Modi said that "What is happening is a chain of action and reaction." Later in 2002, Modi said the way in which he had handled the media was his only regret regarding the episode. In March 2008, the Supreme Court reopened several cases related to the 2002 riots, including that of the Gulbarg Society massacre, and established a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the issue. In response to a petition from Zakia Jafri (widow of Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre), in April 2009 the court also asked the SIT to investigate the issue of Modi's complicity in the killings. The SIT questioned Modi in March 2010; in May, it presented to the court a report finding no evidence against him. In July 2011, the court-appointed amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran submitted his final report to the court. Contrary to the SIT's position, he said that Modi could be prosecuted based on the available evidence. The Supreme Court gave the matter to the magistrate's court. The SIT examined Ramachandran's report, and in March 2012 submitted its final report, asking for the case to be closed. Zakia Jafri filed a protest petition in response. In December 2013 the magistrate's court rejected the protest petition, accepting the SIT's finding that there was no evidence against the chief minister.
2002 election
In the aftermath of the violence there were widespread calls for Modi to resign as chief minister from within and outside the state, including from leaders of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Telugu Desam Party (allies in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition), and opposition parties stalled Parliament over the issue. Modi submitted his resignation at the April 2002 BJP national executive meeting in Goa, but it was not accepted. His cabinet had an emergency meeting on 19 July 2002, after which it offered its resignation to the Gujarat Governor S. S. Bhandari, and the state assembly was dissolved. Despite opposition from the election commissioner, who said that a number of voters were still displaced, Modi succeeded in advancing the election to December 2002. In the elections, the BJP won 127 seats in the 182-member assembly. Although Modi later denied it, he made significant use of anti-Muslim rhetoric during his campaign, and the BJP profited from religious polarisation among the voters. He won the Maninagar constituency, receiving of votes and defeating INC candidate Yatin Oza by 75,333 votes. On 22 December 2002, Bhandari swore Modi in for a second term. Modi framed the criticism of his government for human rights violations as an attack upon Gujarati pride, a strategy which led to the BJP winning two-thirds of the seats in the state assembly.
Second term
During Modi's second term the rhetoric of the government shifted from Hindutva to Gujarat's economic development. Modi curtailed the influence of Sangh Parivar organisations such as the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), entrenched in the state after the decline of Ahmedabad's textile industry, and dropped Gordhan Zadafia (an ally of former Sangh co-worker and VHP state chief Praveen Togadia) from his cabinet. When the BKS staged a farmers' demonstration Modi ordered their eviction from state-provided houses, and his decision to demolish 200 illegal temples in Gandhinagar deepened the rift with the Vishva Hindu Parishad. Sangh organisations were no longer consulted or informed in advance about Modi's administrative decisions. Nonetheless, Modi retained connections with some Hindu nationalists. Modi wrote a foreword to a textbook by Dinanath Batra released in 2014, which stated that ancient India possessed technologies including test-tube babies.
Modi's relationship with Muslims continued to attract criticism. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who asked Modi for tolerance in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat violence and supported his resignation as chief minister) distanced himself, reaching out to North Indian Muslims before the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. After the elections Vajpayee called the violence in Gujarat a reason for the BJP's electoral defeat and said it had been a mistake to leave Modi in office after the riots.
Questions about Modi's relationship with Muslims were also raised by many Western nations during his tenure as chief minister. Modi was barred from entering the United States by the State Department, in accordance with the recommendations of the Commission on International Religious Freedom formed under the aegis of the International Religious Freedom Act, the only person denied a US visa under this law. The UK and the European Union refused to admit him because of what they saw as his role in the riots. As Modi rose to prominence in India, the UK and the EU lifted their bans in October 2012 and March 2013, respectively, and after his election he was invited to Washington as the nation's prime minister.
During the run-up to the 2007 Gujarat Legislative Assembly election and the 2009 Indian general election, the BJP intensified its rhetoric on terrorism. In July 2006, Modi criticised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh " for his reluctance to revive anti-terror legislation" such as the 2002 Prevention of Terrorism Act. He asked the national government to allow states to invoke tougher laws in the wake of the 2006 Mumbai train bombings. In 2007 Modi authored Karmayog, a 101-page booklet discussing manual scavenging. In it, Modi argued that scavenging was a "spiritual experience" for Valmiks, a sub-caste of Dalits. However, this book was not circulated that time because of the election code of conduct. After the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, Modi held a meeting to discuss the security of Gujarat's -long coastline, resulting in government authorisation of 30 high-speed surveillance boats. In July 2007 Modi completed 2,063 consecutive days as chief minister of Gujarat, making him the longest-serving holder of that post, and the BJP won 122 of 182 state-assembly seats in that year's election.
Development projects
As Chief Minister, Modi favoured privatisation and small government, which was at odds with the philosophy of the RSS, usually described as anti-privatisation and anti-globalisation. His policies during his second term have been credited with reducing corruption in the state. He established financial and technology parks in Gujarat and during the 2007 Vibrant Gujarat summit, real-estate investment deals worth were signed.
The governments led by Patel and Modi supported NGOs and communities in the creation of groundwater-conservation projects. By December 2008, 500,000 structures had been built, of which 113,738 were check dams, which helped recharge the aquifers beneath them. Sixty of the 112 tehsils which had depleted the water table in 2004 had regained their normal groundwater levels by 2010. As a result, the state's production of genetically modified cotton increased to become the largest in India. The boom in cotton production and its semi-arid land use led to Gujarat's agricultural sector growing at an average rate of 9.6 percent from 2001 to 2007. Public irrigation measures in central and southern Gujarat, such as the Sardar Sarovar Dam, were less successful. The Sardar Sarovar project only irrigated 4–6% of the area intended. Nonetheless, from 2001 to 2010 Gujarat recorded an agricultural growth rate of 10.97 percent – the highest of any state. However, sociologists have pointed out that the growth rate under the 1992–97 INC government was 12.9 percent. In 2008 Modi offered land in Gujarat to Tata Motors to set up a plant manufacturing the Nano after a popular agitation had forced the company to move out of West Bengal. Several other companies followed the Tata to Gujarat.
The Modi government finished the process of bringing electricity to every village in Gujarat that its predecessor had almost completed. Modi significantly changed the state's system of power distribution, greatly impacting farmers. Gujarat expanded the Jyotigram Yojana scheme, in which agricultural electricity was separated from other rural electricity; the agricultural electricity was rationed to fit scheduled irrigation demands, reducing its cost. Although early protests by farmers ended when those who benefited found that their electricity supply had stabilised, according to an assessment study corporations and large farmers benefited from the policy at the expense of small farmers and labourers.
Development debate
A contentious debate surrounds the assessment of Gujarat's economic development during Modi's tenure as chief minister. The state's GDP growth rate averaged 10% during Modi's tenure, a value similar to other highly industrialised states, and above that of the country as a whole. Gujarat also had a high rate of economic growth in the 1990s, before Modi took office, and some scholars have stated that growth did not much accelerate during Modi's tenure, although the state is considered to have maintained a high growth rate during Modi's Chief Ministership. Under Narendra Modi, Gujarat topped the World Bank's "ease of doing business" rankings among Indian states for two consecutive years. In 2013, Gujarat was ranked first among Indian states for "economic freedom" by a report measuring governance, growth, citizens' rights and labour and business regulation among the country's 20 largest states. In the later years of Modi's government, Gujarat's economic growth was frequently used as an argument to counter allegations of communalism. Tax breaks for businesses were easier to obtain in Gujarat than in other states, as was land. Modi's policies to make Gujarat attractive for investment included the creation of Special Economic Zones, where labour laws were greatly weakened.
Despite its growth rate, Gujarat had a relatively poor record on human development, poverty relief, nutrition and education during Modi's tenure. In 2013, Gujarat ranked 13th in the country with respect to rates of poverty and 21st in education. Nearly 45 percent of children under five were underweight and 23 percent were undernourished, putting the state in the "alarming" category on the India State Hunger Index. A study by UNICEF and the Indian government found that Gujarat under Modi had a poor record with respect to immunisation in children.
Over the decade from 2001 to 2011, Gujarat did not change its position relative to the rest of the country with respect to poverty and female literacy, remaining near the median of the 29 Indian states. It showed a marginal improvement in rates of infant mortality, and its position with respect to individual consumption declined. With respect to the quality of education in government schools, the state ranked below many Indian states. The social policies of the government generally did not benefit Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis, and generally increased social inequalities. Development in Gujarat was generally limited to the urban middle class, and citizens in rural areas or from lower castes were increasingly marginalised. In 2013 the state ranked 10th of 21 Indian states in the Human Development Index. Under Modi, the state government spent less than the national average on education and healthcare.
Final years
Despite the BJP's shift away from explicit Hindutva, Modi's election campaign in 2007 and 2012 contained elements of Hindu nationalism. Modi only attended Hindu religious ceremonies, and had prominent associations with Hindu religious leaders. During his 2012 campaign he twice refused to wear articles of clothing gifted by Muslim leaders. He did, however, maintain relations with Dawoodi Bohra. His campaign included references to issues known to cause religious polarisation, including to Afzal Guru and the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. The BJP did not nominate any Muslim candidates for the assembly election of 2012. During the 2012 campaign, Modi attempted to identify himself with the state of Gujarat, a strategy similar to that used by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, and projected himself as protecting Gujarat against persecution by the rest of India.
While campaigning for the 2012 assembly elections, Modi made extensive use of holograms and other technologies allowing him to reach a large number of people, something he would repeat in the 2014 general election. In the 2012 Gujarat Legislative Assembly elections, Modi won the constituency of Maninagar by 86,373 votes over Shweta Bhatt, the INC candidate and wife of Sanjiv Bhatt. The BJP won 115 of the 182 seats, continuing its majority during his tenure and allowing the party to form the government (as it had in Gujarat since 1995). After his election as prime minister, Modi resigned as the chief minister and as an MLA from Maninagar on 21 May 2014. Anandiben Patel succeeded him as the chief minister.
Premiership campaigns
2014 Indian general election
In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi.
During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development, although Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately , and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances.
The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism.
Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi by 371,784 votes and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat.
2019 Indian general election
On 13 October 2018, Modi was renamed as the BJP candidate for prime minister for the 2019 general election. The chief campaigner for the party was BJP's president Amit Shah. Modi launched the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign ahead of the general election, against Chowkidar Chor Hai campaign slogan of INC. In the year 2018, end Party's, second-biggest alliance Telugu Desam Party split from NDA over the matter of special-status for Andhra Pradesh.
The campaign was started by Amit Shah on 8 April 2019. In the campaign, Modi was targeted by the opposition on corruption allegations over Rafale deal with France government. Highlighting this controversy the campaign "Chowkidar Chor Hai" was started, which was contrary to "Main Bhi Chowkidar" slogan. Modi made defence and national security among the foremost topics for the election campaign, especially after Pulwama attack, and the retaliatory attack of Balakot airstrike was counted as an achievement of the Modi administration. Other topics in the campaign were development and good foreign relations in the first premiership.
Modi contested the Lok Sabha elections as a candidate from Varanasi. He won the seat by defeating Shalini Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, who fought on SP-BSP alliance by a margin of votes. Modi was unanimously appointed the prime minister for a second time by the National Democratic Alliance, after the alliance won the election for the second time by securing 353 seats in the Lok Sabha with the BJP alone won 303 seats.
Prime Minister
After the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won a landslide in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India on 26 May 2014. He became the first Prime Minister born after India's independence from the British Empire in 1947. Modi started his second term after the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won again in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. On 6 December 2020, Modi became the 4th longest serving Prime Minister of India and the longest serving Non-Congress Prime Minister.
Governance and other initiatives
Modi's first year as prime minister saw significant centralisation of power relative to previous administrations. His efforts at centralisation have been linked to an increase in the number of senior administration officials resigning their positions. Initially lacking a majority in the Rajya Sabha, or upper house of Indian Parliament, Modi passed a number of ordinances to enact his policies, leading to further centralisation of power. The government also passed a bill increasing the control that it had over the appointment of judges, and reducing that of the judiciary.
In December 2014 Modi abolished the Planning Commission, replacing it with the National Institution for Transforming India, or NITI Aayog. The move had the effect of greatly centralising the power previously with the planning commission in the person of the prime minister. The planning commission had received heavy criticism in previous years for creating inefficiency in the government, and of not filling its role of improving social welfare: however, since the economic liberalisation of the 1990s, it had been the major government body responsible for measures related to social justice.
The Modi government launched investigations by the Intelligence Bureau against numerous civil society organisations and foreign non-governmental organisations in the first year of the administration. The investigations, on the grounds that these organisations were slowing economic growth, was criticised as a witch-hunt. International humanitarian aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres was among the groups that were put under pressure. Other organisations affected included the Sierra Club and Avaaz. Cases of sedition were filed against individuals criticising the government. This led to discontent within the BJP regarding Modi's style of functioning and drew comparisons to the governing style of Indira Gandhi.
Modi repealed 1,200 obsolete laws in first three years as prime minister; a total of 1,301 such laws had been repealed by previous governments over a span of 64 years. He started a monthly radio programme titled "Mann Ki Baat" on 3 October 2014. Modi also launched the Digital India programme, with the goal of ensuring that government services are available electronically, building infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet access to rural areas, boosting manufacturing of electronic goods in the country, and promoting digital literacy.
Modi launched Ujjwala scheme to provide free LPG connection to rural households. The scheme led to an increase in LPG consumption by 56% in 2019 as compared to 2014. In 2019, a law was passed to provide 10% reservation to Economically weaker sections.
He was again sworn in as prime minister on 30 May 2019. On 30 July 2019, Parliament of India declared the practice of Triple Talaq as illegal, unconstitutional and made it punishable act from 1 August 2019 which is deemed to be in effect from 19 September 2018. On 5 August 2019, the government moved resolution to scrap Article 370 in the Rajya Sabha, and also reorganise the state with Jammu and Kashmir serving as one of the union territory and Ladakh region separated out as a separate union territory.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how he Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. Reporters Without Borders in 2021 characterised Modi as a predator for curbing press freedom in India since 2014.
Economic policy
The economic policies of Modi's government focused on privatisation and liberalisation of the economy, based on a neoliberal framework. Modi liberalised India's foreign direct investment policies, allowing more foreign investment in several industries, including in defence and the railways. Other proposed reforms included making it harder for workers to form unions and easier for employers to hire and fire them; some of these proposals were dropped after protests. The reforms drew strong opposition from unions: on 2 September 2015, eleven of the country's largest unions went on strike, including one affiliated with the BJP. The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, a constituent of the Sangh Parivar, stated that the underlying motivation of labour reforms favoured corporations over labourers.
The funds dedicated to poverty reduction programmes and social welfare measures were greatly decreased by the Modi administration. The money spent on social programmes declined from 14.6% of GDP during the Congress government to 12.6% during Modi's first year in office. Spending on health and family welfare declined by 15%, and on primary and secondary education by 16%. The budgetary allocation for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, or the "education for all" programme, declined by 22%. The government also lowered corporate taxes, abolished the wealth tax, increased sales taxes, and reduced customs duties on gold, and jewellery. In October 2014, the Modi government deregulated diesel prices.
In September 2014, Modi introduced the Make in India initiative to encourage foreign companies to manufacture products in India, with the goal of turning the country into a global manufacturing hub. Supporters of economic liberalisation supported the initiative, while critics argued it would allow foreign corporations to capture a greater share of the Indian market. Modi's administration passed a land-reform bill that allowed it to acquire private agricultural land without conducting a social impact assessment, and without the consent of the farmers who owned it. The bill was passed via an executive order after it faced opposition in parliament, but was eventually allowed to lapse. Modi's government put in place the Goods and Services Tax, the biggest tax reform in the country since independence. It subsumed around 17 different taxes and became effective from 1 July 2017.
In his first cabinet decision, Modi set up a team to investigate black money. On 9 November 2016, the government demonetised ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes, with the stated intention of curbing corruption, black money, the use of counterfeit currency, and terrorism. The move led to severe cash shortages, a steep decline in the Indian stock indices BSE SENSEX and NIFTY 50, and sparked widespread protests throughout the country. Several deaths were linked to the rush to exchange cash. In the subsequent year, the number of income tax returns filed for individuals rose by 25%, and the number of digital transactions increased steeply.
Over the first four years of Modi's premiership, India's GDP grew at an average rate of 7.23%, higher than the rate of 6.39% under the previous government. The level of income inequality increased, while an internal government report said that in 2017, unemployment had increased to its highest level in 45 years. The loss of jobs was attributed to the 2016 demonetisation, and to the effects of the Goods and Services Tax.
In the next year, after 2018, Indian economy started a gradual recovery with a GDP growth of 6.12% in 2018-19 FY, with an inflation rate of 3.4%. Same year, India was successful in making a good economy in trade and manufacturing sector. While in the FY of 2019–20, due to the general election, Modi government focused more on their election campaign. In the year 2019–20, the GDP growth rate was 4.18% and inflation rate also increased to 4.7% from 3.4% in the previous year. Though being high unemployment, increase in inflation rate and budget deficiency, Modi's leadership won in 2019 elections.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous rating agencies downgraded India's GDP predictions for FY21 to negative figures, signalling a recession in India, the most severe since 1979. According to a Dun & Bradstreet report, the country is likely to suffer a recession in the third quarter of FY2020 as a result of the over 2-month long nation-wide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. This was also accompanied by the mass migration of migrant workers.
Health and sanitation
In his first year as prime minister, Modi reduced the amount of money spent by the central government on healthcare. The Modi government launched New Health Policy (NHP) in January 2015. The policy did not increase the government's spending on healthcare, instead emphasising the role of private healthcare organisations. This represented a shift away from the policy of the previous Congress government, which had supported programmes to assist public health goals, including reducing child and maternal mortality rates. The National Health Mission, which included public health programmes targeted at these indices received nearly 20% less funds in 2015 than in the previous year. 15 national health programmes, including those aimed at controlling tobacco use and supporting healthcare for the elderly, were merged with the National Health Mission. In its budget for the second year after it took office, the Modi government reduced healthcare spending by 15%. The healthcare budget for the following year rose by 19%. The budget was viewed positively by private insurance providers. Public health experts criticised its emphasis on the role of private healthcare providers, and suggested that it represented a shift away from public health facilities. The healthcare budget rose by 11.5% in 2018; the change included an allocation of for a government-funded health insurance program, and a decrease in the budget of the National Health Mission. The government introduced stricter packaging laws for tobacco which requires 85% of the packet size to be covered by pictorial warnings. An article in the medical journal Lancet stated that the country "might have taken a few steps back in public health" under Modi. In 2018 Modi launched the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, a government health insurance scheme intended to insure 500 million people. 100,000 people had signed up by October 2018.
Modi emphasised his government's efforts at sanitation as a means of ensuring good health. On 2 October 2014, Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission ("Clean India") campaign. The stated goals of the campaign included eliminating open defecation and manual scavenging within five years. As part of the programme, the Indian government began constructing millions of toilets in rural areas and encouraging people to use them. The government also announced plans to build new sewage treatment plants. The administration plans to construct 60 million toilets by 2019. The construction projects have faced allegations of corruption, and have faced severe difficulty in getting people to use the toilets constructed for them. Sanitation cover in the country increased from 38.7% in October 2014 to 84.1% in May 2018; however, usage of the new sanitary facilities lagged behind the government's targets. In 2018, the World Health Organization stated that at least 180,000 diarrhoeal deaths were averted in rural India after the launch of the sanitation effort.
Hindutva
During the 2014 election campaign, the BJP sought to identify itself with political leaders known to have opposed Hindu nationalism, including B. R. Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Ram Manohar Lohia. The campaign also saw the use of rhetoric based on Hindutva by BJP leaders in certain states. Communal tensions were played upon especially in Uttar Pradesh and the states of Northeast India. A proposal for the controversial Uniform Civil Code was a part of the BJP's election manifesto.
The activities of a number of Hindu nationalist organisations increased in scope after Modi's election as Prime Minister, sometimes with the support of the government. These activities included a Hindu religious conversion programme, a campaign against the alleged Islamic practice of "Love Jihad", and attempts to celebrate Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, by members of the right wing Hindu Mahasabha. Officials in the government, including the Home Minister, defended the conversion programmes.
Links between the BJP and the RSS grew stronger under Modi. The RSS provided organisational support to the BJP's electoral campaigns, while the Modi administration appointed a number of individuals affiliated with the RSS to prominent government positions. In 2014, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, who had previously been associated with the RSS, became the chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). Historians and former members of the ICHR, including those sympathetic to the BJP, questioned his credentials as a historian, and stated that the appointment was part of an agenda of cultural nationalism.
The North East Delhi riots, which left more than 40 dead and hundreds injured, were triggered by protests against a citizenship law seen by many critics as anti-Muslim and part of Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda. On 5 August 2020, Modi visited Ayodhya after the Supreme Court in 2019 ordered a contested land in Ayodhya to be handed over to a trust to build the Hindu temple and ordered the government to give alternate 5 acre land to Sunni Waqf Board for the purpose of building a mosque. He became the first prime minister to visit Ram Janmabhoomi and Hanuman Garhi.
Foreign policy
Foreign policy played a relatively small role in Modi's election campaign, and did not feature prominently in the BJP's election manifesto. Modi invited all the other leaders of SAARC countries to his swearing in ceremony as prime minister. He was the first Indian prime minister to do so.
Modi's foreign policy, similarly to that of the preceding INC government, focused on improving economic ties, security, and regional relations. Modi continued Manmohan Singh's policy of "multi-alignment." The Modi administration tried to attract foreign investment in the Indian economy from several sources, especially in East Asia, with the use of slogans such as "Make in India" and "Digital India". The government also tried to improve relations with Islamic nations in the Middle East, such as Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as with Israel.
The foreign relations of India with the USA also mended after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. During the run-up to the general election there was wide-ranging scepticism regarding future of the strategic bilateral relation under Modi's premiership as in 2005 he was, while Chief Minister of Gujarat, denied a U.S. visa during the Bush administration for his poor human rights records. However sensing Modi's inevitable victory well before the election, the US Ambassador Nancy Powell had reached out to him as part of greater rapprochement from the west. Moreover, following his 2014 election as the Prime Minister of India President Obama congratulated him over the telephone and invited him to visit the US. Modi government has been successful in making good foreign relations with the USA in the presidency of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
During the first few months after the election, Modi made trips to a number of different countries to further the goals of his policy, and attended the BRICS, ASEAN, and G20 summits. One of Modi's first visits as prime minister was to Nepal, during which he promised a billion USD in aid. Modi also made several overtures to the United States, including multiple visits to that country. While this was described as an unexpected development, due to the US having previously denied Modi a travel visa over his role during the 2002 Gujarat riots, the visits were expected to strengthen diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries.
In 2015, the Indian parliament ratified a land exchange deal with Bangladesh about the India–Bangladesh enclaves, which had been initiated by the government of Manmohan Singh. Modi's administration gave renewed attention to India's "Look East Policy", instituted in 1991. The policy was renamed the "Act East Policy", and involved directing Indian foreign policy towards East Asia and Southeast Asia. The government signed agreements to improve land connectivity with Myanmar, through the state of Manipur. This represented a break with India's historic engagement with Myanmar, which prioritised border security over trade. China–India relations have deteriorated rapidly following the 2020 China–India skirmishes. Modi has pledged aid of $900 million to Afghanistan, visited the nation twice and been honoured with the nation's highest civilian honour in 2016.
Defence policy
India's nominal military spending increased steadily under Modi. The military budget declined over Modi's tenure both as a fraction of GDP and when adjusted for inflation. A substantial portion of the military budget was devoted to personnel costs, leading commentators to write that the budget was constraining Indian military modernisation.
The BJP election manifesto had also promised to deal with illegal immigration into India in the Northeast, as well as to be more firm in its handling of insurgent groups. The Modi government issued a notification allowing Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh to legalise their residency in India. The government described the measure as being taken for humanitarian reasons but it drew criticism from several Assamese organisations.The Modi administration negotiated a peace agreement with the largest faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCM), which was announced in August 2015. The Naga insurgency in northeast India had begun in the 1950s. The NSCM and the government had agreed to a ceasefire in 1997, but a peace accord had not previously been signed. In 2015 the government abrogated a 15-year ceasefire with the Khaplang faction of the NSCM (NSCM-K). The NSCM-K responded with a series of attacks, which killed 18 people. The Modi government carried out a raid across the border with Myanmar as a result, and labelled the NSCM-K a terrorist organisation.
Modi promised to be "tough on Pakistan" during his election campaign, and repeatedly stated that Pakistan was an exporter of terrorism. On 29 September 2016, the Indian Army stated that it had conducted a surgical strike on terror launch pads in Azad Kashmir. The Indian media claimed that up to 50 terrorists and Pakistani soldiers had been killed in the strike. Pakistan initially denied that any strikes had taken place. Subsequent reports suggested that Indian claim about the scope of the strike and the number of casualties had been exaggerated, although cross-border strikes had been carried out. In February 2019 India carried out airstrikes in Pakistan against a supposed terrorist camp. Further military skirmishes followed, including cross-border shelling and the loss of an Indian aircraft.
Following his victory in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he focused more on Defence policies of India, especially against China and Pakistan. On 5 May 2020, Chinese and Indian troops engaged in aggressive melee, face-offs and skirmishes at locations along the Sino-Indian border, including near the disputed Pangong Lake in Ladakh and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and near the border between Sikkim and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Additional clashes also took place at locations in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). After which there was start of skirmishes between the nations leading to many border clashes, responses and reactions from both sides. A series of talks were also held between the two by both military and diplomatic means for peace. The first border clash reported in 2021 was on 20 January, referred to as a minor border clash in Sikkim.
Environmental policy
In naming his cabinet, Modi renamed the "Ministry of Environment and Forests" the "Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change." In the first budget of the government, the money allotted to this ministry was reduced by more than 50%. The new ministry also removed or diluted a number of laws related to environmental protection. These included no longer requiring clearance from the National Board for Wildlife for projects close to protected areas, and allowing certain projects to proceed before environmental clearance was received. The government also tried to reconstitute the Wildlife board such that it no longer had representatives from non-governmental organisations: however, this move was prevented by the Supreme Court.
Modi also relaxed or abolished a number of other environmental regulations, particularly those related to industrial activity. A government committee stated that the existing system only served to create corruption, and that the government should instead rely on the owners of industries to voluntarily inform the government about the pollution they were creating. Other changes included reducing ministry oversight on small mining projects, and no longer requiring approval from tribal councils for projects inside forested areas. In addition, Modi lifted a moratorium on new industrial activity in the most polluted areas in the countries. The changes were welcomed by businesspeople, but criticised by environmentalists.
Under the UPA government that preceded Modi's administration, field trials of Genetically Modified (GM) crops had essentially been put on hold, after protests from farmers fearing for their livelihoods. Under the Modi government these restrictions were gradually lifted. The government received some criticism for freezing the bank accounts of environmental group Greenpeace, citing financial irregularities, although a leaked government report said that the freeze had to do with Greenpeace's opposition to GM crops. At the COP26 conference Modi announced that India would target carbon neutrality by 2070, and also expand its renewable energy capacity. Though the date of net zero is far behind that of China and the USA and India's government wants to continue with the use of coal, Indian environmentalists and economists applauded the decision, describing it as a bold climate action.
Democratic backsliding
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how the Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. There have been several reports of the Modi government to be as an authoritarian conservative government, even due to lack of good opposition.
Electoral history
Personal life and image
Personal life
In accordance with Ghanchi tradition, Modi's marriage was arranged by his parents when he was a child. He was engaged at age 13 to Jashodaben Modi, marrying her when he was 18. They spent little time together and grew apart when Modi began two years of travel, including visits to Hindu ashrams. Reportedly, their marriage was never consummated, and he kept it a secret because otherwise he could not have become a 'pracharak' in the puritan Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Modi kept his marriage secret for most of his career. He acknowledged his wife for the first time when he filed his nomination for the 2014 general elections. Modi maintains a close relationship with his centenarian mother, Hiraben.
A vegetarian and teetotaler, Modi has a frugal lifestyle and is a workaholic and introvert. A person named Badri Meena has been his cook since 2002. Modi's 31 August 2012 post on Google Hangouts made him the first Indian politician to interact with citizens on a live chat. Modi has also been called a fashion-icon for his signature crisply ironed, half-sleeved kurta, as well as for a suit with his name embroidered repeatedly in the pinstripes that he wore during a state visit by US President Barack Obama, which drew public and media attention and criticism. Modi's personality has been variously described by scholars and biographers as energetic, arrogant, and charismatic.
He had published a Gujarati book titled Jyotipunj in 2008, containing profiles of various RSS leaders. The longest was of M. S. Golwalkar, under whose leadership the RSS expanded and whom Modi refers to as Pujniya Shri Guruji ("Guru worthy of worship"). According to The Economic Times, his intention was to explain the workings of the RSS to his readers and to reassure RSS members that he remained ideologically aligned with them. Modi authored eight other books, mostly containing short stories for children.
The nomination of Modi for the prime ministership drew attention to his reputation as "one of contemporary India's most controversial and divisive politicians." During the 2014 election campaign the BJP projected an image of Modi as a strong, masculine leader, who would be able to take difficult decisions. Campaigns in which he has participated have focused on Modi as an individual, in a manner unusual for the BJP and RSS. Modi has relied upon his reputation as a politician able to bring about economic growth and "development". Nonetheless, his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots continues to attract criticism and controversy. Modi's hardline Hindutva philosophy and the policies adopted by his government continue to draw criticism, and have been seen as evidence of a majoritarian and exclusionary social agenda.
In March 2021, Modi received his first COVID-19 vaccine dose at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
Personal donations
Modi has made donations for various causes and programmes. One such instance was when Modi donated towards the initial corpus of the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) Fund. In his role as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi had donated from personal savings for educating daughters of state government officials. Modi had also raised by auctioning all the gifts he received as chief minister and donated this to the Kanya Kelavani Fund. The money was spent on the education of girl children, through the scheme.
Approval ratings
As a Prime Minister, Modi has received consistently high approval ratings; at the end of his first year in office, he received an overall approval rating of 87% in a Pew Research poll, with 68% of people rating him "very favorably" and 93% approving of his government. His approval rating remained largely consistent at around 74% through his second year in office, according to a nationwide poll conducted by instaVaani. At the end of his second year in office, an updated Pew Research poll showed Modi continued to receive high overall approval ratings of 81%, with 57% of those polled rating him "very favorably." At the end of his third year in office, a further Pew Research poll showed Modi with an overall approval rating of 88%, his highest yet, with 69% of people polled rating him "very favorably." A poll conducted by The Times of India in May 2017 showed 77% of the respondents rated Modi as "very good" and "good". In early 2017, a survey from Pew Research Center showed Modi to be the most popular figure in Indian politics. In a weekly analysis by Morning Consult called the Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker, Modi had the highest net approval rating as of 22 December 2020 of all government leaders in the 13 countries being tracked.
Awards and recognition
In March 2012 and June 2014, Modi appeared on the cover of the Asian edition of Time Magazine, one of the few Indian politicians to have done so. He was awarded Indian of the Year by CNN-News18 (formally CNN-IBN) news network in 2014. In June 2015, Modi was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020 and 2021, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Forbes Magazine ranked him the 15th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2014 and the 9th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2015, 2016 and 2018. In 2015, Modi was ranked the 13th Most Influential Person in the World by Bloomberg Markets Magazine. Modi was ranked fifth on Fortune Magazines first annual list of the "World's Greatest Leaders" in 2015. In 2017, Gallup International Association (GIA) conducted a poll and ranked Modi as third top leader of the world. In 2016, a wax statue of Modi was unveiled at Madame Tussauds wax museum in London.
In 2015 he was named one of Times "30 Most Influential People on the Internet" as the second-most-followed politician on Twitter and Facebook. In 2018, he was the third most followed world leader on Twitter, and the most followed world leader on Facebook and Instagram. In October 2018, Modi received United Nations's highest environmental award, the 'Champions of the Earth', for policy leadership by "pioneering work in championing" the International Solar Alliance and "new areas of levels of cooperation on environmental action". He was conferred the 2018 Seoul Peace Prize in recognition of "his dedication to improving international co-operation, raising global economic growth, accelerating the Human Development of the people of India by fostering economic growth and furthering the development of democracy through anti-corruption and social integration efforts". He is the first Indian to win the award.
Following his second swearing-in ceremony as Prime Minister of India, a picture of Modi was displayed on the facade of the ADNOC building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Texas India Forum hosted a community event in honour of Modi on 22 September 2019 at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. The event was attended by over 50,000 people and several American politicians including President Donald Trump, making it the largest gathering for an invited foreign leader visiting the United States other than the Pope. At the same event, Modi was presented with the Key to the City of Houston by Mayor Sylvester Turner. He was awarded the Global Goalkeeper Award on 24 September 2019 in New York City by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in recognition for the Swachh Bharat Mission and "the progress India has made in providing safe sanitation under his leadership".
In 2020, Modi was among eight world leaders awarded the parodic Ig Nobel Prize in Medical Education "for using the COVID-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can". On 21 December 2020, President Donald Trump awarded Modi with the Legion of Merit for elevating the India–United States relations. The Legion of Merit was awarded to Modi along with Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison and former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, the "original architects" of the QUAD.
On 24 February 2021, the largest cricket stadium in the world at Ahmedabad was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by the Gujarat Cricket Association.
Modi is featured in TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2021 list, making it his fifth time after 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2020. TIME called him the third "pivotal leader" of independent India after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi who "dominated the country’s politics like no one since them".
State honours
Other honours
In popular culture
Modi Kaka Ka Gaon, a 2017 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Tushar Amrish Goel is the first biopic on Modi, starring Vikas Mahante in the titular role it was made halfway into his first-term as the prime minister which is shown in the film. PM Narendra Modi, a 2019 Indian Hindi-language biographical drama film by Omung Kumar, starred Vivek Oberoi in the titular role and covers his rise to prime ministership.An Indian web series, Modi: Journey of a Common Man, based on the same premise released in May 2019 on Eros Now with Ashish Sharma portraying Modi. Hu Narender Modi Banva Mangu Chu is a 2018 Indian Gujarati-language drama film by Anil Naryani about the aspirations of a young boy who wants to become like Narendra Modi.
7 RCR (7, Race Course Road), a 2014 Indian docudrama political television series which charts the political careers of prominent Indian politicians, covered Modi's rise to the PM's office in the episodes - "Story of Narendra Modi from 1950 to 2001", "Story of Narendra Modi in Controversial Years from 2001 to 2013", "Truth Behind Brand Modi", "Election Journey of Narendra Modi to 7 RCR", and "Masterplan of Narendra Modi's NDA Govt."; with Sangam Rai in the role of Modi.
Other portrayals of Modi include by Rajit Kapur in the film Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) and Vikram Gokhale in the web-television series Avrodh: The Siege Within (2020) both based on the 2016 Uri attack and the following Indian surgical strikes. Pratap Singh played a character based on Modi in Chand Bujh Gaya (2005) which is set in the backdrop of the Gujarat riots.
Premiered on 12 August 2019, Modi appeared in an episode - "Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls and Prime Minister Modi" - of Discovery Channel's show Man vs Wild with the host Bear Grylls, becoming the second world leader after Barack Obama to appear in the reality show. In the show he trekked the jungles and talked about nature and wildlife conservation with Grylls. The episode was shot in Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand and was broadcast in 180 countries along India. He has also appeared twice on the Indian television talk show Aap Ki Adalat before the 2009 and 2014 elections respectively.
Along with hosting the Mann Ki Baat monthly radio programme, on All India Radio, he has also conducted Pariksha Pe Charcha - a competition/discussion for students and the issues they face in examinations.
Bibliography
See also
List of prime ministers of India
Opinion polling on the Narendra Modi premiership
References
Notes
Citations
Further reading
External links
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1950 births
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Time 100 | true | [
"This is a list of members of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, from the elections of 21 January; 7, 20 February 1868 to the elections of 14 February; 3, 16 March 1871. Victoria was a British self-governing colony in Australia at the time.\n\nNote the \"Term in Office\" refers to that members term(s) in the Assembly, not necessarily for that electorate.\n\n Aspinall resigned c. October 1870, replaced by James Stephen in an October 1870 by-election.\n Baillie left parliament in November 1870, replaced by James Patterson in a December 1870 by-election.\n Balfour resigned August 1868, replaced by William Lobb in a September by-election\n Bindon resigned in October 1868, replaced by Richard Kitto in a by-election the same month.\n Bowman resigned in March 1870, replaced by Duncan Gillies in a by-election the same month.\n Byrne resigned October 1869, replaced by George Rolfe in a by-election the same month.\n Carr resigned May 1870, replaced by Robert de Bruce Johnstone in May 1870.\n Foott died 24 September 1868, replaced by Graham Berry in October 1868.\n Frazer died 13 December 1870, replaced by James Syme Stewart in January 1871.\n Gillies resigned in May 1868, replaced by Charles Jones in a by-election the same month.\n Grant left Parliament in July 1870, replaced by Peter Finn who was sworn-in October 1870.\n McCaw resigned in September 1870, replaced by Robert Ramsay in October 1870.\n McCombie resigned in March 1869, replaced by George Macartney in a by-election the same month.\n McDonnell retired in April 1870, replaced by Michael O'Grady who was elected unopposed in July 1870.\n O'Grady became Minister for Public Works which caused a by-election in May 1868; won by John Branscombe Crews.\n Reeves lost a by-election in October 1869 after becoming a minister, replaced by William Vale.\n Vale resigned in April 1869, replaced by John James in a May 1869 by-election.\n Verdon resigned May 1868 replaced by John Whiteman in a June 1868 by-election\n\nFrancis Murphy was Speaker, Frederick Smyth was Chairman of Committees.\n\nReferences\n\nMembers of the Parliament of Victoria by term\n19th-century Australian politicians",
"The Poole by-election of 1884 was fought on 19 April 1884. The by-election was fought due to the death of the incumbent MP, Charles Schreiber. It was won by the Conservative candidate William James Harris.\n\nBackground \nCharles Schreiber had been elected at the 1880 general election, representing Poole, Dorset until his death in March 1884. A by-election was called for the following month.\n\nResults\n\nReferences \n\nHistory of Poole\nBy-elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom in Dorset constituencies\n1884 in England\n19th century in Dorset\n1884 elections in the United Kingdom\nPolitics of Poole"
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[
"Narendra Modi",
"2014 Indian general election",
"in what month was the election?",
"the 2014 Lok Sabha election."
] | C_b6a0c764bf0c443b9768973ff08ca8fb_0 | what position did he run for in the election? | 2 | What position did Narendra Modi run for in the 2014 Indian general election? | Narendra Modi | In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi. During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development. Although the BJP avoided issues of Hindu nationalism to an extent, Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately Rs50 billion (US$770 million), and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances. The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism. Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by 570,128 votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat. CANNOTANSWER | prime minister | Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from Varanasi. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organisation. He is the first prime minister to have been born after India's independence in 1947 and the second prime minister not belonging to the Indian National Congress to have won two consecutive majorities in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Indian of parliament.
Born and raised in Vadnagar, a small town in northeastern Gujarat, Modi completed his secondary education there. He was introduced to the RSS at age eight. He has drawn attention to having to work as a child in his father's tea stall on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that has not been reliably corroborated. At age 18, Modi was married to Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, whom he abandoned soon after. He left his parental home where she had come to live. He first publicly acknowledged her as his wife more than four decades later when required to do so by Indian law, but has made no contact with her since. Modi has asserted he had travelled in northern India for two years after leaving his parental home, visiting a number of religious centres, but few details of his travels have emerged. Upon his return to Gujarat in 1971, he became a full-time worker for the RSS. After the state of emergency declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, Modi went into hiding. The RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985 and he held several positions within the party hierarchy until 2001, rising to the rank of general secretary.
Modi was appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001 due to Keshubhai Patel's failing health and poor public image following the earthquake in Bhuj. Modi was elected to the legislative assembly soon after. His administration has been considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots in which 1044 people were killed, three-quarters of whom were Muslim, or otherwise criticised for its management of the crisis. The Supreme Court remarked that Narendra Modi was like a Modern-day Nero, looking the other way as innocent women and children were burning. A Supreme Court of India-appointed Special Investigation Team found no evidence to initiate prosecution proceedings against Modi personally. While his policies as chief minister—credited with encouraging economic growth—have received praise, his administration has been criticised for failing to significantly improve health, poverty and education indices in the state.
Modi led the BJP in the 2014 general election which gave the party a majority in the Indian lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, the first time for any single party since 1984. Modi's administration has tried to raise foreign direct investment in the Indian economy and reduced spending on healthcare and social welfare programmes. Modi has attempted to improve efficiency in the bureaucracy; he has centralised power by abolishing the Planning Commission. He began a high-profile sanitation campaign, controversially initiated a demonetisation of high-denomination banknotes and transformation of taxation regime, and weakened or abolished environmental and labour laws.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. Following his party's victory in the 2019 general election, his administration revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and also introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act, which resulted in widespread protests across the country. Described as engineering a political realignment towards right-wing politics, Modi remains a figure of controversy domestically and internationally over his Hindu nationalist beliefs and his handling of the 2002 Gujarat riots, cited as evidence of an exclusionary social agenda.
Early life and education
Narendra Damodardas Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a Gujarati Hindu family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district, Bombay State (present-day Gujarat). He was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi () and Hiraben Modi (born ). Modi's family belonged to the Modh-Ghanchi-Teli (oil-presser) community, which is categorised as an Other Backward Class by the Indian government.
Modi had only infrequently spoken of his family background during his 13 years as chief minister of Gujarat. In the run up to the 2014 national elections, he began to regularly draw attention to his low-ranking social origins and to having to work as a child in his father's tea shop on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that the evidence of neighbours does not entirely corroborate. Modi completed his higher secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where teachers described him as an average student and a keen gifted debater, with interest in theatre. Modi preferred playing larger-than-life characters in theatrical productions, which has influenced his political image.
When eight years old, Modi was introduced to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and began attending its local shakhas (training sessions). There, Modi met Lakshmanrao Inamdar, popularly known as Vakil Saheb, who inducted him as a balswayamsevak (junior cadet) in the RSS and became his political mentor. While Modi was training with the RSS, he also met Vasant Gajendragadkar and Nathalal Jaghda, Bharatiya Jana Sangh leaders who were founding members of the BJP's Gujarat unit in 1980.
In a custom traditional to Narendra Modi's caste, his family arranged a betrothal to a girl, Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, leading to their marriage when she was 17 and he was 18. Soon afterwards, he abandoned his bride, and left home, never divorcing her, but the marriage remaining unmentioned in Modi's public pronouncements for many decades. In April 2014, shortly before the national elections that swept him to power, Modi publicly affirmed that he was married and his spouse was Jashodaben; the couple has remained married, but estranged.
Modi spent the ensuing two years travelling across Northern and North-eastern India, though few details of where he went have emerged. In interviews, Modi has described visiting Hindu ashrams founded by Swami Vivekananda: the Belur Math near Kolkata, followed by the Advaita Ashrama in Almora and the Ramakrishna Mission in Rajkot. Modi remained only a short time at each, since he lacked the required college education. Vivekananda has been described as a large influence in Modi's life.
In the early summer of 1968, Modi reached the Belur Math but was turned away, after which Modi wandered through Calcutta, West Bengal and Assam, stopping in Siliguri and Guwahati. Modi then went to the Ramakrishna Ashram in Almora, where he was again rejected, before travelling back to Gujarat via Delhi and Rajasthan in 1968–69. Sometime in late 1969 or early 1970, Modi returned to Vadnagar for a brief visit before leaving again for Ahmedabad. There, Modi lived with his uncle, working in the latter's canteen at the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation.
In Ahmedabad, Modi renewed his acquaintance with Inamdar, who was based at the Hedgewar Bhavan (RSS headquarters) in the city. Modi's first known political activity as an adult was in 1971 when he, as per his remarks, joined a Jana Sangh Satyagraha in Delhi led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee to enlist for the battlefield during the Bangladesh Liberation War. But the Indira Gandhi-led central government disallowed open support for the Mukti Bahini and Modi, according to his own claim, was put in Tihar Jail for a short period. After the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he stopped working for his uncle and became a full-time pracharak (campaigner) for the RSS, working under Inamdar. Shortly before the war, Modi took part in a non-violent protest against the Indian government in New Delhi, for which he was arrested (as per his claim); this has been cited as a reason for Inamdar electing to mentor him. Many years later Modi would co-author a biography of Inamdar, published in 2001. Modi's claim that he was part of a Satyagraha led to a political war. Applications were filed with the PMO under the RTI Act seeking details of his arrest. In reply, the PMO claimed that it maintains official records on Modi only since he took charge as the Prime Minister of India in 2014. Despite this claim, the official website of the PMO contains specific information about Modi which dates back to the 1950s.
In 1978 Modi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the School of Open Learning (SOL) at the University of Delhi, graduating with a third class. Five years later, in 1983, he received a Master of Arts degree in political science from Gujarat University, graduating with a first class as an external distance learning student. But there is a big controversy surrounding his educational qualification. Replying to an RTI query, the SOL said it did not have any data of students who received a BA degree in 1978. Jayantibhai Patel, a former political science professor of Gujarat University, claimed that the subjects listed in Modi's MA degree were not offered by the university when Modi was studying there.
Early political career
In June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India which lasted until 1977. During this period, known as "The Emergency", many of her political opponents were jailed and opposition groups were banned. Modi was appointed general secretary of the "Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti", an RSS committee co-ordinating opposition to the Emergency in Gujarat. Shortly afterwards, the RSS was banned. Modi was forced to go underground in Gujarat and frequently travelled in disguise to avoid arrest. He became involved in printing pamphlets opposing the government, sending them to Delhi and organising demonstrations. Modi was also involved with creating a network of safe houses for individuals wanted by the government, and in raising funds for political refugees and activists. During this period, Modi wrote a book in Gujarati, Sangharsh Ma Gujarat (In The Struggles of Gujarat), describing events during the Emergency. Among the people he met in this role was trade unionist and socialist activist George Fernandes, as well as several other national political figures. In his travels during the Emergency, Modi was often forced to move in disguise, once dressing as a monk, and once as a Sikh.
Modi became an RSS sambhag pracharak (regional organiser) in 1978, overseeing RSS activities in the areas of Surat and Vadodara, and in 1979 he went to work for the RSS in Delhi, where he was put to work researching and writing the RSS's version of the history of the Emergency. He returned to Gujarat a short while later, and was assigned by the RSS to the BJP in 1985. In 1987 Modi helped organise the BJP's campaign in the Ahmedabad municipal election, which the BJP won comfortably; Modi's planning has been described as the reason for that result by biographers. After L. K. Advani became president of the BJP in 1986, the RSS decided to place its members in important positions within the BJP; Modi's work during the Ahmedabad election led to his selection for this role, and Modi was elected organising secretary of the BJP's Gujarat unit later in 1987.
Modi rose within the party and was named a member of the BJP's National Election Committee in 1990, helping organise L. K. Advani's 1990 Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 and Murli Manohar Joshi's 1991–92 Ekta Yatra (Journey for Unity). However, he took a brief break from politics in 1992, instead establishing a school in Ahmedabad; friction with Shankersinh Vaghela, a BJP MP from Gujarat at the time, also played a part in this decision. Modi returned to electoral politics in 1994, partly at the insistence of Advani, and as party secretary, Modi's electoral strategy was considered central to the BJP victory in the 1995 state assembly elections. In November of that year Modi was appointed BJP national secretary and transferred to New Delhi, where he assumed responsibility for party activities in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The following year, Shankersinh Vaghela, a prominent BJP leader from Gujarat, defected to the Indian National Congress (Congress, INC) after losing his parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha elections. Modi, on the selection committee for the 1998 Assembly elections in Gujarat, favoured supporters of BJP leader Keshubhai Patel over those supporting Vaghela to end factional division in the party. His strategy was credited as key to the BJP winning an overall majority in the 1998 elections, and Modi was promoted to BJP general secretary (organisation) in May of that year.
Chief Minister of Gujarat
Taking office
In 2001, Keshubhai Patel's health was failing and the BJP lost a few state assembly seats in by-elections. Allegations of abuse of power, corruption and poor administration were made, and Patel's standing had been damaged by his administration's handling of the earthquake in Bhuj in 2001. The BJP national leadership sought a new candidate for the chief ministership, and Modi, who had expressed misgivings about Patel's administration, was chosen as a replacement. Although BJP leader L. K. Advani did not want to ostracise Patel and was concerned about Modi's lack of experience in government, Modi declined an offer to be Patel's deputy chief minister, telling Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee that he was "going to be fully responsible for Gujarat or not at all". On 3 October 2001 he replaced Patel as Chief Minister of Gujarat, with the responsibility of preparing the BJP for the December 2002 elections. Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister on 7 October 2001, and entered the Gujarat state legislature on 24 February 2002 by winning a by-election to the Rajkot – II constituency, defeating Ashwin Mehta of the INC by 14,728 votes.
2002 Gujarat riots
On 27 February 2002, a train with several hundred passengers burned near Godhra, killing approximately 60 people. The train carried a large number of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya after a religious ceremony at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid. In making a public statement after the incident, Modi declared it a terrorist attack planned and orchestrated by local Muslims. The next day, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for a bandh across the state. Riots began during the bandh, and anti-Muslim violence spread through Gujarat. The government's decision to move the bodies of the train victims from Godhra to Ahmedabad further inflamed the violence. The state government stated later that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed. Independent sources put the death toll at over 2000, the vast majority Muslims Approximately 150,000 people were driven to refugee camps. Numerous women and children were among the victims; the violence included mass rapes and mutilations of women.
The government of Gujarat itself is generally considered by scholars to have been complicit in the riots, (with some blaming chief minister Modi explicitly) and has otherwise received heavy criticism for its handling of the situation. Several scholars have described the violence as a pogrom, while others have called it an example of state terrorism. Summarising academic views on the subject, Martha Nussbaum said: "There is by now a broad consensus that the Gujarat violence was a form of ethnic cleansing, that in many ways it was premeditated, and that it was carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law." The Modi government imposed a curfew in 26 major cities, issued shoot-at-sight orders and called for the army to patrol the streets, but was unable to prevent the violence from escalating. The president of the state unit of the BJP expressed support for the bandh, despite such actions being illegal at the time. State officials later prevented riot victims from leaving the refugee camps, and the camps were often unable to meet the needs of those living there. Muslim victims of the riots were subject to further discrimination when the state government announced that compensation for Muslim victims would be half of that offered to Hindus, although this decision was later reversed after the issue was taken to court. During the riots, police officers often did not intervene in situations where they were able.
Modi's personal involvement in the 2002 events has continued to be debated. During the riots, Modi said that "What is happening is a chain of action and reaction." Later in 2002, Modi said the way in which he had handled the media was his only regret regarding the episode. In March 2008, the Supreme Court reopened several cases related to the 2002 riots, including that of the Gulbarg Society massacre, and established a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the issue. In response to a petition from Zakia Jafri (widow of Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre), in April 2009 the court also asked the SIT to investigate the issue of Modi's complicity in the killings. The SIT questioned Modi in March 2010; in May, it presented to the court a report finding no evidence against him. In July 2011, the court-appointed amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran submitted his final report to the court. Contrary to the SIT's position, he said that Modi could be prosecuted based on the available evidence. The Supreme Court gave the matter to the magistrate's court. The SIT examined Ramachandran's report, and in March 2012 submitted its final report, asking for the case to be closed. Zakia Jafri filed a protest petition in response. In December 2013 the magistrate's court rejected the protest petition, accepting the SIT's finding that there was no evidence against the chief minister.
2002 election
In the aftermath of the violence there were widespread calls for Modi to resign as chief minister from within and outside the state, including from leaders of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Telugu Desam Party (allies in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition), and opposition parties stalled Parliament over the issue. Modi submitted his resignation at the April 2002 BJP national executive meeting in Goa, but it was not accepted. His cabinet had an emergency meeting on 19 July 2002, after which it offered its resignation to the Gujarat Governor S. S. Bhandari, and the state assembly was dissolved. Despite opposition from the election commissioner, who said that a number of voters were still displaced, Modi succeeded in advancing the election to December 2002. In the elections, the BJP won 127 seats in the 182-member assembly. Although Modi later denied it, he made significant use of anti-Muslim rhetoric during his campaign, and the BJP profited from religious polarisation among the voters. He won the Maninagar constituency, receiving of votes and defeating INC candidate Yatin Oza by 75,333 votes. On 22 December 2002, Bhandari swore Modi in for a second term. Modi framed the criticism of his government for human rights violations as an attack upon Gujarati pride, a strategy which led to the BJP winning two-thirds of the seats in the state assembly.
Second term
During Modi's second term the rhetoric of the government shifted from Hindutva to Gujarat's economic development. Modi curtailed the influence of Sangh Parivar organisations such as the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), entrenched in the state after the decline of Ahmedabad's textile industry, and dropped Gordhan Zadafia (an ally of former Sangh co-worker and VHP state chief Praveen Togadia) from his cabinet. When the BKS staged a farmers' demonstration Modi ordered their eviction from state-provided houses, and his decision to demolish 200 illegal temples in Gandhinagar deepened the rift with the Vishva Hindu Parishad. Sangh organisations were no longer consulted or informed in advance about Modi's administrative decisions. Nonetheless, Modi retained connections with some Hindu nationalists. Modi wrote a foreword to a textbook by Dinanath Batra released in 2014, which stated that ancient India possessed technologies including test-tube babies.
Modi's relationship with Muslims continued to attract criticism. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who asked Modi for tolerance in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat violence and supported his resignation as chief minister) distanced himself, reaching out to North Indian Muslims before the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. After the elections Vajpayee called the violence in Gujarat a reason for the BJP's electoral defeat and said it had been a mistake to leave Modi in office after the riots.
Questions about Modi's relationship with Muslims were also raised by many Western nations during his tenure as chief minister. Modi was barred from entering the United States by the State Department, in accordance with the recommendations of the Commission on International Religious Freedom formed under the aegis of the International Religious Freedom Act, the only person denied a US visa under this law. The UK and the European Union refused to admit him because of what they saw as his role in the riots. As Modi rose to prominence in India, the UK and the EU lifted their bans in October 2012 and March 2013, respectively, and after his election he was invited to Washington as the nation's prime minister.
During the run-up to the 2007 Gujarat Legislative Assembly election and the 2009 Indian general election, the BJP intensified its rhetoric on terrorism. In July 2006, Modi criticised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh " for his reluctance to revive anti-terror legislation" such as the 2002 Prevention of Terrorism Act. He asked the national government to allow states to invoke tougher laws in the wake of the 2006 Mumbai train bombings. In 2007 Modi authored Karmayog, a 101-page booklet discussing manual scavenging. In it, Modi argued that scavenging was a "spiritual experience" for Valmiks, a sub-caste of Dalits. However, this book was not circulated that time because of the election code of conduct. After the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, Modi held a meeting to discuss the security of Gujarat's -long coastline, resulting in government authorisation of 30 high-speed surveillance boats. In July 2007 Modi completed 2,063 consecutive days as chief minister of Gujarat, making him the longest-serving holder of that post, and the BJP won 122 of 182 state-assembly seats in that year's election.
Development projects
As Chief Minister, Modi favoured privatisation and small government, which was at odds with the philosophy of the RSS, usually described as anti-privatisation and anti-globalisation. His policies during his second term have been credited with reducing corruption in the state. He established financial and technology parks in Gujarat and during the 2007 Vibrant Gujarat summit, real-estate investment deals worth were signed.
The governments led by Patel and Modi supported NGOs and communities in the creation of groundwater-conservation projects. By December 2008, 500,000 structures had been built, of which 113,738 were check dams, which helped recharge the aquifers beneath them. Sixty of the 112 tehsils which had depleted the water table in 2004 had regained their normal groundwater levels by 2010. As a result, the state's production of genetically modified cotton increased to become the largest in India. The boom in cotton production and its semi-arid land use led to Gujarat's agricultural sector growing at an average rate of 9.6 percent from 2001 to 2007. Public irrigation measures in central and southern Gujarat, such as the Sardar Sarovar Dam, were less successful. The Sardar Sarovar project only irrigated 4–6% of the area intended. Nonetheless, from 2001 to 2010 Gujarat recorded an agricultural growth rate of 10.97 percent – the highest of any state. However, sociologists have pointed out that the growth rate under the 1992–97 INC government was 12.9 percent. In 2008 Modi offered land in Gujarat to Tata Motors to set up a plant manufacturing the Nano after a popular agitation had forced the company to move out of West Bengal. Several other companies followed the Tata to Gujarat.
The Modi government finished the process of bringing electricity to every village in Gujarat that its predecessor had almost completed. Modi significantly changed the state's system of power distribution, greatly impacting farmers. Gujarat expanded the Jyotigram Yojana scheme, in which agricultural electricity was separated from other rural electricity; the agricultural electricity was rationed to fit scheduled irrigation demands, reducing its cost. Although early protests by farmers ended when those who benefited found that their electricity supply had stabilised, according to an assessment study corporations and large farmers benefited from the policy at the expense of small farmers and labourers.
Development debate
A contentious debate surrounds the assessment of Gujarat's economic development during Modi's tenure as chief minister. The state's GDP growth rate averaged 10% during Modi's tenure, a value similar to other highly industrialised states, and above that of the country as a whole. Gujarat also had a high rate of economic growth in the 1990s, before Modi took office, and some scholars have stated that growth did not much accelerate during Modi's tenure, although the state is considered to have maintained a high growth rate during Modi's Chief Ministership. Under Narendra Modi, Gujarat topped the World Bank's "ease of doing business" rankings among Indian states for two consecutive years. In 2013, Gujarat was ranked first among Indian states for "economic freedom" by a report measuring governance, growth, citizens' rights and labour and business regulation among the country's 20 largest states. In the later years of Modi's government, Gujarat's economic growth was frequently used as an argument to counter allegations of communalism. Tax breaks for businesses were easier to obtain in Gujarat than in other states, as was land. Modi's policies to make Gujarat attractive for investment included the creation of Special Economic Zones, where labour laws were greatly weakened.
Despite its growth rate, Gujarat had a relatively poor record on human development, poverty relief, nutrition and education during Modi's tenure. In 2013, Gujarat ranked 13th in the country with respect to rates of poverty and 21st in education. Nearly 45 percent of children under five were underweight and 23 percent were undernourished, putting the state in the "alarming" category on the India State Hunger Index. A study by UNICEF and the Indian government found that Gujarat under Modi had a poor record with respect to immunisation in children.
Over the decade from 2001 to 2011, Gujarat did not change its position relative to the rest of the country with respect to poverty and female literacy, remaining near the median of the 29 Indian states. It showed a marginal improvement in rates of infant mortality, and its position with respect to individual consumption declined. With respect to the quality of education in government schools, the state ranked below many Indian states. The social policies of the government generally did not benefit Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis, and generally increased social inequalities. Development in Gujarat was generally limited to the urban middle class, and citizens in rural areas or from lower castes were increasingly marginalised. In 2013 the state ranked 10th of 21 Indian states in the Human Development Index. Under Modi, the state government spent less than the national average on education and healthcare.
Final years
Despite the BJP's shift away from explicit Hindutva, Modi's election campaign in 2007 and 2012 contained elements of Hindu nationalism. Modi only attended Hindu religious ceremonies, and had prominent associations with Hindu religious leaders. During his 2012 campaign he twice refused to wear articles of clothing gifted by Muslim leaders. He did, however, maintain relations with Dawoodi Bohra. His campaign included references to issues known to cause religious polarisation, including to Afzal Guru and the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. The BJP did not nominate any Muslim candidates for the assembly election of 2012. During the 2012 campaign, Modi attempted to identify himself with the state of Gujarat, a strategy similar to that used by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, and projected himself as protecting Gujarat against persecution by the rest of India.
While campaigning for the 2012 assembly elections, Modi made extensive use of holograms and other technologies allowing him to reach a large number of people, something he would repeat in the 2014 general election. In the 2012 Gujarat Legislative Assembly elections, Modi won the constituency of Maninagar by 86,373 votes over Shweta Bhatt, the INC candidate and wife of Sanjiv Bhatt. The BJP won 115 of the 182 seats, continuing its majority during his tenure and allowing the party to form the government (as it had in Gujarat since 1995). After his election as prime minister, Modi resigned as the chief minister and as an MLA from Maninagar on 21 May 2014. Anandiben Patel succeeded him as the chief minister.
Premiership campaigns
2014 Indian general election
In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi.
During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development, although Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately , and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances.
The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism.
Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi by 371,784 votes and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat.
2019 Indian general election
On 13 October 2018, Modi was renamed as the BJP candidate for prime minister for the 2019 general election. The chief campaigner for the party was BJP's president Amit Shah. Modi launched the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign ahead of the general election, against Chowkidar Chor Hai campaign slogan of INC. In the year 2018, end Party's, second-biggest alliance Telugu Desam Party split from NDA over the matter of special-status for Andhra Pradesh.
The campaign was started by Amit Shah on 8 April 2019. In the campaign, Modi was targeted by the opposition on corruption allegations over Rafale deal with France government. Highlighting this controversy the campaign "Chowkidar Chor Hai" was started, which was contrary to "Main Bhi Chowkidar" slogan. Modi made defence and national security among the foremost topics for the election campaign, especially after Pulwama attack, and the retaliatory attack of Balakot airstrike was counted as an achievement of the Modi administration. Other topics in the campaign were development and good foreign relations in the first premiership.
Modi contested the Lok Sabha elections as a candidate from Varanasi. He won the seat by defeating Shalini Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, who fought on SP-BSP alliance by a margin of votes. Modi was unanimously appointed the prime minister for a second time by the National Democratic Alliance, after the alliance won the election for the second time by securing 353 seats in the Lok Sabha with the BJP alone won 303 seats.
Prime Minister
After the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won a landslide in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India on 26 May 2014. He became the first Prime Minister born after India's independence from the British Empire in 1947. Modi started his second term after the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won again in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. On 6 December 2020, Modi became the 4th longest serving Prime Minister of India and the longest serving Non-Congress Prime Minister.
Governance and other initiatives
Modi's first year as prime minister saw significant centralisation of power relative to previous administrations. His efforts at centralisation have been linked to an increase in the number of senior administration officials resigning their positions. Initially lacking a majority in the Rajya Sabha, or upper house of Indian Parliament, Modi passed a number of ordinances to enact his policies, leading to further centralisation of power. The government also passed a bill increasing the control that it had over the appointment of judges, and reducing that of the judiciary.
In December 2014 Modi abolished the Planning Commission, replacing it with the National Institution for Transforming India, or NITI Aayog. The move had the effect of greatly centralising the power previously with the planning commission in the person of the prime minister. The planning commission had received heavy criticism in previous years for creating inefficiency in the government, and of not filling its role of improving social welfare: however, since the economic liberalisation of the 1990s, it had been the major government body responsible for measures related to social justice.
The Modi government launched investigations by the Intelligence Bureau against numerous civil society organisations and foreign non-governmental organisations in the first year of the administration. The investigations, on the grounds that these organisations were slowing economic growth, was criticised as a witch-hunt. International humanitarian aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres was among the groups that were put under pressure. Other organisations affected included the Sierra Club and Avaaz. Cases of sedition were filed against individuals criticising the government. This led to discontent within the BJP regarding Modi's style of functioning and drew comparisons to the governing style of Indira Gandhi.
Modi repealed 1,200 obsolete laws in first three years as prime minister; a total of 1,301 such laws had been repealed by previous governments over a span of 64 years. He started a monthly radio programme titled "Mann Ki Baat" on 3 October 2014. Modi also launched the Digital India programme, with the goal of ensuring that government services are available electronically, building infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet access to rural areas, boosting manufacturing of electronic goods in the country, and promoting digital literacy.
Modi launched Ujjwala scheme to provide free LPG connection to rural households. The scheme led to an increase in LPG consumption by 56% in 2019 as compared to 2014. In 2019, a law was passed to provide 10% reservation to Economically weaker sections.
He was again sworn in as prime minister on 30 May 2019. On 30 July 2019, Parliament of India declared the practice of Triple Talaq as illegal, unconstitutional and made it punishable act from 1 August 2019 which is deemed to be in effect from 19 September 2018. On 5 August 2019, the government moved resolution to scrap Article 370 in the Rajya Sabha, and also reorganise the state with Jammu and Kashmir serving as one of the union territory and Ladakh region separated out as a separate union territory.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how he Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. Reporters Without Borders in 2021 characterised Modi as a predator for curbing press freedom in India since 2014.
Economic policy
The economic policies of Modi's government focused on privatisation and liberalisation of the economy, based on a neoliberal framework. Modi liberalised India's foreign direct investment policies, allowing more foreign investment in several industries, including in defence and the railways. Other proposed reforms included making it harder for workers to form unions and easier for employers to hire and fire them; some of these proposals were dropped after protests. The reforms drew strong opposition from unions: on 2 September 2015, eleven of the country's largest unions went on strike, including one affiliated with the BJP. The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, a constituent of the Sangh Parivar, stated that the underlying motivation of labour reforms favoured corporations over labourers.
The funds dedicated to poverty reduction programmes and social welfare measures were greatly decreased by the Modi administration. The money spent on social programmes declined from 14.6% of GDP during the Congress government to 12.6% during Modi's first year in office. Spending on health and family welfare declined by 15%, and on primary and secondary education by 16%. The budgetary allocation for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, or the "education for all" programme, declined by 22%. The government also lowered corporate taxes, abolished the wealth tax, increased sales taxes, and reduced customs duties on gold, and jewellery. In October 2014, the Modi government deregulated diesel prices.
In September 2014, Modi introduced the Make in India initiative to encourage foreign companies to manufacture products in India, with the goal of turning the country into a global manufacturing hub. Supporters of economic liberalisation supported the initiative, while critics argued it would allow foreign corporations to capture a greater share of the Indian market. Modi's administration passed a land-reform bill that allowed it to acquire private agricultural land without conducting a social impact assessment, and without the consent of the farmers who owned it. The bill was passed via an executive order after it faced opposition in parliament, but was eventually allowed to lapse. Modi's government put in place the Goods and Services Tax, the biggest tax reform in the country since independence. It subsumed around 17 different taxes and became effective from 1 July 2017.
In his first cabinet decision, Modi set up a team to investigate black money. On 9 November 2016, the government demonetised ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes, with the stated intention of curbing corruption, black money, the use of counterfeit currency, and terrorism. The move led to severe cash shortages, a steep decline in the Indian stock indices BSE SENSEX and NIFTY 50, and sparked widespread protests throughout the country. Several deaths were linked to the rush to exchange cash. In the subsequent year, the number of income tax returns filed for individuals rose by 25%, and the number of digital transactions increased steeply.
Over the first four years of Modi's premiership, India's GDP grew at an average rate of 7.23%, higher than the rate of 6.39% under the previous government. The level of income inequality increased, while an internal government report said that in 2017, unemployment had increased to its highest level in 45 years. The loss of jobs was attributed to the 2016 demonetisation, and to the effects of the Goods and Services Tax.
In the next year, after 2018, Indian economy started a gradual recovery with a GDP growth of 6.12% in 2018-19 FY, with an inflation rate of 3.4%. Same year, India was successful in making a good economy in trade and manufacturing sector. While in the FY of 2019–20, due to the general election, Modi government focused more on their election campaign. In the year 2019–20, the GDP growth rate was 4.18% and inflation rate also increased to 4.7% from 3.4% in the previous year. Though being high unemployment, increase in inflation rate and budget deficiency, Modi's leadership won in 2019 elections.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous rating agencies downgraded India's GDP predictions for FY21 to negative figures, signalling a recession in India, the most severe since 1979. According to a Dun & Bradstreet report, the country is likely to suffer a recession in the third quarter of FY2020 as a result of the over 2-month long nation-wide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. This was also accompanied by the mass migration of migrant workers.
Health and sanitation
In his first year as prime minister, Modi reduced the amount of money spent by the central government on healthcare. The Modi government launched New Health Policy (NHP) in January 2015. The policy did not increase the government's spending on healthcare, instead emphasising the role of private healthcare organisations. This represented a shift away from the policy of the previous Congress government, which had supported programmes to assist public health goals, including reducing child and maternal mortality rates. The National Health Mission, which included public health programmes targeted at these indices received nearly 20% less funds in 2015 than in the previous year. 15 national health programmes, including those aimed at controlling tobacco use and supporting healthcare for the elderly, were merged with the National Health Mission. In its budget for the second year after it took office, the Modi government reduced healthcare spending by 15%. The healthcare budget for the following year rose by 19%. The budget was viewed positively by private insurance providers. Public health experts criticised its emphasis on the role of private healthcare providers, and suggested that it represented a shift away from public health facilities. The healthcare budget rose by 11.5% in 2018; the change included an allocation of for a government-funded health insurance program, and a decrease in the budget of the National Health Mission. The government introduced stricter packaging laws for tobacco which requires 85% of the packet size to be covered by pictorial warnings. An article in the medical journal Lancet stated that the country "might have taken a few steps back in public health" under Modi. In 2018 Modi launched the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, a government health insurance scheme intended to insure 500 million people. 100,000 people had signed up by October 2018.
Modi emphasised his government's efforts at sanitation as a means of ensuring good health. On 2 October 2014, Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission ("Clean India") campaign. The stated goals of the campaign included eliminating open defecation and manual scavenging within five years. As part of the programme, the Indian government began constructing millions of toilets in rural areas and encouraging people to use them. The government also announced plans to build new sewage treatment plants. The administration plans to construct 60 million toilets by 2019. The construction projects have faced allegations of corruption, and have faced severe difficulty in getting people to use the toilets constructed for them. Sanitation cover in the country increased from 38.7% in October 2014 to 84.1% in May 2018; however, usage of the new sanitary facilities lagged behind the government's targets. In 2018, the World Health Organization stated that at least 180,000 diarrhoeal deaths were averted in rural India after the launch of the sanitation effort.
Hindutva
During the 2014 election campaign, the BJP sought to identify itself with political leaders known to have opposed Hindu nationalism, including B. R. Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Ram Manohar Lohia. The campaign also saw the use of rhetoric based on Hindutva by BJP leaders in certain states. Communal tensions were played upon especially in Uttar Pradesh and the states of Northeast India. A proposal for the controversial Uniform Civil Code was a part of the BJP's election manifesto.
The activities of a number of Hindu nationalist organisations increased in scope after Modi's election as Prime Minister, sometimes with the support of the government. These activities included a Hindu religious conversion programme, a campaign against the alleged Islamic practice of "Love Jihad", and attempts to celebrate Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, by members of the right wing Hindu Mahasabha. Officials in the government, including the Home Minister, defended the conversion programmes.
Links between the BJP and the RSS grew stronger under Modi. The RSS provided organisational support to the BJP's electoral campaigns, while the Modi administration appointed a number of individuals affiliated with the RSS to prominent government positions. In 2014, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, who had previously been associated with the RSS, became the chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). Historians and former members of the ICHR, including those sympathetic to the BJP, questioned his credentials as a historian, and stated that the appointment was part of an agenda of cultural nationalism.
The North East Delhi riots, which left more than 40 dead and hundreds injured, were triggered by protests against a citizenship law seen by many critics as anti-Muslim and part of Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda. On 5 August 2020, Modi visited Ayodhya after the Supreme Court in 2019 ordered a contested land in Ayodhya to be handed over to a trust to build the Hindu temple and ordered the government to give alternate 5 acre land to Sunni Waqf Board for the purpose of building a mosque. He became the first prime minister to visit Ram Janmabhoomi and Hanuman Garhi.
Foreign policy
Foreign policy played a relatively small role in Modi's election campaign, and did not feature prominently in the BJP's election manifesto. Modi invited all the other leaders of SAARC countries to his swearing in ceremony as prime minister. He was the first Indian prime minister to do so.
Modi's foreign policy, similarly to that of the preceding INC government, focused on improving economic ties, security, and regional relations. Modi continued Manmohan Singh's policy of "multi-alignment." The Modi administration tried to attract foreign investment in the Indian economy from several sources, especially in East Asia, with the use of slogans such as "Make in India" and "Digital India". The government also tried to improve relations with Islamic nations in the Middle East, such as Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as with Israel.
The foreign relations of India with the USA also mended after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. During the run-up to the general election there was wide-ranging scepticism regarding future of the strategic bilateral relation under Modi's premiership as in 2005 he was, while Chief Minister of Gujarat, denied a U.S. visa during the Bush administration for his poor human rights records. However sensing Modi's inevitable victory well before the election, the US Ambassador Nancy Powell had reached out to him as part of greater rapprochement from the west. Moreover, following his 2014 election as the Prime Minister of India President Obama congratulated him over the telephone and invited him to visit the US. Modi government has been successful in making good foreign relations with the USA in the presidency of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
During the first few months after the election, Modi made trips to a number of different countries to further the goals of his policy, and attended the BRICS, ASEAN, and G20 summits. One of Modi's first visits as prime minister was to Nepal, during which he promised a billion USD in aid. Modi also made several overtures to the United States, including multiple visits to that country. While this was described as an unexpected development, due to the US having previously denied Modi a travel visa over his role during the 2002 Gujarat riots, the visits were expected to strengthen diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries.
In 2015, the Indian parliament ratified a land exchange deal with Bangladesh about the India–Bangladesh enclaves, which had been initiated by the government of Manmohan Singh. Modi's administration gave renewed attention to India's "Look East Policy", instituted in 1991. The policy was renamed the "Act East Policy", and involved directing Indian foreign policy towards East Asia and Southeast Asia. The government signed agreements to improve land connectivity with Myanmar, through the state of Manipur. This represented a break with India's historic engagement with Myanmar, which prioritised border security over trade. China–India relations have deteriorated rapidly following the 2020 China–India skirmishes. Modi has pledged aid of $900 million to Afghanistan, visited the nation twice and been honoured with the nation's highest civilian honour in 2016.
Defence policy
India's nominal military spending increased steadily under Modi. The military budget declined over Modi's tenure both as a fraction of GDP and when adjusted for inflation. A substantial portion of the military budget was devoted to personnel costs, leading commentators to write that the budget was constraining Indian military modernisation.
The BJP election manifesto had also promised to deal with illegal immigration into India in the Northeast, as well as to be more firm in its handling of insurgent groups. The Modi government issued a notification allowing Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh to legalise their residency in India. The government described the measure as being taken for humanitarian reasons but it drew criticism from several Assamese organisations.The Modi administration negotiated a peace agreement with the largest faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCM), which was announced in August 2015. The Naga insurgency in northeast India had begun in the 1950s. The NSCM and the government had agreed to a ceasefire in 1997, but a peace accord had not previously been signed. In 2015 the government abrogated a 15-year ceasefire with the Khaplang faction of the NSCM (NSCM-K). The NSCM-K responded with a series of attacks, which killed 18 people. The Modi government carried out a raid across the border with Myanmar as a result, and labelled the NSCM-K a terrorist organisation.
Modi promised to be "tough on Pakistan" during his election campaign, and repeatedly stated that Pakistan was an exporter of terrorism. On 29 September 2016, the Indian Army stated that it had conducted a surgical strike on terror launch pads in Azad Kashmir. The Indian media claimed that up to 50 terrorists and Pakistani soldiers had been killed in the strike. Pakistan initially denied that any strikes had taken place. Subsequent reports suggested that Indian claim about the scope of the strike and the number of casualties had been exaggerated, although cross-border strikes had been carried out. In February 2019 India carried out airstrikes in Pakistan against a supposed terrorist camp. Further military skirmishes followed, including cross-border shelling and the loss of an Indian aircraft.
Following his victory in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he focused more on Defence policies of India, especially against China and Pakistan. On 5 May 2020, Chinese and Indian troops engaged in aggressive melee, face-offs and skirmishes at locations along the Sino-Indian border, including near the disputed Pangong Lake in Ladakh and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and near the border between Sikkim and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Additional clashes also took place at locations in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). After which there was start of skirmishes between the nations leading to many border clashes, responses and reactions from both sides. A series of talks were also held between the two by both military and diplomatic means for peace. The first border clash reported in 2021 was on 20 January, referred to as a minor border clash in Sikkim.
Environmental policy
In naming his cabinet, Modi renamed the "Ministry of Environment and Forests" the "Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change." In the first budget of the government, the money allotted to this ministry was reduced by more than 50%. The new ministry also removed or diluted a number of laws related to environmental protection. These included no longer requiring clearance from the National Board for Wildlife for projects close to protected areas, and allowing certain projects to proceed before environmental clearance was received. The government also tried to reconstitute the Wildlife board such that it no longer had representatives from non-governmental organisations: however, this move was prevented by the Supreme Court.
Modi also relaxed or abolished a number of other environmental regulations, particularly those related to industrial activity. A government committee stated that the existing system only served to create corruption, and that the government should instead rely on the owners of industries to voluntarily inform the government about the pollution they were creating. Other changes included reducing ministry oversight on small mining projects, and no longer requiring approval from tribal councils for projects inside forested areas. In addition, Modi lifted a moratorium on new industrial activity in the most polluted areas in the countries. The changes were welcomed by businesspeople, but criticised by environmentalists.
Under the UPA government that preceded Modi's administration, field trials of Genetically Modified (GM) crops had essentially been put on hold, after protests from farmers fearing for their livelihoods. Under the Modi government these restrictions were gradually lifted. The government received some criticism for freezing the bank accounts of environmental group Greenpeace, citing financial irregularities, although a leaked government report said that the freeze had to do with Greenpeace's opposition to GM crops. At the COP26 conference Modi announced that India would target carbon neutrality by 2070, and also expand its renewable energy capacity. Though the date of net zero is far behind that of China and the USA and India's government wants to continue with the use of coal, Indian environmentalists and economists applauded the decision, describing it as a bold climate action.
Democratic backsliding
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how the Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. There have been several reports of the Modi government to be as an authoritarian conservative government, even due to lack of good opposition.
Electoral history
Personal life and image
Personal life
In accordance with Ghanchi tradition, Modi's marriage was arranged by his parents when he was a child. He was engaged at age 13 to Jashodaben Modi, marrying her when he was 18. They spent little time together and grew apart when Modi began two years of travel, including visits to Hindu ashrams. Reportedly, their marriage was never consummated, and he kept it a secret because otherwise he could not have become a 'pracharak' in the puritan Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Modi kept his marriage secret for most of his career. He acknowledged his wife for the first time when he filed his nomination for the 2014 general elections. Modi maintains a close relationship with his centenarian mother, Hiraben.
A vegetarian and teetotaler, Modi has a frugal lifestyle and is a workaholic and introvert. A person named Badri Meena has been his cook since 2002. Modi's 31 August 2012 post on Google Hangouts made him the first Indian politician to interact with citizens on a live chat. Modi has also been called a fashion-icon for his signature crisply ironed, half-sleeved kurta, as well as for a suit with his name embroidered repeatedly in the pinstripes that he wore during a state visit by US President Barack Obama, which drew public and media attention and criticism. Modi's personality has been variously described by scholars and biographers as energetic, arrogant, and charismatic.
He had published a Gujarati book titled Jyotipunj in 2008, containing profiles of various RSS leaders. The longest was of M. S. Golwalkar, under whose leadership the RSS expanded and whom Modi refers to as Pujniya Shri Guruji ("Guru worthy of worship"). According to The Economic Times, his intention was to explain the workings of the RSS to his readers and to reassure RSS members that he remained ideologically aligned with them. Modi authored eight other books, mostly containing short stories for children.
The nomination of Modi for the prime ministership drew attention to his reputation as "one of contemporary India's most controversial and divisive politicians." During the 2014 election campaign the BJP projected an image of Modi as a strong, masculine leader, who would be able to take difficult decisions. Campaigns in which he has participated have focused on Modi as an individual, in a manner unusual for the BJP and RSS. Modi has relied upon his reputation as a politician able to bring about economic growth and "development". Nonetheless, his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots continues to attract criticism and controversy. Modi's hardline Hindutva philosophy and the policies adopted by his government continue to draw criticism, and have been seen as evidence of a majoritarian and exclusionary social agenda.
In March 2021, Modi received his first COVID-19 vaccine dose at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
Personal donations
Modi has made donations for various causes and programmes. One such instance was when Modi donated towards the initial corpus of the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) Fund. In his role as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi had donated from personal savings for educating daughters of state government officials. Modi had also raised by auctioning all the gifts he received as chief minister and donated this to the Kanya Kelavani Fund. The money was spent on the education of girl children, through the scheme.
Approval ratings
As a Prime Minister, Modi has received consistently high approval ratings; at the end of his first year in office, he received an overall approval rating of 87% in a Pew Research poll, with 68% of people rating him "very favorably" and 93% approving of his government. His approval rating remained largely consistent at around 74% through his second year in office, according to a nationwide poll conducted by instaVaani. At the end of his second year in office, an updated Pew Research poll showed Modi continued to receive high overall approval ratings of 81%, with 57% of those polled rating him "very favorably." At the end of his third year in office, a further Pew Research poll showed Modi with an overall approval rating of 88%, his highest yet, with 69% of people polled rating him "very favorably." A poll conducted by The Times of India in May 2017 showed 77% of the respondents rated Modi as "very good" and "good". In early 2017, a survey from Pew Research Center showed Modi to be the most popular figure in Indian politics. In a weekly analysis by Morning Consult called the Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker, Modi had the highest net approval rating as of 22 December 2020 of all government leaders in the 13 countries being tracked.
Awards and recognition
In March 2012 and June 2014, Modi appeared on the cover of the Asian edition of Time Magazine, one of the few Indian politicians to have done so. He was awarded Indian of the Year by CNN-News18 (formally CNN-IBN) news network in 2014. In June 2015, Modi was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020 and 2021, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Forbes Magazine ranked him the 15th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2014 and the 9th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2015, 2016 and 2018. In 2015, Modi was ranked the 13th Most Influential Person in the World by Bloomberg Markets Magazine. Modi was ranked fifth on Fortune Magazines first annual list of the "World's Greatest Leaders" in 2015. In 2017, Gallup International Association (GIA) conducted a poll and ranked Modi as third top leader of the world. In 2016, a wax statue of Modi was unveiled at Madame Tussauds wax museum in London.
In 2015 he was named one of Times "30 Most Influential People on the Internet" as the second-most-followed politician on Twitter and Facebook. In 2018, he was the third most followed world leader on Twitter, and the most followed world leader on Facebook and Instagram. In October 2018, Modi received United Nations's highest environmental award, the 'Champions of the Earth', for policy leadership by "pioneering work in championing" the International Solar Alliance and "new areas of levels of cooperation on environmental action". He was conferred the 2018 Seoul Peace Prize in recognition of "his dedication to improving international co-operation, raising global economic growth, accelerating the Human Development of the people of India by fostering economic growth and furthering the development of democracy through anti-corruption and social integration efforts". He is the first Indian to win the award.
Following his second swearing-in ceremony as Prime Minister of India, a picture of Modi was displayed on the facade of the ADNOC building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Texas India Forum hosted a community event in honour of Modi on 22 September 2019 at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. The event was attended by over 50,000 people and several American politicians including President Donald Trump, making it the largest gathering for an invited foreign leader visiting the United States other than the Pope. At the same event, Modi was presented with the Key to the City of Houston by Mayor Sylvester Turner. He was awarded the Global Goalkeeper Award on 24 September 2019 in New York City by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in recognition for the Swachh Bharat Mission and "the progress India has made in providing safe sanitation under his leadership".
In 2020, Modi was among eight world leaders awarded the parodic Ig Nobel Prize in Medical Education "for using the COVID-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can". On 21 December 2020, President Donald Trump awarded Modi with the Legion of Merit for elevating the India–United States relations. The Legion of Merit was awarded to Modi along with Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison and former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, the "original architects" of the QUAD.
On 24 February 2021, the largest cricket stadium in the world at Ahmedabad was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by the Gujarat Cricket Association.
Modi is featured in TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2021 list, making it his fifth time after 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2020. TIME called him the third "pivotal leader" of independent India after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi who "dominated the country’s politics like no one since them".
State honours
Other honours
In popular culture
Modi Kaka Ka Gaon, a 2017 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Tushar Amrish Goel is the first biopic on Modi, starring Vikas Mahante in the titular role it was made halfway into his first-term as the prime minister which is shown in the film. PM Narendra Modi, a 2019 Indian Hindi-language biographical drama film by Omung Kumar, starred Vivek Oberoi in the titular role and covers his rise to prime ministership.An Indian web series, Modi: Journey of a Common Man, based on the same premise released in May 2019 on Eros Now with Ashish Sharma portraying Modi. Hu Narender Modi Banva Mangu Chu is a 2018 Indian Gujarati-language drama film by Anil Naryani about the aspirations of a young boy who wants to become like Narendra Modi.
7 RCR (7, Race Course Road), a 2014 Indian docudrama political television series which charts the political careers of prominent Indian politicians, covered Modi's rise to the PM's office in the episodes - "Story of Narendra Modi from 1950 to 2001", "Story of Narendra Modi in Controversial Years from 2001 to 2013", "Truth Behind Brand Modi", "Election Journey of Narendra Modi to 7 RCR", and "Masterplan of Narendra Modi's NDA Govt."; with Sangam Rai in the role of Modi.
Other portrayals of Modi include by Rajit Kapur in the film Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) and Vikram Gokhale in the web-television series Avrodh: The Siege Within (2020) both based on the 2016 Uri attack and the following Indian surgical strikes. Pratap Singh played a character based on Modi in Chand Bujh Gaya (2005) which is set in the backdrop of the Gujarat riots.
Premiered on 12 August 2019, Modi appeared in an episode - "Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls and Prime Minister Modi" - of Discovery Channel's show Man vs Wild with the host Bear Grylls, becoming the second world leader after Barack Obama to appear in the reality show. In the show he trekked the jungles and talked about nature and wildlife conservation with Grylls. The episode was shot in Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand and was broadcast in 180 countries along India. He has also appeared twice on the Indian television talk show Aap Ki Adalat before the 2009 and 2014 elections respectively.
Along with hosting the Mann Ki Baat monthly radio programme, on All India Radio, he has also conducted Pariksha Pe Charcha - a competition/discussion for students and the issues they face in examinations.
Bibliography
See also
List of prime ministers of India
Opinion polling on the Narendra Modi premiership
References
Notes
Citations
Further reading
External links
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1950 births
Living people
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Time 100 | true | [
"Pete Rios was a member of the Arizona House of Representatives and the Arizona Senate, serving two stretches in the Senate and a single term in the House. He first ran, unsuccessfully, for the House in 1980. In 1982 he ran for the State Senate, winning the seat from Arizona's 7th District. He won re-election in 1984, 1986, 1988, 1990, and 1992. He served as the Senate President during the 40th Legislature from 1991–1992. In 1994, he did not run for re-election to the Senate, instead choosing to run for the Arizona Secretary of State, a bid for which he was unsuccessful. In 1996 Rios once again ran for the Senate, regaining his seat in District 7. He won election three times, the first two in 1998 and 2000 to District, and then to District 23 in 2002, after re-districting. In 2004, due to Arizona's term limit laws, Rios was unable to run again for the Senate, and chose to run for the House seat from District 23, which he won. He won re-election in 2006. He did not run for re-election in 2008.\n\nReferences\n\n \n\nArizona Democrats\nMembers of the Arizona House of Representatives\nArizona state senators\nLiving people\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nPresidents of the Arizona State Senate",
"Retirement slump refers to the average falloff in the party’s vote when the incumbent retires. A positive value of the sophomore surge represents an incumbency advantage. The retirement slump should be positive for an incumbency advantage to exist.\n\nSophomore surge is the average vote gain for freshman winners in election 1 who run again in election 2. Retirement slump is the average vote loss for the parties whose candidates won election 1 and did not run in election 2.\n\nWhen a Sophomore surge and a Retirement slump combine, it is what is called a slurge.\n\nReferences \n\nElections"
] |
[
"Narendra Modi",
"2014 Indian general election",
"in what month was the election?",
"the 2014 Lok Sabha election.",
"what position did he run for in the election?",
"prime minister"
] | C_b6a0c764bf0c443b9768973ff08ca8fb_0 | what political party was he in? | 3 | What political party was Narendra Modi in? | Narendra Modi | In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi. During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development. Although the BJP avoided issues of Hindu nationalism to an extent, Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately Rs50 billion (US$770 million), and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances. The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism. Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by 570,128 votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat. CANNOTANSWER | the BJP's candidate | Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from Varanasi. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organisation. He is the first prime minister to have been born after India's independence in 1947 and the second prime minister not belonging to the Indian National Congress to have won two consecutive majorities in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Indian of parliament.
Born and raised in Vadnagar, a small town in northeastern Gujarat, Modi completed his secondary education there. He was introduced to the RSS at age eight. He has drawn attention to having to work as a child in his father's tea stall on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that has not been reliably corroborated. At age 18, Modi was married to Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, whom he abandoned soon after. He left his parental home where she had come to live. He first publicly acknowledged her as his wife more than four decades later when required to do so by Indian law, but has made no contact with her since. Modi has asserted he had travelled in northern India for two years after leaving his parental home, visiting a number of religious centres, but few details of his travels have emerged. Upon his return to Gujarat in 1971, he became a full-time worker for the RSS. After the state of emergency declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, Modi went into hiding. The RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985 and he held several positions within the party hierarchy until 2001, rising to the rank of general secretary.
Modi was appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001 due to Keshubhai Patel's failing health and poor public image following the earthquake in Bhuj. Modi was elected to the legislative assembly soon after. His administration has been considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots in which 1044 people were killed, three-quarters of whom were Muslim, or otherwise criticised for its management of the crisis. The Supreme Court remarked that Narendra Modi was like a Modern-day Nero, looking the other way as innocent women and children were burning. A Supreme Court of India-appointed Special Investigation Team found no evidence to initiate prosecution proceedings against Modi personally. While his policies as chief minister—credited with encouraging economic growth—have received praise, his administration has been criticised for failing to significantly improve health, poverty and education indices in the state.
Modi led the BJP in the 2014 general election which gave the party a majority in the Indian lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, the first time for any single party since 1984. Modi's administration has tried to raise foreign direct investment in the Indian economy and reduced spending on healthcare and social welfare programmes. Modi has attempted to improve efficiency in the bureaucracy; he has centralised power by abolishing the Planning Commission. He began a high-profile sanitation campaign, controversially initiated a demonetisation of high-denomination banknotes and transformation of taxation regime, and weakened or abolished environmental and labour laws.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. Following his party's victory in the 2019 general election, his administration revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and also introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act, which resulted in widespread protests across the country. Described as engineering a political realignment towards right-wing politics, Modi remains a figure of controversy domestically and internationally over his Hindu nationalist beliefs and his handling of the 2002 Gujarat riots, cited as evidence of an exclusionary social agenda.
Early life and education
Narendra Damodardas Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a Gujarati Hindu family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district, Bombay State (present-day Gujarat). He was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi () and Hiraben Modi (born ). Modi's family belonged to the Modh-Ghanchi-Teli (oil-presser) community, which is categorised as an Other Backward Class by the Indian government.
Modi had only infrequently spoken of his family background during his 13 years as chief minister of Gujarat. In the run up to the 2014 national elections, he began to regularly draw attention to his low-ranking social origins and to having to work as a child in his father's tea shop on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that the evidence of neighbours does not entirely corroborate. Modi completed his higher secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where teachers described him as an average student and a keen gifted debater, with interest in theatre. Modi preferred playing larger-than-life characters in theatrical productions, which has influenced his political image.
When eight years old, Modi was introduced to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and began attending its local shakhas (training sessions). There, Modi met Lakshmanrao Inamdar, popularly known as Vakil Saheb, who inducted him as a balswayamsevak (junior cadet) in the RSS and became his political mentor. While Modi was training with the RSS, he also met Vasant Gajendragadkar and Nathalal Jaghda, Bharatiya Jana Sangh leaders who were founding members of the BJP's Gujarat unit in 1980.
In a custom traditional to Narendra Modi's caste, his family arranged a betrothal to a girl, Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, leading to their marriage when she was 17 and he was 18. Soon afterwards, he abandoned his bride, and left home, never divorcing her, but the marriage remaining unmentioned in Modi's public pronouncements for many decades. In April 2014, shortly before the national elections that swept him to power, Modi publicly affirmed that he was married and his spouse was Jashodaben; the couple has remained married, but estranged.
Modi spent the ensuing two years travelling across Northern and North-eastern India, though few details of where he went have emerged. In interviews, Modi has described visiting Hindu ashrams founded by Swami Vivekananda: the Belur Math near Kolkata, followed by the Advaita Ashrama in Almora and the Ramakrishna Mission in Rajkot. Modi remained only a short time at each, since he lacked the required college education. Vivekananda has been described as a large influence in Modi's life.
In the early summer of 1968, Modi reached the Belur Math but was turned away, after which Modi wandered through Calcutta, West Bengal and Assam, stopping in Siliguri and Guwahati. Modi then went to the Ramakrishna Ashram in Almora, where he was again rejected, before travelling back to Gujarat via Delhi and Rajasthan in 1968–69. Sometime in late 1969 or early 1970, Modi returned to Vadnagar for a brief visit before leaving again for Ahmedabad. There, Modi lived with his uncle, working in the latter's canteen at the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation.
In Ahmedabad, Modi renewed his acquaintance with Inamdar, who was based at the Hedgewar Bhavan (RSS headquarters) in the city. Modi's first known political activity as an adult was in 1971 when he, as per his remarks, joined a Jana Sangh Satyagraha in Delhi led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee to enlist for the battlefield during the Bangladesh Liberation War. But the Indira Gandhi-led central government disallowed open support for the Mukti Bahini and Modi, according to his own claim, was put in Tihar Jail for a short period. After the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he stopped working for his uncle and became a full-time pracharak (campaigner) for the RSS, working under Inamdar. Shortly before the war, Modi took part in a non-violent protest against the Indian government in New Delhi, for which he was arrested (as per his claim); this has been cited as a reason for Inamdar electing to mentor him. Many years later Modi would co-author a biography of Inamdar, published in 2001. Modi's claim that he was part of a Satyagraha led to a political war. Applications were filed with the PMO under the RTI Act seeking details of his arrest. In reply, the PMO claimed that it maintains official records on Modi only since he took charge as the Prime Minister of India in 2014. Despite this claim, the official website of the PMO contains specific information about Modi which dates back to the 1950s.
In 1978 Modi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the School of Open Learning (SOL) at the University of Delhi, graduating with a third class. Five years later, in 1983, he received a Master of Arts degree in political science from Gujarat University, graduating with a first class as an external distance learning student. But there is a big controversy surrounding his educational qualification. Replying to an RTI query, the SOL said it did not have any data of students who received a BA degree in 1978. Jayantibhai Patel, a former political science professor of Gujarat University, claimed that the subjects listed in Modi's MA degree were not offered by the university when Modi was studying there.
Early political career
In June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India which lasted until 1977. During this period, known as "The Emergency", many of her political opponents were jailed and opposition groups were banned. Modi was appointed general secretary of the "Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti", an RSS committee co-ordinating opposition to the Emergency in Gujarat. Shortly afterwards, the RSS was banned. Modi was forced to go underground in Gujarat and frequently travelled in disguise to avoid arrest. He became involved in printing pamphlets opposing the government, sending them to Delhi and organising demonstrations. Modi was also involved with creating a network of safe houses for individuals wanted by the government, and in raising funds for political refugees and activists. During this period, Modi wrote a book in Gujarati, Sangharsh Ma Gujarat (In The Struggles of Gujarat), describing events during the Emergency. Among the people he met in this role was trade unionist and socialist activist George Fernandes, as well as several other national political figures. In his travels during the Emergency, Modi was often forced to move in disguise, once dressing as a monk, and once as a Sikh.
Modi became an RSS sambhag pracharak (regional organiser) in 1978, overseeing RSS activities in the areas of Surat and Vadodara, and in 1979 he went to work for the RSS in Delhi, where he was put to work researching and writing the RSS's version of the history of the Emergency. He returned to Gujarat a short while later, and was assigned by the RSS to the BJP in 1985. In 1987 Modi helped organise the BJP's campaign in the Ahmedabad municipal election, which the BJP won comfortably; Modi's planning has been described as the reason for that result by biographers. After L. K. Advani became president of the BJP in 1986, the RSS decided to place its members in important positions within the BJP; Modi's work during the Ahmedabad election led to his selection for this role, and Modi was elected organising secretary of the BJP's Gujarat unit later in 1987.
Modi rose within the party and was named a member of the BJP's National Election Committee in 1990, helping organise L. K. Advani's 1990 Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 and Murli Manohar Joshi's 1991–92 Ekta Yatra (Journey for Unity). However, he took a brief break from politics in 1992, instead establishing a school in Ahmedabad; friction with Shankersinh Vaghela, a BJP MP from Gujarat at the time, also played a part in this decision. Modi returned to electoral politics in 1994, partly at the insistence of Advani, and as party secretary, Modi's electoral strategy was considered central to the BJP victory in the 1995 state assembly elections. In November of that year Modi was appointed BJP national secretary and transferred to New Delhi, where he assumed responsibility for party activities in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The following year, Shankersinh Vaghela, a prominent BJP leader from Gujarat, defected to the Indian National Congress (Congress, INC) after losing his parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha elections. Modi, on the selection committee for the 1998 Assembly elections in Gujarat, favoured supporters of BJP leader Keshubhai Patel over those supporting Vaghela to end factional division in the party. His strategy was credited as key to the BJP winning an overall majority in the 1998 elections, and Modi was promoted to BJP general secretary (organisation) in May of that year.
Chief Minister of Gujarat
Taking office
In 2001, Keshubhai Patel's health was failing and the BJP lost a few state assembly seats in by-elections. Allegations of abuse of power, corruption and poor administration were made, and Patel's standing had been damaged by his administration's handling of the earthquake in Bhuj in 2001. The BJP national leadership sought a new candidate for the chief ministership, and Modi, who had expressed misgivings about Patel's administration, was chosen as a replacement. Although BJP leader L. K. Advani did not want to ostracise Patel and was concerned about Modi's lack of experience in government, Modi declined an offer to be Patel's deputy chief minister, telling Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee that he was "going to be fully responsible for Gujarat or not at all". On 3 October 2001 he replaced Patel as Chief Minister of Gujarat, with the responsibility of preparing the BJP for the December 2002 elections. Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister on 7 October 2001, and entered the Gujarat state legislature on 24 February 2002 by winning a by-election to the Rajkot – II constituency, defeating Ashwin Mehta of the INC by 14,728 votes.
2002 Gujarat riots
On 27 February 2002, a train with several hundred passengers burned near Godhra, killing approximately 60 people. The train carried a large number of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya after a religious ceremony at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid. In making a public statement after the incident, Modi declared it a terrorist attack planned and orchestrated by local Muslims. The next day, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for a bandh across the state. Riots began during the bandh, and anti-Muslim violence spread through Gujarat. The government's decision to move the bodies of the train victims from Godhra to Ahmedabad further inflamed the violence. The state government stated later that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed. Independent sources put the death toll at over 2000, the vast majority Muslims Approximately 150,000 people were driven to refugee camps. Numerous women and children were among the victims; the violence included mass rapes and mutilations of women.
The government of Gujarat itself is generally considered by scholars to have been complicit in the riots, (with some blaming chief minister Modi explicitly) and has otherwise received heavy criticism for its handling of the situation. Several scholars have described the violence as a pogrom, while others have called it an example of state terrorism. Summarising academic views on the subject, Martha Nussbaum said: "There is by now a broad consensus that the Gujarat violence was a form of ethnic cleansing, that in many ways it was premeditated, and that it was carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law." The Modi government imposed a curfew in 26 major cities, issued shoot-at-sight orders and called for the army to patrol the streets, but was unable to prevent the violence from escalating. The president of the state unit of the BJP expressed support for the bandh, despite such actions being illegal at the time. State officials later prevented riot victims from leaving the refugee camps, and the camps were often unable to meet the needs of those living there. Muslim victims of the riots were subject to further discrimination when the state government announced that compensation for Muslim victims would be half of that offered to Hindus, although this decision was later reversed after the issue was taken to court. During the riots, police officers often did not intervene in situations where they were able.
Modi's personal involvement in the 2002 events has continued to be debated. During the riots, Modi said that "What is happening is a chain of action and reaction." Later in 2002, Modi said the way in which he had handled the media was his only regret regarding the episode. In March 2008, the Supreme Court reopened several cases related to the 2002 riots, including that of the Gulbarg Society massacre, and established a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the issue. In response to a petition from Zakia Jafri (widow of Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre), in April 2009 the court also asked the SIT to investigate the issue of Modi's complicity in the killings. The SIT questioned Modi in March 2010; in May, it presented to the court a report finding no evidence against him. In July 2011, the court-appointed amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran submitted his final report to the court. Contrary to the SIT's position, he said that Modi could be prosecuted based on the available evidence. The Supreme Court gave the matter to the magistrate's court. The SIT examined Ramachandran's report, and in March 2012 submitted its final report, asking for the case to be closed. Zakia Jafri filed a protest petition in response. In December 2013 the magistrate's court rejected the protest petition, accepting the SIT's finding that there was no evidence against the chief minister.
2002 election
In the aftermath of the violence there were widespread calls for Modi to resign as chief minister from within and outside the state, including from leaders of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Telugu Desam Party (allies in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition), and opposition parties stalled Parliament over the issue. Modi submitted his resignation at the April 2002 BJP national executive meeting in Goa, but it was not accepted. His cabinet had an emergency meeting on 19 July 2002, after which it offered its resignation to the Gujarat Governor S. S. Bhandari, and the state assembly was dissolved. Despite opposition from the election commissioner, who said that a number of voters were still displaced, Modi succeeded in advancing the election to December 2002. In the elections, the BJP won 127 seats in the 182-member assembly. Although Modi later denied it, he made significant use of anti-Muslim rhetoric during his campaign, and the BJP profited from religious polarisation among the voters. He won the Maninagar constituency, receiving of votes and defeating INC candidate Yatin Oza by 75,333 votes. On 22 December 2002, Bhandari swore Modi in for a second term. Modi framed the criticism of his government for human rights violations as an attack upon Gujarati pride, a strategy which led to the BJP winning two-thirds of the seats in the state assembly.
Second term
During Modi's second term the rhetoric of the government shifted from Hindutva to Gujarat's economic development. Modi curtailed the influence of Sangh Parivar organisations such as the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), entrenched in the state after the decline of Ahmedabad's textile industry, and dropped Gordhan Zadafia (an ally of former Sangh co-worker and VHP state chief Praveen Togadia) from his cabinet. When the BKS staged a farmers' demonstration Modi ordered their eviction from state-provided houses, and his decision to demolish 200 illegal temples in Gandhinagar deepened the rift with the Vishva Hindu Parishad. Sangh organisations were no longer consulted or informed in advance about Modi's administrative decisions. Nonetheless, Modi retained connections with some Hindu nationalists. Modi wrote a foreword to a textbook by Dinanath Batra released in 2014, which stated that ancient India possessed technologies including test-tube babies.
Modi's relationship with Muslims continued to attract criticism. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who asked Modi for tolerance in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat violence and supported his resignation as chief minister) distanced himself, reaching out to North Indian Muslims before the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. After the elections Vajpayee called the violence in Gujarat a reason for the BJP's electoral defeat and said it had been a mistake to leave Modi in office after the riots.
Questions about Modi's relationship with Muslims were also raised by many Western nations during his tenure as chief minister. Modi was barred from entering the United States by the State Department, in accordance with the recommendations of the Commission on International Religious Freedom formed under the aegis of the International Religious Freedom Act, the only person denied a US visa under this law. The UK and the European Union refused to admit him because of what they saw as his role in the riots. As Modi rose to prominence in India, the UK and the EU lifted their bans in October 2012 and March 2013, respectively, and after his election he was invited to Washington as the nation's prime minister.
During the run-up to the 2007 Gujarat Legislative Assembly election and the 2009 Indian general election, the BJP intensified its rhetoric on terrorism. In July 2006, Modi criticised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh " for his reluctance to revive anti-terror legislation" such as the 2002 Prevention of Terrorism Act. He asked the national government to allow states to invoke tougher laws in the wake of the 2006 Mumbai train bombings. In 2007 Modi authored Karmayog, a 101-page booklet discussing manual scavenging. In it, Modi argued that scavenging was a "spiritual experience" for Valmiks, a sub-caste of Dalits. However, this book was not circulated that time because of the election code of conduct. After the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, Modi held a meeting to discuss the security of Gujarat's -long coastline, resulting in government authorisation of 30 high-speed surveillance boats. In July 2007 Modi completed 2,063 consecutive days as chief minister of Gujarat, making him the longest-serving holder of that post, and the BJP won 122 of 182 state-assembly seats in that year's election.
Development projects
As Chief Minister, Modi favoured privatisation and small government, which was at odds with the philosophy of the RSS, usually described as anti-privatisation and anti-globalisation. His policies during his second term have been credited with reducing corruption in the state. He established financial and technology parks in Gujarat and during the 2007 Vibrant Gujarat summit, real-estate investment deals worth were signed.
The governments led by Patel and Modi supported NGOs and communities in the creation of groundwater-conservation projects. By December 2008, 500,000 structures had been built, of which 113,738 were check dams, which helped recharge the aquifers beneath them. Sixty of the 112 tehsils which had depleted the water table in 2004 had regained their normal groundwater levels by 2010. As a result, the state's production of genetically modified cotton increased to become the largest in India. The boom in cotton production and its semi-arid land use led to Gujarat's agricultural sector growing at an average rate of 9.6 percent from 2001 to 2007. Public irrigation measures in central and southern Gujarat, such as the Sardar Sarovar Dam, were less successful. The Sardar Sarovar project only irrigated 4–6% of the area intended. Nonetheless, from 2001 to 2010 Gujarat recorded an agricultural growth rate of 10.97 percent – the highest of any state. However, sociologists have pointed out that the growth rate under the 1992–97 INC government was 12.9 percent. In 2008 Modi offered land in Gujarat to Tata Motors to set up a plant manufacturing the Nano after a popular agitation had forced the company to move out of West Bengal. Several other companies followed the Tata to Gujarat.
The Modi government finished the process of bringing electricity to every village in Gujarat that its predecessor had almost completed. Modi significantly changed the state's system of power distribution, greatly impacting farmers. Gujarat expanded the Jyotigram Yojana scheme, in which agricultural electricity was separated from other rural electricity; the agricultural electricity was rationed to fit scheduled irrigation demands, reducing its cost. Although early protests by farmers ended when those who benefited found that their electricity supply had stabilised, according to an assessment study corporations and large farmers benefited from the policy at the expense of small farmers and labourers.
Development debate
A contentious debate surrounds the assessment of Gujarat's economic development during Modi's tenure as chief minister. The state's GDP growth rate averaged 10% during Modi's tenure, a value similar to other highly industrialised states, and above that of the country as a whole. Gujarat also had a high rate of economic growth in the 1990s, before Modi took office, and some scholars have stated that growth did not much accelerate during Modi's tenure, although the state is considered to have maintained a high growth rate during Modi's Chief Ministership. Under Narendra Modi, Gujarat topped the World Bank's "ease of doing business" rankings among Indian states for two consecutive years. In 2013, Gujarat was ranked first among Indian states for "economic freedom" by a report measuring governance, growth, citizens' rights and labour and business regulation among the country's 20 largest states. In the later years of Modi's government, Gujarat's economic growth was frequently used as an argument to counter allegations of communalism. Tax breaks for businesses were easier to obtain in Gujarat than in other states, as was land. Modi's policies to make Gujarat attractive for investment included the creation of Special Economic Zones, where labour laws were greatly weakened.
Despite its growth rate, Gujarat had a relatively poor record on human development, poverty relief, nutrition and education during Modi's tenure. In 2013, Gujarat ranked 13th in the country with respect to rates of poverty and 21st in education. Nearly 45 percent of children under five were underweight and 23 percent were undernourished, putting the state in the "alarming" category on the India State Hunger Index. A study by UNICEF and the Indian government found that Gujarat under Modi had a poor record with respect to immunisation in children.
Over the decade from 2001 to 2011, Gujarat did not change its position relative to the rest of the country with respect to poverty and female literacy, remaining near the median of the 29 Indian states. It showed a marginal improvement in rates of infant mortality, and its position with respect to individual consumption declined. With respect to the quality of education in government schools, the state ranked below many Indian states. The social policies of the government generally did not benefit Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis, and generally increased social inequalities. Development in Gujarat was generally limited to the urban middle class, and citizens in rural areas or from lower castes were increasingly marginalised. In 2013 the state ranked 10th of 21 Indian states in the Human Development Index. Under Modi, the state government spent less than the national average on education and healthcare.
Final years
Despite the BJP's shift away from explicit Hindutva, Modi's election campaign in 2007 and 2012 contained elements of Hindu nationalism. Modi only attended Hindu religious ceremonies, and had prominent associations with Hindu religious leaders. During his 2012 campaign he twice refused to wear articles of clothing gifted by Muslim leaders. He did, however, maintain relations with Dawoodi Bohra. His campaign included references to issues known to cause religious polarisation, including to Afzal Guru and the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. The BJP did not nominate any Muslim candidates for the assembly election of 2012. During the 2012 campaign, Modi attempted to identify himself with the state of Gujarat, a strategy similar to that used by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, and projected himself as protecting Gujarat against persecution by the rest of India.
While campaigning for the 2012 assembly elections, Modi made extensive use of holograms and other technologies allowing him to reach a large number of people, something he would repeat in the 2014 general election. In the 2012 Gujarat Legislative Assembly elections, Modi won the constituency of Maninagar by 86,373 votes over Shweta Bhatt, the INC candidate and wife of Sanjiv Bhatt. The BJP won 115 of the 182 seats, continuing its majority during his tenure and allowing the party to form the government (as it had in Gujarat since 1995). After his election as prime minister, Modi resigned as the chief minister and as an MLA from Maninagar on 21 May 2014. Anandiben Patel succeeded him as the chief minister.
Premiership campaigns
2014 Indian general election
In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi.
During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development, although Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately , and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances.
The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism.
Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi by 371,784 votes and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat.
2019 Indian general election
On 13 October 2018, Modi was renamed as the BJP candidate for prime minister for the 2019 general election. The chief campaigner for the party was BJP's president Amit Shah. Modi launched the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign ahead of the general election, against Chowkidar Chor Hai campaign slogan of INC. In the year 2018, end Party's, second-biggest alliance Telugu Desam Party split from NDA over the matter of special-status for Andhra Pradesh.
The campaign was started by Amit Shah on 8 April 2019. In the campaign, Modi was targeted by the opposition on corruption allegations over Rafale deal with France government. Highlighting this controversy the campaign "Chowkidar Chor Hai" was started, which was contrary to "Main Bhi Chowkidar" slogan. Modi made defence and national security among the foremost topics for the election campaign, especially after Pulwama attack, and the retaliatory attack of Balakot airstrike was counted as an achievement of the Modi administration. Other topics in the campaign were development and good foreign relations in the first premiership.
Modi contested the Lok Sabha elections as a candidate from Varanasi. He won the seat by defeating Shalini Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, who fought on SP-BSP alliance by a margin of votes. Modi was unanimously appointed the prime minister for a second time by the National Democratic Alliance, after the alliance won the election for the second time by securing 353 seats in the Lok Sabha with the BJP alone won 303 seats.
Prime Minister
After the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won a landslide in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India on 26 May 2014. He became the first Prime Minister born after India's independence from the British Empire in 1947. Modi started his second term after the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won again in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. On 6 December 2020, Modi became the 4th longest serving Prime Minister of India and the longest serving Non-Congress Prime Minister.
Governance and other initiatives
Modi's first year as prime minister saw significant centralisation of power relative to previous administrations. His efforts at centralisation have been linked to an increase in the number of senior administration officials resigning their positions. Initially lacking a majority in the Rajya Sabha, or upper house of Indian Parliament, Modi passed a number of ordinances to enact his policies, leading to further centralisation of power. The government also passed a bill increasing the control that it had over the appointment of judges, and reducing that of the judiciary.
In December 2014 Modi abolished the Planning Commission, replacing it with the National Institution for Transforming India, or NITI Aayog. The move had the effect of greatly centralising the power previously with the planning commission in the person of the prime minister. The planning commission had received heavy criticism in previous years for creating inefficiency in the government, and of not filling its role of improving social welfare: however, since the economic liberalisation of the 1990s, it had been the major government body responsible for measures related to social justice.
The Modi government launched investigations by the Intelligence Bureau against numerous civil society organisations and foreign non-governmental organisations in the first year of the administration. The investigations, on the grounds that these organisations were slowing economic growth, was criticised as a witch-hunt. International humanitarian aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres was among the groups that were put under pressure. Other organisations affected included the Sierra Club and Avaaz. Cases of sedition were filed against individuals criticising the government. This led to discontent within the BJP regarding Modi's style of functioning and drew comparisons to the governing style of Indira Gandhi.
Modi repealed 1,200 obsolete laws in first three years as prime minister; a total of 1,301 such laws had been repealed by previous governments over a span of 64 years. He started a monthly radio programme titled "Mann Ki Baat" on 3 October 2014. Modi also launched the Digital India programme, with the goal of ensuring that government services are available electronically, building infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet access to rural areas, boosting manufacturing of electronic goods in the country, and promoting digital literacy.
Modi launched Ujjwala scheme to provide free LPG connection to rural households. The scheme led to an increase in LPG consumption by 56% in 2019 as compared to 2014. In 2019, a law was passed to provide 10% reservation to Economically weaker sections.
He was again sworn in as prime minister on 30 May 2019. On 30 July 2019, Parliament of India declared the practice of Triple Talaq as illegal, unconstitutional and made it punishable act from 1 August 2019 which is deemed to be in effect from 19 September 2018. On 5 August 2019, the government moved resolution to scrap Article 370 in the Rajya Sabha, and also reorganise the state with Jammu and Kashmir serving as one of the union territory and Ladakh region separated out as a separate union territory.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how he Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. Reporters Without Borders in 2021 characterised Modi as a predator for curbing press freedom in India since 2014.
Economic policy
The economic policies of Modi's government focused on privatisation and liberalisation of the economy, based on a neoliberal framework. Modi liberalised India's foreign direct investment policies, allowing more foreign investment in several industries, including in defence and the railways. Other proposed reforms included making it harder for workers to form unions and easier for employers to hire and fire them; some of these proposals were dropped after protests. The reforms drew strong opposition from unions: on 2 September 2015, eleven of the country's largest unions went on strike, including one affiliated with the BJP. The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, a constituent of the Sangh Parivar, stated that the underlying motivation of labour reforms favoured corporations over labourers.
The funds dedicated to poverty reduction programmes and social welfare measures were greatly decreased by the Modi administration. The money spent on social programmes declined from 14.6% of GDP during the Congress government to 12.6% during Modi's first year in office. Spending on health and family welfare declined by 15%, and on primary and secondary education by 16%. The budgetary allocation for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, or the "education for all" programme, declined by 22%. The government also lowered corporate taxes, abolished the wealth tax, increased sales taxes, and reduced customs duties on gold, and jewellery. In October 2014, the Modi government deregulated diesel prices.
In September 2014, Modi introduced the Make in India initiative to encourage foreign companies to manufacture products in India, with the goal of turning the country into a global manufacturing hub. Supporters of economic liberalisation supported the initiative, while critics argued it would allow foreign corporations to capture a greater share of the Indian market. Modi's administration passed a land-reform bill that allowed it to acquire private agricultural land without conducting a social impact assessment, and without the consent of the farmers who owned it. The bill was passed via an executive order after it faced opposition in parliament, but was eventually allowed to lapse. Modi's government put in place the Goods and Services Tax, the biggest tax reform in the country since independence. It subsumed around 17 different taxes and became effective from 1 July 2017.
In his first cabinet decision, Modi set up a team to investigate black money. On 9 November 2016, the government demonetised ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes, with the stated intention of curbing corruption, black money, the use of counterfeit currency, and terrorism. The move led to severe cash shortages, a steep decline in the Indian stock indices BSE SENSEX and NIFTY 50, and sparked widespread protests throughout the country. Several deaths were linked to the rush to exchange cash. In the subsequent year, the number of income tax returns filed for individuals rose by 25%, and the number of digital transactions increased steeply.
Over the first four years of Modi's premiership, India's GDP grew at an average rate of 7.23%, higher than the rate of 6.39% under the previous government. The level of income inequality increased, while an internal government report said that in 2017, unemployment had increased to its highest level in 45 years. The loss of jobs was attributed to the 2016 demonetisation, and to the effects of the Goods and Services Tax.
In the next year, after 2018, Indian economy started a gradual recovery with a GDP growth of 6.12% in 2018-19 FY, with an inflation rate of 3.4%. Same year, India was successful in making a good economy in trade and manufacturing sector. While in the FY of 2019–20, due to the general election, Modi government focused more on their election campaign. In the year 2019–20, the GDP growth rate was 4.18% and inflation rate also increased to 4.7% from 3.4% in the previous year. Though being high unemployment, increase in inflation rate and budget deficiency, Modi's leadership won in 2019 elections.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous rating agencies downgraded India's GDP predictions for FY21 to negative figures, signalling a recession in India, the most severe since 1979. According to a Dun & Bradstreet report, the country is likely to suffer a recession in the third quarter of FY2020 as a result of the over 2-month long nation-wide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. This was also accompanied by the mass migration of migrant workers.
Health and sanitation
In his first year as prime minister, Modi reduced the amount of money spent by the central government on healthcare. The Modi government launched New Health Policy (NHP) in January 2015. The policy did not increase the government's spending on healthcare, instead emphasising the role of private healthcare organisations. This represented a shift away from the policy of the previous Congress government, which had supported programmes to assist public health goals, including reducing child and maternal mortality rates. The National Health Mission, which included public health programmes targeted at these indices received nearly 20% less funds in 2015 than in the previous year. 15 national health programmes, including those aimed at controlling tobacco use and supporting healthcare for the elderly, were merged with the National Health Mission. In its budget for the second year after it took office, the Modi government reduced healthcare spending by 15%. The healthcare budget for the following year rose by 19%. The budget was viewed positively by private insurance providers. Public health experts criticised its emphasis on the role of private healthcare providers, and suggested that it represented a shift away from public health facilities. The healthcare budget rose by 11.5% in 2018; the change included an allocation of for a government-funded health insurance program, and a decrease in the budget of the National Health Mission. The government introduced stricter packaging laws for tobacco which requires 85% of the packet size to be covered by pictorial warnings. An article in the medical journal Lancet stated that the country "might have taken a few steps back in public health" under Modi. In 2018 Modi launched the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, a government health insurance scheme intended to insure 500 million people. 100,000 people had signed up by October 2018.
Modi emphasised his government's efforts at sanitation as a means of ensuring good health. On 2 October 2014, Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission ("Clean India") campaign. The stated goals of the campaign included eliminating open defecation and manual scavenging within five years. As part of the programme, the Indian government began constructing millions of toilets in rural areas and encouraging people to use them. The government also announced plans to build new sewage treatment plants. The administration plans to construct 60 million toilets by 2019. The construction projects have faced allegations of corruption, and have faced severe difficulty in getting people to use the toilets constructed for them. Sanitation cover in the country increased from 38.7% in October 2014 to 84.1% in May 2018; however, usage of the new sanitary facilities lagged behind the government's targets. In 2018, the World Health Organization stated that at least 180,000 diarrhoeal deaths were averted in rural India after the launch of the sanitation effort.
Hindutva
During the 2014 election campaign, the BJP sought to identify itself with political leaders known to have opposed Hindu nationalism, including B. R. Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Ram Manohar Lohia. The campaign also saw the use of rhetoric based on Hindutva by BJP leaders in certain states. Communal tensions were played upon especially in Uttar Pradesh and the states of Northeast India. A proposal for the controversial Uniform Civil Code was a part of the BJP's election manifesto.
The activities of a number of Hindu nationalist organisations increased in scope after Modi's election as Prime Minister, sometimes with the support of the government. These activities included a Hindu religious conversion programme, a campaign against the alleged Islamic practice of "Love Jihad", and attempts to celebrate Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, by members of the right wing Hindu Mahasabha. Officials in the government, including the Home Minister, defended the conversion programmes.
Links between the BJP and the RSS grew stronger under Modi. The RSS provided organisational support to the BJP's electoral campaigns, while the Modi administration appointed a number of individuals affiliated with the RSS to prominent government positions. In 2014, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, who had previously been associated with the RSS, became the chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). Historians and former members of the ICHR, including those sympathetic to the BJP, questioned his credentials as a historian, and stated that the appointment was part of an agenda of cultural nationalism.
The North East Delhi riots, which left more than 40 dead and hundreds injured, were triggered by protests against a citizenship law seen by many critics as anti-Muslim and part of Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda. On 5 August 2020, Modi visited Ayodhya after the Supreme Court in 2019 ordered a contested land in Ayodhya to be handed over to a trust to build the Hindu temple and ordered the government to give alternate 5 acre land to Sunni Waqf Board for the purpose of building a mosque. He became the first prime minister to visit Ram Janmabhoomi and Hanuman Garhi.
Foreign policy
Foreign policy played a relatively small role in Modi's election campaign, and did not feature prominently in the BJP's election manifesto. Modi invited all the other leaders of SAARC countries to his swearing in ceremony as prime minister. He was the first Indian prime minister to do so.
Modi's foreign policy, similarly to that of the preceding INC government, focused on improving economic ties, security, and regional relations. Modi continued Manmohan Singh's policy of "multi-alignment." The Modi administration tried to attract foreign investment in the Indian economy from several sources, especially in East Asia, with the use of slogans such as "Make in India" and "Digital India". The government also tried to improve relations with Islamic nations in the Middle East, such as Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as with Israel.
The foreign relations of India with the USA also mended after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. During the run-up to the general election there was wide-ranging scepticism regarding future of the strategic bilateral relation under Modi's premiership as in 2005 he was, while Chief Minister of Gujarat, denied a U.S. visa during the Bush administration for his poor human rights records. However sensing Modi's inevitable victory well before the election, the US Ambassador Nancy Powell had reached out to him as part of greater rapprochement from the west. Moreover, following his 2014 election as the Prime Minister of India President Obama congratulated him over the telephone and invited him to visit the US. Modi government has been successful in making good foreign relations with the USA in the presidency of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
During the first few months after the election, Modi made trips to a number of different countries to further the goals of his policy, and attended the BRICS, ASEAN, and G20 summits. One of Modi's first visits as prime minister was to Nepal, during which he promised a billion USD in aid. Modi also made several overtures to the United States, including multiple visits to that country. While this was described as an unexpected development, due to the US having previously denied Modi a travel visa over his role during the 2002 Gujarat riots, the visits were expected to strengthen diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries.
In 2015, the Indian parliament ratified a land exchange deal with Bangladesh about the India–Bangladesh enclaves, which had been initiated by the government of Manmohan Singh. Modi's administration gave renewed attention to India's "Look East Policy", instituted in 1991. The policy was renamed the "Act East Policy", and involved directing Indian foreign policy towards East Asia and Southeast Asia. The government signed agreements to improve land connectivity with Myanmar, through the state of Manipur. This represented a break with India's historic engagement with Myanmar, which prioritised border security over trade. China–India relations have deteriorated rapidly following the 2020 China–India skirmishes. Modi has pledged aid of $900 million to Afghanistan, visited the nation twice and been honoured with the nation's highest civilian honour in 2016.
Defence policy
India's nominal military spending increased steadily under Modi. The military budget declined over Modi's tenure both as a fraction of GDP and when adjusted for inflation. A substantial portion of the military budget was devoted to personnel costs, leading commentators to write that the budget was constraining Indian military modernisation.
The BJP election manifesto had also promised to deal with illegal immigration into India in the Northeast, as well as to be more firm in its handling of insurgent groups. The Modi government issued a notification allowing Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh to legalise their residency in India. The government described the measure as being taken for humanitarian reasons but it drew criticism from several Assamese organisations.The Modi administration negotiated a peace agreement with the largest faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCM), which was announced in August 2015. The Naga insurgency in northeast India had begun in the 1950s. The NSCM and the government had agreed to a ceasefire in 1997, but a peace accord had not previously been signed. In 2015 the government abrogated a 15-year ceasefire with the Khaplang faction of the NSCM (NSCM-K). The NSCM-K responded with a series of attacks, which killed 18 people. The Modi government carried out a raid across the border with Myanmar as a result, and labelled the NSCM-K a terrorist organisation.
Modi promised to be "tough on Pakistan" during his election campaign, and repeatedly stated that Pakistan was an exporter of terrorism. On 29 September 2016, the Indian Army stated that it had conducted a surgical strike on terror launch pads in Azad Kashmir. The Indian media claimed that up to 50 terrorists and Pakistani soldiers had been killed in the strike. Pakistan initially denied that any strikes had taken place. Subsequent reports suggested that Indian claim about the scope of the strike and the number of casualties had been exaggerated, although cross-border strikes had been carried out. In February 2019 India carried out airstrikes in Pakistan against a supposed terrorist camp. Further military skirmishes followed, including cross-border shelling and the loss of an Indian aircraft.
Following his victory in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he focused more on Defence policies of India, especially against China and Pakistan. On 5 May 2020, Chinese and Indian troops engaged in aggressive melee, face-offs and skirmishes at locations along the Sino-Indian border, including near the disputed Pangong Lake in Ladakh and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and near the border between Sikkim and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Additional clashes also took place at locations in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). After which there was start of skirmishes between the nations leading to many border clashes, responses and reactions from both sides. A series of talks were also held between the two by both military and diplomatic means for peace. The first border clash reported in 2021 was on 20 January, referred to as a minor border clash in Sikkim.
Environmental policy
In naming his cabinet, Modi renamed the "Ministry of Environment and Forests" the "Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change." In the first budget of the government, the money allotted to this ministry was reduced by more than 50%. The new ministry also removed or diluted a number of laws related to environmental protection. These included no longer requiring clearance from the National Board for Wildlife for projects close to protected areas, and allowing certain projects to proceed before environmental clearance was received. The government also tried to reconstitute the Wildlife board such that it no longer had representatives from non-governmental organisations: however, this move was prevented by the Supreme Court.
Modi also relaxed or abolished a number of other environmental regulations, particularly those related to industrial activity. A government committee stated that the existing system only served to create corruption, and that the government should instead rely on the owners of industries to voluntarily inform the government about the pollution they were creating. Other changes included reducing ministry oversight on small mining projects, and no longer requiring approval from tribal councils for projects inside forested areas. In addition, Modi lifted a moratorium on new industrial activity in the most polluted areas in the countries. The changes were welcomed by businesspeople, but criticised by environmentalists.
Under the UPA government that preceded Modi's administration, field trials of Genetically Modified (GM) crops had essentially been put on hold, after protests from farmers fearing for their livelihoods. Under the Modi government these restrictions were gradually lifted. The government received some criticism for freezing the bank accounts of environmental group Greenpeace, citing financial irregularities, although a leaked government report said that the freeze had to do with Greenpeace's opposition to GM crops. At the COP26 conference Modi announced that India would target carbon neutrality by 2070, and also expand its renewable energy capacity. Though the date of net zero is far behind that of China and the USA and India's government wants to continue with the use of coal, Indian environmentalists and economists applauded the decision, describing it as a bold climate action.
Democratic backsliding
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how the Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. There have been several reports of the Modi government to be as an authoritarian conservative government, even due to lack of good opposition.
Electoral history
Personal life and image
Personal life
In accordance with Ghanchi tradition, Modi's marriage was arranged by his parents when he was a child. He was engaged at age 13 to Jashodaben Modi, marrying her when he was 18. They spent little time together and grew apart when Modi began two years of travel, including visits to Hindu ashrams. Reportedly, their marriage was never consummated, and he kept it a secret because otherwise he could not have become a 'pracharak' in the puritan Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Modi kept his marriage secret for most of his career. He acknowledged his wife for the first time when he filed his nomination for the 2014 general elections. Modi maintains a close relationship with his centenarian mother, Hiraben.
A vegetarian and teetotaler, Modi has a frugal lifestyle and is a workaholic and introvert. A person named Badri Meena has been his cook since 2002. Modi's 31 August 2012 post on Google Hangouts made him the first Indian politician to interact with citizens on a live chat. Modi has also been called a fashion-icon for his signature crisply ironed, half-sleeved kurta, as well as for a suit with his name embroidered repeatedly in the pinstripes that he wore during a state visit by US President Barack Obama, which drew public and media attention and criticism. Modi's personality has been variously described by scholars and biographers as energetic, arrogant, and charismatic.
He had published a Gujarati book titled Jyotipunj in 2008, containing profiles of various RSS leaders. The longest was of M. S. Golwalkar, under whose leadership the RSS expanded and whom Modi refers to as Pujniya Shri Guruji ("Guru worthy of worship"). According to The Economic Times, his intention was to explain the workings of the RSS to his readers and to reassure RSS members that he remained ideologically aligned with them. Modi authored eight other books, mostly containing short stories for children.
The nomination of Modi for the prime ministership drew attention to his reputation as "one of contemporary India's most controversial and divisive politicians." During the 2014 election campaign the BJP projected an image of Modi as a strong, masculine leader, who would be able to take difficult decisions. Campaigns in which he has participated have focused on Modi as an individual, in a manner unusual for the BJP and RSS. Modi has relied upon his reputation as a politician able to bring about economic growth and "development". Nonetheless, his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots continues to attract criticism and controversy. Modi's hardline Hindutva philosophy and the policies adopted by his government continue to draw criticism, and have been seen as evidence of a majoritarian and exclusionary social agenda.
In March 2021, Modi received his first COVID-19 vaccine dose at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
Personal donations
Modi has made donations for various causes and programmes. One such instance was when Modi donated towards the initial corpus of the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) Fund. In his role as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi had donated from personal savings for educating daughters of state government officials. Modi had also raised by auctioning all the gifts he received as chief minister and donated this to the Kanya Kelavani Fund. The money was spent on the education of girl children, through the scheme.
Approval ratings
As a Prime Minister, Modi has received consistently high approval ratings; at the end of his first year in office, he received an overall approval rating of 87% in a Pew Research poll, with 68% of people rating him "very favorably" and 93% approving of his government. His approval rating remained largely consistent at around 74% through his second year in office, according to a nationwide poll conducted by instaVaani. At the end of his second year in office, an updated Pew Research poll showed Modi continued to receive high overall approval ratings of 81%, with 57% of those polled rating him "very favorably." At the end of his third year in office, a further Pew Research poll showed Modi with an overall approval rating of 88%, his highest yet, with 69% of people polled rating him "very favorably." A poll conducted by The Times of India in May 2017 showed 77% of the respondents rated Modi as "very good" and "good". In early 2017, a survey from Pew Research Center showed Modi to be the most popular figure in Indian politics. In a weekly analysis by Morning Consult called the Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker, Modi had the highest net approval rating as of 22 December 2020 of all government leaders in the 13 countries being tracked.
Awards and recognition
In March 2012 and June 2014, Modi appeared on the cover of the Asian edition of Time Magazine, one of the few Indian politicians to have done so. He was awarded Indian of the Year by CNN-News18 (formally CNN-IBN) news network in 2014. In June 2015, Modi was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020 and 2021, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Forbes Magazine ranked him the 15th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2014 and the 9th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2015, 2016 and 2018. In 2015, Modi was ranked the 13th Most Influential Person in the World by Bloomberg Markets Magazine. Modi was ranked fifth on Fortune Magazines first annual list of the "World's Greatest Leaders" in 2015. In 2017, Gallup International Association (GIA) conducted a poll and ranked Modi as third top leader of the world. In 2016, a wax statue of Modi was unveiled at Madame Tussauds wax museum in London.
In 2015 he was named one of Times "30 Most Influential People on the Internet" as the second-most-followed politician on Twitter and Facebook. In 2018, he was the third most followed world leader on Twitter, and the most followed world leader on Facebook and Instagram. In October 2018, Modi received United Nations's highest environmental award, the 'Champions of the Earth', for policy leadership by "pioneering work in championing" the International Solar Alliance and "new areas of levels of cooperation on environmental action". He was conferred the 2018 Seoul Peace Prize in recognition of "his dedication to improving international co-operation, raising global economic growth, accelerating the Human Development of the people of India by fostering economic growth and furthering the development of democracy through anti-corruption and social integration efforts". He is the first Indian to win the award.
Following his second swearing-in ceremony as Prime Minister of India, a picture of Modi was displayed on the facade of the ADNOC building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Texas India Forum hosted a community event in honour of Modi on 22 September 2019 at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. The event was attended by over 50,000 people and several American politicians including President Donald Trump, making it the largest gathering for an invited foreign leader visiting the United States other than the Pope. At the same event, Modi was presented with the Key to the City of Houston by Mayor Sylvester Turner. He was awarded the Global Goalkeeper Award on 24 September 2019 in New York City by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in recognition for the Swachh Bharat Mission and "the progress India has made in providing safe sanitation under his leadership".
In 2020, Modi was among eight world leaders awarded the parodic Ig Nobel Prize in Medical Education "for using the COVID-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can". On 21 December 2020, President Donald Trump awarded Modi with the Legion of Merit for elevating the India–United States relations. The Legion of Merit was awarded to Modi along with Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison and former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, the "original architects" of the QUAD.
On 24 February 2021, the largest cricket stadium in the world at Ahmedabad was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by the Gujarat Cricket Association.
Modi is featured in TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2021 list, making it his fifth time after 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2020. TIME called him the third "pivotal leader" of independent India after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi who "dominated the country’s politics like no one since them".
State honours
Other honours
In popular culture
Modi Kaka Ka Gaon, a 2017 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Tushar Amrish Goel is the first biopic on Modi, starring Vikas Mahante in the titular role it was made halfway into his first-term as the prime minister which is shown in the film. PM Narendra Modi, a 2019 Indian Hindi-language biographical drama film by Omung Kumar, starred Vivek Oberoi in the titular role and covers his rise to prime ministership.An Indian web series, Modi: Journey of a Common Man, based on the same premise released in May 2019 on Eros Now with Ashish Sharma portraying Modi. Hu Narender Modi Banva Mangu Chu is a 2018 Indian Gujarati-language drama film by Anil Naryani about the aspirations of a young boy who wants to become like Narendra Modi.
7 RCR (7, Race Course Road), a 2014 Indian docudrama political television series which charts the political careers of prominent Indian politicians, covered Modi's rise to the PM's office in the episodes - "Story of Narendra Modi from 1950 to 2001", "Story of Narendra Modi in Controversial Years from 2001 to 2013", "Truth Behind Brand Modi", "Election Journey of Narendra Modi to 7 RCR", and "Masterplan of Narendra Modi's NDA Govt."; with Sangam Rai in the role of Modi.
Other portrayals of Modi include by Rajit Kapur in the film Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) and Vikram Gokhale in the web-television series Avrodh: The Siege Within (2020) both based on the 2016 Uri attack and the following Indian surgical strikes. Pratap Singh played a character based on Modi in Chand Bujh Gaya (2005) which is set in the backdrop of the Gujarat riots.
Premiered on 12 August 2019, Modi appeared in an episode - "Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls and Prime Minister Modi" - of Discovery Channel's show Man vs Wild with the host Bear Grylls, becoming the second world leader after Barack Obama to appear in the reality show. In the show he trekked the jungles and talked about nature and wildlife conservation with Grylls. The episode was shot in Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand and was broadcast in 180 countries along India. He has also appeared twice on the Indian television talk show Aap Ki Adalat before the 2009 and 2014 elections respectively.
Along with hosting the Mann Ki Baat monthly radio programme, on All India Radio, he has also conducted Pariksha Pe Charcha - a competition/discussion for students and the issues they face in examinations.
Bibliography
See also
List of prime ministers of India
Opinion polling on the Narendra Modi premiership
References
Notes
Citations
Further reading
External links
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1950 births
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Time 100 | true | [
"The National Democrats () was a political party in Norway, which was founded in January 1990. The party was led by Hege Søfteland, who had been excluded from Stop Immigration. The party's main issue was to stop what it called the \"mass immigration to Norway.\" It also wanted to stop foreign aid and replace it with a \"disaster fund\", and was against Norway joining the European Economic Community.\n\nBy August 1991, the party had 460 registered members. The party contested the 1991 local elections in Oslo, where it received 655 votes. It was though never registered publicly as a political party. The party worked with both the Norwegian Association and Folkebevegelsen mot innvandring.\n\nReferences\n\nDefunct political parties in Norway\nPolitical parties established in 1991\n1991 establishments in Norway\nPolitical parties disestablished in 1991\nFar-right political parties in Norway",
"Zhong Mian (; born May 1963) is a Chinese politician from Sichuan province who served as the executive vice governor of the province between 2013 and 2015; since May 2015, he has served as the Deputy Party Secretary of Yunnan province.\n\nZhong was born in Qianwei County in Sichuan province. He studied political economics at Sichuan Finance College (now part of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics) and graduated in 1984. He joined the Communist Party while attending university. He then worked in the provincial policy research office, then the provincial finance and economics office. He then was made a political secretary working in the provincial Party Committee General Office. In 1995, he was named Communist Party Secretary of the city of Emeishan, and a Party Standing Committee member of Leshan. In August 1997 he was elevated to deputy party chief of Leshan, then executive deputy mayor in 2000. In May 2000, he was named head of the Tourism Department of Sichuan, during this time he earned a doctorate degree in economics.\n\nIn February 2003, he was named party chief of Ziyang, then in February 2007, the Secretary-General of the Party Committee, and a member of the provincial Party Standing Committee. In January 2008 he was made vice governor of Sichuan, then in February 2013, he was named executive vice governor. In April 2015, he was named Deputy Communist Party Secretary of Yunnan, replacing the disgraced Qiu He. In 2016, Zhong was transferred to Guizhou to become vice-governor, in what was seen as a demotion.\n\nZhong was a delegate to the 17th and 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.\n\nReferences \n\nPeople from Leshan\n1963 births\nLiving people\nPolitical office-holders in Sichuan\nPolitical office-holders in Yunnan\nSouthwestern University of Finance and Economics alumni"
] |
[
"Narendra Modi",
"2014 Indian general election",
"in what month was the election?",
"the 2014 Lok Sabha election.",
"what position did he run for in the election?",
"prime minister",
"what political party was he in?",
"the BJP's candidate"
] | C_b6a0c764bf0c443b9768973ff08ca8fb_0 | did he win the election? | 4 | Did Narendra Modi win the 2014 Indian general election? | Narendra Modi | In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi. During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development. Although the BJP avoided issues of Hindu nationalism to an extent, Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately Rs50 billion (US$770 million), and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances. The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism. Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by 570,128 votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat. CANNOTANSWER | Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment | Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from Varanasi. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organisation. He is the first prime minister to have been born after India's independence in 1947 and the second prime minister not belonging to the Indian National Congress to have won two consecutive majorities in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Indian of parliament.
Born and raised in Vadnagar, a small town in northeastern Gujarat, Modi completed his secondary education there. He was introduced to the RSS at age eight. He has drawn attention to having to work as a child in his father's tea stall on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that has not been reliably corroborated. At age 18, Modi was married to Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, whom he abandoned soon after. He left his parental home where she had come to live. He first publicly acknowledged her as his wife more than four decades later when required to do so by Indian law, but has made no contact with her since. Modi has asserted he had travelled in northern India for two years after leaving his parental home, visiting a number of religious centres, but few details of his travels have emerged. Upon his return to Gujarat in 1971, he became a full-time worker for the RSS. After the state of emergency declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, Modi went into hiding. The RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985 and he held several positions within the party hierarchy until 2001, rising to the rank of general secretary.
Modi was appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001 due to Keshubhai Patel's failing health and poor public image following the earthquake in Bhuj. Modi was elected to the legislative assembly soon after. His administration has been considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots in which 1044 people were killed, three-quarters of whom were Muslim, or otherwise criticised for its management of the crisis. The Supreme Court remarked that Narendra Modi was like a Modern-day Nero, looking the other way as innocent women and children were burning. A Supreme Court of India-appointed Special Investigation Team found no evidence to initiate prosecution proceedings against Modi personally. While his policies as chief minister—credited with encouraging economic growth—have received praise, his administration has been criticised for failing to significantly improve health, poverty and education indices in the state.
Modi led the BJP in the 2014 general election which gave the party a majority in the Indian lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, the first time for any single party since 1984. Modi's administration has tried to raise foreign direct investment in the Indian economy and reduced spending on healthcare and social welfare programmes. Modi has attempted to improve efficiency in the bureaucracy; he has centralised power by abolishing the Planning Commission. He began a high-profile sanitation campaign, controversially initiated a demonetisation of high-denomination banknotes and transformation of taxation regime, and weakened or abolished environmental and labour laws.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. Following his party's victory in the 2019 general election, his administration revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and also introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act, which resulted in widespread protests across the country. Described as engineering a political realignment towards right-wing politics, Modi remains a figure of controversy domestically and internationally over his Hindu nationalist beliefs and his handling of the 2002 Gujarat riots, cited as evidence of an exclusionary social agenda.
Early life and education
Narendra Damodardas Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a Gujarati Hindu family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district, Bombay State (present-day Gujarat). He was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi () and Hiraben Modi (born ). Modi's family belonged to the Modh-Ghanchi-Teli (oil-presser) community, which is categorised as an Other Backward Class by the Indian government.
Modi had only infrequently spoken of his family background during his 13 years as chief minister of Gujarat. In the run up to the 2014 national elections, he began to regularly draw attention to his low-ranking social origins and to having to work as a child in his father's tea shop on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that the evidence of neighbours does not entirely corroborate. Modi completed his higher secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where teachers described him as an average student and a keen gifted debater, with interest in theatre. Modi preferred playing larger-than-life characters in theatrical productions, which has influenced his political image.
When eight years old, Modi was introduced to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and began attending its local shakhas (training sessions). There, Modi met Lakshmanrao Inamdar, popularly known as Vakil Saheb, who inducted him as a balswayamsevak (junior cadet) in the RSS and became his political mentor. While Modi was training with the RSS, he also met Vasant Gajendragadkar and Nathalal Jaghda, Bharatiya Jana Sangh leaders who were founding members of the BJP's Gujarat unit in 1980.
In a custom traditional to Narendra Modi's caste, his family arranged a betrothal to a girl, Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, leading to their marriage when she was 17 and he was 18. Soon afterwards, he abandoned his bride, and left home, never divorcing her, but the marriage remaining unmentioned in Modi's public pronouncements for many decades. In April 2014, shortly before the national elections that swept him to power, Modi publicly affirmed that he was married and his spouse was Jashodaben; the couple has remained married, but estranged.
Modi spent the ensuing two years travelling across Northern and North-eastern India, though few details of where he went have emerged. In interviews, Modi has described visiting Hindu ashrams founded by Swami Vivekananda: the Belur Math near Kolkata, followed by the Advaita Ashrama in Almora and the Ramakrishna Mission in Rajkot. Modi remained only a short time at each, since he lacked the required college education. Vivekananda has been described as a large influence in Modi's life.
In the early summer of 1968, Modi reached the Belur Math but was turned away, after which Modi wandered through Calcutta, West Bengal and Assam, stopping in Siliguri and Guwahati. Modi then went to the Ramakrishna Ashram in Almora, where he was again rejected, before travelling back to Gujarat via Delhi and Rajasthan in 1968–69. Sometime in late 1969 or early 1970, Modi returned to Vadnagar for a brief visit before leaving again for Ahmedabad. There, Modi lived with his uncle, working in the latter's canteen at the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation.
In Ahmedabad, Modi renewed his acquaintance with Inamdar, who was based at the Hedgewar Bhavan (RSS headquarters) in the city. Modi's first known political activity as an adult was in 1971 when he, as per his remarks, joined a Jana Sangh Satyagraha in Delhi led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee to enlist for the battlefield during the Bangladesh Liberation War. But the Indira Gandhi-led central government disallowed open support for the Mukti Bahini and Modi, according to his own claim, was put in Tihar Jail for a short period. After the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he stopped working for his uncle and became a full-time pracharak (campaigner) for the RSS, working under Inamdar. Shortly before the war, Modi took part in a non-violent protest against the Indian government in New Delhi, for which he was arrested (as per his claim); this has been cited as a reason for Inamdar electing to mentor him. Many years later Modi would co-author a biography of Inamdar, published in 2001. Modi's claim that he was part of a Satyagraha led to a political war. Applications were filed with the PMO under the RTI Act seeking details of his arrest. In reply, the PMO claimed that it maintains official records on Modi only since he took charge as the Prime Minister of India in 2014. Despite this claim, the official website of the PMO contains specific information about Modi which dates back to the 1950s.
In 1978 Modi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the School of Open Learning (SOL) at the University of Delhi, graduating with a third class. Five years later, in 1983, he received a Master of Arts degree in political science from Gujarat University, graduating with a first class as an external distance learning student. But there is a big controversy surrounding his educational qualification. Replying to an RTI query, the SOL said it did not have any data of students who received a BA degree in 1978. Jayantibhai Patel, a former political science professor of Gujarat University, claimed that the subjects listed in Modi's MA degree were not offered by the university when Modi was studying there.
Early political career
In June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India which lasted until 1977. During this period, known as "The Emergency", many of her political opponents were jailed and opposition groups were banned. Modi was appointed general secretary of the "Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti", an RSS committee co-ordinating opposition to the Emergency in Gujarat. Shortly afterwards, the RSS was banned. Modi was forced to go underground in Gujarat and frequently travelled in disguise to avoid arrest. He became involved in printing pamphlets opposing the government, sending them to Delhi and organising demonstrations. Modi was also involved with creating a network of safe houses for individuals wanted by the government, and in raising funds for political refugees and activists. During this period, Modi wrote a book in Gujarati, Sangharsh Ma Gujarat (In The Struggles of Gujarat), describing events during the Emergency. Among the people he met in this role was trade unionist and socialist activist George Fernandes, as well as several other national political figures. In his travels during the Emergency, Modi was often forced to move in disguise, once dressing as a monk, and once as a Sikh.
Modi became an RSS sambhag pracharak (regional organiser) in 1978, overseeing RSS activities in the areas of Surat and Vadodara, and in 1979 he went to work for the RSS in Delhi, where he was put to work researching and writing the RSS's version of the history of the Emergency. He returned to Gujarat a short while later, and was assigned by the RSS to the BJP in 1985. In 1987 Modi helped organise the BJP's campaign in the Ahmedabad municipal election, which the BJP won comfortably; Modi's planning has been described as the reason for that result by biographers. After L. K. Advani became president of the BJP in 1986, the RSS decided to place its members in important positions within the BJP; Modi's work during the Ahmedabad election led to his selection for this role, and Modi was elected organising secretary of the BJP's Gujarat unit later in 1987.
Modi rose within the party and was named a member of the BJP's National Election Committee in 1990, helping organise L. K. Advani's 1990 Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 and Murli Manohar Joshi's 1991–92 Ekta Yatra (Journey for Unity). However, he took a brief break from politics in 1992, instead establishing a school in Ahmedabad; friction with Shankersinh Vaghela, a BJP MP from Gujarat at the time, also played a part in this decision. Modi returned to electoral politics in 1994, partly at the insistence of Advani, and as party secretary, Modi's electoral strategy was considered central to the BJP victory in the 1995 state assembly elections. In November of that year Modi was appointed BJP national secretary and transferred to New Delhi, where he assumed responsibility for party activities in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The following year, Shankersinh Vaghela, a prominent BJP leader from Gujarat, defected to the Indian National Congress (Congress, INC) after losing his parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha elections. Modi, on the selection committee for the 1998 Assembly elections in Gujarat, favoured supporters of BJP leader Keshubhai Patel over those supporting Vaghela to end factional division in the party. His strategy was credited as key to the BJP winning an overall majority in the 1998 elections, and Modi was promoted to BJP general secretary (organisation) in May of that year.
Chief Minister of Gujarat
Taking office
In 2001, Keshubhai Patel's health was failing and the BJP lost a few state assembly seats in by-elections. Allegations of abuse of power, corruption and poor administration were made, and Patel's standing had been damaged by his administration's handling of the earthquake in Bhuj in 2001. The BJP national leadership sought a new candidate for the chief ministership, and Modi, who had expressed misgivings about Patel's administration, was chosen as a replacement. Although BJP leader L. K. Advani did not want to ostracise Patel and was concerned about Modi's lack of experience in government, Modi declined an offer to be Patel's deputy chief minister, telling Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee that he was "going to be fully responsible for Gujarat or not at all". On 3 October 2001 he replaced Patel as Chief Minister of Gujarat, with the responsibility of preparing the BJP for the December 2002 elections. Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister on 7 October 2001, and entered the Gujarat state legislature on 24 February 2002 by winning a by-election to the Rajkot – II constituency, defeating Ashwin Mehta of the INC by 14,728 votes.
2002 Gujarat riots
On 27 February 2002, a train with several hundred passengers burned near Godhra, killing approximately 60 people. The train carried a large number of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya after a religious ceremony at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid. In making a public statement after the incident, Modi declared it a terrorist attack planned and orchestrated by local Muslims. The next day, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for a bandh across the state. Riots began during the bandh, and anti-Muslim violence spread through Gujarat. The government's decision to move the bodies of the train victims from Godhra to Ahmedabad further inflamed the violence. The state government stated later that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed. Independent sources put the death toll at over 2000, the vast majority Muslims Approximately 150,000 people were driven to refugee camps. Numerous women and children were among the victims; the violence included mass rapes and mutilations of women.
The government of Gujarat itself is generally considered by scholars to have been complicit in the riots, (with some blaming chief minister Modi explicitly) and has otherwise received heavy criticism for its handling of the situation. Several scholars have described the violence as a pogrom, while others have called it an example of state terrorism. Summarising academic views on the subject, Martha Nussbaum said: "There is by now a broad consensus that the Gujarat violence was a form of ethnic cleansing, that in many ways it was premeditated, and that it was carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law." The Modi government imposed a curfew in 26 major cities, issued shoot-at-sight orders and called for the army to patrol the streets, but was unable to prevent the violence from escalating. The president of the state unit of the BJP expressed support for the bandh, despite such actions being illegal at the time. State officials later prevented riot victims from leaving the refugee camps, and the camps were often unable to meet the needs of those living there. Muslim victims of the riots were subject to further discrimination when the state government announced that compensation for Muslim victims would be half of that offered to Hindus, although this decision was later reversed after the issue was taken to court. During the riots, police officers often did not intervene in situations where they were able.
Modi's personal involvement in the 2002 events has continued to be debated. During the riots, Modi said that "What is happening is a chain of action and reaction." Later in 2002, Modi said the way in which he had handled the media was his only regret regarding the episode. In March 2008, the Supreme Court reopened several cases related to the 2002 riots, including that of the Gulbarg Society massacre, and established a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the issue. In response to a petition from Zakia Jafri (widow of Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre), in April 2009 the court also asked the SIT to investigate the issue of Modi's complicity in the killings. The SIT questioned Modi in March 2010; in May, it presented to the court a report finding no evidence against him. In July 2011, the court-appointed amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran submitted his final report to the court. Contrary to the SIT's position, he said that Modi could be prosecuted based on the available evidence. The Supreme Court gave the matter to the magistrate's court. The SIT examined Ramachandran's report, and in March 2012 submitted its final report, asking for the case to be closed. Zakia Jafri filed a protest petition in response. In December 2013 the magistrate's court rejected the protest petition, accepting the SIT's finding that there was no evidence against the chief minister.
2002 election
In the aftermath of the violence there were widespread calls for Modi to resign as chief minister from within and outside the state, including from leaders of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Telugu Desam Party (allies in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition), and opposition parties stalled Parliament over the issue. Modi submitted his resignation at the April 2002 BJP national executive meeting in Goa, but it was not accepted. His cabinet had an emergency meeting on 19 July 2002, after which it offered its resignation to the Gujarat Governor S. S. Bhandari, and the state assembly was dissolved. Despite opposition from the election commissioner, who said that a number of voters were still displaced, Modi succeeded in advancing the election to December 2002. In the elections, the BJP won 127 seats in the 182-member assembly. Although Modi later denied it, he made significant use of anti-Muslim rhetoric during his campaign, and the BJP profited from religious polarisation among the voters. He won the Maninagar constituency, receiving of votes and defeating INC candidate Yatin Oza by 75,333 votes. On 22 December 2002, Bhandari swore Modi in for a second term. Modi framed the criticism of his government for human rights violations as an attack upon Gujarati pride, a strategy which led to the BJP winning two-thirds of the seats in the state assembly.
Second term
During Modi's second term the rhetoric of the government shifted from Hindutva to Gujarat's economic development. Modi curtailed the influence of Sangh Parivar organisations such as the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), entrenched in the state after the decline of Ahmedabad's textile industry, and dropped Gordhan Zadafia (an ally of former Sangh co-worker and VHP state chief Praveen Togadia) from his cabinet. When the BKS staged a farmers' demonstration Modi ordered their eviction from state-provided houses, and his decision to demolish 200 illegal temples in Gandhinagar deepened the rift with the Vishva Hindu Parishad. Sangh organisations were no longer consulted or informed in advance about Modi's administrative decisions. Nonetheless, Modi retained connections with some Hindu nationalists. Modi wrote a foreword to a textbook by Dinanath Batra released in 2014, which stated that ancient India possessed technologies including test-tube babies.
Modi's relationship with Muslims continued to attract criticism. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who asked Modi for tolerance in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat violence and supported his resignation as chief minister) distanced himself, reaching out to North Indian Muslims before the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. After the elections Vajpayee called the violence in Gujarat a reason for the BJP's electoral defeat and said it had been a mistake to leave Modi in office after the riots.
Questions about Modi's relationship with Muslims were also raised by many Western nations during his tenure as chief minister. Modi was barred from entering the United States by the State Department, in accordance with the recommendations of the Commission on International Religious Freedom formed under the aegis of the International Religious Freedom Act, the only person denied a US visa under this law. The UK and the European Union refused to admit him because of what they saw as his role in the riots. As Modi rose to prominence in India, the UK and the EU lifted their bans in October 2012 and March 2013, respectively, and after his election he was invited to Washington as the nation's prime minister.
During the run-up to the 2007 Gujarat Legislative Assembly election and the 2009 Indian general election, the BJP intensified its rhetoric on terrorism. In July 2006, Modi criticised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh " for his reluctance to revive anti-terror legislation" such as the 2002 Prevention of Terrorism Act. He asked the national government to allow states to invoke tougher laws in the wake of the 2006 Mumbai train bombings. In 2007 Modi authored Karmayog, a 101-page booklet discussing manual scavenging. In it, Modi argued that scavenging was a "spiritual experience" for Valmiks, a sub-caste of Dalits. However, this book was not circulated that time because of the election code of conduct. After the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, Modi held a meeting to discuss the security of Gujarat's -long coastline, resulting in government authorisation of 30 high-speed surveillance boats. In July 2007 Modi completed 2,063 consecutive days as chief minister of Gujarat, making him the longest-serving holder of that post, and the BJP won 122 of 182 state-assembly seats in that year's election.
Development projects
As Chief Minister, Modi favoured privatisation and small government, which was at odds with the philosophy of the RSS, usually described as anti-privatisation and anti-globalisation. His policies during his second term have been credited with reducing corruption in the state. He established financial and technology parks in Gujarat and during the 2007 Vibrant Gujarat summit, real-estate investment deals worth were signed.
The governments led by Patel and Modi supported NGOs and communities in the creation of groundwater-conservation projects. By December 2008, 500,000 structures had been built, of which 113,738 were check dams, which helped recharge the aquifers beneath them. Sixty of the 112 tehsils which had depleted the water table in 2004 had regained their normal groundwater levels by 2010. As a result, the state's production of genetically modified cotton increased to become the largest in India. The boom in cotton production and its semi-arid land use led to Gujarat's agricultural sector growing at an average rate of 9.6 percent from 2001 to 2007. Public irrigation measures in central and southern Gujarat, such as the Sardar Sarovar Dam, were less successful. The Sardar Sarovar project only irrigated 4–6% of the area intended. Nonetheless, from 2001 to 2010 Gujarat recorded an agricultural growth rate of 10.97 percent – the highest of any state. However, sociologists have pointed out that the growth rate under the 1992–97 INC government was 12.9 percent. In 2008 Modi offered land in Gujarat to Tata Motors to set up a plant manufacturing the Nano after a popular agitation had forced the company to move out of West Bengal. Several other companies followed the Tata to Gujarat.
The Modi government finished the process of bringing electricity to every village in Gujarat that its predecessor had almost completed. Modi significantly changed the state's system of power distribution, greatly impacting farmers. Gujarat expanded the Jyotigram Yojana scheme, in which agricultural electricity was separated from other rural electricity; the agricultural electricity was rationed to fit scheduled irrigation demands, reducing its cost. Although early protests by farmers ended when those who benefited found that their electricity supply had stabilised, according to an assessment study corporations and large farmers benefited from the policy at the expense of small farmers and labourers.
Development debate
A contentious debate surrounds the assessment of Gujarat's economic development during Modi's tenure as chief minister. The state's GDP growth rate averaged 10% during Modi's tenure, a value similar to other highly industrialised states, and above that of the country as a whole. Gujarat also had a high rate of economic growth in the 1990s, before Modi took office, and some scholars have stated that growth did not much accelerate during Modi's tenure, although the state is considered to have maintained a high growth rate during Modi's Chief Ministership. Under Narendra Modi, Gujarat topped the World Bank's "ease of doing business" rankings among Indian states for two consecutive years. In 2013, Gujarat was ranked first among Indian states for "economic freedom" by a report measuring governance, growth, citizens' rights and labour and business regulation among the country's 20 largest states. In the later years of Modi's government, Gujarat's economic growth was frequently used as an argument to counter allegations of communalism. Tax breaks for businesses were easier to obtain in Gujarat than in other states, as was land. Modi's policies to make Gujarat attractive for investment included the creation of Special Economic Zones, where labour laws were greatly weakened.
Despite its growth rate, Gujarat had a relatively poor record on human development, poverty relief, nutrition and education during Modi's tenure. In 2013, Gujarat ranked 13th in the country with respect to rates of poverty and 21st in education. Nearly 45 percent of children under five were underweight and 23 percent were undernourished, putting the state in the "alarming" category on the India State Hunger Index. A study by UNICEF and the Indian government found that Gujarat under Modi had a poor record with respect to immunisation in children.
Over the decade from 2001 to 2011, Gujarat did not change its position relative to the rest of the country with respect to poverty and female literacy, remaining near the median of the 29 Indian states. It showed a marginal improvement in rates of infant mortality, and its position with respect to individual consumption declined. With respect to the quality of education in government schools, the state ranked below many Indian states. The social policies of the government generally did not benefit Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis, and generally increased social inequalities. Development in Gujarat was generally limited to the urban middle class, and citizens in rural areas or from lower castes were increasingly marginalised. In 2013 the state ranked 10th of 21 Indian states in the Human Development Index. Under Modi, the state government spent less than the national average on education and healthcare.
Final years
Despite the BJP's shift away from explicit Hindutva, Modi's election campaign in 2007 and 2012 contained elements of Hindu nationalism. Modi only attended Hindu religious ceremonies, and had prominent associations with Hindu religious leaders. During his 2012 campaign he twice refused to wear articles of clothing gifted by Muslim leaders. He did, however, maintain relations with Dawoodi Bohra. His campaign included references to issues known to cause religious polarisation, including to Afzal Guru and the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. The BJP did not nominate any Muslim candidates for the assembly election of 2012. During the 2012 campaign, Modi attempted to identify himself with the state of Gujarat, a strategy similar to that used by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, and projected himself as protecting Gujarat against persecution by the rest of India.
While campaigning for the 2012 assembly elections, Modi made extensive use of holograms and other technologies allowing him to reach a large number of people, something he would repeat in the 2014 general election. In the 2012 Gujarat Legislative Assembly elections, Modi won the constituency of Maninagar by 86,373 votes over Shweta Bhatt, the INC candidate and wife of Sanjiv Bhatt. The BJP won 115 of the 182 seats, continuing its majority during his tenure and allowing the party to form the government (as it had in Gujarat since 1995). After his election as prime minister, Modi resigned as the chief minister and as an MLA from Maninagar on 21 May 2014. Anandiben Patel succeeded him as the chief minister.
Premiership campaigns
2014 Indian general election
In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi.
During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development, although Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately , and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances.
The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism.
Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi by 371,784 votes and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat.
2019 Indian general election
On 13 October 2018, Modi was renamed as the BJP candidate for prime minister for the 2019 general election. The chief campaigner for the party was BJP's president Amit Shah. Modi launched the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign ahead of the general election, against Chowkidar Chor Hai campaign slogan of INC. In the year 2018, end Party's, second-biggest alliance Telugu Desam Party split from NDA over the matter of special-status for Andhra Pradesh.
The campaign was started by Amit Shah on 8 April 2019. In the campaign, Modi was targeted by the opposition on corruption allegations over Rafale deal with France government. Highlighting this controversy the campaign "Chowkidar Chor Hai" was started, which was contrary to "Main Bhi Chowkidar" slogan. Modi made defence and national security among the foremost topics for the election campaign, especially after Pulwama attack, and the retaliatory attack of Balakot airstrike was counted as an achievement of the Modi administration. Other topics in the campaign were development and good foreign relations in the first premiership.
Modi contested the Lok Sabha elections as a candidate from Varanasi. He won the seat by defeating Shalini Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, who fought on SP-BSP alliance by a margin of votes. Modi was unanimously appointed the prime minister for a second time by the National Democratic Alliance, after the alliance won the election for the second time by securing 353 seats in the Lok Sabha with the BJP alone won 303 seats.
Prime Minister
After the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won a landslide in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India on 26 May 2014. He became the first Prime Minister born after India's independence from the British Empire in 1947. Modi started his second term after the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won again in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. On 6 December 2020, Modi became the 4th longest serving Prime Minister of India and the longest serving Non-Congress Prime Minister.
Governance and other initiatives
Modi's first year as prime minister saw significant centralisation of power relative to previous administrations. His efforts at centralisation have been linked to an increase in the number of senior administration officials resigning their positions. Initially lacking a majority in the Rajya Sabha, or upper house of Indian Parliament, Modi passed a number of ordinances to enact his policies, leading to further centralisation of power. The government also passed a bill increasing the control that it had over the appointment of judges, and reducing that of the judiciary.
In December 2014 Modi abolished the Planning Commission, replacing it with the National Institution for Transforming India, or NITI Aayog. The move had the effect of greatly centralising the power previously with the planning commission in the person of the prime minister. The planning commission had received heavy criticism in previous years for creating inefficiency in the government, and of not filling its role of improving social welfare: however, since the economic liberalisation of the 1990s, it had been the major government body responsible for measures related to social justice.
The Modi government launched investigations by the Intelligence Bureau against numerous civil society organisations and foreign non-governmental organisations in the first year of the administration. The investigations, on the grounds that these organisations were slowing economic growth, was criticised as a witch-hunt. International humanitarian aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres was among the groups that were put under pressure. Other organisations affected included the Sierra Club and Avaaz. Cases of sedition were filed against individuals criticising the government. This led to discontent within the BJP regarding Modi's style of functioning and drew comparisons to the governing style of Indira Gandhi.
Modi repealed 1,200 obsolete laws in first three years as prime minister; a total of 1,301 such laws had been repealed by previous governments over a span of 64 years. He started a monthly radio programme titled "Mann Ki Baat" on 3 October 2014. Modi also launched the Digital India programme, with the goal of ensuring that government services are available electronically, building infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet access to rural areas, boosting manufacturing of electronic goods in the country, and promoting digital literacy.
Modi launched Ujjwala scheme to provide free LPG connection to rural households. The scheme led to an increase in LPG consumption by 56% in 2019 as compared to 2014. In 2019, a law was passed to provide 10% reservation to Economically weaker sections.
He was again sworn in as prime minister on 30 May 2019. On 30 July 2019, Parliament of India declared the practice of Triple Talaq as illegal, unconstitutional and made it punishable act from 1 August 2019 which is deemed to be in effect from 19 September 2018. On 5 August 2019, the government moved resolution to scrap Article 370 in the Rajya Sabha, and also reorganise the state with Jammu and Kashmir serving as one of the union territory and Ladakh region separated out as a separate union territory.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how he Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. Reporters Without Borders in 2021 characterised Modi as a predator for curbing press freedom in India since 2014.
Economic policy
The economic policies of Modi's government focused on privatisation and liberalisation of the economy, based on a neoliberal framework. Modi liberalised India's foreign direct investment policies, allowing more foreign investment in several industries, including in defence and the railways. Other proposed reforms included making it harder for workers to form unions and easier for employers to hire and fire them; some of these proposals were dropped after protests. The reforms drew strong opposition from unions: on 2 September 2015, eleven of the country's largest unions went on strike, including one affiliated with the BJP. The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, a constituent of the Sangh Parivar, stated that the underlying motivation of labour reforms favoured corporations over labourers.
The funds dedicated to poverty reduction programmes and social welfare measures were greatly decreased by the Modi administration. The money spent on social programmes declined from 14.6% of GDP during the Congress government to 12.6% during Modi's first year in office. Spending on health and family welfare declined by 15%, and on primary and secondary education by 16%. The budgetary allocation for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, or the "education for all" programme, declined by 22%. The government also lowered corporate taxes, abolished the wealth tax, increased sales taxes, and reduced customs duties on gold, and jewellery. In October 2014, the Modi government deregulated diesel prices.
In September 2014, Modi introduced the Make in India initiative to encourage foreign companies to manufacture products in India, with the goal of turning the country into a global manufacturing hub. Supporters of economic liberalisation supported the initiative, while critics argued it would allow foreign corporations to capture a greater share of the Indian market. Modi's administration passed a land-reform bill that allowed it to acquire private agricultural land without conducting a social impact assessment, and without the consent of the farmers who owned it. The bill was passed via an executive order after it faced opposition in parliament, but was eventually allowed to lapse. Modi's government put in place the Goods and Services Tax, the biggest tax reform in the country since independence. It subsumed around 17 different taxes and became effective from 1 July 2017.
In his first cabinet decision, Modi set up a team to investigate black money. On 9 November 2016, the government demonetised ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes, with the stated intention of curbing corruption, black money, the use of counterfeit currency, and terrorism. The move led to severe cash shortages, a steep decline in the Indian stock indices BSE SENSEX and NIFTY 50, and sparked widespread protests throughout the country. Several deaths were linked to the rush to exchange cash. In the subsequent year, the number of income tax returns filed for individuals rose by 25%, and the number of digital transactions increased steeply.
Over the first four years of Modi's premiership, India's GDP grew at an average rate of 7.23%, higher than the rate of 6.39% under the previous government. The level of income inequality increased, while an internal government report said that in 2017, unemployment had increased to its highest level in 45 years. The loss of jobs was attributed to the 2016 demonetisation, and to the effects of the Goods and Services Tax.
In the next year, after 2018, Indian economy started a gradual recovery with a GDP growth of 6.12% in 2018-19 FY, with an inflation rate of 3.4%. Same year, India was successful in making a good economy in trade and manufacturing sector. While in the FY of 2019–20, due to the general election, Modi government focused more on their election campaign. In the year 2019–20, the GDP growth rate was 4.18% and inflation rate also increased to 4.7% from 3.4% in the previous year. Though being high unemployment, increase in inflation rate and budget deficiency, Modi's leadership won in 2019 elections.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous rating agencies downgraded India's GDP predictions for FY21 to negative figures, signalling a recession in India, the most severe since 1979. According to a Dun & Bradstreet report, the country is likely to suffer a recession in the third quarter of FY2020 as a result of the over 2-month long nation-wide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. This was also accompanied by the mass migration of migrant workers.
Health and sanitation
In his first year as prime minister, Modi reduced the amount of money spent by the central government on healthcare. The Modi government launched New Health Policy (NHP) in January 2015. The policy did not increase the government's spending on healthcare, instead emphasising the role of private healthcare organisations. This represented a shift away from the policy of the previous Congress government, which had supported programmes to assist public health goals, including reducing child and maternal mortality rates. The National Health Mission, which included public health programmes targeted at these indices received nearly 20% less funds in 2015 than in the previous year. 15 national health programmes, including those aimed at controlling tobacco use and supporting healthcare for the elderly, were merged with the National Health Mission. In its budget for the second year after it took office, the Modi government reduced healthcare spending by 15%. The healthcare budget for the following year rose by 19%. The budget was viewed positively by private insurance providers. Public health experts criticised its emphasis on the role of private healthcare providers, and suggested that it represented a shift away from public health facilities. The healthcare budget rose by 11.5% in 2018; the change included an allocation of for a government-funded health insurance program, and a decrease in the budget of the National Health Mission. The government introduced stricter packaging laws for tobacco which requires 85% of the packet size to be covered by pictorial warnings. An article in the medical journal Lancet stated that the country "might have taken a few steps back in public health" under Modi. In 2018 Modi launched the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, a government health insurance scheme intended to insure 500 million people. 100,000 people had signed up by October 2018.
Modi emphasised his government's efforts at sanitation as a means of ensuring good health. On 2 October 2014, Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission ("Clean India") campaign. The stated goals of the campaign included eliminating open defecation and manual scavenging within five years. As part of the programme, the Indian government began constructing millions of toilets in rural areas and encouraging people to use them. The government also announced plans to build new sewage treatment plants. The administration plans to construct 60 million toilets by 2019. The construction projects have faced allegations of corruption, and have faced severe difficulty in getting people to use the toilets constructed for them. Sanitation cover in the country increased from 38.7% in October 2014 to 84.1% in May 2018; however, usage of the new sanitary facilities lagged behind the government's targets. In 2018, the World Health Organization stated that at least 180,000 diarrhoeal deaths were averted in rural India after the launch of the sanitation effort.
Hindutva
During the 2014 election campaign, the BJP sought to identify itself with political leaders known to have opposed Hindu nationalism, including B. R. Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Ram Manohar Lohia. The campaign also saw the use of rhetoric based on Hindutva by BJP leaders in certain states. Communal tensions were played upon especially in Uttar Pradesh and the states of Northeast India. A proposal for the controversial Uniform Civil Code was a part of the BJP's election manifesto.
The activities of a number of Hindu nationalist organisations increased in scope after Modi's election as Prime Minister, sometimes with the support of the government. These activities included a Hindu religious conversion programme, a campaign against the alleged Islamic practice of "Love Jihad", and attempts to celebrate Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, by members of the right wing Hindu Mahasabha. Officials in the government, including the Home Minister, defended the conversion programmes.
Links between the BJP and the RSS grew stronger under Modi. The RSS provided organisational support to the BJP's electoral campaigns, while the Modi administration appointed a number of individuals affiliated with the RSS to prominent government positions. In 2014, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, who had previously been associated with the RSS, became the chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). Historians and former members of the ICHR, including those sympathetic to the BJP, questioned his credentials as a historian, and stated that the appointment was part of an agenda of cultural nationalism.
The North East Delhi riots, which left more than 40 dead and hundreds injured, were triggered by protests against a citizenship law seen by many critics as anti-Muslim and part of Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda. On 5 August 2020, Modi visited Ayodhya after the Supreme Court in 2019 ordered a contested land in Ayodhya to be handed over to a trust to build the Hindu temple and ordered the government to give alternate 5 acre land to Sunni Waqf Board for the purpose of building a mosque. He became the first prime minister to visit Ram Janmabhoomi and Hanuman Garhi.
Foreign policy
Foreign policy played a relatively small role in Modi's election campaign, and did not feature prominently in the BJP's election manifesto. Modi invited all the other leaders of SAARC countries to his swearing in ceremony as prime minister. He was the first Indian prime minister to do so.
Modi's foreign policy, similarly to that of the preceding INC government, focused on improving economic ties, security, and regional relations. Modi continued Manmohan Singh's policy of "multi-alignment." The Modi administration tried to attract foreign investment in the Indian economy from several sources, especially in East Asia, with the use of slogans such as "Make in India" and "Digital India". The government also tried to improve relations with Islamic nations in the Middle East, such as Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as with Israel.
The foreign relations of India with the USA also mended after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. During the run-up to the general election there was wide-ranging scepticism regarding future of the strategic bilateral relation under Modi's premiership as in 2005 he was, while Chief Minister of Gujarat, denied a U.S. visa during the Bush administration for his poor human rights records. However sensing Modi's inevitable victory well before the election, the US Ambassador Nancy Powell had reached out to him as part of greater rapprochement from the west. Moreover, following his 2014 election as the Prime Minister of India President Obama congratulated him over the telephone and invited him to visit the US. Modi government has been successful in making good foreign relations with the USA in the presidency of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
During the first few months after the election, Modi made trips to a number of different countries to further the goals of his policy, and attended the BRICS, ASEAN, and G20 summits. One of Modi's first visits as prime minister was to Nepal, during which he promised a billion USD in aid. Modi also made several overtures to the United States, including multiple visits to that country. While this was described as an unexpected development, due to the US having previously denied Modi a travel visa over his role during the 2002 Gujarat riots, the visits were expected to strengthen diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries.
In 2015, the Indian parliament ratified a land exchange deal with Bangladesh about the India–Bangladesh enclaves, which had been initiated by the government of Manmohan Singh. Modi's administration gave renewed attention to India's "Look East Policy", instituted in 1991. The policy was renamed the "Act East Policy", and involved directing Indian foreign policy towards East Asia and Southeast Asia. The government signed agreements to improve land connectivity with Myanmar, through the state of Manipur. This represented a break with India's historic engagement with Myanmar, which prioritised border security over trade. China–India relations have deteriorated rapidly following the 2020 China–India skirmishes. Modi has pledged aid of $900 million to Afghanistan, visited the nation twice and been honoured with the nation's highest civilian honour in 2016.
Defence policy
India's nominal military spending increased steadily under Modi. The military budget declined over Modi's tenure both as a fraction of GDP and when adjusted for inflation. A substantial portion of the military budget was devoted to personnel costs, leading commentators to write that the budget was constraining Indian military modernisation.
The BJP election manifesto had also promised to deal with illegal immigration into India in the Northeast, as well as to be more firm in its handling of insurgent groups. The Modi government issued a notification allowing Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh to legalise their residency in India. The government described the measure as being taken for humanitarian reasons but it drew criticism from several Assamese organisations.The Modi administration negotiated a peace agreement with the largest faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCM), which was announced in August 2015. The Naga insurgency in northeast India had begun in the 1950s. The NSCM and the government had agreed to a ceasefire in 1997, but a peace accord had not previously been signed. In 2015 the government abrogated a 15-year ceasefire with the Khaplang faction of the NSCM (NSCM-K). The NSCM-K responded with a series of attacks, which killed 18 people. The Modi government carried out a raid across the border with Myanmar as a result, and labelled the NSCM-K a terrorist organisation.
Modi promised to be "tough on Pakistan" during his election campaign, and repeatedly stated that Pakistan was an exporter of terrorism. On 29 September 2016, the Indian Army stated that it had conducted a surgical strike on terror launch pads in Azad Kashmir. The Indian media claimed that up to 50 terrorists and Pakistani soldiers had been killed in the strike. Pakistan initially denied that any strikes had taken place. Subsequent reports suggested that Indian claim about the scope of the strike and the number of casualties had been exaggerated, although cross-border strikes had been carried out. In February 2019 India carried out airstrikes in Pakistan against a supposed terrorist camp. Further military skirmishes followed, including cross-border shelling and the loss of an Indian aircraft.
Following his victory in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he focused more on Defence policies of India, especially against China and Pakistan. On 5 May 2020, Chinese and Indian troops engaged in aggressive melee, face-offs and skirmishes at locations along the Sino-Indian border, including near the disputed Pangong Lake in Ladakh and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and near the border between Sikkim and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Additional clashes also took place at locations in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). After which there was start of skirmishes between the nations leading to many border clashes, responses and reactions from both sides. A series of talks were also held between the two by both military and diplomatic means for peace. The first border clash reported in 2021 was on 20 January, referred to as a minor border clash in Sikkim.
Environmental policy
In naming his cabinet, Modi renamed the "Ministry of Environment and Forests" the "Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change." In the first budget of the government, the money allotted to this ministry was reduced by more than 50%. The new ministry also removed or diluted a number of laws related to environmental protection. These included no longer requiring clearance from the National Board for Wildlife for projects close to protected areas, and allowing certain projects to proceed before environmental clearance was received. The government also tried to reconstitute the Wildlife board such that it no longer had representatives from non-governmental organisations: however, this move was prevented by the Supreme Court.
Modi also relaxed or abolished a number of other environmental regulations, particularly those related to industrial activity. A government committee stated that the existing system only served to create corruption, and that the government should instead rely on the owners of industries to voluntarily inform the government about the pollution they were creating. Other changes included reducing ministry oversight on small mining projects, and no longer requiring approval from tribal councils for projects inside forested areas. In addition, Modi lifted a moratorium on new industrial activity in the most polluted areas in the countries. The changes were welcomed by businesspeople, but criticised by environmentalists.
Under the UPA government that preceded Modi's administration, field trials of Genetically Modified (GM) crops had essentially been put on hold, after protests from farmers fearing for their livelihoods. Under the Modi government these restrictions were gradually lifted. The government received some criticism for freezing the bank accounts of environmental group Greenpeace, citing financial irregularities, although a leaked government report said that the freeze had to do with Greenpeace's opposition to GM crops. At the COP26 conference Modi announced that India would target carbon neutrality by 2070, and also expand its renewable energy capacity. Though the date of net zero is far behind that of China and the USA and India's government wants to continue with the use of coal, Indian environmentalists and economists applauded the decision, describing it as a bold climate action.
Democratic backsliding
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how the Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. There have been several reports of the Modi government to be as an authoritarian conservative government, even due to lack of good opposition.
Electoral history
Personal life and image
Personal life
In accordance with Ghanchi tradition, Modi's marriage was arranged by his parents when he was a child. He was engaged at age 13 to Jashodaben Modi, marrying her when he was 18. They spent little time together and grew apart when Modi began two years of travel, including visits to Hindu ashrams. Reportedly, their marriage was never consummated, and he kept it a secret because otherwise he could not have become a 'pracharak' in the puritan Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Modi kept his marriage secret for most of his career. He acknowledged his wife for the first time when he filed his nomination for the 2014 general elections. Modi maintains a close relationship with his centenarian mother, Hiraben.
A vegetarian and teetotaler, Modi has a frugal lifestyle and is a workaholic and introvert. A person named Badri Meena has been his cook since 2002. Modi's 31 August 2012 post on Google Hangouts made him the first Indian politician to interact with citizens on a live chat. Modi has also been called a fashion-icon for his signature crisply ironed, half-sleeved kurta, as well as for a suit with his name embroidered repeatedly in the pinstripes that he wore during a state visit by US President Barack Obama, which drew public and media attention and criticism. Modi's personality has been variously described by scholars and biographers as energetic, arrogant, and charismatic.
He had published a Gujarati book titled Jyotipunj in 2008, containing profiles of various RSS leaders. The longest was of M. S. Golwalkar, under whose leadership the RSS expanded and whom Modi refers to as Pujniya Shri Guruji ("Guru worthy of worship"). According to The Economic Times, his intention was to explain the workings of the RSS to his readers and to reassure RSS members that he remained ideologically aligned with them. Modi authored eight other books, mostly containing short stories for children.
The nomination of Modi for the prime ministership drew attention to his reputation as "one of contemporary India's most controversial and divisive politicians." During the 2014 election campaign the BJP projected an image of Modi as a strong, masculine leader, who would be able to take difficult decisions. Campaigns in which he has participated have focused on Modi as an individual, in a manner unusual for the BJP and RSS. Modi has relied upon his reputation as a politician able to bring about economic growth and "development". Nonetheless, his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots continues to attract criticism and controversy. Modi's hardline Hindutva philosophy and the policies adopted by his government continue to draw criticism, and have been seen as evidence of a majoritarian and exclusionary social agenda.
In March 2021, Modi received his first COVID-19 vaccine dose at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
Personal donations
Modi has made donations for various causes and programmes. One such instance was when Modi donated towards the initial corpus of the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) Fund. In his role as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi had donated from personal savings for educating daughters of state government officials. Modi had also raised by auctioning all the gifts he received as chief minister and donated this to the Kanya Kelavani Fund. The money was spent on the education of girl children, through the scheme.
Approval ratings
As a Prime Minister, Modi has received consistently high approval ratings; at the end of his first year in office, he received an overall approval rating of 87% in a Pew Research poll, with 68% of people rating him "very favorably" and 93% approving of his government. His approval rating remained largely consistent at around 74% through his second year in office, according to a nationwide poll conducted by instaVaani. At the end of his second year in office, an updated Pew Research poll showed Modi continued to receive high overall approval ratings of 81%, with 57% of those polled rating him "very favorably." At the end of his third year in office, a further Pew Research poll showed Modi with an overall approval rating of 88%, his highest yet, with 69% of people polled rating him "very favorably." A poll conducted by The Times of India in May 2017 showed 77% of the respondents rated Modi as "very good" and "good". In early 2017, a survey from Pew Research Center showed Modi to be the most popular figure in Indian politics. In a weekly analysis by Morning Consult called the Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker, Modi had the highest net approval rating as of 22 December 2020 of all government leaders in the 13 countries being tracked.
Awards and recognition
In March 2012 and June 2014, Modi appeared on the cover of the Asian edition of Time Magazine, one of the few Indian politicians to have done so. He was awarded Indian of the Year by CNN-News18 (formally CNN-IBN) news network in 2014. In June 2015, Modi was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020 and 2021, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Forbes Magazine ranked him the 15th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2014 and the 9th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2015, 2016 and 2018. In 2015, Modi was ranked the 13th Most Influential Person in the World by Bloomberg Markets Magazine. Modi was ranked fifth on Fortune Magazines first annual list of the "World's Greatest Leaders" in 2015. In 2017, Gallup International Association (GIA) conducted a poll and ranked Modi as third top leader of the world. In 2016, a wax statue of Modi was unveiled at Madame Tussauds wax museum in London.
In 2015 he was named one of Times "30 Most Influential People on the Internet" as the second-most-followed politician on Twitter and Facebook. In 2018, he was the third most followed world leader on Twitter, and the most followed world leader on Facebook and Instagram. In October 2018, Modi received United Nations's highest environmental award, the 'Champions of the Earth', for policy leadership by "pioneering work in championing" the International Solar Alliance and "new areas of levels of cooperation on environmental action". He was conferred the 2018 Seoul Peace Prize in recognition of "his dedication to improving international co-operation, raising global economic growth, accelerating the Human Development of the people of India by fostering economic growth and furthering the development of democracy through anti-corruption and social integration efforts". He is the first Indian to win the award.
Following his second swearing-in ceremony as Prime Minister of India, a picture of Modi was displayed on the facade of the ADNOC building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Texas India Forum hosted a community event in honour of Modi on 22 September 2019 at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. The event was attended by over 50,000 people and several American politicians including President Donald Trump, making it the largest gathering for an invited foreign leader visiting the United States other than the Pope. At the same event, Modi was presented with the Key to the City of Houston by Mayor Sylvester Turner. He was awarded the Global Goalkeeper Award on 24 September 2019 in New York City by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in recognition for the Swachh Bharat Mission and "the progress India has made in providing safe sanitation under his leadership".
In 2020, Modi was among eight world leaders awarded the parodic Ig Nobel Prize in Medical Education "for using the COVID-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can". On 21 December 2020, President Donald Trump awarded Modi with the Legion of Merit for elevating the India–United States relations. The Legion of Merit was awarded to Modi along with Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison and former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, the "original architects" of the QUAD.
On 24 February 2021, the largest cricket stadium in the world at Ahmedabad was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by the Gujarat Cricket Association.
Modi is featured in TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2021 list, making it his fifth time after 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2020. TIME called him the third "pivotal leader" of independent India after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi who "dominated the country’s politics like no one since them".
State honours
Other honours
In popular culture
Modi Kaka Ka Gaon, a 2017 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Tushar Amrish Goel is the first biopic on Modi, starring Vikas Mahante in the titular role it was made halfway into his first-term as the prime minister which is shown in the film. PM Narendra Modi, a 2019 Indian Hindi-language biographical drama film by Omung Kumar, starred Vivek Oberoi in the titular role and covers his rise to prime ministership.An Indian web series, Modi: Journey of a Common Man, based on the same premise released in May 2019 on Eros Now with Ashish Sharma portraying Modi. Hu Narender Modi Banva Mangu Chu is a 2018 Indian Gujarati-language drama film by Anil Naryani about the aspirations of a young boy who wants to become like Narendra Modi.
7 RCR (7, Race Course Road), a 2014 Indian docudrama political television series which charts the political careers of prominent Indian politicians, covered Modi's rise to the PM's office in the episodes - "Story of Narendra Modi from 1950 to 2001", "Story of Narendra Modi in Controversial Years from 2001 to 2013", "Truth Behind Brand Modi", "Election Journey of Narendra Modi to 7 RCR", and "Masterplan of Narendra Modi's NDA Govt."; with Sangam Rai in the role of Modi.
Other portrayals of Modi include by Rajit Kapur in the film Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) and Vikram Gokhale in the web-television series Avrodh: The Siege Within (2020) both based on the 2016 Uri attack and the following Indian surgical strikes. Pratap Singh played a character based on Modi in Chand Bujh Gaya (2005) which is set in the backdrop of the Gujarat riots.
Premiered on 12 August 2019, Modi appeared in an episode - "Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls and Prime Minister Modi" - of Discovery Channel's show Man vs Wild with the host Bear Grylls, becoming the second world leader after Barack Obama to appear in the reality show. In the show he trekked the jungles and talked about nature and wildlife conservation with Grylls. The episode was shot in Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand and was broadcast in 180 countries along India. He has also appeared twice on the Indian television talk show Aap Ki Adalat before the 2009 and 2014 elections respectively.
Along with hosting the Mann Ki Baat monthly radio programme, on All India Radio, he has also conducted Pariksha Pe Charcha - a competition/discussion for students and the issues they face in examinations.
Bibliography
See also
List of prime ministers of India
Opinion polling on the Narendra Modi premiership
References
Notes
Citations
Further reading
External links
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Time 100 | true | [
"The All-Ukrainian Chornobyl People's Party \"For the Welfare and Protection of the People\" () is a political party in Ukraine registered in October 1998.\n\nHistory\nThe party first participated 2006 Ukrainian parliamentary election as part of the election bloc \"People's Power\" () that did not win any seats in the Ukrainian parliament. In the 30 September 2007 elections, the party failed as part of the Ukrainian People's Bloc to win parliamentary representation. The party did not participate in the 2012 parliamentary elections. The party did not participate in the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election either.\n\nReferences\n\nPolitical parties in Ukraine",
"The Ukrainian Republican Party (; Ukrajinska Respublikanska Partija) is a political party in Ukraine registered in December 2006 as Ukrainian Republican Party Lukyanenko (). The party was led by political veteran Levko Lukyanenko(1928-2018). The party did not participate in the 2007 parliamentary election as well as the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election nationwide proportional party-list system; instead three members of the party tried to win a seat in three of the 225 local single-member districts. None of the parties candidates did win.\n\nThe party did participate in the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election in 5 single-member districts; but again did not win seats. The party has not taken part in national elections since 2012.\n\nThe party occupies a few seats in local and provincial councils. In the 2020 Ukrainian local elections the party gained 4 deputies (0.01% of all available mandates).\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\nConservative parties in Ukraine\nPolitical parties established in 2006\nNationalist parties in Ukraine"
] |
[
"Narendra Modi",
"2014 Indian general election",
"in what month was the election?",
"the 2014 Lok Sabha election.",
"what position did he run for in the election?",
"prime minister",
"what political party was he in?",
"the BJP's candidate",
"did he win the election?",
"Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment"
] | C_b6a0c764bf0c443b9768973ff08ca8fb_0 | how many votes did he get? | 5 | How many votes did Narendra Modi get in the 2014 Indian general election? | Narendra Modi | In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi. During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development. Although the BJP avoided issues of Hindu nationalism to an extent, Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately Rs50 billion (US$770 million), and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances. The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism. Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by 570,128 votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat. CANNOTANSWER | by 570,128 votes. | Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from Varanasi. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organisation. He is the first prime minister to have been born after India's independence in 1947 and the second prime minister not belonging to the Indian National Congress to have won two consecutive majorities in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Indian of parliament.
Born and raised in Vadnagar, a small town in northeastern Gujarat, Modi completed his secondary education there. He was introduced to the RSS at age eight. He has drawn attention to having to work as a child in his father's tea stall on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that has not been reliably corroborated. At age 18, Modi was married to Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, whom he abandoned soon after. He left his parental home where she had come to live. He first publicly acknowledged her as his wife more than four decades later when required to do so by Indian law, but has made no contact with her since. Modi has asserted he had travelled in northern India for two years after leaving his parental home, visiting a number of religious centres, but few details of his travels have emerged. Upon his return to Gujarat in 1971, he became a full-time worker for the RSS. After the state of emergency declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, Modi went into hiding. The RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985 and he held several positions within the party hierarchy until 2001, rising to the rank of general secretary.
Modi was appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001 due to Keshubhai Patel's failing health and poor public image following the earthquake in Bhuj. Modi was elected to the legislative assembly soon after. His administration has been considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots in which 1044 people were killed, three-quarters of whom were Muslim, or otherwise criticised for its management of the crisis. The Supreme Court remarked that Narendra Modi was like a Modern-day Nero, looking the other way as innocent women and children were burning. A Supreme Court of India-appointed Special Investigation Team found no evidence to initiate prosecution proceedings against Modi personally. While his policies as chief minister—credited with encouraging economic growth—have received praise, his administration has been criticised for failing to significantly improve health, poverty and education indices in the state.
Modi led the BJP in the 2014 general election which gave the party a majority in the Indian lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, the first time for any single party since 1984. Modi's administration has tried to raise foreign direct investment in the Indian economy and reduced spending on healthcare and social welfare programmes. Modi has attempted to improve efficiency in the bureaucracy; he has centralised power by abolishing the Planning Commission. He began a high-profile sanitation campaign, controversially initiated a demonetisation of high-denomination banknotes and transformation of taxation regime, and weakened or abolished environmental and labour laws.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. Following his party's victory in the 2019 general election, his administration revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and also introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act, which resulted in widespread protests across the country. Described as engineering a political realignment towards right-wing politics, Modi remains a figure of controversy domestically and internationally over his Hindu nationalist beliefs and his handling of the 2002 Gujarat riots, cited as evidence of an exclusionary social agenda.
Early life and education
Narendra Damodardas Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a Gujarati Hindu family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district, Bombay State (present-day Gujarat). He was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi () and Hiraben Modi (born ). Modi's family belonged to the Modh-Ghanchi-Teli (oil-presser) community, which is categorised as an Other Backward Class by the Indian government.
Modi had only infrequently spoken of his family background during his 13 years as chief minister of Gujarat. In the run up to the 2014 national elections, he began to regularly draw attention to his low-ranking social origins and to having to work as a child in his father's tea shop on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that the evidence of neighbours does not entirely corroborate. Modi completed his higher secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where teachers described him as an average student and a keen gifted debater, with interest in theatre. Modi preferred playing larger-than-life characters in theatrical productions, which has influenced his political image.
When eight years old, Modi was introduced to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and began attending its local shakhas (training sessions). There, Modi met Lakshmanrao Inamdar, popularly known as Vakil Saheb, who inducted him as a balswayamsevak (junior cadet) in the RSS and became his political mentor. While Modi was training with the RSS, he also met Vasant Gajendragadkar and Nathalal Jaghda, Bharatiya Jana Sangh leaders who were founding members of the BJP's Gujarat unit in 1980.
In a custom traditional to Narendra Modi's caste, his family arranged a betrothal to a girl, Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, leading to their marriage when she was 17 and he was 18. Soon afterwards, he abandoned his bride, and left home, never divorcing her, but the marriage remaining unmentioned in Modi's public pronouncements for many decades. In April 2014, shortly before the national elections that swept him to power, Modi publicly affirmed that he was married and his spouse was Jashodaben; the couple has remained married, but estranged.
Modi spent the ensuing two years travelling across Northern and North-eastern India, though few details of where he went have emerged. In interviews, Modi has described visiting Hindu ashrams founded by Swami Vivekananda: the Belur Math near Kolkata, followed by the Advaita Ashrama in Almora and the Ramakrishna Mission in Rajkot. Modi remained only a short time at each, since he lacked the required college education. Vivekananda has been described as a large influence in Modi's life.
In the early summer of 1968, Modi reached the Belur Math but was turned away, after which Modi wandered through Calcutta, West Bengal and Assam, stopping in Siliguri and Guwahati. Modi then went to the Ramakrishna Ashram in Almora, where he was again rejected, before travelling back to Gujarat via Delhi and Rajasthan in 1968–69. Sometime in late 1969 or early 1970, Modi returned to Vadnagar for a brief visit before leaving again for Ahmedabad. There, Modi lived with his uncle, working in the latter's canteen at the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation.
In Ahmedabad, Modi renewed his acquaintance with Inamdar, who was based at the Hedgewar Bhavan (RSS headquarters) in the city. Modi's first known political activity as an adult was in 1971 when he, as per his remarks, joined a Jana Sangh Satyagraha in Delhi led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee to enlist for the battlefield during the Bangladesh Liberation War. But the Indira Gandhi-led central government disallowed open support for the Mukti Bahini and Modi, according to his own claim, was put in Tihar Jail for a short period. After the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he stopped working for his uncle and became a full-time pracharak (campaigner) for the RSS, working under Inamdar. Shortly before the war, Modi took part in a non-violent protest against the Indian government in New Delhi, for which he was arrested (as per his claim); this has been cited as a reason for Inamdar electing to mentor him. Many years later Modi would co-author a biography of Inamdar, published in 2001. Modi's claim that he was part of a Satyagraha led to a political war. Applications were filed with the PMO under the RTI Act seeking details of his arrest. In reply, the PMO claimed that it maintains official records on Modi only since he took charge as the Prime Minister of India in 2014. Despite this claim, the official website of the PMO contains specific information about Modi which dates back to the 1950s.
In 1978 Modi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the School of Open Learning (SOL) at the University of Delhi, graduating with a third class. Five years later, in 1983, he received a Master of Arts degree in political science from Gujarat University, graduating with a first class as an external distance learning student. But there is a big controversy surrounding his educational qualification. Replying to an RTI query, the SOL said it did not have any data of students who received a BA degree in 1978. Jayantibhai Patel, a former political science professor of Gujarat University, claimed that the subjects listed in Modi's MA degree were not offered by the university when Modi was studying there.
Early political career
In June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India which lasted until 1977. During this period, known as "The Emergency", many of her political opponents were jailed and opposition groups were banned. Modi was appointed general secretary of the "Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti", an RSS committee co-ordinating opposition to the Emergency in Gujarat. Shortly afterwards, the RSS was banned. Modi was forced to go underground in Gujarat and frequently travelled in disguise to avoid arrest. He became involved in printing pamphlets opposing the government, sending them to Delhi and organising demonstrations. Modi was also involved with creating a network of safe houses for individuals wanted by the government, and in raising funds for political refugees and activists. During this period, Modi wrote a book in Gujarati, Sangharsh Ma Gujarat (In The Struggles of Gujarat), describing events during the Emergency. Among the people he met in this role was trade unionist and socialist activist George Fernandes, as well as several other national political figures. In his travels during the Emergency, Modi was often forced to move in disguise, once dressing as a monk, and once as a Sikh.
Modi became an RSS sambhag pracharak (regional organiser) in 1978, overseeing RSS activities in the areas of Surat and Vadodara, and in 1979 he went to work for the RSS in Delhi, where he was put to work researching and writing the RSS's version of the history of the Emergency. He returned to Gujarat a short while later, and was assigned by the RSS to the BJP in 1985. In 1987 Modi helped organise the BJP's campaign in the Ahmedabad municipal election, which the BJP won comfortably; Modi's planning has been described as the reason for that result by biographers. After L. K. Advani became president of the BJP in 1986, the RSS decided to place its members in important positions within the BJP; Modi's work during the Ahmedabad election led to his selection for this role, and Modi was elected organising secretary of the BJP's Gujarat unit later in 1987.
Modi rose within the party and was named a member of the BJP's National Election Committee in 1990, helping organise L. K. Advani's 1990 Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 and Murli Manohar Joshi's 1991–92 Ekta Yatra (Journey for Unity). However, he took a brief break from politics in 1992, instead establishing a school in Ahmedabad; friction with Shankersinh Vaghela, a BJP MP from Gujarat at the time, also played a part in this decision. Modi returned to electoral politics in 1994, partly at the insistence of Advani, and as party secretary, Modi's electoral strategy was considered central to the BJP victory in the 1995 state assembly elections. In November of that year Modi was appointed BJP national secretary and transferred to New Delhi, where he assumed responsibility for party activities in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The following year, Shankersinh Vaghela, a prominent BJP leader from Gujarat, defected to the Indian National Congress (Congress, INC) after losing his parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha elections. Modi, on the selection committee for the 1998 Assembly elections in Gujarat, favoured supporters of BJP leader Keshubhai Patel over those supporting Vaghela to end factional division in the party. His strategy was credited as key to the BJP winning an overall majority in the 1998 elections, and Modi was promoted to BJP general secretary (organisation) in May of that year.
Chief Minister of Gujarat
Taking office
In 2001, Keshubhai Patel's health was failing and the BJP lost a few state assembly seats in by-elections. Allegations of abuse of power, corruption and poor administration were made, and Patel's standing had been damaged by his administration's handling of the earthquake in Bhuj in 2001. The BJP national leadership sought a new candidate for the chief ministership, and Modi, who had expressed misgivings about Patel's administration, was chosen as a replacement. Although BJP leader L. K. Advani did not want to ostracise Patel and was concerned about Modi's lack of experience in government, Modi declined an offer to be Patel's deputy chief minister, telling Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee that he was "going to be fully responsible for Gujarat or not at all". On 3 October 2001 he replaced Patel as Chief Minister of Gujarat, with the responsibility of preparing the BJP for the December 2002 elections. Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister on 7 October 2001, and entered the Gujarat state legislature on 24 February 2002 by winning a by-election to the Rajkot – II constituency, defeating Ashwin Mehta of the INC by 14,728 votes.
2002 Gujarat riots
On 27 February 2002, a train with several hundred passengers burned near Godhra, killing approximately 60 people. The train carried a large number of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya after a religious ceremony at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid. In making a public statement after the incident, Modi declared it a terrorist attack planned and orchestrated by local Muslims. The next day, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for a bandh across the state. Riots began during the bandh, and anti-Muslim violence spread through Gujarat. The government's decision to move the bodies of the train victims from Godhra to Ahmedabad further inflamed the violence. The state government stated later that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed. Independent sources put the death toll at over 2000, the vast majority Muslims Approximately 150,000 people were driven to refugee camps. Numerous women and children were among the victims; the violence included mass rapes and mutilations of women.
The government of Gujarat itself is generally considered by scholars to have been complicit in the riots, (with some blaming chief minister Modi explicitly) and has otherwise received heavy criticism for its handling of the situation. Several scholars have described the violence as a pogrom, while others have called it an example of state terrorism. Summarising academic views on the subject, Martha Nussbaum said: "There is by now a broad consensus that the Gujarat violence was a form of ethnic cleansing, that in many ways it was premeditated, and that it was carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law." The Modi government imposed a curfew in 26 major cities, issued shoot-at-sight orders and called for the army to patrol the streets, but was unable to prevent the violence from escalating. The president of the state unit of the BJP expressed support for the bandh, despite such actions being illegal at the time. State officials later prevented riot victims from leaving the refugee camps, and the camps were often unable to meet the needs of those living there. Muslim victims of the riots were subject to further discrimination when the state government announced that compensation for Muslim victims would be half of that offered to Hindus, although this decision was later reversed after the issue was taken to court. During the riots, police officers often did not intervene in situations where they were able.
Modi's personal involvement in the 2002 events has continued to be debated. During the riots, Modi said that "What is happening is a chain of action and reaction." Later in 2002, Modi said the way in which he had handled the media was his only regret regarding the episode. In March 2008, the Supreme Court reopened several cases related to the 2002 riots, including that of the Gulbarg Society massacre, and established a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the issue. In response to a petition from Zakia Jafri (widow of Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre), in April 2009 the court also asked the SIT to investigate the issue of Modi's complicity in the killings. The SIT questioned Modi in March 2010; in May, it presented to the court a report finding no evidence against him. In July 2011, the court-appointed amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran submitted his final report to the court. Contrary to the SIT's position, he said that Modi could be prosecuted based on the available evidence. The Supreme Court gave the matter to the magistrate's court. The SIT examined Ramachandran's report, and in March 2012 submitted its final report, asking for the case to be closed. Zakia Jafri filed a protest petition in response. In December 2013 the magistrate's court rejected the protest petition, accepting the SIT's finding that there was no evidence against the chief minister.
2002 election
In the aftermath of the violence there were widespread calls for Modi to resign as chief minister from within and outside the state, including from leaders of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Telugu Desam Party (allies in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition), and opposition parties stalled Parliament over the issue. Modi submitted his resignation at the April 2002 BJP national executive meeting in Goa, but it was not accepted. His cabinet had an emergency meeting on 19 July 2002, after which it offered its resignation to the Gujarat Governor S. S. Bhandari, and the state assembly was dissolved. Despite opposition from the election commissioner, who said that a number of voters were still displaced, Modi succeeded in advancing the election to December 2002. In the elections, the BJP won 127 seats in the 182-member assembly. Although Modi later denied it, he made significant use of anti-Muslim rhetoric during his campaign, and the BJP profited from religious polarisation among the voters. He won the Maninagar constituency, receiving of votes and defeating INC candidate Yatin Oza by 75,333 votes. On 22 December 2002, Bhandari swore Modi in for a second term. Modi framed the criticism of his government for human rights violations as an attack upon Gujarati pride, a strategy which led to the BJP winning two-thirds of the seats in the state assembly.
Second term
During Modi's second term the rhetoric of the government shifted from Hindutva to Gujarat's economic development. Modi curtailed the influence of Sangh Parivar organisations such as the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), entrenched in the state after the decline of Ahmedabad's textile industry, and dropped Gordhan Zadafia (an ally of former Sangh co-worker and VHP state chief Praveen Togadia) from his cabinet. When the BKS staged a farmers' demonstration Modi ordered their eviction from state-provided houses, and his decision to demolish 200 illegal temples in Gandhinagar deepened the rift with the Vishva Hindu Parishad. Sangh organisations were no longer consulted or informed in advance about Modi's administrative decisions. Nonetheless, Modi retained connections with some Hindu nationalists. Modi wrote a foreword to a textbook by Dinanath Batra released in 2014, which stated that ancient India possessed technologies including test-tube babies.
Modi's relationship with Muslims continued to attract criticism. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who asked Modi for tolerance in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat violence and supported his resignation as chief minister) distanced himself, reaching out to North Indian Muslims before the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. After the elections Vajpayee called the violence in Gujarat a reason for the BJP's electoral defeat and said it had been a mistake to leave Modi in office after the riots.
Questions about Modi's relationship with Muslims were also raised by many Western nations during his tenure as chief minister. Modi was barred from entering the United States by the State Department, in accordance with the recommendations of the Commission on International Religious Freedom formed under the aegis of the International Religious Freedom Act, the only person denied a US visa under this law. The UK and the European Union refused to admit him because of what they saw as his role in the riots. As Modi rose to prominence in India, the UK and the EU lifted their bans in October 2012 and March 2013, respectively, and after his election he was invited to Washington as the nation's prime minister.
During the run-up to the 2007 Gujarat Legislative Assembly election and the 2009 Indian general election, the BJP intensified its rhetoric on terrorism. In July 2006, Modi criticised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh " for his reluctance to revive anti-terror legislation" such as the 2002 Prevention of Terrorism Act. He asked the national government to allow states to invoke tougher laws in the wake of the 2006 Mumbai train bombings. In 2007 Modi authored Karmayog, a 101-page booklet discussing manual scavenging. In it, Modi argued that scavenging was a "spiritual experience" for Valmiks, a sub-caste of Dalits. However, this book was not circulated that time because of the election code of conduct. After the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, Modi held a meeting to discuss the security of Gujarat's -long coastline, resulting in government authorisation of 30 high-speed surveillance boats. In July 2007 Modi completed 2,063 consecutive days as chief minister of Gujarat, making him the longest-serving holder of that post, and the BJP won 122 of 182 state-assembly seats in that year's election.
Development projects
As Chief Minister, Modi favoured privatisation and small government, which was at odds with the philosophy of the RSS, usually described as anti-privatisation and anti-globalisation. His policies during his second term have been credited with reducing corruption in the state. He established financial and technology parks in Gujarat and during the 2007 Vibrant Gujarat summit, real-estate investment deals worth were signed.
The governments led by Patel and Modi supported NGOs and communities in the creation of groundwater-conservation projects. By December 2008, 500,000 structures had been built, of which 113,738 were check dams, which helped recharge the aquifers beneath them. Sixty of the 112 tehsils which had depleted the water table in 2004 had regained their normal groundwater levels by 2010. As a result, the state's production of genetically modified cotton increased to become the largest in India. The boom in cotton production and its semi-arid land use led to Gujarat's agricultural sector growing at an average rate of 9.6 percent from 2001 to 2007. Public irrigation measures in central and southern Gujarat, such as the Sardar Sarovar Dam, were less successful. The Sardar Sarovar project only irrigated 4–6% of the area intended. Nonetheless, from 2001 to 2010 Gujarat recorded an agricultural growth rate of 10.97 percent – the highest of any state. However, sociologists have pointed out that the growth rate under the 1992–97 INC government was 12.9 percent. In 2008 Modi offered land in Gujarat to Tata Motors to set up a plant manufacturing the Nano after a popular agitation had forced the company to move out of West Bengal. Several other companies followed the Tata to Gujarat.
The Modi government finished the process of bringing electricity to every village in Gujarat that its predecessor had almost completed. Modi significantly changed the state's system of power distribution, greatly impacting farmers. Gujarat expanded the Jyotigram Yojana scheme, in which agricultural electricity was separated from other rural electricity; the agricultural electricity was rationed to fit scheduled irrigation demands, reducing its cost. Although early protests by farmers ended when those who benefited found that their electricity supply had stabilised, according to an assessment study corporations and large farmers benefited from the policy at the expense of small farmers and labourers.
Development debate
A contentious debate surrounds the assessment of Gujarat's economic development during Modi's tenure as chief minister. The state's GDP growth rate averaged 10% during Modi's tenure, a value similar to other highly industrialised states, and above that of the country as a whole. Gujarat also had a high rate of economic growth in the 1990s, before Modi took office, and some scholars have stated that growth did not much accelerate during Modi's tenure, although the state is considered to have maintained a high growth rate during Modi's Chief Ministership. Under Narendra Modi, Gujarat topped the World Bank's "ease of doing business" rankings among Indian states for two consecutive years. In 2013, Gujarat was ranked first among Indian states for "economic freedom" by a report measuring governance, growth, citizens' rights and labour and business regulation among the country's 20 largest states. In the later years of Modi's government, Gujarat's economic growth was frequently used as an argument to counter allegations of communalism. Tax breaks for businesses were easier to obtain in Gujarat than in other states, as was land. Modi's policies to make Gujarat attractive for investment included the creation of Special Economic Zones, where labour laws were greatly weakened.
Despite its growth rate, Gujarat had a relatively poor record on human development, poverty relief, nutrition and education during Modi's tenure. In 2013, Gujarat ranked 13th in the country with respect to rates of poverty and 21st in education. Nearly 45 percent of children under five were underweight and 23 percent were undernourished, putting the state in the "alarming" category on the India State Hunger Index. A study by UNICEF and the Indian government found that Gujarat under Modi had a poor record with respect to immunisation in children.
Over the decade from 2001 to 2011, Gujarat did not change its position relative to the rest of the country with respect to poverty and female literacy, remaining near the median of the 29 Indian states. It showed a marginal improvement in rates of infant mortality, and its position with respect to individual consumption declined. With respect to the quality of education in government schools, the state ranked below many Indian states. The social policies of the government generally did not benefit Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis, and generally increased social inequalities. Development in Gujarat was generally limited to the urban middle class, and citizens in rural areas or from lower castes were increasingly marginalised. In 2013 the state ranked 10th of 21 Indian states in the Human Development Index. Under Modi, the state government spent less than the national average on education and healthcare.
Final years
Despite the BJP's shift away from explicit Hindutva, Modi's election campaign in 2007 and 2012 contained elements of Hindu nationalism. Modi only attended Hindu religious ceremonies, and had prominent associations with Hindu religious leaders. During his 2012 campaign he twice refused to wear articles of clothing gifted by Muslim leaders. He did, however, maintain relations with Dawoodi Bohra. His campaign included references to issues known to cause religious polarisation, including to Afzal Guru and the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. The BJP did not nominate any Muslim candidates for the assembly election of 2012. During the 2012 campaign, Modi attempted to identify himself with the state of Gujarat, a strategy similar to that used by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, and projected himself as protecting Gujarat against persecution by the rest of India.
While campaigning for the 2012 assembly elections, Modi made extensive use of holograms and other technologies allowing him to reach a large number of people, something he would repeat in the 2014 general election. In the 2012 Gujarat Legislative Assembly elections, Modi won the constituency of Maninagar by 86,373 votes over Shweta Bhatt, the INC candidate and wife of Sanjiv Bhatt. The BJP won 115 of the 182 seats, continuing its majority during his tenure and allowing the party to form the government (as it had in Gujarat since 1995). After his election as prime minister, Modi resigned as the chief minister and as an MLA from Maninagar on 21 May 2014. Anandiben Patel succeeded him as the chief minister.
Premiership campaigns
2014 Indian general election
In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi.
During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development, although Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately , and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances.
The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism.
Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi by 371,784 votes and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat.
2019 Indian general election
On 13 October 2018, Modi was renamed as the BJP candidate for prime minister for the 2019 general election. The chief campaigner for the party was BJP's president Amit Shah. Modi launched the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign ahead of the general election, against Chowkidar Chor Hai campaign slogan of INC. In the year 2018, end Party's, second-biggest alliance Telugu Desam Party split from NDA over the matter of special-status for Andhra Pradesh.
The campaign was started by Amit Shah on 8 April 2019. In the campaign, Modi was targeted by the opposition on corruption allegations over Rafale deal with France government. Highlighting this controversy the campaign "Chowkidar Chor Hai" was started, which was contrary to "Main Bhi Chowkidar" slogan. Modi made defence and national security among the foremost topics for the election campaign, especially after Pulwama attack, and the retaliatory attack of Balakot airstrike was counted as an achievement of the Modi administration. Other topics in the campaign were development and good foreign relations in the first premiership.
Modi contested the Lok Sabha elections as a candidate from Varanasi. He won the seat by defeating Shalini Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, who fought on SP-BSP alliance by a margin of votes. Modi was unanimously appointed the prime minister for a second time by the National Democratic Alliance, after the alliance won the election for the second time by securing 353 seats in the Lok Sabha with the BJP alone won 303 seats.
Prime Minister
After the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won a landslide in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India on 26 May 2014. He became the first Prime Minister born after India's independence from the British Empire in 1947. Modi started his second term after the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won again in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. On 6 December 2020, Modi became the 4th longest serving Prime Minister of India and the longest serving Non-Congress Prime Minister.
Governance and other initiatives
Modi's first year as prime minister saw significant centralisation of power relative to previous administrations. His efforts at centralisation have been linked to an increase in the number of senior administration officials resigning their positions. Initially lacking a majority in the Rajya Sabha, or upper house of Indian Parliament, Modi passed a number of ordinances to enact his policies, leading to further centralisation of power. The government also passed a bill increasing the control that it had over the appointment of judges, and reducing that of the judiciary.
In December 2014 Modi abolished the Planning Commission, replacing it with the National Institution for Transforming India, or NITI Aayog. The move had the effect of greatly centralising the power previously with the planning commission in the person of the prime minister. The planning commission had received heavy criticism in previous years for creating inefficiency in the government, and of not filling its role of improving social welfare: however, since the economic liberalisation of the 1990s, it had been the major government body responsible for measures related to social justice.
The Modi government launched investigations by the Intelligence Bureau against numerous civil society organisations and foreign non-governmental organisations in the first year of the administration. The investigations, on the grounds that these organisations were slowing economic growth, was criticised as a witch-hunt. International humanitarian aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres was among the groups that were put under pressure. Other organisations affected included the Sierra Club and Avaaz. Cases of sedition were filed against individuals criticising the government. This led to discontent within the BJP regarding Modi's style of functioning and drew comparisons to the governing style of Indira Gandhi.
Modi repealed 1,200 obsolete laws in first three years as prime minister; a total of 1,301 such laws had been repealed by previous governments over a span of 64 years. He started a monthly radio programme titled "Mann Ki Baat" on 3 October 2014. Modi also launched the Digital India programme, with the goal of ensuring that government services are available electronically, building infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet access to rural areas, boosting manufacturing of electronic goods in the country, and promoting digital literacy.
Modi launched Ujjwala scheme to provide free LPG connection to rural households. The scheme led to an increase in LPG consumption by 56% in 2019 as compared to 2014. In 2019, a law was passed to provide 10% reservation to Economically weaker sections.
He was again sworn in as prime minister on 30 May 2019. On 30 July 2019, Parliament of India declared the practice of Triple Talaq as illegal, unconstitutional and made it punishable act from 1 August 2019 which is deemed to be in effect from 19 September 2018. On 5 August 2019, the government moved resolution to scrap Article 370 in the Rajya Sabha, and also reorganise the state with Jammu and Kashmir serving as one of the union territory and Ladakh region separated out as a separate union territory.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how he Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. Reporters Without Borders in 2021 characterised Modi as a predator for curbing press freedom in India since 2014.
Economic policy
The economic policies of Modi's government focused on privatisation and liberalisation of the economy, based on a neoliberal framework. Modi liberalised India's foreign direct investment policies, allowing more foreign investment in several industries, including in defence and the railways. Other proposed reforms included making it harder for workers to form unions and easier for employers to hire and fire them; some of these proposals were dropped after protests. The reforms drew strong opposition from unions: on 2 September 2015, eleven of the country's largest unions went on strike, including one affiliated with the BJP. The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, a constituent of the Sangh Parivar, stated that the underlying motivation of labour reforms favoured corporations over labourers.
The funds dedicated to poverty reduction programmes and social welfare measures were greatly decreased by the Modi administration. The money spent on social programmes declined from 14.6% of GDP during the Congress government to 12.6% during Modi's first year in office. Spending on health and family welfare declined by 15%, and on primary and secondary education by 16%. The budgetary allocation for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, or the "education for all" programme, declined by 22%. The government also lowered corporate taxes, abolished the wealth tax, increased sales taxes, and reduced customs duties on gold, and jewellery. In October 2014, the Modi government deregulated diesel prices.
In September 2014, Modi introduced the Make in India initiative to encourage foreign companies to manufacture products in India, with the goal of turning the country into a global manufacturing hub. Supporters of economic liberalisation supported the initiative, while critics argued it would allow foreign corporations to capture a greater share of the Indian market. Modi's administration passed a land-reform bill that allowed it to acquire private agricultural land without conducting a social impact assessment, and without the consent of the farmers who owned it. The bill was passed via an executive order after it faced opposition in parliament, but was eventually allowed to lapse. Modi's government put in place the Goods and Services Tax, the biggest tax reform in the country since independence. It subsumed around 17 different taxes and became effective from 1 July 2017.
In his first cabinet decision, Modi set up a team to investigate black money. On 9 November 2016, the government demonetised ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes, with the stated intention of curbing corruption, black money, the use of counterfeit currency, and terrorism. The move led to severe cash shortages, a steep decline in the Indian stock indices BSE SENSEX and NIFTY 50, and sparked widespread protests throughout the country. Several deaths were linked to the rush to exchange cash. In the subsequent year, the number of income tax returns filed for individuals rose by 25%, and the number of digital transactions increased steeply.
Over the first four years of Modi's premiership, India's GDP grew at an average rate of 7.23%, higher than the rate of 6.39% under the previous government. The level of income inequality increased, while an internal government report said that in 2017, unemployment had increased to its highest level in 45 years. The loss of jobs was attributed to the 2016 demonetisation, and to the effects of the Goods and Services Tax.
In the next year, after 2018, Indian economy started a gradual recovery with a GDP growth of 6.12% in 2018-19 FY, with an inflation rate of 3.4%. Same year, India was successful in making a good economy in trade and manufacturing sector. While in the FY of 2019–20, due to the general election, Modi government focused more on their election campaign. In the year 2019–20, the GDP growth rate was 4.18% and inflation rate also increased to 4.7% from 3.4% in the previous year. Though being high unemployment, increase in inflation rate and budget deficiency, Modi's leadership won in 2019 elections.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous rating agencies downgraded India's GDP predictions for FY21 to negative figures, signalling a recession in India, the most severe since 1979. According to a Dun & Bradstreet report, the country is likely to suffer a recession in the third quarter of FY2020 as a result of the over 2-month long nation-wide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. This was also accompanied by the mass migration of migrant workers.
Health and sanitation
In his first year as prime minister, Modi reduced the amount of money spent by the central government on healthcare. The Modi government launched New Health Policy (NHP) in January 2015. The policy did not increase the government's spending on healthcare, instead emphasising the role of private healthcare organisations. This represented a shift away from the policy of the previous Congress government, which had supported programmes to assist public health goals, including reducing child and maternal mortality rates. The National Health Mission, which included public health programmes targeted at these indices received nearly 20% less funds in 2015 than in the previous year. 15 national health programmes, including those aimed at controlling tobacco use and supporting healthcare for the elderly, were merged with the National Health Mission. In its budget for the second year after it took office, the Modi government reduced healthcare spending by 15%. The healthcare budget for the following year rose by 19%. The budget was viewed positively by private insurance providers. Public health experts criticised its emphasis on the role of private healthcare providers, and suggested that it represented a shift away from public health facilities. The healthcare budget rose by 11.5% in 2018; the change included an allocation of for a government-funded health insurance program, and a decrease in the budget of the National Health Mission. The government introduced stricter packaging laws for tobacco which requires 85% of the packet size to be covered by pictorial warnings. An article in the medical journal Lancet stated that the country "might have taken a few steps back in public health" under Modi. In 2018 Modi launched the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, a government health insurance scheme intended to insure 500 million people. 100,000 people had signed up by October 2018.
Modi emphasised his government's efforts at sanitation as a means of ensuring good health. On 2 October 2014, Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission ("Clean India") campaign. The stated goals of the campaign included eliminating open defecation and manual scavenging within five years. As part of the programme, the Indian government began constructing millions of toilets in rural areas and encouraging people to use them. The government also announced plans to build new sewage treatment plants. The administration plans to construct 60 million toilets by 2019. The construction projects have faced allegations of corruption, and have faced severe difficulty in getting people to use the toilets constructed for them. Sanitation cover in the country increased from 38.7% in October 2014 to 84.1% in May 2018; however, usage of the new sanitary facilities lagged behind the government's targets. In 2018, the World Health Organization stated that at least 180,000 diarrhoeal deaths were averted in rural India after the launch of the sanitation effort.
Hindutva
During the 2014 election campaign, the BJP sought to identify itself with political leaders known to have opposed Hindu nationalism, including B. R. Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Ram Manohar Lohia. The campaign also saw the use of rhetoric based on Hindutva by BJP leaders in certain states. Communal tensions were played upon especially in Uttar Pradesh and the states of Northeast India. A proposal for the controversial Uniform Civil Code was a part of the BJP's election manifesto.
The activities of a number of Hindu nationalist organisations increased in scope after Modi's election as Prime Minister, sometimes with the support of the government. These activities included a Hindu religious conversion programme, a campaign against the alleged Islamic practice of "Love Jihad", and attempts to celebrate Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, by members of the right wing Hindu Mahasabha. Officials in the government, including the Home Minister, defended the conversion programmes.
Links between the BJP and the RSS grew stronger under Modi. The RSS provided organisational support to the BJP's electoral campaigns, while the Modi administration appointed a number of individuals affiliated with the RSS to prominent government positions. In 2014, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, who had previously been associated with the RSS, became the chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). Historians and former members of the ICHR, including those sympathetic to the BJP, questioned his credentials as a historian, and stated that the appointment was part of an agenda of cultural nationalism.
The North East Delhi riots, which left more than 40 dead and hundreds injured, were triggered by protests against a citizenship law seen by many critics as anti-Muslim and part of Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda. On 5 August 2020, Modi visited Ayodhya after the Supreme Court in 2019 ordered a contested land in Ayodhya to be handed over to a trust to build the Hindu temple and ordered the government to give alternate 5 acre land to Sunni Waqf Board for the purpose of building a mosque. He became the first prime minister to visit Ram Janmabhoomi and Hanuman Garhi.
Foreign policy
Foreign policy played a relatively small role in Modi's election campaign, and did not feature prominently in the BJP's election manifesto. Modi invited all the other leaders of SAARC countries to his swearing in ceremony as prime minister. He was the first Indian prime minister to do so.
Modi's foreign policy, similarly to that of the preceding INC government, focused on improving economic ties, security, and regional relations. Modi continued Manmohan Singh's policy of "multi-alignment." The Modi administration tried to attract foreign investment in the Indian economy from several sources, especially in East Asia, with the use of slogans such as "Make in India" and "Digital India". The government also tried to improve relations with Islamic nations in the Middle East, such as Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as with Israel.
The foreign relations of India with the USA also mended after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. During the run-up to the general election there was wide-ranging scepticism regarding future of the strategic bilateral relation under Modi's premiership as in 2005 he was, while Chief Minister of Gujarat, denied a U.S. visa during the Bush administration for his poor human rights records. However sensing Modi's inevitable victory well before the election, the US Ambassador Nancy Powell had reached out to him as part of greater rapprochement from the west. Moreover, following his 2014 election as the Prime Minister of India President Obama congratulated him over the telephone and invited him to visit the US. Modi government has been successful in making good foreign relations with the USA in the presidency of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
During the first few months after the election, Modi made trips to a number of different countries to further the goals of his policy, and attended the BRICS, ASEAN, and G20 summits. One of Modi's first visits as prime minister was to Nepal, during which he promised a billion USD in aid. Modi also made several overtures to the United States, including multiple visits to that country. While this was described as an unexpected development, due to the US having previously denied Modi a travel visa over his role during the 2002 Gujarat riots, the visits were expected to strengthen diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries.
In 2015, the Indian parliament ratified a land exchange deal with Bangladesh about the India–Bangladesh enclaves, which had been initiated by the government of Manmohan Singh. Modi's administration gave renewed attention to India's "Look East Policy", instituted in 1991. The policy was renamed the "Act East Policy", and involved directing Indian foreign policy towards East Asia and Southeast Asia. The government signed agreements to improve land connectivity with Myanmar, through the state of Manipur. This represented a break with India's historic engagement with Myanmar, which prioritised border security over trade. China–India relations have deteriorated rapidly following the 2020 China–India skirmishes. Modi has pledged aid of $900 million to Afghanistan, visited the nation twice and been honoured with the nation's highest civilian honour in 2016.
Defence policy
India's nominal military spending increased steadily under Modi. The military budget declined over Modi's tenure both as a fraction of GDP and when adjusted for inflation. A substantial portion of the military budget was devoted to personnel costs, leading commentators to write that the budget was constraining Indian military modernisation.
The BJP election manifesto had also promised to deal with illegal immigration into India in the Northeast, as well as to be more firm in its handling of insurgent groups. The Modi government issued a notification allowing Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh to legalise their residency in India. The government described the measure as being taken for humanitarian reasons but it drew criticism from several Assamese organisations.The Modi administration negotiated a peace agreement with the largest faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCM), which was announced in August 2015. The Naga insurgency in northeast India had begun in the 1950s. The NSCM and the government had agreed to a ceasefire in 1997, but a peace accord had not previously been signed. In 2015 the government abrogated a 15-year ceasefire with the Khaplang faction of the NSCM (NSCM-K). The NSCM-K responded with a series of attacks, which killed 18 people. The Modi government carried out a raid across the border with Myanmar as a result, and labelled the NSCM-K a terrorist organisation.
Modi promised to be "tough on Pakistan" during his election campaign, and repeatedly stated that Pakistan was an exporter of terrorism. On 29 September 2016, the Indian Army stated that it had conducted a surgical strike on terror launch pads in Azad Kashmir. The Indian media claimed that up to 50 terrorists and Pakistani soldiers had been killed in the strike. Pakistan initially denied that any strikes had taken place. Subsequent reports suggested that Indian claim about the scope of the strike and the number of casualties had been exaggerated, although cross-border strikes had been carried out. In February 2019 India carried out airstrikes in Pakistan against a supposed terrorist camp. Further military skirmishes followed, including cross-border shelling and the loss of an Indian aircraft.
Following his victory in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he focused more on Defence policies of India, especially against China and Pakistan. On 5 May 2020, Chinese and Indian troops engaged in aggressive melee, face-offs and skirmishes at locations along the Sino-Indian border, including near the disputed Pangong Lake in Ladakh and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and near the border between Sikkim and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Additional clashes also took place at locations in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). After which there was start of skirmishes between the nations leading to many border clashes, responses and reactions from both sides. A series of talks were also held between the two by both military and diplomatic means for peace. The first border clash reported in 2021 was on 20 January, referred to as a minor border clash in Sikkim.
Environmental policy
In naming his cabinet, Modi renamed the "Ministry of Environment and Forests" the "Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change." In the first budget of the government, the money allotted to this ministry was reduced by more than 50%. The new ministry also removed or diluted a number of laws related to environmental protection. These included no longer requiring clearance from the National Board for Wildlife for projects close to protected areas, and allowing certain projects to proceed before environmental clearance was received. The government also tried to reconstitute the Wildlife board such that it no longer had representatives from non-governmental organisations: however, this move was prevented by the Supreme Court.
Modi also relaxed or abolished a number of other environmental regulations, particularly those related to industrial activity. A government committee stated that the existing system only served to create corruption, and that the government should instead rely on the owners of industries to voluntarily inform the government about the pollution they were creating. Other changes included reducing ministry oversight on small mining projects, and no longer requiring approval from tribal councils for projects inside forested areas. In addition, Modi lifted a moratorium on new industrial activity in the most polluted areas in the countries. The changes were welcomed by businesspeople, but criticised by environmentalists.
Under the UPA government that preceded Modi's administration, field trials of Genetically Modified (GM) crops had essentially been put on hold, after protests from farmers fearing for their livelihoods. Under the Modi government these restrictions were gradually lifted. The government received some criticism for freezing the bank accounts of environmental group Greenpeace, citing financial irregularities, although a leaked government report said that the freeze had to do with Greenpeace's opposition to GM crops. At the COP26 conference Modi announced that India would target carbon neutrality by 2070, and also expand its renewable energy capacity. Though the date of net zero is far behind that of China and the USA and India's government wants to continue with the use of coal, Indian environmentalists and economists applauded the decision, describing it as a bold climate action.
Democratic backsliding
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how the Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. There have been several reports of the Modi government to be as an authoritarian conservative government, even due to lack of good opposition.
Electoral history
Personal life and image
Personal life
In accordance with Ghanchi tradition, Modi's marriage was arranged by his parents when he was a child. He was engaged at age 13 to Jashodaben Modi, marrying her when he was 18. They spent little time together and grew apart when Modi began two years of travel, including visits to Hindu ashrams. Reportedly, their marriage was never consummated, and he kept it a secret because otherwise he could not have become a 'pracharak' in the puritan Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Modi kept his marriage secret for most of his career. He acknowledged his wife for the first time when he filed his nomination for the 2014 general elections. Modi maintains a close relationship with his centenarian mother, Hiraben.
A vegetarian and teetotaler, Modi has a frugal lifestyle and is a workaholic and introvert. A person named Badri Meena has been his cook since 2002. Modi's 31 August 2012 post on Google Hangouts made him the first Indian politician to interact with citizens on a live chat. Modi has also been called a fashion-icon for his signature crisply ironed, half-sleeved kurta, as well as for a suit with his name embroidered repeatedly in the pinstripes that he wore during a state visit by US President Barack Obama, which drew public and media attention and criticism. Modi's personality has been variously described by scholars and biographers as energetic, arrogant, and charismatic.
He had published a Gujarati book titled Jyotipunj in 2008, containing profiles of various RSS leaders. The longest was of M. S. Golwalkar, under whose leadership the RSS expanded and whom Modi refers to as Pujniya Shri Guruji ("Guru worthy of worship"). According to The Economic Times, his intention was to explain the workings of the RSS to his readers and to reassure RSS members that he remained ideologically aligned with them. Modi authored eight other books, mostly containing short stories for children.
The nomination of Modi for the prime ministership drew attention to his reputation as "one of contemporary India's most controversial and divisive politicians." During the 2014 election campaign the BJP projected an image of Modi as a strong, masculine leader, who would be able to take difficult decisions. Campaigns in which he has participated have focused on Modi as an individual, in a manner unusual for the BJP and RSS. Modi has relied upon his reputation as a politician able to bring about economic growth and "development". Nonetheless, his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots continues to attract criticism and controversy. Modi's hardline Hindutva philosophy and the policies adopted by his government continue to draw criticism, and have been seen as evidence of a majoritarian and exclusionary social agenda.
In March 2021, Modi received his first COVID-19 vaccine dose at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
Personal donations
Modi has made donations for various causes and programmes. One such instance was when Modi donated towards the initial corpus of the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) Fund. In his role as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi had donated from personal savings for educating daughters of state government officials. Modi had also raised by auctioning all the gifts he received as chief minister and donated this to the Kanya Kelavani Fund. The money was spent on the education of girl children, through the scheme.
Approval ratings
As a Prime Minister, Modi has received consistently high approval ratings; at the end of his first year in office, he received an overall approval rating of 87% in a Pew Research poll, with 68% of people rating him "very favorably" and 93% approving of his government. His approval rating remained largely consistent at around 74% through his second year in office, according to a nationwide poll conducted by instaVaani. At the end of his second year in office, an updated Pew Research poll showed Modi continued to receive high overall approval ratings of 81%, with 57% of those polled rating him "very favorably." At the end of his third year in office, a further Pew Research poll showed Modi with an overall approval rating of 88%, his highest yet, with 69% of people polled rating him "very favorably." A poll conducted by The Times of India in May 2017 showed 77% of the respondents rated Modi as "very good" and "good". In early 2017, a survey from Pew Research Center showed Modi to be the most popular figure in Indian politics. In a weekly analysis by Morning Consult called the Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker, Modi had the highest net approval rating as of 22 December 2020 of all government leaders in the 13 countries being tracked.
Awards and recognition
In March 2012 and June 2014, Modi appeared on the cover of the Asian edition of Time Magazine, one of the few Indian politicians to have done so. He was awarded Indian of the Year by CNN-News18 (formally CNN-IBN) news network in 2014. In June 2015, Modi was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020 and 2021, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Forbes Magazine ranked him the 15th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2014 and the 9th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2015, 2016 and 2018. In 2015, Modi was ranked the 13th Most Influential Person in the World by Bloomberg Markets Magazine. Modi was ranked fifth on Fortune Magazines first annual list of the "World's Greatest Leaders" in 2015. In 2017, Gallup International Association (GIA) conducted a poll and ranked Modi as third top leader of the world. In 2016, a wax statue of Modi was unveiled at Madame Tussauds wax museum in London.
In 2015 he was named one of Times "30 Most Influential People on the Internet" as the second-most-followed politician on Twitter and Facebook. In 2018, he was the third most followed world leader on Twitter, and the most followed world leader on Facebook and Instagram. In October 2018, Modi received United Nations's highest environmental award, the 'Champions of the Earth', for policy leadership by "pioneering work in championing" the International Solar Alliance and "new areas of levels of cooperation on environmental action". He was conferred the 2018 Seoul Peace Prize in recognition of "his dedication to improving international co-operation, raising global economic growth, accelerating the Human Development of the people of India by fostering economic growth and furthering the development of democracy through anti-corruption and social integration efforts". He is the first Indian to win the award.
Following his second swearing-in ceremony as Prime Minister of India, a picture of Modi was displayed on the facade of the ADNOC building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Texas India Forum hosted a community event in honour of Modi on 22 September 2019 at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. The event was attended by over 50,000 people and several American politicians including President Donald Trump, making it the largest gathering for an invited foreign leader visiting the United States other than the Pope. At the same event, Modi was presented with the Key to the City of Houston by Mayor Sylvester Turner. He was awarded the Global Goalkeeper Award on 24 September 2019 in New York City by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in recognition for the Swachh Bharat Mission and "the progress India has made in providing safe sanitation under his leadership".
In 2020, Modi was among eight world leaders awarded the parodic Ig Nobel Prize in Medical Education "for using the COVID-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can". On 21 December 2020, President Donald Trump awarded Modi with the Legion of Merit for elevating the India–United States relations. The Legion of Merit was awarded to Modi along with Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison and former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, the "original architects" of the QUAD.
On 24 February 2021, the largest cricket stadium in the world at Ahmedabad was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by the Gujarat Cricket Association.
Modi is featured in TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2021 list, making it his fifth time after 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2020. TIME called him the third "pivotal leader" of independent India after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi who "dominated the country’s politics like no one since them".
State honours
Other honours
In popular culture
Modi Kaka Ka Gaon, a 2017 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Tushar Amrish Goel is the first biopic on Modi, starring Vikas Mahante in the titular role it was made halfway into his first-term as the prime minister which is shown in the film. PM Narendra Modi, a 2019 Indian Hindi-language biographical drama film by Omung Kumar, starred Vivek Oberoi in the titular role and covers his rise to prime ministership.An Indian web series, Modi: Journey of a Common Man, based on the same premise released in May 2019 on Eros Now with Ashish Sharma portraying Modi. Hu Narender Modi Banva Mangu Chu is a 2018 Indian Gujarati-language drama film by Anil Naryani about the aspirations of a young boy who wants to become like Narendra Modi.
7 RCR (7, Race Course Road), a 2014 Indian docudrama political television series which charts the political careers of prominent Indian politicians, covered Modi's rise to the PM's office in the episodes - "Story of Narendra Modi from 1950 to 2001", "Story of Narendra Modi in Controversial Years from 2001 to 2013", "Truth Behind Brand Modi", "Election Journey of Narendra Modi to 7 RCR", and "Masterplan of Narendra Modi's NDA Govt."; with Sangam Rai in the role of Modi.
Other portrayals of Modi include by Rajit Kapur in the film Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) and Vikram Gokhale in the web-television series Avrodh: The Siege Within (2020) both based on the 2016 Uri attack and the following Indian surgical strikes. Pratap Singh played a character based on Modi in Chand Bujh Gaya (2005) which is set in the backdrop of the Gujarat riots.
Premiered on 12 August 2019, Modi appeared in an episode - "Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls and Prime Minister Modi" - of Discovery Channel's show Man vs Wild with the host Bear Grylls, becoming the second world leader after Barack Obama to appear in the reality show. In the show he trekked the jungles and talked about nature and wildlife conservation with Grylls. The episode was shot in Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand and was broadcast in 180 countries along India. He has also appeared twice on the Indian television talk show Aap Ki Adalat before the 2009 and 2014 elections respectively.
Along with hosting the Mann Ki Baat monthly radio programme, on All India Radio, he has also conducted Pariksha Pe Charcha - a competition/discussion for students and the issues they face in examinations.
Bibliography
See also
List of prime ministers of India
Opinion polling on the Narendra Modi premiership
References
Notes
Citations
Further reading
External links
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1950 births
Living people
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Politicians from Varanasi
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"Active Pensionists (Danish: Aktive Pensionister) was a political party in Denmark.\n\nHistory\nActive Pensionists was established in 1997. The party ran in 2001 in Copenhagen (507 votes), Frederikshavn (212 votes) and Skagen Municipality (19 votes). They did not get any municipal seats.\n\nIn 2005, Active Pensionists ran in Greve Municipality (43 votes), Vejle Municipality (158 votes), Fredericia Municipality (679) and Copenhagen Municipality (232 votes). They did not manage to get any municipal seats.\n\nThe party has not run for municipal elections since 2005, and is assumedly dissolved.\n\nElection results\n\nMunicipal elections\n\nReferences\n\nPolitical parties in Denmark\nPensioners' parties\n1997 establishments in Denmark\nPolitical parties established in 1997\nDefunct political parties in Denmark",
"How Did This Get Made? is a comedy podcast on the Earwolf network hosted by Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, and Jason Mantzoukas.\n\nGenerally, How Did This Get Made? is released every two weeks. During the show's off-week, a \".5\" episode is uploaded featuring Scheer announcing the next week's movie, as well as challenges for the fans. In addition to the shows and mini-shows, the How Did This Get Made? stream hosted the first three episodes of Bitch Sesh, the podcast of previous guests Casey Wilson and Danielle Schneider, in December 2015. It has also hosted episodes of its own spin-off podcast, the How Did This Get Made? Origin Stories, in which Blake Harris interviews people involved with the films covered by the main show. In December 2017, an episode was recorded for the Pee Cast Blast event, and released exclusively on Stitcher Premium.\n\nEvery episode has featured Paul Scheer as the host of the podcast. The only episode to date in which Scheer hosted remotely was The Smurfs, in which he Skyped in. Raphael has taken extended breaks from the podcast for both filming commitments and maternity leave. Mantzoukas has also missed episodes due to work, but has also Skyped in for various episodes. On the occasions that neither Raphael nor Mantzoukas are available for live appearances, Scheer calls in previous fan-favorite guests for what is known as a How Did This Get Made? All-Stars episode.\n\nList of episodes\n\nMini episodes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n List of How Did This Get Made? episodes\n\nHow Did This Get Made\nHow Did This Get Made"
] |
[
"Narendra Modi",
"2014 Indian general election",
"in what month was the election?",
"the 2014 Lok Sabha election.",
"what position did he run for in the election?",
"prime minister",
"what political party was he in?",
"the BJP's candidate",
"did he win the election?",
"Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment",
"how many votes did he get?",
"by 570,128 votes."
] | C_b6a0c764bf0c443b9768973ff08ca8fb_0 | who was his opponent? | 6 | Who was Narendra Modi's opponent in the 2014 Indian general election? | Narendra Modi | In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi. During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development. Although the BJP avoided issues of Hindu nationalism to an extent, Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately Rs50 billion (US$770 million), and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances. The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism. Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by 570,128 votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat. CANNOTANSWER | defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi | Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from Varanasi. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organisation. He is the first prime minister to have been born after India's independence in 1947 and the second prime minister not belonging to the Indian National Congress to have won two consecutive majorities in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Indian of parliament.
Born and raised in Vadnagar, a small town in northeastern Gujarat, Modi completed his secondary education there. He was introduced to the RSS at age eight. He has drawn attention to having to work as a child in his father's tea stall on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that has not been reliably corroborated. At age 18, Modi was married to Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, whom he abandoned soon after. He left his parental home where she had come to live. He first publicly acknowledged her as his wife more than four decades later when required to do so by Indian law, but has made no contact with her since. Modi has asserted he had travelled in northern India for two years after leaving his parental home, visiting a number of religious centres, but few details of his travels have emerged. Upon his return to Gujarat in 1971, he became a full-time worker for the RSS. After the state of emergency declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, Modi went into hiding. The RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985 and he held several positions within the party hierarchy until 2001, rising to the rank of general secretary.
Modi was appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001 due to Keshubhai Patel's failing health and poor public image following the earthquake in Bhuj. Modi was elected to the legislative assembly soon after. His administration has been considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots in which 1044 people were killed, three-quarters of whom were Muslim, or otherwise criticised for its management of the crisis. The Supreme Court remarked that Narendra Modi was like a Modern-day Nero, looking the other way as innocent women and children were burning. A Supreme Court of India-appointed Special Investigation Team found no evidence to initiate prosecution proceedings against Modi personally. While his policies as chief minister—credited with encouraging economic growth—have received praise, his administration has been criticised for failing to significantly improve health, poverty and education indices in the state.
Modi led the BJP in the 2014 general election which gave the party a majority in the Indian lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, the first time for any single party since 1984. Modi's administration has tried to raise foreign direct investment in the Indian economy and reduced spending on healthcare and social welfare programmes. Modi has attempted to improve efficiency in the bureaucracy; he has centralised power by abolishing the Planning Commission. He began a high-profile sanitation campaign, controversially initiated a demonetisation of high-denomination banknotes and transformation of taxation regime, and weakened or abolished environmental and labour laws.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. Following his party's victory in the 2019 general election, his administration revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and also introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act, which resulted in widespread protests across the country. Described as engineering a political realignment towards right-wing politics, Modi remains a figure of controversy domestically and internationally over his Hindu nationalist beliefs and his handling of the 2002 Gujarat riots, cited as evidence of an exclusionary social agenda.
Early life and education
Narendra Damodardas Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a Gujarati Hindu family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district, Bombay State (present-day Gujarat). He was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi () and Hiraben Modi (born ). Modi's family belonged to the Modh-Ghanchi-Teli (oil-presser) community, which is categorised as an Other Backward Class by the Indian government.
Modi had only infrequently spoken of his family background during his 13 years as chief minister of Gujarat. In the run up to the 2014 national elections, he began to regularly draw attention to his low-ranking social origins and to having to work as a child in his father's tea shop on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that the evidence of neighbours does not entirely corroborate. Modi completed his higher secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where teachers described him as an average student and a keen gifted debater, with interest in theatre. Modi preferred playing larger-than-life characters in theatrical productions, which has influenced his political image.
When eight years old, Modi was introduced to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and began attending its local shakhas (training sessions). There, Modi met Lakshmanrao Inamdar, popularly known as Vakil Saheb, who inducted him as a balswayamsevak (junior cadet) in the RSS and became his political mentor. While Modi was training with the RSS, he also met Vasant Gajendragadkar and Nathalal Jaghda, Bharatiya Jana Sangh leaders who were founding members of the BJP's Gujarat unit in 1980.
In a custom traditional to Narendra Modi's caste, his family arranged a betrothal to a girl, Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, leading to their marriage when she was 17 and he was 18. Soon afterwards, he abandoned his bride, and left home, never divorcing her, but the marriage remaining unmentioned in Modi's public pronouncements for many decades. In April 2014, shortly before the national elections that swept him to power, Modi publicly affirmed that he was married and his spouse was Jashodaben; the couple has remained married, but estranged.
Modi spent the ensuing two years travelling across Northern and North-eastern India, though few details of where he went have emerged. In interviews, Modi has described visiting Hindu ashrams founded by Swami Vivekananda: the Belur Math near Kolkata, followed by the Advaita Ashrama in Almora and the Ramakrishna Mission in Rajkot. Modi remained only a short time at each, since he lacked the required college education. Vivekananda has been described as a large influence in Modi's life.
In the early summer of 1968, Modi reached the Belur Math but was turned away, after which Modi wandered through Calcutta, West Bengal and Assam, stopping in Siliguri and Guwahati. Modi then went to the Ramakrishna Ashram in Almora, where he was again rejected, before travelling back to Gujarat via Delhi and Rajasthan in 1968–69. Sometime in late 1969 or early 1970, Modi returned to Vadnagar for a brief visit before leaving again for Ahmedabad. There, Modi lived with his uncle, working in the latter's canteen at the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation.
In Ahmedabad, Modi renewed his acquaintance with Inamdar, who was based at the Hedgewar Bhavan (RSS headquarters) in the city. Modi's first known political activity as an adult was in 1971 when he, as per his remarks, joined a Jana Sangh Satyagraha in Delhi led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee to enlist for the battlefield during the Bangladesh Liberation War. But the Indira Gandhi-led central government disallowed open support for the Mukti Bahini and Modi, according to his own claim, was put in Tihar Jail for a short period. After the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he stopped working for his uncle and became a full-time pracharak (campaigner) for the RSS, working under Inamdar. Shortly before the war, Modi took part in a non-violent protest against the Indian government in New Delhi, for which he was arrested (as per his claim); this has been cited as a reason for Inamdar electing to mentor him. Many years later Modi would co-author a biography of Inamdar, published in 2001. Modi's claim that he was part of a Satyagraha led to a political war. Applications were filed with the PMO under the RTI Act seeking details of his arrest. In reply, the PMO claimed that it maintains official records on Modi only since he took charge as the Prime Minister of India in 2014. Despite this claim, the official website of the PMO contains specific information about Modi which dates back to the 1950s.
In 1978 Modi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the School of Open Learning (SOL) at the University of Delhi, graduating with a third class. Five years later, in 1983, he received a Master of Arts degree in political science from Gujarat University, graduating with a first class as an external distance learning student. But there is a big controversy surrounding his educational qualification. Replying to an RTI query, the SOL said it did not have any data of students who received a BA degree in 1978. Jayantibhai Patel, a former political science professor of Gujarat University, claimed that the subjects listed in Modi's MA degree were not offered by the university when Modi was studying there.
Early political career
In June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India which lasted until 1977. During this period, known as "The Emergency", many of her political opponents were jailed and opposition groups were banned. Modi was appointed general secretary of the "Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti", an RSS committee co-ordinating opposition to the Emergency in Gujarat. Shortly afterwards, the RSS was banned. Modi was forced to go underground in Gujarat and frequently travelled in disguise to avoid arrest. He became involved in printing pamphlets opposing the government, sending them to Delhi and organising demonstrations. Modi was also involved with creating a network of safe houses for individuals wanted by the government, and in raising funds for political refugees and activists. During this period, Modi wrote a book in Gujarati, Sangharsh Ma Gujarat (In The Struggles of Gujarat), describing events during the Emergency. Among the people he met in this role was trade unionist and socialist activist George Fernandes, as well as several other national political figures. In his travels during the Emergency, Modi was often forced to move in disguise, once dressing as a monk, and once as a Sikh.
Modi became an RSS sambhag pracharak (regional organiser) in 1978, overseeing RSS activities in the areas of Surat and Vadodara, and in 1979 he went to work for the RSS in Delhi, where he was put to work researching and writing the RSS's version of the history of the Emergency. He returned to Gujarat a short while later, and was assigned by the RSS to the BJP in 1985. In 1987 Modi helped organise the BJP's campaign in the Ahmedabad municipal election, which the BJP won comfortably; Modi's planning has been described as the reason for that result by biographers. After L. K. Advani became president of the BJP in 1986, the RSS decided to place its members in important positions within the BJP; Modi's work during the Ahmedabad election led to his selection for this role, and Modi was elected organising secretary of the BJP's Gujarat unit later in 1987.
Modi rose within the party and was named a member of the BJP's National Election Committee in 1990, helping organise L. K. Advani's 1990 Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 and Murli Manohar Joshi's 1991–92 Ekta Yatra (Journey for Unity). However, he took a brief break from politics in 1992, instead establishing a school in Ahmedabad; friction with Shankersinh Vaghela, a BJP MP from Gujarat at the time, also played a part in this decision. Modi returned to electoral politics in 1994, partly at the insistence of Advani, and as party secretary, Modi's electoral strategy was considered central to the BJP victory in the 1995 state assembly elections. In November of that year Modi was appointed BJP national secretary and transferred to New Delhi, where he assumed responsibility for party activities in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The following year, Shankersinh Vaghela, a prominent BJP leader from Gujarat, defected to the Indian National Congress (Congress, INC) after losing his parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha elections. Modi, on the selection committee for the 1998 Assembly elections in Gujarat, favoured supporters of BJP leader Keshubhai Patel over those supporting Vaghela to end factional division in the party. His strategy was credited as key to the BJP winning an overall majority in the 1998 elections, and Modi was promoted to BJP general secretary (organisation) in May of that year.
Chief Minister of Gujarat
Taking office
In 2001, Keshubhai Patel's health was failing and the BJP lost a few state assembly seats in by-elections. Allegations of abuse of power, corruption and poor administration were made, and Patel's standing had been damaged by his administration's handling of the earthquake in Bhuj in 2001. The BJP national leadership sought a new candidate for the chief ministership, and Modi, who had expressed misgivings about Patel's administration, was chosen as a replacement. Although BJP leader L. K. Advani did not want to ostracise Patel and was concerned about Modi's lack of experience in government, Modi declined an offer to be Patel's deputy chief minister, telling Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee that he was "going to be fully responsible for Gujarat or not at all". On 3 October 2001 he replaced Patel as Chief Minister of Gujarat, with the responsibility of preparing the BJP for the December 2002 elections. Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister on 7 October 2001, and entered the Gujarat state legislature on 24 February 2002 by winning a by-election to the Rajkot – II constituency, defeating Ashwin Mehta of the INC by 14,728 votes.
2002 Gujarat riots
On 27 February 2002, a train with several hundred passengers burned near Godhra, killing approximately 60 people. The train carried a large number of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya after a religious ceremony at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid. In making a public statement after the incident, Modi declared it a terrorist attack planned and orchestrated by local Muslims. The next day, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for a bandh across the state. Riots began during the bandh, and anti-Muslim violence spread through Gujarat. The government's decision to move the bodies of the train victims from Godhra to Ahmedabad further inflamed the violence. The state government stated later that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed. Independent sources put the death toll at over 2000, the vast majority Muslims Approximately 150,000 people were driven to refugee camps. Numerous women and children were among the victims; the violence included mass rapes and mutilations of women.
The government of Gujarat itself is generally considered by scholars to have been complicit in the riots, (with some blaming chief minister Modi explicitly) and has otherwise received heavy criticism for its handling of the situation. Several scholars have described the violence as a pogrom, while others have called it an example of state terrorism. Summarising academic views on the subject, Martha Nussbaum said: "There is by now a broad consensus that the Gujarat violence was a form of ethnic cleansing, that in many ways it was premeditated, and that it was carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law." The Modi government imposed a curfew in 26 major cities, issued shoot-at-sight orders and called for the army to patrol the streets, but was unable to prevent the violence from escalating. The president of the state unit of the BJP expressed support for the bandh, despite such actions being illegal at the time. State officials later prevented riot victims from leaving the refugee camps, and the camps were often unable to meet the needs of those living there. Muslim victims of the riots were subject to further discrimination when the state government announced that compensation for Muslim victims would be half of that offered to Hindus, although this decision was later reversed after the issue was taken to court. During the riots, police officers often did not intervene in situations where they were able.
Modi's personal involvement in the 2002 events has continued to be debated. During the riots, Modi said that "What is happening is a chain of action and reaction." Later in 2002, Modi said the way in which he had handled the media was his only regret regarding the episode. In March 2008, the Supreme Court reopened several cases related to the 2002 riots, including that of the Gulbarg Society massacre, and established a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the issue. In response to a petition from Zakia Jafri (widow of Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre), in April 2009 the court also asked the SIT to investigate the issue of Modi's complicity in the killings. The SIT questioned Modi in March 2010; in May, it presented to the court a report finding no evidence against him. In July 2011, the court-appointed amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran submitted his final report to the court. Contrary to the SIT's position, he said that Modi could be prosecuted based on the available evidence. The Supreme Court gave the matter to the magistrate's court. The SIT examined Ramachandran's report, and in March 2012 submitted its final report, asking for the case to be closed. Zakia Jafri filed a protest petition in response. In December 2013 the magistrate's court rejected the protest petition, accepting the SIT's finding that there was no evidence against the chief minister.
2002 election
In the aftermath of the violence there were widespread calls for Modi to resign as chief minister from within and outside the state, including from leaders of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Telugu Desam Party (allies in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition), and opposition parties stalled Parliament over the issue. Modi submitted his resignation at the April 2002 BJP national executive meeting in Goa, but it was not accepted. His cabinet had an emergency meeting on 19 July 2002, after which it offered its resignation to the Gujarat Governor S. S. Bhandari, and the state assembly was dissolved. Despite opposition from the election commissioner, who said that a number of voters were still displaced, Modi succeeded in advancing the election to December 2002. In the elections, the BJP won 127 seats in the 182-member assembly. Although Modi later denied it, he made significant use of anti-Muslim rhetoric during his campaign, and the BJP profited from religious polarisation among the voters. He won the Maninagar constituency, receiving of votes and defeating INC candidate Yatin Oza by 75,333 votes. On 22 December 2002, Bhandari swore Modi in for a second term. Modi framed the criticism of his government for human rights violations as an attack upon Gujarati pride, a strategy which led to the BJP winning two-thirds of the seats in the state assembly.
Second term
During Modi's second term the rhetoric of the government shifted from Hindutva to Gujarat's economic development. Modi curtailed the influence of Sangh Parivar organisations such as the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), entrenched in the state after the decline of Ahmedabad's textile industry, and dropped Gordhan Zadafia (an ally of former Sangh co-worker and VHP state chief Praveen Togadia) from his cabinet. When the BKS staged a farmers' demonstration Modi ordered their eviction from state-provided houses, and his decision to demolish 200 illegal temples in Gandhinagar deepened the rift with the Vishva Hindu Parishad. Sangh organisations were no longer consulted or informed in advance about Modi's administrative decisions. Nonetheless, Modi retained connections with some Hindu nationalists. Modi wrote a foreword to a textbook by Dinanath Batra released in 2014, which stated that ancient India possessed technologies including test-tube babies.
Modi's relationship with Muslims continued to attract criticism. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who asked Modi for tolerance in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat violence and supported his resignation as chief minister) distanced himself, reaching out to North Indian Muslims before the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. After the elections Vajpayee called the violence in Gujarat a reason for the BJP's electoral defeat and said it had been a mistake to leave Modi in office after the riots.
Questions about Modi's relationship with Muslims were also raised by many Western nations during his tenure as chief minister. Modi was barred from entering the United States by the State Department, in accordance with the recommendations of the Commission on International Religious Freedom formed under the aegis of the International Religious Freedom Act, the only person denied a US visa under this law. The UK and the European Union refused to admit him because of what they saw as his role in the riots. As Modi rose to prominence in India, the UK and the EU lifted their bans in October 2012 and March 2013, respectively, and after his election he was invited to Washington as the nation's prime minister.
During the run-up to the 2007 Gujarat Legislative Assembly election and the 2009 Indian general election, the BJP intensified its rhetoric on terrorism. In July 2006, Modi criticised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh " for his reluctance to revive anti-terror legislation" such as the 2002 Prevention of Terrorism Act. He asked the national government to allow states to invoke tougher laws in the wake of the 2006 Mumbai train bombings. In 2007 Modi authored Karmayog, a 101-page booklet discussing manual scavenging. In it, Modi argued that scavenging was a "spiritual experience" for Valmiks, a sub-caste of Dalits. However, this book was not circulated that time because of the election code of conduct. After the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, Modi held a meeting to discuss the security of Gujarat's -long coastline, resulting in government authorisation of 30 high-speed surveillance boats. In July 2007 Modi completed 2,063 consecutive days as chief minister of Gujarat, making him the longest-serving holder of that post, and the BJP won 122 of 182 state-assembly seats in that year's election.
Development projects
As Chief Minister, Modi favoured privatisation and small government, which was at odds with the philosophy of the RSS, usually described as anti-privatisation and anti-globalisation. His policies during his second term have been credited with reducing corruption in the state. He established financial and technology parks in Gujarat and during the 2007 Vibrant Gujarat summit, real-estate investment deals worth were signed.
The governments led by Patel and Modi supported NGOs and communities in the creation of groundwater-conservation projects. By December 2008, 500,000 structures had been built, of which 113,738 were check dams, which helped recharge the aquifers beneath them. Sixty of the 112 tehsils which had depleted the water table in 2004 had regained their normal groundwater levels by 2010. As a result, the state's production of genetically modified cotton increased to become the largest in India. The boom in cotton production and its semi-arid land use led to Gujarat's agricultural sector growing at an average rate of 9.6 percent from 2001 to 2007. Public irrigation measures in central and southern Gujarat, such as the Sardar Sarovar Dam, were less successful. The Sardar Sarovar project only irrigated 4–6% of the area intended. Nonetheless, from 2001 to 2010 Gujarat recorded an agricultural growth rate of 10.97 percent – the highest of any state. However, sociologists have pointed out that the growth rate under the 1992–97 INC government was 12.9 percent. In 2008 Modi offered land in Gujarat to Tata Motors to set up a plant manufacturing the Nano after a popular agitation had forced the company to move out of West Bengal. Several other companies followed the Tata to Gujarat.
The Modi government finished the process of bringing electricity to every village in Gujarat that its predecessor had almost completed. Modi significantly changed the state's system of power distribution, greatly impacting farmers. Gujarat expanded the Jyotigram Yojana scheme, in which agricultural electricity was separated from other rural electricity; the agricultural electricity was rationed to fit scheduled irrigation demands, reducing its cost. Although early protests by farmers ended when those who benefited found that their electricity supply had stabilised, according to an assessment study corporations and large farmers benefited from the policy at the expense of small farmers and labourers.
Development debate
A contentious debate surrounds the assessment of Gujarat's economic development during Modi's tenure as chief minister. The state's GDP growth rate averaged 10% during Modi's tenure, a value similar to other highly industrialised states, and above that of the country as a whole. Gujarat also had a high rate of economic growth in the 1990s, before Modi took office, and some scholars have stated that growth did not much accelerate during Modi's tenure, although the state is considered to have maintained a high growth rate during Modi's Chief Ministership. Under Narendra Modi, Gujarat topped the World Bank's "ease of doing business" rankings among Indian states for two consecutive years. In 2013, Gujarat was ranked first among Indian states for "economic freedom" by a report measuring governance, growth, citizens' rights and labour and business regulation among the country's 20 largest states. In the later years of Modi's government, Gujarat's economic growth was frequently used as an argument to counter allegations of communalism. Tax breaks for businesses were easier to obtain in Gujarat than in other states, as was land. Modi's policies to make Gujarat attractive for investment included the creation of Special Economic Zones, where labour laws were greatly weakened.
Despite its growth rate, Gujarat had a relatively poor record on human development, poverty relief, nutrition and education during Modi's tenure. In 2013, Gujarat ranked 13th in the country with respect to rates of poverty and 21st in education. Nearly 45 percent of children under five were underweight and 23 percent were undernourished, putting the state in the "alarming" category on the India State Hunger Index. A study by UNICEF and the Indian government found that Gujarat under Modi had a poor record with respect to immunisation in children.
Over the decade from 2001 to 2011, Gujarat did not change its position relative to the rest of the country with respect to poverty and female literacy, remaining near the median of the 29 Indian states. It showed a marginal improvement in rates of infant mortality, and its position with respect to individual consumption declined. With respect to the quality of education in government schools, the state ranked below many Indian states. The social policies of the government generally did not benefit Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis, and generally increased social inequalities. Development in Gujarat was generally limited to the urban middle class, and citizens in rural areas or from lower castes were increasingly marginalised. In 2013 the state ranked 10th of 21 Indian states in the Human Development Index. Under Modi, the state government spent less than the national average on education and healthcare.
Final years
Despite the BJP's shift away from explicit Hindutva, Modi's election campaign in 2007 and 2012 contained elements of Hindu nationalism. Modi only attended Hindu religious ceremonies, and had prominent associations with Hindu religious leaders. During his 2012 campaign he twice refused to wear articles of clothing gifted by Muslim leaders. He did, however, maintain relations with Dawoodi Bohra. His campaign included references to issues known to cause religious polarisation, including to Afzal Guru and the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. The BJP did not nominate any Muslim candidates for the assembly election of 2012. During the 2012 campaign, Modi attempted to identify himself with the state of Gujarat, a strategy similar to that used by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, and projected himself as protecting Gujarat against persecution by the rest of India.
While campaigning for the 2012 assembly elections, Modi made extensive use of holograms and other technologies allowing him to reach a large number of people, something he would repeat in the 2014 general election. In the 2012 Gujarat Legislative Assembly elections, Modi won the constituency of Maninagar by 86,373 votes over Shweta Bhatt, the INC candidate and wife of Sanjiv Bhatt. The BJP won 115 of the 182 seats, continuing its majority during his tenure and allowing the party to form the government (as it had in Gujarat since 1995). After his election as prime minister, Modi resigned as the chief minister and as an MLA from Maninagar on 21 May 2014. Anandiben Patel succeeded him as the chief minister.
Premiership campaigns
2014 Indian general election
In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi.
During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development, although Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately , and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances.
The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism.
Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi by 371,784 votes and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat.
2019 Indian general election
On 13 October 2018, Modi was renamed as the BJP candidate for prime minister for the 2019 general election. The chief campaigner for the party was BJP's president Amit Shah. Modi launched the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign ahead of the general election, against Chowkidar Chor Hai campaign slogan of INC. In the year 2018, end Party's, second-biggest alliance Telugu Desam Party split from NDA over the matter of special-status for Andhra Pradesh.
The campaign was started by Amit Shah on 8 April 2019. In the campaign, Modi was targeted by the opposition on corruption allegations over Rafale deal with France government. Highlighting this controversy the campaign "Chowkidar Chor Hai" was started, which was contrary to "Main Bhi Chowkidar" slogan. Modi made defence and national security among the foremost topics for the election campaign, especially after Pulwama attack, and the retaliatory attack of Balakot airstrike was counted as an achievement of the Modi administration. Other topics in the campaign were development and good foreign relations in the first premiership.
Modi contested the Lok Sabha elections as a candidate from Varanasi. He won the seat by defeating Shalini Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, who fought on SP-BSP alliance by a margin of votes. Modi was unanimously appointed the prime minister for a second time by the National Democratic Alliance, after the alliance won the election for the second time by securing 353 seats in the Lok Sabha with the BJP alone won 303 seats.
Prime Minister
After the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won a landslide in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India on 26 May 2014. He became the first Prime Minister born after India's independence from the British Empire in 1947. Modi started his second term after the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won again in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. On 6 December 2020, Modi became the 4th longest serving Prime Minister of India and the longest serving Non-Congress Prime Minister.
Governance and other initiatives
Modi's first year as prime minister saw significant centralisation of power relative to previous administrations. His efforts at centralisation have been linked to an increase in the number of senior administration officials resigning their positions. Initially lacking a majority in the Rajya Sabha, or upper house of Indian Parliament, Modi passed a number of ordinances to enact his policies, leading to further centralisation of power. The government also passed a bill increasing the control that it had over the appointment of judges, and reducing that of the judiciary.
In December 2014 Modi abolished the Planning Commission, replacing it with the National Institution for Transforming India, or NITI Aayog. The move had the effect of greatly centralising the power previously with the planning commission in the person of the prime minister. The planning commission had received heavy criticism in previous years for creating inefficiency in the government, and of not filling its role of improving social welfare: however, since the economic liberalisation of the 1990s, it had been the major government body responsible for measures related to social justice.
The Modi government launched investigations by the Intelligence Bureau against numerous civil society organisations and foreign non-governmental organisations in the first year of the administration. The investigations, on the grounds that these organisations were slowing economic growth, was criticised as a witch-hunt. International humanitarian aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres was among the groups that were put under pressure. Other organisations affected included the Sierra Club and Avaaz. Cases of sedition were filed against individuals criticising the government. This led to discontent within the BJP regarding Modi's style of functioning and drew comparisons to the governing style of Indira Gandhi.
Modi repealed 1,200 obsolete laws in first three years as prime minister; a total of 1,301 such laws had been repealed by previous governments over a span of 64 years. He started a monthly radio programme titled "Mann Ki Baat" on 3 October 2014. Modi also launched the Digital India programme, with the goal of ensuring that government services are available electronically, building infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet access to rural areas, boosting manufacturing of electronic goods in the country, and promoting digital literacy.
Modi launched Ujjwala scheme to provide free LPG connection to rural households. The scheme led to an increase in LPG consumption by 56% in 2019 as compared to 2014. In 2019, a law was passed to provide 10% reservation to Economically weaker sections.
He was again sworn in as prime minister on 30 May 2019. On 30 July 2019, Parliament of India declared the practice of Triple Talaq as illegal, unconstitutional and made it punishable act from 1 August 2019 which is deemed to be in effect from 19 September 2018. On 5 August 2019, the government moved resolution to scrap Article 370 in the Rajya Sabha, and also reorganise the state with Jammu and Kashmir serving as one of the union territory and Ladakh region separated out as a separate union territory.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how he Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. Reporters Without Borders in 2021 characterised Modi as a predator for curbing press freedom in India since 2014.
Economic policy
The economic policies of Modi's government focused on privatisation and liberalisation of the economy, based on a neoliberal framework. Modi liberalised India's foreign direct investment policies, allowing more foreign investment in several industries, including in defence and the railways. Other proposed reforms included making it harder for workers to form unions and easier for employers to hire and fire them; some of these proposals were dropped after protests. The reforms drew strong opposition from unions: on 2 September 2015, eleven of the country's largest unions went on strike, including one affiliated with the BJP. The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, a constituent of the Sangh Parivar, stated that the underlying motivation of labour reforms favoured corporations over labourers.
The funds dedicated to poverty reduction programmes and social welfare measures were greatly decreased by the Modi administration. The money spent on social programmes declined from 14.6% of GDP during the Congress government to 12.6% during Modi's first year in office. Spending on health and family welfare declined by 15%, and on primary and secondary education by 16%. The budgetary allocation for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, or the "education for all" programme, declined by 22%. The government also lowered corporate taxes, abolished the wealth tax, increased sales taxes, and reduced customs duties on gold, and jewellery. In October 2014, the Modi government deregulated diesel prices.
In September 2014, Modi introduced the Make in India initiative to encourage foreign companies to manufacture products in India, with the goal of turning the country into a global manufacturing hub. Supporters of economic liberalisation supported the initiative, while critics argued it would allow foreign corporations to capture a greater share of the Indian market. Modi's administration passed a land-reform bill that allowed it to acquire private agricultural land without conducting a social impact assessment, and without the consent of the farmers who owned it. The bill was passed via an executive order after it faced opposition in parliament, but was eventually allowed to lapse. Modi's government put in place the Goods and Services Tax, the biggest tax reform in the country since independence. It subsumed around 17 different taxes and became effective from 1 July 2017.
In his first cabinet decision, Modi set up a team to investigate black money. On 9 November 2016, the government demonetised ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes, with the stated intention of curbing corruption, black money, the use of counterfeit currency, and terrorism. The move led to severe cash shortages, a steep decline in the Indian stock indices BSE SENSEX and NIFTY 50, and sparked widespread protests throughout the country. Several deaths were linked to the rush to exchange cash. In the subsequent year, the number of income tax returns filed for individuals rose by 25%, and the number of digital transactions increased steeply.
Over the first four years of Modi's premiership, India's GDP grew at an average rate of 7.23%, higher than the rate of 6.39% under the previous government. The level of income inequality increased, while an internal government report said that in 2017, unemployment had increased to its highest level in 45 years. The loss of jobs was attributed to the 2016 demonetisation, and to the effects of the Goods and Services Tax.
In the next year, after 2018, Indian economy started a gradual recovery with a GDP growth of 6.12% in 2018-19 FY, with an inflation rate of 3.4%. Same year, India was successful in making a good economy in trade and manufacturing sector. While in the FY of 2019–20, due to the general election, Modi government focused more on their election campaign. In the year 2019–20, the GDP growth rate was 4.18% and inflation rate also increased to 4.7% from 3.4% in the previous year. Though being high unemployment, increase in inflation rate and budget deficiency, Modi's leadership won in 2019 elections.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous rating agencies downgraded India's GDP predictions for FY21 to negative figures, signalling a recession in India, the most severe since 1979. According to a Dun & Bradstreet report, the country is likely to suffer a recession in the third quarter of FY2020 as a result of the over 2-month long nation-wide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. This was also accompanied by the mass migration of migrant workers.
Health and sanitation
In his first year as prime minister, Modi reduced the amount of money spent by the central government on healthcare. The Modi government launched New Health Policy (NHP) in January 2015. The policy did not increase the government's spending on healthcare, instead emphasising the role of private healthcare organisations. This represented a shift away from the policy of the previous Congress government, which had supported programmes to assist public health goals, including reducing child and maternal mortality rates. The National Health Mission, which included public health programmes targeted at these indices received nearly 20% less funds in 2015 than in the previous year. 15 national health programmes, including those aimed at controlling tobacco use and supporting healthcare for the elderly, were merged with the National Health Mission. In its budget for the second year after it took office, the Modi government reduced healthcare spending by 15%. The healthcare budget for the following year rose by 19%. The budget was viewed positively by private insurance providers. Public health experts criticised its emphasis on the role of private healthcare providers, and suggested that it represented a shift away from public health facilities. The healthcare budget rose by 11.5% in 2018; the change included an allocation of for a government-funded health insurance program, and a decrease in the budget of the National Health Mission. The government introduced stricter packaging laws for tobacco which requires 85% of the packet size to be covered by pictorial warnings. An article in the medical journal Lancet stated that the country "might have taken a few steps back in public health" under Modi. In 2018 Modi launched the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, a government health insurance scheme intended to insure 500 million people. 100,000 people had signed up by October 2018.
Modi emphasised his government's efforts at sanitation as a means of ensuring good health. On 2 October 2014, Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission ("Clean India") campaign. The stated goals of the campaign included eliminating open defecation and manual scavenging within five years. As part of the programme, the Indian government began constructing millions of toilets in rural areas and encouraging people to use them. The government also announced plans to build new sewage treatment plants. The administration plans to construct 60 million toilets by 2019. The construction projects have faced allegations of corruption, and have faced severe difficulty in getting people to use the toilets constructed for them. Sanitation cover in the country increased from 38.7% in October 2014 to 84.1% in May 2018; however, usage of the new sanitary facilities lagged behind the government's targets. In 2018, the World Health Organization stated that at least 180,000 diarrhoeal deaths were averted in rural India after the launch of the sanitation effort.
Hindutva
During the 2014 election campaign, the BJP sought to identify itself with political leaders known to have opposed Hindu nationalism, including B. R. Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Ram Manohar Lohia. The campaign also saw the use of rhetoric based on Hindutva by BJP leaders in certain states. Communal tensions were played upon especially in Uttar Pradesh and the states of Northeast India. A proposal for the controversial Uniform Civil Code was a part of the BJP's election manifesto.
The activities of a number of Hindu nationalist organisations increased in scope after Modi's election as Prime Minister, sometimes with the support of the government. These activities included a Hindu religious conversion programme, a campaign against the alleged Islamic practice of "Love Jihad", and attempts to celebrate Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, by members of the right wing Hindu Mahasabha. Officials in the government, including the Home Minister, defended the conversion programmes.
Links between the BJP and the RSS grew stronger under Modi. The RSS provided organisational support to the BJP's electoral campaigns, while the Modi administration appointed a number of individuals affiliated with the RSS to prominent government positions. In 2014, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, who had previously been associated with the RSS, became the chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). Historians and former members of the ICHR, including those sympathetic to the BJP, questioned his credentials as a historian, and stated that the appointment was part of an agenda of cultural nationalism.
The North East Delhi riots, which left more than 40 dead and hundreds injured, were triggered by protests against a citizenship law seen by many critics as anti-Muslim and part of Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda. On 5 August 2020, Modi visited Ayodhya after the Supreme Court in 2019 ordered a contested land in Ayodhya to be handed over to a trust to build the Hindu temple and ordered the government to give alternate 5 acre land to Sunni Waqf Board for the purpose of building a mosque. He became the first prime minister to visit Ram Janmabhoomi and Hanuman Garhi.
Foreign policy
Foreign policy played a relatively small role in Modi's election campaign, and did not feature prominently in the BJP's election manifesto. Modi invited all the other leaders of SAARC countries to his swearing in ceremony as prime minister. He was the first Indian prime minister to do so.
Modi's foreign policy, similarly to that of the preceding INC government, focused on improving economic ties, security, and regional relations. Modi continued Manmohan Singh's policy of "multi-alignment." The Modi administration tried to attract foreign investment in the Indian economy from several sources, especially in East Asia, with the use of slogans such as "Make in India" and "Digital India". The government also tried to improve relations with Islamic nations in the Middle East, such as Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as with Israel.
The foreign relations of India with the USA also mended after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. During the run-up to the general election there was wide-ranging scepticism regarding future of the strategic bilateral relation under Modi's premiership as in 2005 he was, while Chief Minister of Gujarat, denied a U.S. visa during the Bush administration for his poor human rights records. However sensing Modi's inevitable victory well before the election, the US Ambassador Nancy Powell had reached out to him as part of greater rapprochement from the west. Moreover, following his 2014 election as the Prime Minister of India President Obama congratulated him over the telephone and invited him to visit the US. Modi government has been successful in making good foreign relations with the USA in the presidency of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
During the first few months after the election, Modi made trips to a number of different countries to further the goals of his policy, and attended the BRICS, ASEAN, and G20 summits. One of Modi's first visits as prime minister was to Nepal, during which he promised a billion USD in aid. Modi also made several overtures to the United States, including multiple visits to that country. While this was described as an unexpected development, due to the US having previously denied Modi a travel visa over his role during the 2002 Gujarat riots, the visits were expected to strengthen diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries.
In 2015, the Indian parliament ratified a land exchange deal with Bangladesh about the India–Bangladesh enclaves, which had been initiated by the government of Manmohan Singh. Modi's administration gave renewed attention to India's "Look East Policy", instituted in 1991. The policy was renamed the "Act East Policy", and involved directing Indian foreign policy towards East Asia and Southeast Asia. The government signed agreements to improve land connectivity with Myanmar, through the state of Manipur. This represented a break with India's historic engagement with Myanmar, which prioritised border security over trade. China–India relations have deteriorated rapidly following the 2020 China–India skirmishes. Modi has pledged aid of $900 million to Afghanistan, visited the nation twice and been honoured with the nation's highest civilian honour in 2016.
Defence policy
India's nominal military spending increased steadily under Modi. The military budget declined over Modi's tenure both as a fraction of GDP and when adjusted for inflation. A substantial portion of the military budget was devoted to personnel costs, leading commentators to write that the budget was constraining Indian military modernisation.
The BJP election manifesto had also promised to deal with illegal immigration into India in the Northeast, as well as to be more firm in its handling of insurgent groups. The Modi government issued a notification allowing Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh to legalise their residency in India. The government described the measure as being taken for humanitarian reasons but it drew criticism from several Assamese organisations.The Modi administration negotiated a peace agreement with the largest faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCM), which was announced in August 2015. The Naga insurgency in northeast India had begun in the 1950s. The NSCM and the government had agreed to a ceasefire in 1997, but a peace accord had not previously been signed. In 2015 the government abrogated a 15-year ceasefire with the Khaplang faction of the NSCM (NSCM-K). The NSCM-K responded with a series of attacks, which killed 18 people. The Modi government carried out a raid across the border with Myanmar as a result, and labelled the NSCM-K a terrorist organisation.
Modi promised to be "tough on Pakistan" during his election campaign, and repeatedly stated that Pakistan was an exporter of terrorism. On 29 September 2016, the Indian Army stated that it had conducted a surgical strike on terror launch pads in Azad Kashmir. The Indian media claimed that up to 50 terrorists and Pakistani soldiers had been killed in the strike. Pakistan initially denied that any strikes had taken place. Subsequent reports suggested that Indian claim about the scope of the strike and the number of casualties had been exaggerated, although cross-border strikes had been carried out. In February 2019 India carried out airstrikes in Pakistan against a supposed terrorist camp. Further military skirmishes followed, including cross-border shelling and the loss of an Indian aircraft.
Following his victory in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he focused more on Defence policies of India, especially against China and Pakistan. On 5 May 2020, Chinese and Indian troops engaged in aggressive melee, face-offs and skirmishes at locations along the Sino-Indian border, including near the disputed Pangong Lake in Ladakh and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and near the border between Sikkim and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Additional clashes also took place at locations in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). After which there was start of skirmishes between the nations leading to many border clashes, responses and reactions from both sides. A series of talks were also held between the two by both military and diplomatic means for peace. The first border clash reported in 2021 was on 20 January, referred to as a minor border clash in Sikkim.
Environmental policy
In naming his cabinet, Modi renamed the "Ministry of Environment and Forests" the "Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change." In the first budget of the government, the money allotted to this ministry was reduced by more than 50%. The new ministry also removed or diluted a number of laws related to environmental protection. These included no longer requiring clearance from the National Board for Wildlife for projects close to protected areas, and allowing certain projects to proceed before environmental clearance was received. The government also tried to reconstitute the Wildlife board such that it no longer had representatives from non-governmental organisations: however, this move was prevented by the Supreme Court.
Modi also relaxed or abolished a number of other environmental regulations, particularly those related to industrial activity. A government committee stated that the existing system only served to create corruption, and that the government should instead rely on the owners of industries to voluntarily inform the government about the pollution they were creating. Other changes included reducing ministry oversight on small mining projects, and no longer requiring approval from tribal councils for projects inside forested areas. In addition, Modi lifted a moratorium on new industrial activity in the most polluted areas in the countries. The changes were welcomed by businesspeople, but criticised by environmentalists.
Under the UPA government that preceded Modi's administration, field trials of Genetically Modified (GM) crops had essentially been put on hold, after protests from farmers fearing for their livelihoods. Under the Modi government these restrictions were gradually lifted. The government received some criticism for freezing the bank accounts of environmental group Greenpeace, citing financial irregularities, although a leaked government report said that the freeze had to do with Greenpeace's opposition to GM crops. At the COP26 conference Modi announced that India would target carbon neutrality by 2070, and also expand its renewable energy capacity. Though the date of net zero is far behind that of China and the USA and India's government wants to continue with the use of coal, Indian environmentalists and economists applauded the decision, describing it as a bold climate action.
Democratic backsliding
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how the Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. There have been several reports of the Modi government to be as an authoritarian conservative government, even due to lack of good opposition.
Electoral history
Personal life and image
Personal life
In accordance with Ghanchi tradition, Modi's marriage was arranged by his parents when he was a child. He was engaged at age 13 to Jashodaben Modi, marrying her when he was 18. They spent little time together and grew apart when Modi began two years of travel, including visits to Hindu ashrams. Reportedly, their marriage was never consummated, and he kept it a secret because otherwise he could not have become a 'pracharak' in the puritan Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Modi kept his marriage secret for most of his career. He acknowledged his wife for the first time when he filed his nomination for the 2014 general elections. Modi maintains a close relationship with his centenarian mother, Hiraben.
A vegetarian and teetotaler, Modi has a frugal lifestyle and is a workaholic and introvert. A person named Badri Meena has been his cook since 2002. Modi's 31 August 2012 post on Google Hangouts made him the first Indian politician to interact with citizens on a live chat. Modi has also been called a fashion-icon for his signature crisply ironed, half-sleeved kurta, as well as for a suit with his name embroidered repeatedly in the pinstripes that he wore during a state visit by US President Barack Obama, which drew public and media attention and criticism. Modi's personality has been variously described by scholars and biographers as energetic, arrogant, and charismatic.
He had published a Gujarati book titled Jyotipunj in 2008, containing profiles of various RSS leaders. The longest was of M. S. Golwalkar, under whose leadership the RSS expanded and whom Modi refers to as Pujniya Shri Guruji ("Guru worthy of worship"). According to The Economic Times, his intention was to explain the workings of the RSS to his readers and to reassure RSS members that he remained ideologically aligned with them. Modi authored eight other books, mostly containing short stories for children.
The nomination of Modi for the prime ministership drew attention to his reputation as "one of contemporary India's most controversial and divisive politicians." During the 2014 election campaign the BJP projected an image of Modi as a strong, masculine leader, who would be able to take difficult decisions. Campaigns in which he has participated have focused on Modi as an individual, in a manner unusual for the BJP and RSS. Modi has relied upon his reputation as a politician able to bring about economic growth and "development". Nonetheless, his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots continues to attract criticism and controversy. Modi's hardline Hindutva philosophy and the policies adopted by his government continue to draw criticism, and have been seen as evidence of a majoritarian and exclusionary social agenda.
In March 2021, Modi received his first COVID-19 vaccine dose at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
Personal donations
Modi has made donations for various causes and programmes. One such instance was when Modi donated towards the initial corpus of the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) Fund. In his role as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi had donated from personal savings for educating daughters of state government officials. Modi had also raised by auctioning all the gifts he received as chief minister and donated this to the Kanya Kelavani Fund. The money was spent on the education of girl children, through the scheme.
Approval ratings
As a Prime Minister, Modi has received consistently high approval ratings; at the end of his first year in office, he received an overall approval rating of 87% in a Pew Research poll, with 68% of people rating him "very favorably" and 93% approving of his government. His approval rating remained largely consistent at around 74% through his second year in office, according to a nationwide poll conducted by instaVaani. At the end of his second year in office, an updated Pew Research poll showed Modi continued to receive high overall approval ratings of 81%, with 57% of those polled rating him "very favorably." At the end of his third year in office, a further Pew Research poll showed Modi with an overall approval rating of 88%, his highest yet, with 69% of people polled rating him "very favorably." A poll conducted by The Times of India in May 2017 showed 77% of the respondents rated Modi as "very good" and "good". In early 2017, a survey from Pew Research Center showed Modi to be the most popular figure in Indian politics. In a weekly analysis by Morning Consult called the Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker, Modi had the highest net approval rating as of 22 December 2020 of all government leaders in the 13 countries being tracked.
Awards and recognition
In March 2012 and June 2014, Modi appeared on the cover of the Asian edition of Time Magazine, one of the few Indian politicians to have done so. He was awarded Indian of the Year by CNN-News18 (formally CNN-IBN) news network in 2014. In June 2015, Modi was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020 and 2021, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Forbes Magazine ranked him the 15th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2014 and the 9th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2015, 2016 and 2018. In 2015, Modi was ranked the 13th Most Influential Person in the World by Bloomberg Markets Magazine. Modi was ranked fifth on Fortune Magazines first annual list of the "World's Greatest Leaders" in 2015. In 2017, Gallup International Association (GIA) conducted a poll and ranked Modi as third top leader of the world. In 2016, a wax statue of Modi was unveiled at Madame Tussauds wax museum in London.
In 2015 he was named one of Times "30 Most Influential People on the Internet" as the second-most-followed politician on Twitter and Facebook. In 2018, he was the third most followed world leader on Twitter, and the most followed world leader on Facebook and Instagram. In October 2018, Modi received United Nations's highest environmental award, the 'Champions of the Earth', for policy leadership by "pioneering work in championing" the International Solar Alliance and "new areas of levels of cooperation on environmental action". He was conferred the 2018 Seoul Peace Prize in recognition of "his dedication to improving international co-operation, raising global economic growth, accelerating the Human Development of the people of India by fostering economic growth and furthering the development of democracy through anti-corruption and social integration efforts". He is the first Indian to win the award.
Following his second swearing-in ceremony as Prime Minister of India, a picture of Modi was displayed on the facade of the ADNOC building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Texas India Forum hosted a community event in honour of Modi on 22 September 2019 at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. The event was attended by over 50,000 people and several American politicians including President Donald Trump, making it the largest gathering for an invited foreign leader visiting the United States other than the Pope. At the same event, Modi was presented with the Key to the City of Houston by Mayor Sylvester Turner. He was awarded the Global Goalkeeper Award on 24 September 2019 in New York City by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in recognition for the Swachh Bharat Mission and "the progress India has made in providing safe sanitation under his leadership".
In 2020, Modi was among eight world leaders awarded the parodic Ig Nobel Prize in Medical Education "for using the COVID-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can". On 21 December 2020, President Donald Trump awarded Modi with the Legion of Merit for elevating the India–United States relations. The Legion of Merit was awarded to Modi along with Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison and former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, the "original architects" of the QUAD.
On 24 February 2021, the largest cricket stadium in the world at Ahmedabad was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by the Gujarat Cricket Association.
Modi is featured in TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2021 list, making it his fifth time after 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2020. TIME called him the third "pivotal leader" of independent India after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi who "dominated the country’s politics like no one since them".
State honours
Other honours
In popular culture
Modi Kaka Ka Gaon, a 2017 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Tushar Amrish Goel is the first biopic on Modi, starring Vikas Mahante in the titular role it was made halfway into his first-term as the prime minister which is shown in the film. PM Narendra Modi, a 2019 Indian Hindi-language biographical drama film by Omung Kumar, starred Vivek Oberoi in the titular role and covers his rise to prime ministership.An Indian web series, Modi: Journey of a Common Man, based on the same premise released in May 2019 on Eros Now with Ashish Sharma portraying Modi. Hu Narender Modi Banva Mangu Chu is a 2018 Indian Gujarati-language drama film by Anil Naryani about the aspirations of a young boy who wants to become like Narendra Modi.
7 RCR (7, Race Course Road), a 2014 Indian docudrama political television series which charts the political careers of prominent Indian politicians, covered Modi's rise to the PM's office in the episodes - "Story of Narendra Modi from 1950 to 2001", "Story of Narendra Modi in Controversial Years from 2001 to 2013", "Truth Behind Brand Modi", "Election Journey of Narendra Modi to 7 RCR", and "Masterplan of Narendra Modi's NDA Govt."; with Sangam Rai in the role of Modi.
Other portrayals of Modi include by Rajit Kapur in the film Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) and Vikram Gokhale in the web-television series Avrodh: The Siege Within (2020) both based on the 2016 Uri attack and the following Indian surgical strikes. Pratap Singh played a character based on Modi in Chand Bujh Gaya (2005) which is set in the backdrop of the Gujarat riots.
Premiered on 12 August 2019, Modi appeared in an episode - "Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls and Prime Minister Modi" - of Discovery Channel's show Man vs Wild with the host Bear Grylls, becoming the second world leader after Barack Obama to appear in the reality show. In the show he trekked the jungles and talked about nature and wildlife conservation with Grylls. The episode was shot in Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand and was broadcast in 180 countries along India. He has also appeared twice on the Indian television talk show Aap Ki Adalat before the 2009 and 2014 elections respectively.
Along with hosting the Mann Ki Baat monthly radio programme, on All India Radio, he has also conducted Pariksha Pe Charcha - a competition/discussion for students and the issues they face in examinations.
Bibliography
See also
List of prime ministers of India
Opinion polling on the Narendra Modi premiership
References
Notes
Citations
Further reading
External links
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1950 births
Living people
Gujarati people
People from Gujarat
People from Mehsana district
Indian Hindus
Prime Ministers of India
Leaders of the Lok Sabha
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17th Lok Sabha members
Members of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly
Delhi University alumni
Gujarat University alumni
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Recipients of the Legion of Merit
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Right-wing politics in India
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Right-wing populism in India
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Lok Sabha members from Gujarat
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National Democratic Alliance candidates in the 2019 Indian general election
Writers from Gujarat
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Narendra Modi ministry
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Time 100 | true | [
"is a term used in sumo wrestling. In general, the first sumo wrestler to touch any body part outside the ring, or have any part of his body other than the soles of his feet touch the ground loses. There are exceptions to the rule, shini-tai being one of them.\n\nLiterally meaning 'dead body' or 'dying body,' the term is used to describe a wrestler who was not first to fall or touch outside the ring, but who had no chance of winning owing to the superior technique of his opponent (and his falling position). Whilst a relatively rare event, it is most often seen after close bouts in which one wrestler clearly had the advantage towards the end.\n\nFor example, consider the case where one wrestler overpowered his opponent forcing him to the ground with himself on top. If the overpowering wrestler put his hand down to protect against injury (so-called kabai-te) before the wrestler underneath hit the ground, then the wrestler who was on top will still be judged the winner. This was seen in January 1972 when Kitanofuji was declared the winner over Takanohana despite putting his hand down first. Another example is where a strong wrestler pushes his opponent out of the ring with sufficient force that his opponent is still in the air at the time the winning rikishi steps outside because of his momentum. Alternatively, the wrestler who is on the offensive may lift his opponent and carry him out of the ring by tsuri-dashi, and will still be declared the winner even if he puts his foot out first, as long as his opponent's feet are both in the air and he is moving forward.\n\nThe gyōji makes a decision as to the winner, which the judges, or any of the waiting wrestlers around the ring, are entitled to challenge. (It is very rare for a wrestler to intervene.) If there is a challenge the five judges step into the dohyō and have a mono-ii (talk about things) to discuss the match and the result.\n\nTheir options are to declare either a winner or a torinaoshi (replay). If declaring a winner, they can decide who fell out of the ring or touched the ground first, that one wrestler was a shinitai and therefore his opponent won, or declare one wrestler disqualified owing to use of an illegal technique.\n\nTheir explanation is usually that the winning wrestler used a specific technique to overpower his opponent and was in clear control of the match. They grant him the victory regardless of whether or not he touched the ground first.\n\nBy extension, this term is also a Japanese equivalent of the English idiom \"lame duck\".\n\nReferences\n\nSumo terminology",
"USS Opponent (AM-269) was an Admirable-class minesweeper built for the U.S. Navy during World War II. She was built to clear minefields in offshore waters, and served the Navy in the Atlantic Ocean and then was transferred to the North Pacific Ocean before war’s end.\n\nOpponent was laid down 21 September 1942 by the Gulf Shipbuilding Co., Chickasaw, Alabama, launched 12 June 1943; sponsored by Mrs. H. Key, Jr.; and, commissioned 18 February 1944, Lt. J. D. Seay, Jr., USNR, in command.\n\nWorld War II Atlantic operations \nAfter shakedown along the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf Opponent departed Norfolk, Virginia, 12 April for Casco Bay, Maine. There she conducted antisubmarine exercises until she sailed for New York escorting , arriving Norfolk 29 April. Early the next month, Opponent's commanding officer was ordered to assume command of Mine Squadron 33 as well as to retain command of his ship. For the next year, the little minesweeper alternated between patrol work, type training and weather ship duties.\n\nTransfer to the Pacific Fleet \nOn 16 March 1945 she sailed for the Pacific. Arriving San Diego, California, on 5 April, Opponent was assigned to Mine Division 44. She departed San Diego three days later and arrived Pearl Harbor on the 13th. For the remainder of the war, Opponent escorted convoys between Southeast Asia and Pearl Harbor. She continued this service until early 1946, when she sailed to Orange, Texas.\n\nPost-war decommissioning \nOpponent was decommissioned on 27 August 1946. She was reclassified MSF-269 on 7 February 1955. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 April 1960 and was sold to Ships & Power Inc., Miami, Florida, on 3 February 1961.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\nAdmirable-class minesweepers\nShips built in Chickasaw, Alabama\n1943 ships\nWorld War II minesweepers of the United States"
] |
[
"Narendra Modi",
"2014 Indian general election",
"in what month was the election?",
"the 2014 Lok Sabha election.",
"what position did he run for in the election?",
"prime minister",
"what political party was he in?",
"the BJP's candidate",
"did he win the election?",
"Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment",
"how many votes did he get?",
"by 570,128 votes.",
"who was his opponent?",
"defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi"
] | C_b6a0c764bf0c443b9768973ff08ca8fb_0 | for how long was he prime minister? | 7 | For how long was Narendra Modi prime minister? | Narendra Modi | In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi. During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development. Although the BJP avoided issues of Hindu nationalism to an extent, Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately Rs50 billion (US$770 million), and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances. The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism. Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by 570,128 votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat. CANNOTANSWER | To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat. | Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from Varanasi. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organisation. He is the first prime minister to have been born after India's independence in 1947 and the second prime minister not belonging to the Indian National Congress to have won two consecutive majorities in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Indian of parliament.
Born and raised in Vadnagar, a small town in northeastern Gujarat, Modi completed his secondary education there. He was introduced to the RSS at age eight. He has drawn attention to having to work as a child in his father's tea stall on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that has not been reliably corroborated. At age 18, Modi was married to Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, whom he abandoned soon after. He left his parental home where she had come to live. He first publicly acknowledged her as his wife more than four decades later when required to do so by Indian law, but has made no contact with her since. Modi has asserted he had travelled in northern India for two years after leaving his parental home, visiting a number of religious centres, but few details of his travels have emerged. Upon his return to Gujarat in 1971, he became a full-time worker for the RSS. After the state of emergency declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, Modi went into hiding. The RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985 and he held several positions within the party hierarchy until 2001, rising to the rank of general secretary.
Modi was appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001 due to Keshubhai Patel's failing health and poor public image following the earthquake in Bhuj. Modi was elected to the legislative assembly soon after. His administration has been considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots in which 1044 people were killed, three-quarters of whom were Muslim, or otherwise criticised for its management of the crisis. The Supreme Court remarked that Narendra Modi was like a Modern-day Nero, looking the other way as innocent women and children were burning. A Supreme Court of India-appointed Special Investigation Team found no evidence to initiate prosecution proceedings against Modi personally. While his policies as chief minister—credited with encouraging economic growth—have received praise, his administration has been criticised for failing to significantly improve health, poverty and education indices in the state.
Modi led the BJP in the 2014 general election which gave the party a majority in the Indian lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, the first time for any single party since 1984. Modi's administration has tried to raise foreign direct investment in the Indian economy and reduced spending on healthcare and social welfare programmes. Modi has attempted to improve efficiency in the bureaucracy; he has centralised power by abolishing the Planning Commission. He began a high-profile sanitation campaign, controversially initiated a demonetisation of high-denomination banknotes and transformation of taxation regime, and weakened or abolished environmental and labour laws.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. Following his party's victory in the 2019 general election, his administration revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and also introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act, which resulted in widespread protests across the country. Described as engineering a political realignment towards right-wing politics, Modi remains a figure of controversy domestically and internationally over his Hindu nationalist beliefs and his handling of the 2002 Gujarat riots, cited as evidence of an exclusionary social agenda.
Early life and education
Narendra Damodardas Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a Gujarati Hindu family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district, Bombay State (present-day Gujarat). He was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi () and Hiraben Modi (born ). Modi's family belonged to the Modh-Ghanchi-Teli (oil-presser) community, which is categorised as an Other Backward Class by the Indian government.
Modi had only infrequently spoken of his family background during his 13 years as chief minister of Gujarat. In the run up to the 2014 national elections, he began to regularly draw attention to his low-ranking social origins and to having to work as a child in his father's tea shop on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that the evidence of neighbours does not entirely corroborate. Modi completed his higher secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where teachers described him as an average student and a keen gifted debater, with interest in theatre. Modi preferred playing larger-than-life characters in theatrical productions, which has influenced his political image.
When eight years old, Modi was introduced to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and began attending its local shakhas (training sessions). There, Modi met Lakshmanrao Inamdar, popularly known as Vakil Saheb, who inducted him as a balswayamsevak (junior cadet) in the RSS and became his political mentor. While Modi was training with the RSS, he also met Vasant Gajendragadkar and Nathalal Jaghda, Bharatiya Jana Sangh leaders who were founding members of the BJP's Gujarat unit in 1980.
In a custom traditional to Narendra Modi's caste, his family arranged a betrothal to a girl, Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, leading to their marriage when she was 17 and he was 18. Soon afterwards, he abandoned his bride, and left home, never divorcing her, but the marriage remaining unmentioned in Modi's public pronouncements for many decades. In April 2014, shortly before the national elections that swept him to power, Modi publicly affirmed that he was married and his spouse was Jashodaben; the couple has remained married, but estranged.
Modi spent the ensuing two years travelling across Northern and North-eastern India, though few details of where he went have emerged. In interviews, Modi has described visiting Hindu ashrams founded by Swami Vivekananda: the Belur Math near Kolkata, followed by the Advaita Ashrama in Almora and the Ramakrishna Mission in Rajkot. Modi remained only a short time at each, since he lacked the required college education. Vivekananda has been described as a large influence in Modi's life.
In the early summer of 1968, Modi reached the Belur Math but was turned away, after which Modi wandered through Calcutta, West Bengal and Assam, stopping in Siliguri and Guwahati. Modi then went to the Ramakrishna Ashram in Almora, where he was again rejected, before travelling back to Gujarat via Delhi and Rajasthan in 1968–69. Sometime in late 1969 or early 1970, Modi returned to Vadnagar for a brief visit before leaving again for Ahmedabad. There, Modi lived with his uncle, working in the latter's canteen at the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation.
In Ahmedabad, Modi renewed his acquaintance with Inamdar, who was based at the Hedgewar Bhavan (RSS headquarters) in the city. Modi's first known political activity as an adult was in 1971 when he, as per his remarks, joined a Jana Sangh Satyagraha in Delhi led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee to enlist for the battlefield during the Bangladesh Liberation War. But the Indira Gandhi-led central government disallowed open support for the Mukti Bahini and Modi, according to his own claim, was put in Tihar Jail for a short period. After the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he stopped working for his uncle and became a full-time pracharak (campaigner) for the RSS, working under Inamdar. Shortly before the war, Modi took part in a non-violent protest against the Indian government in New Delhi, for which he was arrested (as per his claim); this has been cited as a reason for Inamdar electing to mentor him. Many years later Modi would co-author a biography of Inamdar, published in 2001. Modi's claim that he was part of a Satyagraha led to a political war. Applications were filed with the PMO under the RTI Act seeking details of his arrest. In reply, the PMO claimed that it maintains official records on Modi only since he took charge as the Prime Minister of India in 2014. Despite this claim, the official website of the PMO contains specific information about Modi which dates back to the 1950s.
In 1978 Modi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the School of Open Learning (SOL) at the University of Delhi, graduating with a third class. Five years later, in 1983, he received a Master of Arts degree in political science from Gujarat University, graduating with a first class as an external distance learning student. But there is a big controversy surrounding his educational qualification. Replying to an RTI query, the SOL said it did not have any data of students who received a BA degree in 1978. Jayantibhai Patel, a former political science professor of Gujarat University, claimed that the subjects listed in Modi's MA degree were not offered by the university when Modi was studying there.
Early political career
In June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India which lasted until 1977. During this period, known as "The Emergency", many of her political opponents were jailed and opposition groups were banned. Modi was appointed general secretary of the "Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti", an RSS committee co-ordinating opposition to the Emergency in Gujarat. Shortly afterwards, the RSS was banned. Modi was forced to go underground in Gujarat and frequently travelled in disguise to avoid arrest. He became involved in printing pamphlets opposing the government, sending them to Delhi and organising demonstrations. Modi was also involved with creating a network of safe houses for individuals wanted by the government, and in raising funds for political refugees and activists. During this period, Modi wrote a book in Gujarati, Sangharsh Ma Gujarat (In The Struggles of Gujarat), describing events during the Emergency. Among the people he met in this role was trade unionist and socialist activist George Fernandes, as well as several other national political figures. In his travels during the Emergency, Modi was often forced to move in disguise, once dressing as a monk, and once as a Sikh.
Modi became an RSS sambhag pracharak (regional organiser) in 1978, overseeing RSS activities in the areas of Surat and Vadodara, and in 1979 he went to work for the RSS in Delhi, where he was put to work researching and writing the RSS's version of the history of the Emergency. He returned to Gujarat a short while later, and was assigned by the RSS to the BJP in 1985. In 1987 Modi helped organise the BJP's campaign in the Ahmedabad municipal election, which the BJP won comfortably; Modi's planning has been described as the reason for that result by biographers. After L. K. Advani became president of the BJP in 1986, the RSS decided to place its members in important positions within the BJP; Modi's work during the Ahmedabad election led to his selection for this role, and Modi was elected organising secretary of the BJP's Gujarat unit later in 1987.
Modi rose within the party and was named a member of the BJP's National Election Committee in 1990, helping organise L. K. Advani's 1990 Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 and Murli Manohar Joshi's 1991–92 Ekta Yatra (Journey for Unity). However, he took a brief break from politics in 1992, instead establishing a school in Ahmedabad; friction with Shankersinh Vaghela, a BJP MP from Gujarat at the time, also played a part in this decision. Modi returned to electoral politics in 1994, partly at the insistence of Advani, and as party secretary, Modi's electoral strategy was considered central to the BJP victory in the 1995 state assembly elections. In November of that year Modi was appointed BJP national secretary and transferred to New Delhi, where he assumed responsibility for party activities in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The following year, Shankersinh Vaghela, a prominent BJP leader from Gujarat, defected to the Indian National Congress (Congress, INC) after losing his parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha elections. Modi, on the selection committee for the 1998 Assembly elections in Gujarat, favoured supporters of BJP leader Keshubhai Patel over those supporting Vaghela to end factional division in the party. His strategy was credited as key to the BJP winning an overall majority in the 1998 elections, and Modi was promoted to BJP general secretary (organisation) in May of that year.
Chief Minister of Gujarat
Taking office
In 2001, Keshubhai Patel's health was failing and the BJP lost a few state assembly seats in by-elections. Allegations of abuse of power, corruption and poor administration were made, and Patel's standing had been damaged by his administration's handling of the earthquake in Bhuj in 2001. The BJP national leadership sought a new candidate for the chief ministership, and Modi, who had expressed misgivings about Patel's administration, was chosen as a replacement. Although BJP leader L. K. Advani did not want to ostracise Patel and was concerned about Modi's lack of experience in government, Modi declined an offer to be Patel's deputy chief minister, telling Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee that he was "going to be fully responsible for Gujarat or not at all". On 3 October 2001 he replaced Patel as Chief Minister of Gujarat, with the responsibility of preparing the BJP for the December 2002 elections. Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister on 7 October 2001, and entered the Gujarat state legislature on 24 February 2002 by winning a by-election to the Rajkot – II constituency, defeating Ashwin Mehta of the INC by 14,728 votes.
2002 Gujarat riots
On 27 February 2002, a train with several hundred passengers burned near Godhra, killing approximately 60 people. The train carried a large number of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya after a religious ceremony at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid. In making a public statement after the incident, Modi declared it a terrorist attack planned and orchestrated by local Muslims. The next day, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for a bandh across the state. Riots began during the bandh, and anti-Muslim violence spread through Gujarat. The government's decision to move the bodies of the train victims from Godhra to Ahmedabad further inflamed the violence. The state government stated later that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed. Independent sources put the death toll at over 2000, the vast majority Muslims Approximately 150,000 people were driven to refugee camps. Numerous women and children were among the victims; the violence included mass rapes and mutilations of women.
The government of Gujarat itself is generally considered by scholars to have been complicit in the riots, (with some blaming chief minister Modi explicitly) and has otherwise received heavy criticism for its handling of the situation. Several scholars have described the violence as a pogrom, while others have called it an example of state terrorism. Summarising academic views on the subject, Martha Nussbaum said: "There is by now a broad consensus that the Gujarat violence was a form of ethnic cleansing, that in many ways it was premeditated, and that it was carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law." The Modi government imposed a curfew in 26 major cities, issued shoot-at-sight orders and called for the army to patrol the streets, but was unable to prevent the violence from escalating. The president of the state unit of the BJP expressed support for the bandh, despite such actions being illegal at the time. State officials later prevented riot victims from leaving the refugee camps, and the camps were often unable to meet the needs of those living there. Muslim victims of the riots were subject to further discrimination when the state government announced that compensation for Muslim victims would be half of that offered to Hindus, although this decision was later reversed after the issue was taken to court. During the riots, police officers often did not intervene in situations where they were able.
Modi's personal involvement in the 2002 events has continued to be debated. During the riots, Modi said that "What is happening is a chain of action and reaction." Later in 2002, Modi said the way in which he had handled the media was his only regret regarding the episode. In March 2008, the Supreme Court reopened several cases related to the 2002 riots, including that of the Gulbarg Society massacre, and established a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the issue. In response to a petition from Zakia Jafri (widow of Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre), in April 2009 the court also asked the SIT to investigate the issue of Modi's complicity in the killings. The SIT questioned Modi in March 2010; in May, it presented to the court a report finding no evidence against him. In July 2011, the court-appointed amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran submitted his final report to the court. Contrary to the SIT's position, he said that Modi could be prosecuted based on the available evidence. The Supreme Court gave the matter to the magistrate's court. The SIT examined Ramachandran's report, and in March 2012 submitted its final report, asking for the case to be closed. Zakia Jafri filed a protest petition in response. In December 2013 the magistrate's court rejected the protest petition, accepting the SIT's finding that there was no evidence against the chief minister.
2002 election
In the aftermath of the violence there were widespread calls for Modi to resign as chief minister from within and outside the state, including from leaders of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Telugu Desam Party (allies in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition), and opposition parties stalled Parliament over the issue. Modi submitted his resignation at the April 2002 BJP national executive meeting in Goa, but it was not accepted. His cabinet had an emergency meeting on 19 July 2002, after which it offered its resignation to the Gujarat Governor S. S. Bhandari, and the state assembly was dissolved. Despite opposition from the election commissioner, who said that a number of voters were still displaced, Modi succeeded in advancing the election to December 2002. In the elections, the BJP won 127 seats in the 182-member assembly. Although Modi later denied it, he made significant use of anti-Muslim rhetoric during his campaign, and the BJP profited from religious polarisation among the voters. He won the Maninagar constituency, receiving of votes and defeating INC candidate Yatin Oza by 75,333 votes. On 22 December 2002, Bhandari swore Modi in for a second term. Modi framed the criticism of his government for human rights violations as an attack upon Gujarati pride, a strategy which led to the BJP winning two-thirds of the seats in the state assembly.
Second term
During Modi's second term the rhetoric of the government shifted from Hindutva to Gujarat's economic development. Modi curtailed the influence of Sangh Parivar organisations such as the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), entrenched in the state after the decline of Ahmedabad's textile industry, and dropped Gordhan Zadafia (an ally of former Sangh co-worker and VHP state chief Praveen Togadia) from his cabinet. When the BKS staged a farmers' demonstration Modi ordered their eviction from state-provided houses, and his decision to demolish 200 illegal temples in Gandhinagar deepened the rift with the Vishva Hindu Parishad. Sangh organisations were no longer consulted or informed in advance about Modi's administrative decisions. Nonetheless, Modi retained connections with some Hindu nationalists. Modi wrote a foreword to a textbook by Dinanath Batra released in 2014, which stated that ancient India possessed technologies including test-tube babies.
Modi's relationship with Muslims continued to attract criticism. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who asked Modi for tolerance in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat violence and supported his resignation as chief minister) distanced himself, reaching out to North Indian Muslims before the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. After the elections Vajpayee called the violence in Gujarat a reason for the BJP's electoral defeat and said it had been a mistake to leave Modi in office after the riots.
Questions about Modi's relationship with Muslims were also raised by many Western nations during his tenure as chief minister. Modi was barred from entering the United States by the State Department, in accordance with the recommendations of the Commission on International Religious Freedom formed under the aegis of the International Religious Freedom Act, the only person denied a US visa under this law. The UK and the European Union refused to admit him because of what they saw as his role in the riots. As Modi rose to prominence in India, the UK and the EU lifted their bans in October 2012 and March 2013, respectively, and after his election he was invited to Washington as the nation's prime minister.
During the run-up to the 2007 Gujarat Legislative Assembly election and the 2009 Indian general election, the BJP intensified its rhetoric on terrorism. In July 2006, Modi criticised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh " for his reluctance to revive anti-terror legislation" such as the 2002 Prevention of Terrorism Act. He asked the national government to allow states to invoke tougher laws in the wake of the 2006 Mumbai train bombings. In 2007 Modi authored Karmayog, a 101-page booklet discussing manual scavenging. In it, Modi argued that scavenging was a "spiritual experience" for Valmiks, a sub-caste of Dalits. However, this book was not circulated that time because of the election code of conduct. After the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, Modi held a meeting to discuss the security of Gujarat's -long coastline, resulting in government authorisation of 30 high-speed surveillance boats. In July 2007 Modi completed 2,063 consecutive days as chief minister of Gujarat, making him the longest-serving holder of that post, and the BJP won 122 of 182 state-assembly seats in that year's election.
Development projects
As Chief Minister, Modi favoured privatisation and small government, which was at odds with the philosophy of the RSS, usually described as anti-privatisation and anti-globalisation. His policies during his second term have been credited with reducing corruption in the state. He established financial and technology parks in Gujarat and during the 2007 Vibrant Gujarat summit, real-estate investment deals worth were signed.
The governments led by Patel and Modi supported NGOs and communities in the creation of groundwater-conservation projects. By December 2008, 500,000 structures had been built, of which 113,738 were check dams, which helped recharge the aquifers beneath them. Sixty of the 112 tehsils which had depleted the water table in 2004 had regained their normal groundwater levels by 2010. As a result, the state's production of genetically modified cotton increased to become the largest in India. The boom in cotton production and its semi-arid land use led to Gujarat's agricultural sector growing at an average rate of 9.6 percent from 2001 to 2007. Public irrigation measures in central and southern Gujarat, such as the Sardar Sarovar Dam, were less successful. The Sardar Sarovar project only irrigated 4–6% of the area intended. Nonetheless, from 2001 to 2010 Gujarat recorded an agricultural growth rate of 10.97 percent – the highest of any state. However, sociologists have pointed out that the growth rate under the 1992–97 INC government was 12.9 percent. In 2008 Modi offered land in Gujarat to Tata Motors to set up a plant manufacturing the Nano after a popular agitation had forced the company to move out of West Bengal. Several other companies followed the Tata to Gujarat.
The Modi government finished the process of bringing electricity to every village in Gujarat that its predecessor had almost completed. Modi significantly changed the state's system of power distribution, greatly impacting farmers. Gujarat expanded the Jyotigram Yojana scheme, in which agricultural electricity was separated from other rural electricity; the agricultural electricity was rationed to fit scheduled irrigation demands, reducing its cost. Although early protests by farmers ended when those who benefited found that their electricity supply had stabilised, according to an assessment study corporations and large farmers benefited from the policy at the expense of small farmers and labourers.
Development debate
A contentious debate surrounds the assessment of Gujarat's economic development during Modi's tenure as chief minister. The state's GDP growth rate averaged 10% during Modi's tenure, a value similar to other highly industrialised states, and above that of the country as a whole. Gujarat also had a high rate of economic growth in the 1990s, before Modi took office, and some scholars have stated that growth did not much accelerate during Modi's tenure, although the state is considered to have maintained a high growth rate during Modi's Chief Ministership. Under Narendra Modi, Gujarat topped the World Bank's "ease of doing business" rankings among Indian states for two consecutive years. In 2013, Gujarat was ranked first among Indian states for "economic freedom" by a report measuring governance, growth, citizens' rights and labour and business regulation among the country's 20 largest states. In the later years of Modi's government, Gujarat's economic growth was frequently used as an argument to counter allegations of communalism. Tax breaks for businesses were easier to obtain in Gujarat than in other states, as was land. Modi's policies to make Gujarat attractive for investment included the creation of Special Economic Zones, where labour laws were greatly weakened.
Despite its growth rate, Gujarat had a relatively poor record on human development, poverty relief, nutrition and education during Modi's tenure. In 2013, Gujarat ranked 13th in the country with respect to rates of poverty and 21st in education. Nearly 45 percent of children under five were underweight and 23 percent were undernourished, putting the state in the "alarming" category on the India State Hunger Index. A study by UNICEF and the Indian government found that Gujarat under Modi had a poor record with respect to immunisation in children.
Over the decade from 2001 to 2011, Gujarat did not change its position relative to the rest of the country with respect to poverty and female literacy, remaining near the median of the 29 Indian states. It showed a marginal improvement in rates of infant mortality, and its position with respect to individual consumption declined. With respect to the quality of education in government schools, the state ranked below many Indian states. The social policies of the government generally did not benefit Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis, and generally increased social inequalities. Development in Gujarat was generally limited to the urban middle class, and citizens in rural areas or from lower castes were increasingly marginalised. In 2013 the state ranked 10th of 21 Indian states in the Human Development Index. Under Modi, the state government spent less than the national average on education and healthcare.
Final years
Despite the BJP's shift away from explicit Hindutva, Modi's election campaign in 2007 and 2012 contained elements of Hindu nationalism. Modi only attended Hindu religious ceremonies, and had prominent associations with Hindu religious leaders. During his 2012 campaign he twice refused to wear articles of clothing gifted by Muslim leaders. He did, however, maintain relations with Dawoodi Bohra. His campaign included references to issues known to cause religious polarisation, including to Afzal Guru and the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. The BJP did not nominate any Muslim candidates for the assembly election of 2012. During the 2012 campaign, Modi attempted to identify himself with the state of Gujarat, a strategy similar to that used by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, and projected himself as protecting Gujarat against persecution by the rest of India.
While campaigning for the 2012 assembly elections, Modi made extensive use of holograms and other technologies allowing him to reach a large number of people, something he would repeat in the 2014 general election. In the 2012 Gujarat Legislative Assembly elections, Modi won the constituency of Maninagar by 86,373 votes over Shweta Bhatt, the INC candidate and wife of Sanjiv Bhatt. The BJP won 115 of the 182 seats, continuing its majority during his tenure and allowing the party to form the government (as it had in Gujarat since 1995). After his election as prime minister, Modi resigned as the chief minister and as an MLA from Maninagar on 21 May 2014. Anandiben Patel succeeded him as the chief minister.
Premiership campaigns
2014 Indian general election
In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi.
During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development, although Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately , and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances.
The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism.
Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi by 371,784 votes and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat.
2019 Indian general election
On 13 October 2018, Modi was renamed as the BJP candidate for prime minister for the 2019 general election. The chief campaigner for the party was BJP's president Amit Shah. Modi launched the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign ahead of the general election, against Chowkidar Chor Hai campaign slogan of INC. In the year 2018, end Party's, second-biggest alliance Telugu Desam Party split from NDA over the matter of special-status for Andhra Pradesh.
The campaign was started by Amit Shah on 8 April 2019. In the campaign, Modi was targeted by the opposition on corruption allegations over Rafale deal with France government. Highlighting this controversy the campaign "Chowkidar Chor Hai" was started, which was contrary to "Main Bhi Chowkidar" slogan. Modi made defence and national security among the foremost topics for the election campaign, especially after Pulwama attack, and the retaliatory attack of Balakot airstrike was counted as an achievement of the Modi administration. Other topics in the campaign were development and good foreign relations in the first premiership.
Modi contested the Lok Sabha elections as a candidate from Varanasi. He won the seat by defeating Shalini Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, who fought on SP-BSP alliance by a margin of votes. Modi was unanimously appointed the prime minister for a second time by the National Democratic Alliance, after the alliance won the election for the second time by securing 353 seats in the Lok Sabha with the BJP alone won 303 seats.
Prime Minister
After the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won a landslide in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India on 26 May 2014. He became the first Prime Minister born after India's independence from the British Empire in 1947. Modi started his second term after the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won again in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. On 6 December 2020, Modi became the 4th longest serving Prime Minister of India and the longest serving Non-Congress Prime Minister.
Governance and other initiatives
Modi's first year as prime minister saw significant centralisation of power relative to previous administrations. His efforts at centralisation have been linked to an increase in the number of senior administration officials resigning their positions. Initially lacking a majority in the Rajya Sabha, or upper house of Indian Parliament, Modi passed a number of ordinances to enact his policies, leading to further centralisation of power. The government also passed a bill increasing the control that it had over the appointment of judges, and reducing that of the judiciary.
In December 2014 Modi abolished the Planning Commission, replacing it with the National Institution for Transforming India, or NITI Aayog. The move had the effect of greatly centralising the power previously with the planning commission in the person of the prime minister. The planning commission had received heavy criticism in previous years for creating inefficiency in the government, and of not filling its role of improving social welfare: however, since the economic liberalisation of the 1990s, it had been the major government body responsible for measures related to social justice.
The Modi government launched investigations by the Intelligence Bureau against numerous civil society organisations and foreign non-governmental organisations in the first year of the administration. The investigations, on the grounds that these organisations were slowing economic growth, was criticised as a witch-hunt. International humanitarian aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres was among the groups that were put under pressure. Other organisations affected included the Sierra Club and Avaaz. Cases of sedition were filed against individuals criticising the government. This led to discontent within the BJP regarding Modi's style of functioning and drew comparisons to the governing style of Indira Gandhi.
Modi repealed 1,200 obsolete laws in first three years as prime minister; a total of 1,301 such laws had been repealed by previous governments over a span of 64 years. He started a monthly radio programme titled "Mann Ki Baat" on 3 October 2014. Modi also launched the Digital India programme, with the goal of ensuring that government services are available electronically, building infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet access to rural areas, boosting manufacturing of electronic goods in the country, and promoting digital literacy.
Modi launched Ujjwala scheme to provide free LPG connection to rural households. The scheme led to an increase in LPG consumption by 56% in 2019 as compared to 2014. In 2019, a law was passed to provide 10% reservation to Economically weaker sections.
He was again sworn in as prime minister on 30 May 2019. On 30 July 2019, Parliament of India declared the practice of Triple Talaq as illegal, unconstitutional and made it punishable act from 1 August 2019 which is deemed to be in effect from 19 September 2018. On 5 August 2019, the government moved resolution to scrap Article 370 in the Rajya Sabha, and also reorganise the state with Jammu and Kashmir serving as one of the union territory and Ladakh region separated out as a separate union territory.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how he Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. Reporters Without Borders in 2021 characterised Modi as a predator for curbing press freedom in India since 2014.
Economic policy
The economic policies of Modi's government focused on privatisation and liberalisation of the economy, based on a neoliberal framework. Modi liberalised India's foreign direct investment policies, allowing more foreign investment in several industries, including in defence and the railways. Other proposed reforms included making it harder for workers to form unions and easier for employers to hire and fire them; some of these proposals were dropped after protests. The reforms drew strong opposition from unions: on 2 September 2015, eleven of the country's largest unions went on strike, including one affiliated with the BJP. The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, a constituent of the Sangh Parivar, stated that the underlying motivation of labour reforms favoured corporations over labourers.
The funds dedicated to poverty reduction programmes and social welfare measures were greatly decreased by the Modi administration. The money spent on social programmes declined from 14.6% of GDP during the Congress government to 12.6% during Modi's first year in office. Spending on health and family welfare declined by 15%, and on primary and secondary education by 16%. The budgetary allocation for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, or the "education for all" programme, declined by 22%. The government also lowered corporate taxes, abolished the wealth tax, increased sales taxes, and reduced customs duties on gold, and jewellery. In October 2014, the Modi government deregulated diesel prices.
In September 2014, Modi introduced the Make in India initiative to encourage foreign companies to manufacture products in India, with the goal of turning the country into a global manufacturing hub. Supporters of economic liberalisation supported the initiative, while critics argued it would allow foreign corporations to capture a greater share of the Indian market. Modi's administration passed a land-reform bill that allowed it to acquire private agricultural land without conducting a social impact assessment, and without the consent of the farmers who owned it. The bill was passed via an executive order after it faced opposition in parliament, but was eventually allowed to lapse. Modi's government put in place the Goods and Services Tax, the biggest tax reform in the country since independence. It subsumed around 17 different taxes and became effective from 1 July 2017.
In his first cabinet decision, Modi set up a team to investigate black money. On 9 November 2016, the government demonetised ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes, with the stated intention of curbing corruption, black money, the use of counterfeit currency, and terrorism. The move led to severe cash shortages, a steep decline in the Indian stock indices BSE SENSEX and NIFTY 50, and sparked widespread protests throughout the country. Several deaths were linked to the rush to exchange cash. In the subsequent year, the number of income tax returns filed for individuals rose by 25%, and the number of digital transactions increased steeply.
Over the first four years of Modi's premiership, India's GDP grew at an average rate of 7.23%, higher than the rate of 6.39% under the previous government. The level of income inequality increased, while an internal government report said that in 2017, unemployment had increased to its highest level in 45 years. The loss of jobs was attributed to the 2016 demonetisation, and to the effects of the Goods and Services Tax.
In the next year, after 2018, Indian economy started a gradual recovery with a GDP growth of 6.12% in 2018-19 FY, with an inflation rate of 3.4%. Same year, India was successful in making a good economy in trade and manufacturing sector. While in the FY of 2019–20, due to the general election, Modi government focused more on their election campaign. In the year 2019–20, the GDP growth rate was 4.18% and inflation rate also increased to 4.7% from 3.4% in the previous year. Though being high unemployment, increase in inflation rate and budget deficiency, Modi's leadership won in 2019 elections.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous rating agencies downgraded India's GDP predictions for FY21 to negative figures, signalling a recession in India, the most severe since 1979. According to a Dun & Bradstreet report, the country is likely to suffer a recession in the third quarter of FY2020 as a result of the over 2-month long nation-wide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. This was also accompanied by the mass migration of migrant workers.
Health and sanitation
In his first year as prime minister, Modi reduced the amount of money spent by the central government on healthcare. The Modi government launched New Health Policy (NHP) in January 2015. The policy did not increase the government's spending on healthcare, instead emphasising the role of private healthcare organisations. This represented a shift away from the policy of the previous Congress government, which had supported programmes to assist public health goals, including reducing child and maternal mortality rates. The National Health Mission, which included public health programmes targeted at these indices received nearly 20% less funds in 2015 than in the previous year. 15 national health programmes, including those aimed at controlling tobacco use and supporting healthcare for the elderly, were merged with the National Health Mission. In its budget for the second year after it took office, the Modi government reduced healthcare spending by 15%. The healthcare budget for the following year rose by 19%. The budget was viewed positively by private insurance providers. Public health experts criticised its emphasis on the role of private healthcare providers, and suggested that it represented a shift away from public health facilities. The healthcare budget rose by 11.5% in 2018; the change included an allocation of for a government-funded health insurance program, and a decrease in the budget of the National Health Mission. The government introduced stricter packaging laws for tobacco which requires 85% of the packet size to be covered by pictorial warnings. An article in the medical journal Lancet stated that the country "might have taken a few steps back in public health" under Modi. In 2018 Modi launched the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, a government health insurance scheme intended to insure 500 million people. 100,000 people had signed up by October 2018.
Modi emphasised his government's efforts at sanitation as a means of ensuring good health. On 2 October 2014, Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission ("Clean India") campaign. The stated goals of the campaign included eliminating open defecation and manual scavenging within five years. As part of the programme, the Indian government began constructing millions of toilets in rural areas and encouraging people to use them. The government also announced plans to build new sewage treatment plants. The administration plans to construct 60 million toilets by 2019. The construction projects have faced allegations of corruption, and have faced severe difficulty in getting people to use the toilets constructed for them. Sanitation cover in the country increased from 38.7% in October 2014 to 84.1% in May 2018; however, usage of the new sanitary facilities lagged behind the government's targets. In 2018, the World Health Organization stated that at least 180,000 diarrhoeal deaths were averted in rural India after the launch of the sanitation effort.
Hindutva
During the 2014 election campaign, the BJP sought to identify itself with political leaders known to have opposed Hindu nationalism, including B. R. Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Ram Manohar Lohia. The campaign also saw the use of rhetoric based on Hindutva by BJP leaders in certain states. Communal tensions were played upon especially in Uttar Pradesh and the states of Northeast India. A proposal for the controversial Uniform Civil Code was a part of the BJP's election manifesto.
The activities of a number of Hindu nationalist organisations increased in scope after Modi's election as Prime Minister, sometimes with the support of the government. These activities included a Hindu religious conversion programme, a campaign against the alleged Islamic practice of "Love Jihad", and attempts to celebrate Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, by members of the right wing Hindu Mahasabha. Officials in the government, including the Home Minister, defended the conversion programmes.
Links between the BJP and the RSS grew stronger under Modi. The RSS provided organisational support to the BJP's electoral campaigns, while the Modi administration appointed a number of individuals affiliated with the RSS to prominent government positions. In 2014, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, who had previously been associated with the RSS, became the chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). Historians and former members of the ICHR, including those sympathetic to the BJP, questioned his credentials as a historian, and stated that the appointment was part of an agenda of cultural nationalism.
The North East Delhi riots, which left more than 40 dead and hundreds injured, were triggered by protests against a citizenship law seen by many critics as anti-Muslim and part of Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda. On 5 August 2020, Modi visited Ayodhya after the Supreme Court in 2019 ordered a contested land in Ayodhya to be handed over to a trust to build the Hindu temple and ordered the government to give alternate 5 acre land to Sunni Waqf Board for the purpose of building a mosque. He became the first prime minister to visit Ram Janmabhoomi and Hanuman Garhi.
Foreign policy
Foreign policy played a relatively small role in Modi's election campaign, and did not feature prominently in the BJP's election manifesto. Modi invited all the other leaders of SAARC countries to his swearing in ceremony as prime minister. He was the first Indian prime minister to do so.
Modi's foreign policy, similarly to that of the preceding INC government, focused on improving economic ties, security, and regional relations. Modi continued Manmohan Singh's policy of "multi-alignment." The Modi administration tried to attract foreign investment in the Indian economy from several sources, especially in East Asia, with the use of slogans such as "Make in India" and "Digital India". The government also tried to improve relations with Islamic nations in the Middle East, such as Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as with Israel.
The foreign relations of India with the USA also mended after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. During the run-up to the general election there was wide-ranging scepticism regarding future of the strategic bilateral relation under Modi's premiership as in 2005 he was, while Chief Minister of Gujarat, denied a U.S. visa during the Bush administration for his poor human rights records. However sensing Modi's inevitable victory well before the election, the US Ambassador Nancy Powell had reached out to him as part of greater rapprochement from the west. Moreover, following his 2014 election as the Prime Minister of India President Obama congratulated him over the telephone and invited him to visit the US. Modi government has been successful in making good foreign relations with the USA in the presidency of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
During the first few months after the election, Modi made trips to a number of different countries to further the goals of his policy, and attended the BRICS, ASEAN, and G20 summits. One of Modi's first visits as prime minister was to Nepal, during which he promised a billion USD in aid. Modi also made several overtures to the United States, including multiple visits to that country. While this was described as an unexpected development, due to the US having previously denied Modi a travel visa over his role during the 2002 Gujarat riots, the visits were expected to strengthen diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries.
In 2015, the Indian parliament ratified a land exchange deal with Bangladesh about the India–Bangladesh enclaves, which had been initiated by the government of Manmohan Singh. Modi's administration gave renewed attention to India's "Look East Policy", instituted in 1991. The policy was renamed the "Act East Policy", and involved directing Indian foreign policy towards East Asia and Southeast Asia. The government signed agreements to improve land connectivity with Myanmar, through the state of Manipur. This represented a break with India's historic engagement with Myanmar, which prioritised border security over trade. China–India relations have deteriorated rapidly following the 2020 China–India skirmishes. Modi has pledged aid of $900 million to Afghanistan, visited the nation twice and been honoured with the nation's highest civilian honour in 2016.
Defence policy
India's nominal military spending increased steadily under Modi. The military budget declined over Modi's tenure both as a fraction of GDP and when adjusted for inflation. A substantial portion of the military budget was devoted to personnel costs, leading commentators to write that the budget was constraining Indian military modernisation.
The BJP election manifesto had also promised to deal with illegal immigration into India in the Northeast, as well as to be more firm in its handling of insurgent groups. The Modi government issued a notification allowing Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh to legalise their residency in India. The government described the measure as being taken for humanitarian reasons but it drew criticism from several Assamese organisations.The Modi administration negotiated a peace agreement with the largest faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCM), which was announced in August 2015. The Naga insurgency in northeast India had begun in the 1950s. The NSCM and the government had agreed to a ceasefire in 1997, but a peace accord had not previously been signed. In 2015 the government abrogated a 15-year ceasefire with the Khaplang faction of the NSCM (NSCM-K). The NSCM-K responded with a series of attacks, which killed 18 people. The Modi government carried out a raid across the border with Myanmar as a result, and labelled the NSCM-K a terrorist organisation.
Modi promised to be "tough on Pakistan" during his election campaign, and repeatedly stated that Pakistan was an exporter of terrorism. On 29 September 2016, the Indian Army stated that it had conducted a surgical strike on terror launch pads in Azad Kashmir. The Indian media claimed that up to 50 terrorists and Pakistani soldiers had been killed in the strike. Pakistan initially denied that any strikes had taken place. Subsequent reports suggested that Indian claim about the scope of the strike and the number of casualties had been exaggerated, although cross-border strikes had been carried out. In February 2019 India carried out airstrikes in Pakistan against a supposed terrorist camp. Further military skirmishes followed, including cross-border shelling and the loss of an Indian aircraft.
Following his victory in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he focused more on Defence policies of India, especially against China and Pakistan. On 5 May 2020, Chinese and Indian troops engaged in aggressive melee, face-offs and skirmishes at locations along the Sino-Indian border, including near the disputed Pangong Lake in Ladakh and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and near the border between Sikkim and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Additional clashes also took place at locations in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). After which there was start of skirmishes between the nations leading to many border clashes, responses and reactions from both sides. A series of talks were also held between the two by both military and diplomatic means for peace. The first border clash reported in 2021 was on 20 January, referred to as a minor border clash in Sikkim.
Environmental policy
In naming his cabinet, Modi renamed the "Ministry of Environment and Forests" the "Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change." In the first budget of the government, the money allotted to this ministry was reduced by more than 50%. The new ministry also removed or diluted a number of laws related to environmental protection. These included no longer requiring clearance from the National Board for Wildlife for projects close to protected areas, and allowing certain projects to proceed before environmental clearance was received. The government also tried to reconstitute the Wildlife board such that it no longer had representatives from non-governmental organisations: however, this move was prevented by the Supreme Court.
Modi also relaxed or abolished a number of other environmental regulations, particularly those related to industrial activity. A government committee stated that the existing system only served to create corruption, and that the government should instead rely on the owners of industries to voluntarily inform the government about the pollution they were creating. Other changes included reducing ministry oversight on small mining projects, and no longer requiring approval from tribal councils for projects inside forested areas. In addition, Modi lifted a moratorium on new industrial activity in the most polluted areas in the countries. The changes were welcomed by businesspeople, but criticised by environmentalists.
Under the UPA government that preceded Modi's administration, field trials of Genetically Modified (GM) crops had essentially been put on hold, after protests from farmers fearing for their livelihoods. Under the Modi government these restrictions were gradually lifted. The government received some criticism for freezing the bank accounts of environmental group Greenpeace, citing financial irregularities, although a leaked government report said that the freeze had to do with Greenpeace's opposition to GM crops. At the COP26 conference Modi announced that India would target carbon neutrality by 2070, and also expand its renewable energy capacity. Though the date of net zero is far behind that of China and the USA and India's government wants to continue with the use of coal, Indian environmentalists and economists applauded the decision, describing it as a bold climate action.
Democratic backsliding
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how the Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. There have been several reports of the Modi government to be as an authoritarian conservative government, even due to lack of good opposition.
Electoral history
Personal life and image
Personal life
In accordance with Ghanchi tradition, Modi's marriage was arranged by his parents when he was a child. He was engaged at age 13 to Jashodaben Modi, marrying her when he was 18. They spent little time together and grew apart when Modi began two years of travel, including visits to Hindu ashrams. Reportedly, their marriage was never consummated, and he kept it a secret because otherwise he could not have become a 'pracharak' in the puritan Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Modi kept his marriage secret for most of his career. He acknowledged his wife for the first time when he filed his nomination for the 2014 general elections. Modi maintains a close relationship with his centenarian mother, Hiraben.
A vegetarian and teetotaler, Modi has a frugal lifestyle and is a workaholic and introvert. A person named Badri Meena has been his cook since 2002. Modi's 31 August 2012 post on Google Hangouts made him the first Indian politician to interact with citizens on a live chat. Modi has also been called a fashion-icon for his signature crisply ironed, half-sleeved kurta, as well as for a suit with his name embroidered repeatedly in the pinstripes that he wore during a state visit by US President Barack Obama, which drew public and media attention and criticism. Modi's personality has been variously described by scholars and biographers as energetic, arrogant, and charismatic.
He had published a Gujarati book titled Jyotipunj in 2008, containing profiles of various RSS leaders. The longest was of M. S. Golwalkar, under whose leadership the RSS expanded and whom Modi refers to as Pujniya Shri Guruji ("Guru worthy of worship"). According to The Economic Times, his intention was to explain the workings of the RSS to his readers and to reassure RSS members that he remained ideologically aligned with them. Modi authored eight other books, mostly containing short stories for children.
The nomination of Modi for the prime ministership drew attention to his reputation as "one of contemporary India's most controversial and divisive politicians." During the 2014 election campaign the BJP projected an image of Modi as a strong, masculine leader, who would be able to take difficult decisions. Campaigns in which he has participated have focused on Modi as an individual, in a manner unusual for the BJP and RSS. Modi has relied upon his reputation as a politician able to bring about economic growth and "development". Nonetheless, his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots continues to attract criticism and controversy. Modi's hardline Hindutva philosophy and the policies adopted by his government continue to draw criticism, and have been seen as evidence of a majoritarian and exclusionary social agenda.
In March 2021, Modi received his first COVID-19 vaccine dose at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
Personal donations
Modi has made donations for various causes and programmes. One such instance was when Modi donated towards the initial corpus of the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) Fund. In his role as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi had donated from personal savings for educating daughters of state government officials. Modi had also raised by auctioning all the gifts he received as chief minister and donated this to the Kanya Kelavani Fund. The money was spent on the education of girl children, through the scheme.
Approval ratings
As a Prime Minister, Modi has received consistently high approval ratings; at the end of his first year in office, he received an overall approval rating of 87% in a Pew Research poll, with 68% of people rating him "very favorably" and 93% approving of his government. His approval rating remained largely consistent at around 74% through his second year in office, according to a nationwide poll conducted by instaVaani. At the end of his second year in office, an updated Pew Research poll showed Modi continued to receive high overall approval ratings of 81%, with 57% of those polled rating him "very favorably." At the end of his third year in office, a further Pew Research poll showed Modi with an overall approval rating of 88%, his highest yet, with 69% of people polled rating him "very favorably." A poll conducted by The Times of India in May 2017 showed 77% of the respondents rated Modi as "very good" and "good". In early 2017, a survey from Pew Research Center showed Modi to be the most popular figure in Indian politics. In a weekly analysis by Morning Consult called the Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker, Modi had the highest net approval rating as of 22 December 2020 of all government leaders in the 13 countries being tracked.
Awards and recognition
In March 2012 and June 2014, Modi appeared on the cover of the Asian edition of Time Magazine, one of the few Indian politicians to have done so. He was awarded Indian of the Year by CNN-News18 (formally CNN-IBN) news network in 2014. In June 2015, Modi was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020 and 2021, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Forbes Magazine ranked him the 15th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2014 and the 9th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2015, 2016 and 2018. In 2015, Modi was ranked the 13th Most Influential Person in the World by Bloomberg Markets Magazine. Modi was ranked fifth on Fortune Magazines first annual list of the "World's Greatest Leaders" in 2015. In 2017, Gallup International Association (GIA) conducted a poll and ranked Modi as third top leader of the world. In 2016, a wax statue of Modi was unveiled at Madame Tussauds wax museum in London.
In 2015 he was named one of Times "30 Most Influential People on the Internet" as the second-most-followed politician on Twitter and Facebook. In 2018, he was the third most followed world leader on Twitter, and the most followed world leader on Facebook and Instagram. In October 2018, Modi received United Nations's highest environmental award, the 'Champions of the Earth', for policy leadership by "pioneering work in championing" the International Solar Alliance and "new areas of levels of cooperation on environmental action". He was conferred the 2018 Seoul Peace Prize in recognition of "his dedication to improving international co-operation, raising global economic growth, accelerating the Human Development of the people of India by fostering economic growth and furthering the development of democracy through anti-corruption and social integration efforts". He is the first Indian to win the award.
Following his second swearing-in ceremony as Prime Minister of India, a picture of Modi was displayed on the facade of the ADNOC building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Texas India Forum hosted a community event in honour of Modi on 22 September 2019 at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. The event was attended by over 50,000 people and several American politicians including President Donald Trump, making it the largest gathering for an invited foreign leader visiting the United States other than the Pope. At the same event, Modi was presented with the Key to the City of Houston by Mayor Sylvester Turner. He was awarded the Global Goalkeeper Award on 24 September 2019 in New York City by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in recognition for the Swachh Bharat Mission and "the progress India has made in providing safe sanitation under his leadership".
In 2020, Modi was among eight world leaders awarded the parodic Ig Nobel Prize in Medical Education "for using the COVID-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can". On 21 December 2020, President Donald Trump awarded Modi with the Legion of Merit for elevating the India–United States relations. The Legion of Merit was awarded to Modi along with Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison and former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, the "original architects" of the QUAD.
On 24 February 2021, the largest cricket stadium in the world at Ahmedabad was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by the Gujarat Cricket Association.
Modi is featured in TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2021 list, making it his fifth time after 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2020. TIME called him the third "pivotal leader" of independent India after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi who "dominated the country’s politics like no one since them".
State honours
Other honours
In popular culture
Modi Kaka Ka Gaon, a 2017 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Tushar Amrish Goel is the first biopic on Modi, starring Vikas Mahante in the titular role it was made halfway into his first-term as the prime minister which is shown in the film. PM Narendra Modi, a 2019 Indian Hindi-language biographical drama film by Omung Kumar, starred Vivek Oberoi in the titular role and covers his rise to prime ministership.An Indian web series, Modi: Journey of a Common Man, based on the same premise released in May 2019 on Eros Now with Ashish Sharma portraying Modi. Hu Narender Modi Banva Mangu Chu is a 2018 Indian Gujarati-language drama film by Anil Naryani about the aspirations of a young boy who wants to become like Narendra Modi.
7 RCR (7, Race Course Road), a 2014 Indian docudrama political television series which charts the political careers of prominent Indian politicians, covered Modi's rise to the PM's office in the episodes - "Story of Narendra Modi from 1950 to 2001", "Story of Narendra Modi in Controversial Years from 2001 to 2013", "Truth Behind Brand Modi", "Election Journey of Narendra Modi to 7 RCR", and "Masterplan of Narendra Modi's NDA Govt."; with Sangam Rai in the role of Modi.
Other portrayals of Modi include by Rajit Kapur in the film Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) and Vikram Gokhale in the web-television series Avrodh: The Siege Within (2020) both based on the 2016 Uri attack and the following Indian surgical strikes. Pratap Singh played a character based on Modi in Chand Bujh Gaya (2005) which is set in the backdrop of the Gujarat riots.
Premiered on 12 August 2019, Modi appeared in an episode - "Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls and Prime Minister Modi" - of Discovery Channel's show Man vs Wild with the host Bear Grylls, becoming the second world leader after Barack Obama to appear in the reality show. In the show he trekked the jungles and talked about nature and wildlife conservation with Grylls. The episode was shot in Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand and was broadcast in 180 countries along India. He has also appeared twice on the Indian television talk show Aap Ki Adalat before the 2009 and 2014 elections respectively.
Along with hosting the Mann Ki Baat monthly radio programme, on All India Radio, he has also conducted Pariksha Pe Charcha - a competition/discussion for students and the issues they face in examinations.
Bibliography
See also
List of prime ministers of India
Opinion polling on the Narendra Modi premiership
References
Notes
Citations
Further reading
External links
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1950 births
Living people
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Time 100 | true | [
"Manuel González Salmón (Cádiz, 20 October 1778 – Madrid, 18 January 1832), was a Spanish politician and diplomat who served twice as Prime Minister of Spain.\n\nBiography\n\nHe was First Secretary at the Spanish Embassy in Paris from 1814 to 1819, when he became Acting Prime Minister of Spain between 12 June and 12 September 1819. After this he became Ambassador to Saxony and later Russia until 1826, when he became Prime Minister for the second time.\n\nDespite the fact that he remained Prime Minister for 6 years, a very long term in Spanish politics, very little was known of his actions during that period. This was because he was dominated by Francisco Calomarde and Luis López Ballesteros, the real leaders of the Cabinet.\n\nHe died in January 1832 while still in office.\n\nSources\n\nPrime Ministers of Spain\nForeign ministers of Spain\n1778 births\n1832 deaths\n19th-century Spanish politicians",
"Prime Minister's Youth Programme was a special initiative launched by the Pakistani government in 2013. The Youth Programme comprised several schemes including Prime Minister's Interest Free Loan Scheme, Prime Minister's Youth Business Loans, Prime Minister's Youth Training Scheme, Prime Minister's Youth Skills Development Scheme, Prime Minister's Scheme for Provision of Laptops and Prime Minister's Scheme for Reimbursement of Fee of Students from the Less Developed Areas. It was headed by Maryam Nawaz Sharif. The total worth of PKR 20 billion was to be spread over 5 years.\n\nOn May 14, 2014, the government approved 3.5 billion for interest-free loans up to Rs 50,000 would be provided to 1 million people across country. Half of the beneficiaries would be women. The loans would be disbursed through Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) and each federating unit will get its share as per the NFC Award, with primary focus on rural areas. Proper loan centres and business support centres were to be set up across the country. The Prime Minister's Programme for the Provision of Laptops to Talented Students (Prime Minister's Laptop Scheme was launched on May 23, 2014. \n\nThe Prime Minister Laptop Scheme and other schemes were later abolished by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government as of 2018.\n\nExternal links\nHow to Apply PM’s Kamyab Jawan Program\nApply For Kamyab Jawan Program\n\nReferences\n\nPolicies of Pakistan\n2013 establishments in Pakistan\nNawaz Sharif administration"
] |
[
"Narendra Modi",
"2014 Indian general election",
"in what month was the election?",
"the 2014 Lok Sabha election.",
"what position did he run for in the election?",
"prime minister",
"what political party was he in?",
"the BJP's candidate",
"did he win the election?",
"Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment",
"how many votes did he get?",
"by 570,128 votes.",
"who was his opponent?",
"defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi",
"for how long was he prime minister?",
"To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat."
] | C_b6a0c764bf0c443b9768973ff08ca8fb_0 | where did he do his campaigning? | 8 | Where did Narendra Modi do his campaigning for the BJP? | Narendra Modi | In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi. During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development. Although the BJP avoided issues of Hindu nationalism to an extent, Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately Rs50 billion (US$770 million), and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances. The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism. Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by 570,128 votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat. CANNOTANSWER | The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately Rs50 billion | Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from Varanasi. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organisation. He is the first prime minister to have been born after India's independence in 1947 and the second prime minister not belonging to the Indian National Congress to have won two consecutive majorities in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Indian of parliament.
Born and raised in Vadnagar, a small town in northeastern Gujarat, Modi completed his secondary education there. He was introduced to the RSS at age eight. He has drawn attention to having to work as a child in his father's tea stall on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that has not been reliably corroborated. At age 18, Modi was married to Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, whom he abandoned soon after. He left his parental home where she had come to live. He first publicly acknowledged her as his wife more than four decades later when required to do so by Indian law, but has made no contact with her since. Modi has asserted he had travelled in northern India for two years after leaving his parental home, visiting a number of religious centres, but few details of his travels have emerged. Upon his return to Gujarat in 1971, he became a full-time worker for the RSS. After the state of emergency declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, Modi went into hiding. The RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985 and he held several positions within the party hierarchy until 2001, rising to the rank of general secretary.
Modi was appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001 due to Keshubhai Patel's failing health and poor public image following the earthquake in Bhuj. Modi was elected to the legislative assembly soon after. His administration has been considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots in which 1044 people were killed, three-quarters of whom were Muslim, or otherwise criticised for its management of the crisis. The Supreme Court remarked that Narendra Modi was like a Modern-day Nero, looking the other way as innocent women and children were burning. A Supreme Court of India-appointed Special Investigation Team found no evidence to initiate prosecution proceedings against Modi personally. While his policies as chief minister—credited with encouraging economic growth—have received praise, his administration has been criticised for failing to significantly improve health, poverty and education indices in the state.
Modi led the BJP in the 2014 general election which gave the party a majority in the Indian lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, the first time for any single party since 1984. Modi's administration has tried to raise foreign direct investment in the Indian economy and reduced spending on healthcare and social welfare programmes. Modi has attempted to improve efficiency in the bureaucracy; he has centralised power by abolishing the Planning Commission. He began a high-profile sanitation campaign, controversially initiated a demonetisation of high-denomination banknotes and transformation of taxation regime, and weakened or abolished environmental and labour laws.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. Following his party's victory in the 2019 general election, his administration revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and also introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act, which resulted in widespread protests across the country. Described as engineering a political realignment towards right-wing politics, Modi remains a figure of controversy domestically and internationally over his Hindu nationalist beliefs and his handling of the 2002 Gujarat riots, cited as evidence of an exclusionary social agenda.
Early life and education
Narendra Damodardas Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a Gujarati Hindu family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district, Bombay State (present-day Gujarat). He was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi () and Hiraben Modi (born ). Modi's family belonged to the Modh-Ghanchi-Teli (oil-presser) community, which is categorised as an Other Backward Class by the Indian government.
Modi had only infrequently spoken of his family background during his 13 years as chief minister of Gujarat. In the run up to the 2014 national elections, he began to regularly draw attention to his low-ranking social origins and to having to work as a child in his father's tea shop on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that the evidence of neighbours does not entirely corroborate. Modi completed his higher secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where teachers described him as an average student and a keen gifted debater, with interest in theatre. Modi preferred playing larger-than-life characters in theatrical productions, which has influenced his political image.
When eight years old, Modi was introduced to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and began attending its local shakhas (training sessions). There, Modi met Lakshmanrao Inamdar, popularly known as Vakil Saheb, who inducted him as a balswayamsevak (junior cadet) in the RSS and became his political mentor. While Modi was training with the RSS, he also met Vasant Gajendragadkar and Nathalal Jaghda, Bharatiya Jana Sangh leaders who were founding members of the BJP's Gujarat unit in 1980.
In a custom traditional to Narendra Modi's caste, his family arranged a betrothal to a girl, Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, leading to their marriage when she was 17 and he was 18. Soon afterwards, he abandoned his bride, and left home, never divorcing her, but the marriage remaining unmentioned in Modi's public pronouncements for many decades. In April 2014, shortly before the national elections that swept him to power, Modi publicly affirmed that he was married and his spouse was Jashodaben; the couple has remained married, but estranged.
Modi spent the ensuing two years travelling across Northern and North-eastern India, though few details of where he went have emerged. In interviews, Modi has described visiting Hindu ashrams founded by Swami Vivekananda: the Belur Math near Kolkata, followed by the Advaita Ashrama in Almora and the Ramakrishna Mission in Rajkot. Modi remained only a short time at each, since he lacked the required college education. Vivekananda has been described as a large influence in Modi's life.
In the early summer of 1968, Modi reached the Belur Math but was turned away, after which Modi wandered through Calcutta, West Bengal and Assam, stopping in Siliguri and Guwahati. Modi then went to the Ramakrishna Ashram in Almora, where he was again rejected, before travelling back to Gujarat via Delhi and Rajasthan in 1968–69. Sometime in late 1969 or early 1970, Modi returned to Vadnagar for a brief visit before leaving again for Ahmedabad. There, Modi lived with his uncle, working in the latter's canteen at the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation.
In Ahmedabad, Modi renewed his acquaintance with Inamdar, who was based at the Hedgewar Bhavan (RSS headquarters) in the city. Modi's first known political activity as an adult was in 1971 when he, as per his remarks, joined a Jana Sangh Satyagraha in Delhi led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee to enlist for the battlefield during the Bangladesh Liberation War. But the Indira Gandhi-led central government disallowed open support for the Mukti Bahini and Modi, according to his own claim, was put in Tihar Jail for a short period. After the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he stopped working for his uncle and became a full-time pracharak (campaigner) for the RSS, working under Inamdar. Shortly before the war, Modi took part in a non-violent protest against the Indian government in New Delhi, for which he was arrested (as per his claim); this has been cited as a reason for Inamdar electing to mentor him. Many years later Modi would co-author a biography of Inamdar, published in 2001. Modi's claim that he was part of a Satyagraha led to a political war. Applications were filed with the PMO under the RTI Act seeking details of his arrest. In reply, the PMO claimed that it maintains official records on Modi only since he took charge as the Prime Minister of India in 2014. Despite this claim, the official website of the PMO contains specific information about Modi which dates back to the 1950s.
In 1978 Modi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the School of Open Learning (SOL) at the University of Delhi, graduating with a third class. Five years later, in 1983, he received a Master of Arts degree in political science from Gujarat University, graduating with a first class as an external distance learning student. But there is a big controversy surrounding his educational qualification. Replying to an RTI query, the SOL said it did not have any data of students who received a BA degree in 1978. Jayantibhai Patel, a former political science professor of Gujarat University, claimed that the subjects listed in Modi's MA degree were not offered by the university when Modi was studying there.
Early political career
In June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India which lasted until 1977. During this period, known as "The Emergency", many of her political opponents were jailed and opposition groups were banned. Modi was appointed general secretary of the "Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti", an RSS committee co-ordinating opposition to the Emergency in Gujarat. Shortly afterwards, the RSS was banned. Modi was forced to go underground in Gujarat and frequently travelled in disguise to avoid arrest. He became involved in printing pamphlets opposing the government, sending them to Delhi and organising demonstrations. Modi was also involved with creating a network of safe houses for individuals wanted by the government, and in raising funds for political refugees and activists. During this period, Modi wrote a book in Gujarati, Sangharsh Ma Gujarat (In The Struggles of Gujarat), describing events during the Emergency. Among the people he met in this role was trade unionist and socialist activist George Fernandes, as well as several other national political figures. In his travels during the Emergency, Modi was often forced to move in disguise, once dressing as a monk, and once as a Sikh.
Modi became an RSS sambhag pracharak (regional organiser) in 1978, overseeing RSS activities in the areas of Surat and Vadodara, and in 1979 he went to work for the RSS in Delhi, where he was put to work researching and writing the RSS's version of the history of the Emergency. He returned to Gujarat a short while later, and was assigned by the RSS to the BJP in 1985. In 1987 Modi helped organise the BJP's campaign in the Ahmedabad municipal election, which the BJP won comfortably; Modi's planning has been described as the reason for that result by biographers. After L. K. Advani became president of the BJP in 1986, the RSS decided to place its members in important positions within the BJP; Modi's work during the Ahmedabad election led to his selection for this role, and Modi was elected organising secretary of the BJP's Gujarat unit later in 1987.
Modi rose within the party and was named a member of the BJP's National Election Committee in 1990, helping organise L. K. Advani's 1990 Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 and Murli Manohar Joshi's 1991–92 Ekta Yatra (Journey for Unity). However, he took a brief break from politics in 1992, instead establishing a school in Ahmedabad; friction with Shankersinh Vaghela, a BJP MP from Gujarat at the time, also played a part in this decision. Modi returned to electoral politics in 1994, partly at the insistence of Advani, and as party secretary, Modi's electoral strategy was considered central to the BJP victory in the 1995 state assembly elections. In November of that year Modi was appointed BJP national secretary and transferred to New Delhi, where he assumed responsibility for party activities in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The following year, Shankersinh Vaghela, a prominent BJP leader from Gujarat, defected to the Indian National Congress (Congress, INC) after losing his parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha elections. Modi, on the selection committee for the 1998 Assembly elections in Gujarat, favoured supporters of BJP leader Keshubhai Patel over those supporting Vaghela to end factional division in the party. His strategy was credited as key to the BJP winning an overall majority in the 1998 elections, and Modi was promoted to BJP general secretary (organisation) in May of that year.
Chief Minister of Gujarat
Taking office
In 2001, Keshubhai Patel's health was failing and the BJP lost a few state assembly seats in by-elections. Allegations of abuse of power, corruption and poor administration were made, and Patel's standing had been damaged by his administration's handling of the earthquake in Bhuj in 2001. The BJP national leadership sought a new candidate for the chief ministership, and Modi, who had expressed misgivings about Patel's administration, was chosen as a replacement. Although BJP leader L. K. Advani did not want to ostracise Patel and was concerned about Modi's lack of experience in government, Modi declined an offer to be Patel's deputy chief minister, telling Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee that he was "going to be fully responsible for Gujarat or not at all". On 3 October 2001 he replaced Patel as Chief Minister of Gujarat, with the responsibility of preparing the BJP for the December 2002 elections. Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister on 7 October 2001, and entered the Gujarat state legislature on 24 February 2002 by winning a by-election to the Rajkot – II constituency, defeating Ashwin Mehta of the INC by 14,728 votes.
2002 Gujarat riots
On 27 February 2002, a train with several hundred passengers burned near Godhra, killing approximately 60 people. The train carried a large number of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya after a religious ceremony at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid. In making a public statement after the incident, Modi declared it a terrorist attack planned and orchestrated by local Muslims. The next day, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for a bandh across the state. Riots began during the bandh, and anti-Muslim violence spread through Gujarat. The government's decision to move the bodies of the train victims from Godhra to Ahmedabad further inflamed the violence. The state government stated later that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed. Independent sources put the death toll at over 2000, the vast majority Muslims Approximately 150,000 people were driven to refugee camps. Numerous women and children were among the victims; the violence included mass rapes and mutilations of women.
The government of Gujarat itself is generally considered by scholars to have been complicit in the riots, (with some blaming chief minister Modi explicitly) and has otherwise received heavy criticism for its handling of the situation. Several scholars have described the violence as a pogrom, while others have called it an example of state terrorism. Summarising academic views on the subject, Martha Nussbaum said: "There is by now a broad consensus that the Gujarat violence was a form of ethnic cleansing, that in many ways it was premeditated, and that it was carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law." The Modi government imposed a curfew in 26 major cities, issued shoot-at-sight orders and called for the army to patrol the streets, but was unable to prevent the violence from escalating. The president of the state unit of the BJP expressed support for the bandh, despite such actions being illegal at the time. State officials later prevented riot victims from leaving the refugee camps, and the camps were often unable to meet the needs of those living there. Muslim victims of the riots were subject to further discrimination when the state government announced that compensation for Muslim victims would be half of that offered to Hindus, although this decision was later reversed after the issue was taken to court. During the riots, police officers often did not intervene in situations where they were able.
Modi's personal involvement in the 2002 events has continued to be debated. During the riots, Modi said that "What is happening is a chain of action and reaction." Later in 2002, Modi said the way in which he had handled the media was his only regret regarding the episode. In March 2008, the Supreme Court reopened several cases related to the 2002 riots, including that of the Gulbarg Society massacre, and established a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the issue. In response to a petition from Zakia Jafri (widow of Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre), in April 2009 the court also asked the SIT to investigate the issue of Modi's complicity in the killings. The SIT questioned Modi in March 2010; in May, it presented to the court a report finding no evidence against him. In July 2011, the court-appointed amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran submitted his final report to the court. Contrary to the SIT's position, he said that Modi could be prosecuted based on the available evidence. The Supreme Court gave the matter to the magistrate's court. The SIT examined Ramachandran's report, and in March 2012 submitted its final report, asking for the case to be closed. Zakia Jafri filed a protest petition in response. In December 2013 the magistrate's court rejected the protest petition, accepting the SIT's finding that there was no evidence against the chief minister.
2002 election
In the aftermath of the violence there were widespread calls for Modi to resign as chief minister from within and outside the state, including from leaders of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Telugu Desam Party (allies in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition), and opposition parties stalled Parliament over the issue. Modi submitted his resignation at the April 2002 BJP national executive meeting in Goa, but it was not accepted. His cabinet had an emergency meeting on 19 July 2002, after which it offered its resignation to the Gujarat Governor S. S. Bhandari, and the state assembly was dissolved. Despite opposition from the election commissioner, who said that a number of voters were still displaced, Modi succeeded in advancing the election to December 2002. In the elections, the BJP won 127 seats in the 182-member assembly. Although Modi later denied it, he made significant use of anti-Muslim rhetoric during his campaign, and the BJP profited from religious polarisation among the voters. He won the Maninagar constituency, receiving of votes and defeating INC candidate Yatin Oza by 75,333 votes. On 22 December 2002, Bhandari swore Modi in for a second term. Modi framed the criticism of his government for human rights violations as an attack upon Gujarati pride, a strategy which led to the BJP winning two-thirds of the seats in the state assembly.
Second term
During Modi's second term the rhetoric of the government shifted from Hindutva to Gujarat's economic development. Modi curtailed the influence of Sangh Parivar organisations such as the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), entrenched in the state after the decline of Ahmedabad's textile industry, and dropped Gordhan Zadafia (an ally of former Sangh co-worker and VHP state chief Praveen Togadia) from his cabinet. When the BKS staged a farmers' demonstration Modi ordered their eviction from state-provided houses, and his decision to demolish 200 illegal temples in Gandhinagar deepened the rift with the Vishva Hindu Parishad. Sangh organisations were no longer consulted or informed in advance about Modi's administrative decisions. Nonetheless, Modi retained connections with some Hindu nationalists. Modi wrote a foreword to a textbook by Dinanath Batra released in 2014, which stated that ancient India possessed technologies including test-tube babies.
Modi's relationship with Muslims continued to attract criticism. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who asked Modi for tolerance in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat violence and supported his resignation as chief minister) distanced himself, reaching out to North Indian Muslims before the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. After the elections Vajpayee called the violence in Gujarat a reason for the BJP's electoral defeat and said it had been a mistake to leave Modi in office after the riots.
Questions about Modi's relationship with Muslims were also raised by many Western nations during his tenure as chief minister. Modi was barred from entering the United States by the State Department, in accordance with the recommendations of the Commission on International Religious Freedom formed under the aegis of the International Religious Freedom Act, the only person denied a US visa under this law. The UK and the European Union refused to admit him because of what they saw as his role in the riots. As Modi rose to prominence in India, the UK and the EU lifted their bans in October 2012 and March 2013, respectively, and after his election he was invited to Washington as the nation's prime minister.
During the run-up to the 2007 Gujarat Legislative Assembly election and the 2009 Indian general election, the BJP intensified its rhetoric on terrorism. In July 2006, Modi criticised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh " for his reluctance to revive anti-terror legislation" such as the 2002 Prevention of Terrorism Act. He asked the national government to allow states to invoke tougher laws in the wake of the 2006 Mumbai train bombings. In 2007 Modi authored Karmayog, a 101-page booklet discussing manual scavenging. In it, Modi argued that scavenging was a "spiritual experience" for Valmiks, a sub-caste of Dalits. However, this book was not circulated that time because of the election code of conduct. After the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, Modi held a meeting to discuss the security of Gujarat's -long coastline, resulting in government authorisation of 30 high-speed surveillance boats. In July 2007 Modi completed 2,063 consecutive days as chief minister of Gujarat, making him the longest-serving holder of that post, and the BJP won 122 of 182 state-assembly seats in that year's election.
Development projects
As Chief Minister, Modi favoured privatisation and small government, which was at odds with the philosophy of the RSS, usually described as anti-privatisation and anti-globalisation. His policies during his second term have been credited with reducing corruption in the state. He established financial and technology parks in Gujarat and during the 2007 Vibrant Gujarat summit, real-estate investment deals worth were signed.
The governments led by Patel and Modi supported NGOs and communities in the creation of groundwater-conservation projects. By December 2008, 500,000 structures had been built, of which 113,738 were check dams, which helped recharge the aquifers beneath them. Sixty of the 112 tehsils which had depleted the water table in 2004 had regained their normal groundwater levels by 2010. As a result, the state's production of genetically modified cotton increased to become the largest in India. The boom in cotton production and its semi-arid land use led to Gujarat's agricultural sector growing at an average rate of 9.6 percent from 2001 to 2007. Public irrigation measures in central and southern Gujarat, such as the Sardar Sarovar Dam, were less successful. The Sardar Sarovar project only irrigated 4–6% of the area intended. Nonetheless, from 2001 to 2010 Gujarat recorded an agricultural growth rate of 10.97 percent – the highest of any state. However, sociologists have pointed out that the growth rate under the 1992–97 INC government was 12.9 percent. In 2008 Modi offered land in Gujarat to Tata Motors to set up a plant manufacturing the Nano after a popular agitation had forced the company to move out of West Bengal. Several other companies followed the Tata to Gujarat.
The Modi government finished the process of bringing electricity to every village in Gujarat that its predecessor had almost completed. Modi significantly changed the state's system of power distribution, greatly impacting farmers. Gujarat expanded the Jyotigram Yojana scheme, in which agricultural electricity was separated from other rural electricity; the agricultural electricity was rationed to fit scheduled irrigation demands, reducing its cost. Although early protests by farmers ended when those who benefited found that their electricity supply had stabilised, according to an assessment study corporations and large farmers benefited from the policy at the expense of small farmers and labourers.
Development debate
A contentious debate surrounds the assessment of Gujarat's economic development during Modi's tenure as chief minister. The state's GDP growth rate averaged 10% during Modi's tenure, a value similar to other highly industrialised states, and above that of the country as a whole. Gujarat also had a high rate of economic growth in the 1990s, before Modi took office, and some scholars have stated that growth did not much accelerate during Modi's tenure, although the state is considered to have maintained a high growth rate during Modi's Chief Ministership. Under Narendra Modi, Gujarat topped the World Bank's "ease of doing business" rankings among Indian states for two consecutive years. In 2013, Gujarat was ranked first among Indian states for "economic freedom" by a report measuring governance, growth, citizens' rights and labour and business regulation among the country's 20 largest states. In the later years of Modi's government, Gujarat's economic growth was frequently used as an argument to counter allegations of communalism. Tax breaks for businesses were easier to obtain in Gujarat than in other states, as was land. Modi's policies to make Gujarat attractive for investment included the creation of Special Economic Zones, where labour laws were greatly weakened.
Despite its growth rate, Gujarat had a relatively poor record on human development, poverty relief, nutrition and education during Modi's tenure. In 2013, Gujarat ranked 13th in the country with respect to rates of poverty and 21st in education. Nearly 45 percent of children under five were underweight and 23 percent were undernourished, putting the state in the "alarming" category on the India State Hunger Index. A study by UNICEF and the Indian government found that Gujarat under Modi had a poor record with respect to immunisation in children.
Over the decade from 2001 to 2011, Gujarat did not change its position relative to the rest of the country with respect to poverty and female literacy, remaining near the median of the 29 Indian states. It showed a marginal improvement in rates of infant mortality, and its position with respect to individual consumption declined. With respect to the quality of education in government schools, the state ranked below many Indian states. The social policies of the government generally did not benefit Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis, and generally increased social inequalities. Development in Gujarat was generally limited to the urban middle class, and citizens in rural areas or from lower castes were increasingly marginalised. In 2013 the state ranked 10th of 21 Indian states in the Human Development Index. Under Modi, the state government spent less than the national average on education and healthcare.
Final years
Despite the BJP's shift away from explicit Hindutva, Modi's election campaign in 2007 and 2012 contained elements of Hindu nationalism. Modi only attended Hindu religious ceremonies, and had prominent associations with Hindu religious leaders. During his 2012 campaign he twice refused to wear articles of clothing gifted by Muslim leaders. He did, however, maintain relations with Dawoodi Bohra. His campaign included references to issues known to cause religious polarisation, including to Afzal Guru and the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. The BJP did not nominate any Muslim candidates for the assembly election of 2012. During the 2012 campaign, Modi attempted to identify himself with the state of Gujarat, a strategy similar to that used by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, and projected himself as protecting Gujarat against persecution by the rest of India.
While campaigning for the 2012 assembly elections, Modi made extensive use of holograms and other technologies allowing him to reach a large number of people, something he would repeat in the 2014 general election. In the 2012 Gujarat Legislative Assembly elections, Modi won the constituency of Maninagar by 86,373 votes over Shweta Bhatt, the INC candidate and wife of Sanjiv Bhatt. The BJP won 115 of the 182 seats, continuing its majority during his tenure and allowing the party to form the government (as it had in Gujarat since 1995). After his election as prime minister, Modi resigned as the chief minister and as an MLA from Maninagar on 21 May 2014. Anandiben Patel succeeded him as the chief minister.
Premiership campaigns
2014 Indian general election
In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi.
During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development, although Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately , and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances.
The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism.
Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi by 371,784 votes and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat.
2019 Indian general election
On 13 October 2018, Modi was renamed as the BJP candidate for prime minister for the 2019 general election. The chief campaigner for the party was BJP's president Amit Shah. Modi launched the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign ahead of the general election, against Chowkidar Chor Hai campaign slogan of INC. In the year 2018, end Party's, second-biggest alliance Telugu Desam Party split from NDA over the matter of special-status for Andhra Pradesh.
The campaign was started by Amit Shah on 8 April 2019. In the campaign, Modi was targeted by the opposition on corruption allegations over Rafale deal with France government. Highlighting this controversy the campaign "Chowkidar Chor Hai" was started, which was contrary to "Main Bhi Chowkidar" slogan. Modi made defence and national security among the foremost topics for the election campaign, especially after Pulwama attack, and the retaliatory attack of Balakot airstrike was counted as an achievement of the Modi administration. Other topics in the campaign were development and good foreign relations in the first premiership.
Modi contested the Lok Sabha elections as a candidate from Varanasi. He won the seat by defeating Shalini Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, who fought on SP-BSP alliance by a margin of votes. Modi was unanimously appointed the prime minister for a second time by the National Democratic Alliance, after the alliance won the election for the second time by securing 353 seats in the Lok Sabha with the BJP alone won 303 seats.
Prime Minister
After the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won a landslide in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India on 26 May 2014. He became the first Prime Minister born after India's independence from the British Empire in 1947. Modi started his second term after the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won again in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. On 6 December 2020, Modi became the 4th longest serving Prime Minister of India and the longest serving Non-Congress Prime Minister.
Governance and other initiatives
Modi's first year as prime minister saw significant centralisation of power relative to previous administrations. His efforts at centralisation have been linked to an increase in the number of senior administration officials resigning their positions. Initially lacking a majority in the Rajya Sabha, or upper house of Indian Parliament, Modi passed a number of ordinances to enact his policies, leading to further centralisation of power. The government also passed a bill increasing the control that it had over the appointment of judges, and reducing that of the judiciary.
In December 2014 Modi abolished the Planning Commission, replacing it with the National Institution for Transforming India, or NITI Aayog. The move had the effect of greatly centralising the power previously with the planning commission in the person of the prime minister. The planning commission had received heavy criticism in previous years for creating inefficiency in the government, and of not filling its role of improving social welfare: however, since the economic liberalisation of the 1990s, it had been the major government body responsible for measures related to social justice.
The Modi government launched investigations by the Intelligence Bureau against numerous civil society organisations and foreign non-governmental organisations in the first year of the administration. The investigations, on the grounds that these organisations were slowing economic growth, was criticised as a witch-hunt. International humanitarian aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres was among the groups that were put under pressure. Other organisations affected included the Sierra Club and Avaaz. Cases of sedition were filed against individuals criticising the government. This led to discontent within the BJP regarding Modi's style of functioning and drew comparisons to the governing style of Indira Gandhi.
Modi repealed 1,200 obsolete laws in first three years as prime minister; a total of 1,301 such laws had been repealed by previous governments over a span of 64 years. He started a monthly radio programme titled "Mann Ki Baat" on 3 October 2014. Modi also launched the Digital India programme, with the goal of ensuring that government services are available electronically, building infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet access to rural areas, boosting manufacturing of electronic goods in the country, and promoting digital literacy.
Modi launched Ujjwala scheme to provide free LPG connection to rural households. The scheme led to an increase in LPG consumption by 56% in 2019 as compared to 2014. In 2019, a law was passed to provide 10% reservation to Economically weaker sections.
He was again sworn in as prime minister on 30 May 2019. On 30 July 2019, Parliament of India declared the practice of Triple Talaq as illegal, unconstitutional and made it punishable act from 1 August 2019 which is deemed to be in effect from 19 September 2018. On 5 August 2019, the government moved resolution to scrap Article 370 in the Rajya Sabha, and also reorganise the state with Jammu and Kashmir serving as one of the union territory and Ladakh region separated out as a separate union territory.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how he Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. Reporters Without Borders in 2021 characterised Modi as a predator for curbing press freedom in India since 2014.
Economic policy
The economic policies of Modi's government focused on privatisation and liberalisation of the economy, based on a neoliberal framework. Modi liberalised India's foreign direct investment policies, allowing more foreign investment in several industries, including in defence and the railways. Other proposed reforms included making it harder for workers to form unions and easier for employers to hire and fire them; some of these proposals were dropped after protests. The reforms drew strong opposition from unions: on 2 September 2015, eleven of the country's largest unions went on strike, including one affiliated with the BJP. The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, a constituent of the Sangh Parivar, stated that the underlying motivation of labour reforms favoured corporations over labourers.
The funds dedicated to poverty reduction programmes and social welfare measures were greatly decreased by the Modi administration. The money spent on social programmes declined from 14.6% of GDP during the Congress government to 12.6% during Modi's first year in office. Spending on health and family welfare declined by 15%, and on primary and secondary education by 16%. The budgetary allocation for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, or the "education for all" programme, declined by 22%. The government also lowered corporate taxes, abolished the wealth tax, increased sales taxes, and reduced customs duties on gold, and jewellery. In October 2014, the Modi government deregulated diesel prices.
In September 2014, Modi introduced the Make in India initiative to encourage foreign companies to manufacture products in India, with the goal of turning the country into a global manufacturing hub. Supporters of economic liberalisation supported the initiative, while critics argued it would allow foreign corporations to capture a greater share of the Indian market. Modi's administration passed a land-reform bill that allowed it to acquire private agricultural land without conducting a social impact assessment, and without the consent of the farmers who owned it. The bill was passed via an executive order after it faced opposition in parliament, but was eventually allowed to lapse. Modi's government put in place the Goods and Services Tax, the biggest tax reform in the country since independence. It subsumed around 17 different taxes and became effective from 1 July 2017.
In his first cabinet decision, Modi set up a team to investigate black money. On 9 November 2016, the government demonetised ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes, with the stated intention of curbing corruption, black money, the use of counterfeit currency, and terrorism. The move led to severe cash shortages, a steep decline in the Indian stock indices BSE SENSEX and NIFTY 50, and sparked widespread protests throughout the country. Several deaths were linked to the rush to exchange cash. In the subsequent year, the number of income tax returns filed for individuals rose by 25%, and the number of digital transactions increased steeply.
Over the first four years of Modi's premiership, India's GDP grew at an average rate of 7.23%, higher than the rate of 6.39% under the previous government. The level of income inequality increased, while an internal government report said that in 2017, unemployment had increased to its highest level in 45 years. The loss of jobs was attributed to the 2016 demonetisation, and to the effects of the Goods and Services Tax.
In the next year, after 2018, Indian economy started a gradual recovery with a GDP growth of 6.12% in 2018-19 FY, with an inflation rate of 3.4%. Same year, India was successful in making a good economy in trade and manufacturing sector. While in the FY of 2019–20, due to the general election, Modi government focused more on their election campaign. In the year 2019–20, the GDP growth rate was 4.18% and inflation rate also increased to 4.7% from 3.4% in the previous year. Though being high unemployment, increase in inflation rate and budget deficiency, Modi's leadership won in 2019 elections.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous rating agencies downgraded India's GDP predictions for FY21 to negative figures, signalling a recession in India, the most severe since 1979. According to a Dun & Bradstreet report, the country is likely to suffer a recession in the third quarter of FY2020 as a result of the over 2-month long nation-wide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. This was also accompanied by the mass migration of migrant workers.
Health and sanitation
In his first year as prime minister, Modi reduced the amount of money spent by the central government on healthcare. The Modi government launched New Health Policy (NHP) in January 2015. The policy did not increase the government's spending on healthcare, instead emphasising the role of private healthcare organisations. This represented a shift away from the policy of the previous Congress government, which had supported programmes to assist public health goals, including reducing child and maternal mortality rates. The National Health Mission, which included public health programmes targeted at these indices received nearly 20% less funds in 2015 than in the previous year. 15 national health programmes, including those aimed at controlling tobacco use and supporting healthcare for the elderly, were merged with the National Health Mission. In its budget for the second year after it took office, the Modi government reduced healthcare spending by 15%. The healthcare budget for the following year rose by 19%. The budget was viewed positively by private insurance providers. Public health experts criticised its emphasis on the role of private healthcare providers, and suggested that it represented a shift away from public health facilities. The healthcare budget rose by 11.5% in 2018; the change included an allocation of for a government-funded health insurance program, and a decrease in the budget of the National Health Mission. The government introduced stricter packaging laws for tobacco which requires 85% of the packet size to be covered by pictorial warnings. An article in the medical journal Lancet stated that the country "might have taken a few steps back in public health" under Modi. In 2018 Modi launched the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, a government health insurance scheme intended to insure 500 million people. 100,000 people had signed up by October 2018.
Modi emphasised his government's efforts at sanitation as a means of ensuring good health. On 2 October 2014, Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission ("Clean India") campaign. The stated goals of the campaign included eliminating open defecation and manual scavenging within five years. As part of the programme, the Indian government began constructing millions of toilets in rural areas and encouraging people to use them. The government also announced plans to build new sewage treatment plants. The administration plans to construct 60 million toilets by 2019. The construction projects have faced allegations of corruption, and have faced severe difficulty in getting people to use the toilets constructed for them. Sanitation cover in the country increased from 38.7% in October 2014 to 84.1% in May 2018; however, usage of the new sanitary facilities lagged behind the government's targets. In 2018, the World Health Organization stated that at least 180,000 diarrhoeal deaths were averted in rural India after the launch of the sanitation effort.
Hindutva
During the 2014 election campaign, the BJP sought to identify itself with political leaders known to have opposed Hindu nationalism, including B. R. Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Ram Manohar Lohia. The campaign also saw the use of rhetoric based on Hindutva by BJP leaders in certain states. Communal tensions were played upon especially in Uttar Pradesh and the states of Northeast India. A proposal for the controversial Uniform Civil Code was a part of the BJP's election manifesto.
The activities of a number of Hindu nationalist organisations increased in scope after Modi's election as Prime Minister, sometimes with the support of the government. These activities included a Hindu religious conversion programme, a campaign against the alleged Islamic practice of "Love Jihad", and attempts to celebrate Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, by members of the right wing Hindu Mahasabha. Officials in the government, including the Home Minister, defended the conversion programmes.
Links between the BJP and the RSS grew stronger under Modi. The RSS provided organisational support to the BJP's electoral campaigns, while the Modi administration appointed a number of individuals affiliated with the RSS to prominent government positions. In 2014, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, who had previously been associated with the RSS, became the chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). Historians and former members of the ICHR, including those sympathetic to the BJP, questioned his credentials as a historian, and stated that the appointment was part of an agenda of cultural nationalism.
The North East Delhi riots, which left more than 40 dead and hundreds injured, were triggered by protests against a citizenship law seen by many critics as anti-Muslim and part of Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda. On 5 August 2020, Modi visited Ayodhya after the Supreme Court in 2019 ordered a contested land in Ayodhya to be handed over to a trust to build the Hindu temple and ordered the government to give alternate 5 acre land to Sunni Waqf Board for the purpose of building a mosque. He became the first prime minister to visit Ram Janmabhoomi and Hanuman Garhi.
Foreign policy
Foreign policy played a relatively small role in Modi's election campaign, and did not feature prominently in the BJP's election manifesto. Modi invited all the other leaders of SAARC countries to his swearing in ceremony as prime minister. He was the first Indian prime minister to do so.
Modi's foreign policy, similarly to that of the preceding INC government, focused on improving economic ties, security, and regional relations. Modi continued Manmohan Singh's policy of "multi-alignment." The Modi administration tried to attract foreign investment in the Indian economy from several sources, especially in East Asia, with the use of slogans such as "Make in India" and "Digital India". The government also tried to improve relations with Islamic nations in the Middle East, such as Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as with Israel.
The foreign relations of India with the USA also mended after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. During the run-up to the general election there was wide-ranging scepticism regarding future of the strategic bilateral relation under Modi's premiership as in 2005 he was, while Chief Minister of Gujarat, denied a U.S. visa during the Bush administration for his poor human rights records. However sensing Modi's inevitable victory well before the election, the US Ambassador Nancy Powell had reached out to him as part of greater rapprochement from the west. Moreover, following his 2014 election as the Prime Minister of India President Obama congratulated him over the telephone and invited him to visit the US. Modi government has been successful in making good foreign relations with the USA in the presidency of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
During the first few months after the election, Modi made trips to a number of different countries to further the goals of his policy, and attended the BRICS, ASEAN, and G20 summits. One of Modi's first visits as prime minister was to Nepal, during which he promised a billion USD in aid. Modi also made several overtures to the United States, including multiple visits to that country. While this was described as an unexpected development, due to the US having previously denied Modi a travel visa over his role during the 2002 Gujarat riots, the visits were expected to strengthen diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries.
In 2015, the Indian parliament ratified a land exchange deal with Bangladesh about the India–Bangladesh enclaves, which had been initiated by the government of Manmohan Singh. Modi's administration gave renewed attention to India's "Look East Policy", instituted in 1991. The policy was renamed the "Act East Policy", and involved directing Indian foreign policy towards East Asia and Southeast Asia. The government signed agreements to improve land connectivity with Myanmar, through the state of Manipur. This represented a break with India's historic engagement with Myanmar, which prioritised border security over trade. China–India relations have deteriorated rapidly following the 2020 China–India skirmishes. Modi has pledged aid of $900 million to Afghanistan, visited the nation twice and been honoured with the nation's highest civilian honour in 2016.
Defence policy
India's nominal military spending increased steadily under Modi. The military budget declined over Modi's tenure both as a fraction of GDP and when adjusted for inflation. A substantial portion of the military budget was devoted to personnel costs, leading commentators to write that the budget was constraining Indian military modernisation.
The BJP election manifesto had also promised to deal with illegal immigration into India in the Northeast, as well as to be more firm in its handling of insurgent groups. The Modi government issued a notification allowing Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh to legalise their residency in India. The government described the measure as being taken for humanitarian reasons but it drew criticism from several Assamese organisations.The Modi administration negotiated a peace agreement with the largest faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCM), which was announced in August 2015. The Naga insurgency in northeast India had begun in the 1950s. The NSCM and the government had agreed to a ceasefire in 1997, but a peace accord had not previously been signed. In 2015 the government abrogated a 15-year ceasefire with the Khaplang faction of the NSCM (NSCM-K). The NSCM-K responded with a series of attacks, which killed 18 people. The Modi government carried out a raid across the border with Myanmar as a result, and labelled the NSCM-K a terrorist organisation.
Modi promised to be "tough on Pakistan" during his election campaign, and repeatedly stated that Pakistan was an exporter of terrorism. On 29 September 2016, the Indian Army stated that it had conducted a surgical strike on terror launch pads in Azad Kashmir. The Indian media claimed that up to 50 terrorists and Pakistani soldiers had been killed in the strike. Pakistan initially denied that any strikes had taken place. Subsequent reports suggested that Indian claim about the scope of the strike and the number of casualties had been exaggerated, although cross-border strikes had been carried out. In February 2019 India carried out airstrikes in Pakistan against a supposed terrorist camp. Further military skirmishes followed, including cross-border shelling and the loss of an Indian aircraft.
Following his victory in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he focused more on Defence policies of India, especially against China and Pakistan. On 5 May 2020, Chinese and Indian troops engaged in aggressive melee, face-offs and skirmishes at locations along the Sino-Indian border, including near the disputed Pangong Lake in Ladakh and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and near the border between Sikkim and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Additional clashes also took place at locations in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). After which there was start of skirmishes between the nations leading to many border clashes, responses and reactions from both sides. A series of talks were also held between the two by both military and diplomatic means for peace. The first border clash reported in 2021 was on 20 January, referred to as a minor border clash in Sikkim.
Environmental policy
In naming his cabinet, Modi renamed the "Ministry of Environment and Forests" the "Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change." In the first budget of the government, the money allotted to this ministry was reduced by more than 50%. The new ministry also removed or diluted a number of laws related to environmental protection. These included no longer requiring clearance from the National Board for Wildlife for projects close to protected areas, and allowing certain projects to proceed before environmental clearance was received. The government also tried to reconstitute the Wildlife board such that it no longer had representatives from non-governmental organisations: however, this move was prevented by the Supreme Court.
Modi also relaxed or abolished a number of other environmental regulations, particularly those related to industrial activity. A government committee stated that the existing system only served to create corruption, and that the government should instead rely on the owners of industries to voluntarily inform the government about the pollution they were creating. Other changes included reducing ministry oversight on small mining projects, and no longer requiring approval from tribal councils for projects inside forested areas. In addition, Modi lifted a moratorium on new industrial activity in the most polluted areas in the countries. The changes were welcomed by businesspeople, but criticised by environmentalists.
Under the UPA government that preceded Modi's administration, field trials of Genetically Modified (GM) crops had essentially been put on hold, after protests from farmers fearing for their livelihoods. Under the Modi government these restrictions were gradually lifted. The government received some criticism for freezing the bank accounts of environmental group Greenpeace, citing financial irregularities, although a leaked government report said that the freeze had to do with Greenpeace's opposition to GM crops. At the COP26 conference Modi announced that India would target carbon neutrality by 2070, and also expand its renewable energy capacity. Though the date of net zero is far behind that of China and the USA and India's government wants to continue with the use of coal, Indian environmentalists and economists applauded the decision, describing it as a bold climate action.
Democratic backsliding
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how the Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. There have been several reports of the Modi government to be as an authoritarian conservative government, even due to lack of good opposition.
Electoral history
Personal life and image
Personal life
In accordance with Ghanchi tradition, Modi's marriage was arranged by his parents when he was a child. He was engaged at age 13 to Jashodaben Modi, marrying her when he was 18. They spent little time together and grew apart when Modi began two years of travel, including visits to Hindu ashrams. Reportedly, their marriage was never consummated, and he kept it a secret because otherwise he could not have become a 'pracharak' in the puritan Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Modi kept his marriage secret for most of his career. He acknowledged his wife for the first time when he filed his nomination for the 2014 general elections. Modi maintains a close relationship with his centenarian mother, Hiraben.
A vegetarian and teetotaler, Modi has a frugal lifestyle and is a workaholic and introvert. A person named Badri Meena has been his cook since 2002. Modi's 31 August 2012 post on Google Hangouts made him the first Indian politician to interact with citizens on a live chat. Modi has also been called a fashion-icon for his signature crisply ironed, half-sleeved kurta, as well as for a suit with his name embroidered repeatedly in the pinstripes that he wore during a state visit by US President Barack Obama, which drew public and media attention and criticism. Modi's personality has been variously described by scholars and biographers as energetic, arrogant, and charismatic.
He had published a Gujarati book titled Jyotipunj in 2008, containing profiles of various RSS leaders. The longest was of M. S. Golwalkar, under whose leadership the RSS expanded and whom Modi refers to as Pujniya Shri Guruji ("Guru worthy of worship"). According to The Economic Times, his intention was to explain the workings of the RSS to his readers and to reassure RSS members that he remained ideologically aligned with them. Modi authored eight other books, mostly containing short stories for children.
The nomination of Modi for the prime ministership drew attention to his reputation as "one of contemporary India's most controversial and divisive politicians." During the 2014 election campaign the BJP projected an image of Modi as a strong, masculine leader, who would be able to take difficult decisions. Campaigns in which he has participated have focused on Modi as an individual, in a manner unusual for the BJP and RSS. Modi has relied upon his reputation as a politician able to bring about economic growth and "development". Nonetheless, his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots continues to attract criticism and controversy. Modi's hardline Hindutva philosophy and the policies adopted by his government continue to draw criticism, and have been seen as evidence of a majoritarian and exclusionary social agenda.
In March 2021, Modi received his first COVID-19 vaccine dose at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
Personal donations
Modi has made donations for various causes and programmes. One such instance was when Modi donated towards the initial corpus of the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) Fund. In his role as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi had donated from personal savings for educating daughters of state government officials. Modi had also raised by auctioning all the gifts he received as chief minister and donated this to the Kanya Kelavani Fund. The money was spent on the education of girl children, through the scheme.
Approval ratings
As a Prime Minister, Modi has received consistently high approval ratings; at the end of his first year in office, he received an overall approval rating of 87% in a Pew Research poll, with 68% of people rating him "very favorably" and 93% approving of his government. His approval rating remained largely consistent at around 74% through his second year in office, according to a nationwide poll conducted by instaVaani. At the end of his second year in office, an updated Pew Research poll showed Modi continued to receive high overall approval ratings of 81%, with 57% of those polled rating him "very favorably." At the end of his third year in office, a further Pew Research poll showed Modi with an overall approval rating of 88%, his highest yet, with 69% of people polled rating him "very favorably." A poll conducted by The Times of India in May 2017 showed 77% of the respondents rated Modi as "very good" and "good". In early 2017, a survey from Pew Research Center showed Modi to be the most popular figure in Indian politics. In a weekly analysis by Morning Consult called the Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker, Modi had the highest net approval rating as of 22 December 2020 of all government leaders in the 13 countries being tracked.
Awards and recognition
In March 2012 and June 2014, Modi appeared on the cover of the Asian edition of Time Magazine, one of the few Indian politicians to have done so. He was awarded Indian of the Year by CNN-News18 (formally CNN-IBN) news network in 2014. In June 2015, Modi was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020 and 2021, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Forbes Magazine ranked him the 15th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2014 and the 9th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2015, 2016 and 2018. In 2015, Modi was ranked the 13th Most Influential Person in the World by Bloomberg Markets Magazine. Modi was ranked fifth on Fortune Magazines first annual list of the "World's Greatest Leaders" in 2015. In 2017, Gallup International Association (GIA) conducted a poll and ranked Modi as third top leader of the world. In 2016, a wax statue of Modi was unveiled at Madame Tussauds wax museum in London.
In 2015 he was named one of Times "30 Most Influential People on the Internet" as the second-most-followed politician on Twitter and Facebook. In 2018, he was the third most followed world leader on Twitter, and the most followed world leader on Facebook and Instagram. In October 2018, Modi received United Nations's highest environmental award, the 'Champions of the Earth', for policy leadership by "pioneering work in championing" the International Solar Alliance and "new areas of levels of cooperation on environmental action". He was conferred the 2018 Seoul Peace Prize in recognition of "his dedication to improving international co-operation, raising global economic growth, accelerating the Human Development of the people of India by fostering economic growth and furthering the development of democracy through anti-corruption and social integration efforts". He is the first Indian to win the award.
Following his second swearing-in ceremony as Prime Minister of India, a picture of Modi was displayed on the facade of the ADNOC building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Texas India Forum hosted a community event in honour of Modi on 22 September 2019 at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. The event was attended by over 50,000 people and several American politicians including President Donald Trump, making it the largest gathering for an invited foreign leader visiting the United States other than the Pope. At the same event, Modi was presented with the Key to the City of Houston by Mayor Sylvester Turner. He was awarded the Global Goalkeeper Award on 24 September 2019 in New York City by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in recognition for the Swachh Bharat Mission and "the progress India has made in providing safe sanitation under his leadership".
In 2020, Modi was among eight world leaders awarded the parodic Ig Nobel Prize in Medical Education "for using the COVID-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can". On 21 December 2020, President Donald Trump awarded Modi with the Legion of Merit for elevating the India–United States relations. The Legion of Merit was awarded to Modi along with Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison and former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, the "original architects" of the QUAD.
On 24 February 2021, the largest cricket stadium in the world at Ahmedabad was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by the Gujarat Cricket Association.
Modi is featured in TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2021 list, making it his fifth time after 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2020. TIME called him the third "pivotal leader" of independent India after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi who "dominated the country’s politics like no one since them".
State honours
Other honours
In popular culture
Modi Kaka Ka Gaon, a 2017 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Tushar Amrish Goel is the first biopic on Modi, starring Vikas Mahante in the titular role it was made halfway into his first-term as the prime minister which is shown in the film. PM Narendra Modi, a 2019 Indian Hindi-language biographical drama film by Omung Kumar, starred Vivek Oberoi in the titular role and covers his rise to prime ministership.An Indian web series, Modi: Journey of a Common Man, based on the same premise released in May 2019 on Eros Now with Ashish Sharma portraying Modi. Hu Narender Modi Banva Mangu Chu is a 2018 Indian Gujarati-language drama film by Anil Naryani about the aspirations of a young boy who wants to become like Narendra Modi.
7 RCR (7, Race Course Road), a 2014 Indian docudrama political television series which charts the political careers of prominent Indian politicians, covered Modi's rise to the PM's office in the episodes - "Story of Narendra Modi from 1950 to 2001", "Story of Narendra Modi in Controversial Years from 2001 to 2013", "Truth Behind Brand Modi", "Election Journey of Narendra Modi to 7 RCR", and "Masterplan of Narendra Modi's NDA Govt."; with Sangam Rai in the role of Modi.
Other portrayals of Modi include by Rajit Kapur in the film Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) and Vikram Gokhale in the web-television series Avrodh: The Siege Within (2020) both based on the 2016 Uri attack and the following Indian surgical strikes. Pratap Singh played a character based on Modi in Chand Bujh Gaya (2005) which is set in the backdrop of the Gujarat riots.
Premiered on 12 August 2019, Modi appeared in an episode - "Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls and Prime Minister Modi" - of Discovery Channel's show Man vs Wild with the host Bear Grylls, becoming the second world leader after Barack Obama to appear in the reality show. In the show he trekked the jungles and talked about nature and wildlife conservation with Grylls. The episode was shot in Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand and was broadcast in 180 countries along India. He has also appeared twice on the Indian television talk show Aap Ki Adalat before the 2009 and 2014 elections respectively.
Along with hosting the Mann Ki Baat monthly radio programme, on All India Radio, he has also conducted Pariksha Pe Charcha - a competition/discussion for students and the issues they face in examinations.
Bibliography
See also
List of prime ministers of India
Opinion polling on the Narendra Modi premiership
References
Notes
Citations
Further reading
External links
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1950 births
Living people
Gujarati people
People from Gujarat
People from Mehsana district
Indian Hindus
Prime Ministers of India
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17th Lok Sabha members
Members of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly
Delhi University alumni
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Indian nationalists
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Recipients of the Legion of Merit
Hindu nationalists
Right-wing politics in India
20th-century Indian writers
Members of the Planning Commission of India
Right-wing populism in India
Bharatiya Jana Sangh politicians
Bharatiya Janata Party politicians from Gujarat
Lok Sabha members from Gujarat
Lok Sabha members from Uttar Pradesh
National Democratic Alliance candidates in the 2019 Indian general election
Writers from Gujarat
Candidates in the 2014 Indian general election
Hindu pacifists
Narendra Modi ministry
Candidates in the 2019 Indian general election
Hindu revivalists
Writers about activism and social change
Indian political people
21st-century prime ministers of India
Gujarat MLAs 1998–2002
Politicians of Hindu political parties
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Gujarat MLAs 2002–2007
Gujarat MLAs 2007–2012
Gujarat MLAs 2012–2017
21st-century Indian non-fiction writers
Politicians from Varanasi
Time 100 | false | [
"Burson v. Freeman, 504 U.S. 191 (1992), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a Tennessee law that restricted from political campaigning within 100 feet of a polling place did not violate the First Amendment.\n\nBackground\nPrior to the late 19th century, polling places lacked the privacy and decorum of more contemporary times, with campaigners allowed to directly speak to voters as they were submitting their ballots on election day, leading to voter intimidation. From the end of the 19th century into the 20th century, many states passed laws that restricted the type of activities that could be conducted around polling places. One typical law common that was enacted by forty-seven states established a proximity around the polling place where political campaigning and electioneering were banned. Tennessee was one such state, which by Tennessee Code §§ 2-7-111(b) preventing campaigning - through verbal speech, signs, pamphlets, or other materials - within of a polling place.\n\nIn the lead-up to the 1987 election, Mary Freeman was the treasurer for the campaign for a candidate for the Metropolitan Council of Nashville and Davidson County. She filed a suit within the Tennessee Chancery Courts to seek an injunction to permanently block enforcement of TCA §§ 2-7-111(b), arguing it was unconstitutional for violating the free speech rights by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as well as the Constitution of Tennessee. The Chancery judge ruled to dismiss the complaint, finding that the statute did not violate either federal or state law, as it served a compelling state interest to avoid voter intimidation. The case was appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which ruled 4-1 to overturn the lower court decision, and ruled the statute unconstitutional. The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that while the state did have a compelling interest to prevent voter intimidation within the polling place, it did not a similar case for the 100-ft space around the polling place; if the state wished to prevent voter intimidation, they could enforce this as the entrances of the polling place, the court argued. Further, the court believed that as long as the polling place was free of political campaigning, voters would not be deterred by last-minute campaigning before they entered the polling place.\n\nSupreme Court\nState Attorney General Charles Burson petitioned the United States Supreme Court for writ of certorari, asking the question if the Tennessee 100-ft radius statute violated the First Amendment. The Court granted to hear the case, with oral arguments hear on October 8, 1991. The case was heard before Justice Clarence Thomas was formally appointed to the Supreme Court, and he did not participate in the subsequent decisions.\n\nThe Court issued its decision on May 26, 1992, ruling in a 5-3 vote, that the Tennessee 100-ft statute did not violate the First Amendment, reversing the lower court's judgement. The majority opinion was written by Justice Harry Blackmun, and joined by Justices William Rehnquist, Byron White and Anthony Kennedy. Blackmun wrote in his opinion that \"We simply do not view the question whether the 100-foot boundary line could be somewhat tighter as a question of constitutional dimension...The state of Tennessee has decided that these last 15 seconds before its citizens enter the polling place should be their own, as free from interference as possible. We do not find that this is an unconstitutional choice.\" Justice Antonin Scalia also concurred in a separate decision, though argued that Tennessee would not need a compelling reason to issue a \"viewpoint-neutral\" restriction on free speech.\n\nJustice John Paul Stevens wrote the dissent, joined by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and David H. Souter. Stevens believed that the state had not shown a compelling reason to restrict free speech in the 100-ft radius.\n\nImpact \nThe Court's decision in Burson would later be referenced in a 2018 Supreme Court case, Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky (Docket 16-1435). In Minnesota Voters Alliance (MVA), the Court was presented with a challenge to a Minnesota law that restricted voters from wearing items of clothing with \"political\" messages. The law was challenged as unconstitutionally violating free speech rights. The lower courts had used the Court's decision in Burson to assert the Minnesota law was similarly valid. The Court instead ruled 7-2 that unlike Burson, which set narrow bounds on what the state could restrict around polling places (specifically, political campaigning speech), the Minnesota laws was too vague on what was allowed or not, and reversed the decision of lower courts.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1992 in United States case law\nUnited States Supreme Court cases\nUnited States Supreme Court cases of the Rehnquist Court\nUnited States First Amendment case law\nUnited States elections case law",
"Giorgio Gorgone (Rome, 18 August 1976) is an Italian player in the role of midfielder, currently campaigning in Triestina. His debut in Serie B season takes place in 1998–1999 with the Lucchese.\n\nIn 2010–11 season he was excluded from squad and did not awarded a shirt number.\n\nIn 2012, he assisted Roberto Stellone as the vice coach of Frosinone Calcio.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n \n\n1976 births\nLiving people\nItalian footballers\nA.S. Lodigiani players\nA.C. ChievoVerona players\nCagliari Calcio players\nDelfino Pescara 1936 players\nA.C. Perugia Calcio players\nU.S. Triestina Calcio 1918 players\nVirtus Bergamo Alzano Seriate 1909 players\nAssociation football midfielders"
] |
[
"Narendra Modi",
"2014 Indian general election",
"in what month was the election?",
"the 2014 Lok Sabha election.",
"what position did he run for in the election?",
"prime minister",
"what political party was he in?",
"the BJP's candidate",
"did he win the election?",
"Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment",
"how many votes did he get?",
"by 570,128 votes.",
"who was his opponent?",
"defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi",
"for how long was he prime minister?",
"To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat.",
"where did he do his campaigning?",
"The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately Rs50 billion"
] | C_b6a0c764bf0c443b9768973ff08ca8fb_0 | where did he get the money from to pay for that cost? | 9 | Where did Narendra Modi get the money from to pay for the cost of his BJP campaign? | Narendra Modi | In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi. During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development. Although the BJP avoided issues of Hindu nationalism to an extent, Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately Rs50 billion (US$770 million), and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances. The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism. Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by 570,128 votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat. CANNOTANSWER | received extensive financial support from corporate donors. | Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from Varanasi. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organisation. He is the first prime minister to have been born after India's independence in 1947 and the second prime minister not belonging to the Indian National Congress to have won two consecutive majorities in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Indian of parliament.
Born and raised in Vadnagar, a small town in northeastern Gujarat, Modi completed his secondary education there. He was introduced to the RSS at age eight. He has drawn attention to having to work as a child in his father's tea stall on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that has not been reliably corroborated. At age 18, Modi was married to Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, whom he abandoned soon after. He left his parental home where she had come to live. He first publicly acknowledged her as his wife more than four decades later when required to do so by Indian law, but has made no contact with her since. Modi has asserted he had travelled in northern India for two years after leaving his parental home, visiting a number of religious centres, but few details of his travels have emerged. Upon his return to Gujarat in 1971, he became a full-time worker for the RSS. After the state of emergency declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, Modi went into hiding. The RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985 and he held several positions within the party hierarchy until 2001, rising to the rank of general secretary.
Modi was appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001 due to Keshubhai Patel's failing health and poor public image following the earthquake in Bhuj. Modi was elected to the legislative assembly soon after. His administration has been considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots in which 1044 people were killed, three-quarters of whom were Muslim, or otherwise criticised for its management of the crisis. The Supreme Court remarked that Narendra Modi was like a Modern-day Nero, looking the other way as innocent women and children were burning. A Supreme Court of India-appointed Special Investigation Team found no evidence to initiate prosecution proceedings against Modi personally. While his policies as chief minister—credited with encouraging economic growth—have received praise, his administration has been criticised for failing to significantly improve health, poverty and education indices in the state.
Modi led the BJP in the 2014 general election which gave the party a majority in the Indian lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, the first time for any single party since 1984. Modi's administration has tried to raise foreign direct investment in the Indian economy and reduced spending on healthcare and social welfare programmes. Modi has attempted to improve efficiency in the bureaucracy; he has centralised power by abolishing the Planning Commission. He began a high-profile sanitation campaign, controversially initiated a demonetisation of high-denomination banknotes and transformation of taxation regime, and weakened or abolished environmental and labour laws.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. Following his party's victory in the 2019 general election, his administration revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and also introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act, which resulted in widespread protests across the country. Described as engineering a political realignment towards right-wing politics, Modi remains a figure of controversy domestically and internationally over his Hindu nationalist beliefs and his handling of the 2002 Gujarat riots, cited as evidence of an exclusionary social agenda.
Early life and education
Narendra Damodardas Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a Gujarati Hindu family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district, Bombay State (present-day Gujarat). He was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi () and Hiraben Modi (born ). Modi's family belonged to the Modh-Ghanchi-Teli (oil-presser) community, which is categorised as an Other Backward Class by the Indian government.
Modi had only infrequently spoken of his family background during his 13 years as chief minister of Gujarat. In the run up to the 2014 national elections, he began to regularly draw attention to his low-ranking social origins and to having to work as a child in his father's tea shop on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that the evidence of neighbours does not entirely corroborate. Modi completed his higher secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where teachers described him as an average student and a keen gifted debater, with interest in theatre. Modi preferred playing larger-than-life characters in theatrical productions, which has influenced his political image.
When eight years old, Modi was introduced to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and began attending its local shakhas (training sessions). There, Modi met Lakshmanrao Inamdar, popularly known as Vakil Saheb, who inducted him as a balswayamsevak (junior cadet) in the RSS and became his political mentor. While Modi was training with the RSS, he also met Vasant Gajendragadkar and Nathalal Jaghda, Bharatiya Jana Sangh leaders who were founding members of the BJP's Gujarat unit in 1980.
In a custom traditional to Narendra Modi's caste, his family arranged a betrothal to a girl, Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, leading to their marriage when she was 17 and he was 18. Soon afterwards, he abandoned his bride, and left home, never divorcing her, but the marriage remaining unmentioned in Modi's public pronouncements for many decades. In April 2014, shortly before the national elections that swept him to power, Modi publicly affirmed that he was married and his spouse was Jashodaben; the couple has remained married, but estranged.
Modi spent the ensuing two years travelling across Northern and North-eastern India, though few details of where he went have emerged. In interviews, Modi has described visiting Hindu ashrams founded by Swami Vivekananda: the Belur Math near Kolkata, followed by the Advaita Ashrama in Almora and the Ramakrishna Mission in Rajkot. Modi remained only a short time at each, since he lacked the required college education. Vivekananda has been described as a large influence in Modi's life.
In the early summer of 1968, Modi reached the Belur Math but was turned away, after which Modi wandered through Calcutta, West Bengal and Assam, stopping in Siliguri and Guwahati. Modi then went to the Ramakrishna Ashram in Almora, where he was again rejected, before travelling back to Gujarat via Delhi and Rajasthan in 1968–69. Sometime in late 1969 or early 1970, Modi returned to Vadnagar for a brief visit before leaving again for Ahmedabad. There, Modi lived with his uncle, working in the latter's canteen at the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation.
In Ahmedabad, Modi renewed his acquaintance with Inamdar, who was based at the Hedgewar Bhavan (RSS headquarters) in the city. Modi's first known political activity as an adult was in 1971 when he, as per his remarks, joined a Jana Sangh Satyagraha in Delhi led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee to enlist for the battlefield during the Bangladesh Liberation War. But the Indira Gandhi-led central government disallowed open support for the Mukti Bahini and Modi, according to his own claim, was put in Tihar Jail for a short period. After the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he stopped working for his uncle and became a full-time pracharak (campaigner) for the RSS, working under Inamdar. Shortly before the war, Modi took part in a non-violent protest against the Indian government in New Delhi, for which he was arrested (as per his claim); this has been cited as a reason for Inamdar electing to mentor him. Many years later Modi would co-author a biography of Inamdar, published in 2001. Modi's claim that he was part of a Satyagraha led to a political war. Applications were filed with the PMO under the RTI Act seeking details of his arrest. In reply, the PMO claimed that it maintains official records on Modi only since he took charge as the Prime Minister of India in 2014. Despite this claim, the official website of the PMO contains specific information about Modi which dates back to the 1950s.
In 1978 Modi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the School of Open Learning (SOL) at the University of Delhi, graduating with a third class. Five years later, in 1983, he received a Master of Arts degree in political science from Gujarat University, graduating with a first class as an external distance learning student. But there is a big controversy surrounding his educational qualification. Replying to an RTI query, the SOL said it did not have any data of students who received a BA degree in 1978. Jayantibhai Patel, a former political science professor of Gujarat University, claimed that the subjects listed in Modi's MA degree were not offered by the university when Modi was studying there.
Early political career
In June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India which lasted until 1977. During this period, known as "The Emergency", many of her political opponents were jailed and opposition groups were banned. Modi was appointed general secretary of the "Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti", an RSS committee co-ordinating opposition to the Emergency in Gujarat. Shortly afterwards, the RSS was banned. Modi was forced to go underground in Gujarat and frequently travelled in disguise to avoid arrest. He became involved in printing pamphlets opposing the government, sending them to Delhi and organising demonstrations. Modi was also involved with creating a network of safe houses for individuals wanted by the government, and in raising funds for political refugees and activists. During this period, Modi wrote a book in Gujarati, Sangharsh Ma Gujarat (In The Struggles of Gujarat), describing events during the Emergency. Among the people he met in this role was trade unionist and socialist activist George Fernandes, as well as several other national political figures. In his travels during the Emergency, Modi was often forced to move in disguise, once dressing as a monk, and once as a Sikh.
Modi became an RSS sambhag pracharak (regional organiser) in 1978, overseeing RSS activities in the areas of Surat and Vadodara, and in 1979 he went to work for the RSS in Delhi, where he was put to work researching and writing the RSS's version of the history of the Emergency. He returned to Gujarat a short while later, and was assigned by the RSS to the BJP in 1985. In 1987 Modi helped organise the BJP's campaign in the Ahmedabad municipal election, which the BJP won comfortably; Modi's planning has been described as the reason for that result by biographers. After L. K. Advani became president of the BJP in 1986, the RSS decided to place its members in important positions within the BJP; Modi's work during the Ahmedabad election led to his selection for this role, and Modi was elected organising secretary of the BJP's Gujarat unit later in 1987.
Modi rose within the party and was named a member of the BJP's National Election Committee in 1990, helping organise L. K. Advani's 1990 Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 and Murli Manohar Joshi's 1991–92 Ekta Yatra (Journey for Unity). However, he took a brief break from politics in 1992, instead establishing a school in Ahmedabad; friction with Shankersinh Vaghela, a BJP MP from Gujarat at the time, also played a part in this decision. Modi returned to electoral politics in 1994, partly at the insistence of Advani, and as party secretary, Modi's electoral strategy was considered central to the BJP victory in the 1995 state assembly elections. In November of that year Modi was appointed BJP national secretary and transferred to New Delhi, where he assumed responsibility for party activities in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The following year, Shankersinh Vaghela, a prominent BJP leader from Gujarat, defected to the Indian National Congress (Congress, INC) after losing his parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha elections. Modi, on the selection committee for the 1998 Assembly elections in Gujarat, favoured supporters of BJP leader Keshubhai Patel over those supporting Vaghela to end factional division in the party. His strategy was credited as key to the BJP winning an overall majority in the 1998 elections, and Modi was promoted to BJP general secretary (organisation) in May of that year.
Chief Minister of Gujarat
Taking office
In 2001, Keshubhai Patel's health was failing and the BJP lost a few state assembly seats in by-elections. Allegations of abuse of power, corruption and poor administration were made, and Patel's standing had been damaged by his administration's handling of the earthquake in Bhuj in 2001. The BJP national leadership sought a new candidate for the chief ministership, and Modi, who had expressed misgivings about Patel's administration, was chosen as a replacement. Although BJP leader L. K. Advani did not want to ostracise Patel and was concerned about Modi's lack of experience in government, Modi declined an offer to be Patel's deputy chief minister, telling Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee that he was "going to be fully responsible for Gujarat or not at all". On 3 October 2001 he replaced Patel as Chief Minister of Gujarat, with the responsibility of preparing the BJP for the December 2002 elections. Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister on 7 October 2001, and entered the Gujarat state legislature on 24 February 2002 by winning a by-election to the Rajkot – II constituency, defeating Ashwin Mehta of the INC by 14,728 votes.
2002 Gujarat riots
On 27 February 2002, a train with several hundred passengers burned near Godhra, killing approximately 60 people. The train carried a large number of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya after a religious ceremony at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid. In making a public statement after the incident, Modi declared it a terrorist attack planned and orchestrated by local Muslims. The next day, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for a bandh across the state. Riots began during the bandh, and anti-Muslim violence spread through Gujarat. The government's decision to move the bodies of the train victims from Godhra to Ahmedabad further inflamed the violence. The state government stated later that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed. Independent sources put the death toll at over 2000, the vast majority Muslims Approximately 150,000 people were driven to refugee camps. Numerous women and children were among the victims; the violence included mass rapes and mutilations of women.
The government of Gujarat itself is generally considered by scholars to have been complicit in the riots, (with some blaming chief minister Modi explicitly) and has otherwise received heavy criticism for its handling of the situation. Several scholars have described the violence as a pogrom, while others have called it an example of state terrorism. Summarising academic views on the subject, Martha Nussbaum said: "There is by now a broad consensus that the Gujarat violence was a form of ethnic cleansing, that in many ways it was premeditated, and that it was carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law." The Modi government imposed a curfew in 26 major cities, issued shoot-at-sight orders and called for the army to patrol the streets, but was unable to prevent the violence from escalating. The president of the state unit of the BJP expressed support for the bandh, despite such actions being illegal at the time. State officials later prevented riot victims from leaving the refugee camps, and the camps were often unable to meet the needs of those living there. Muslim victims of the riots were subject to further discrimination when the state government announced that compensation for Muslim victims would be half of that offered to Hindus, although this decision was later reversed after the issue was taken to court. During the riots, police officers often did not intervene in situations where they were able.
Modi's personal involvement in the 2002 events has continued to be debated. During the riots, Modi said that "What is happening is a chain of action and reaction." Later in 2002, Modi said the way in which he had handled the media was his only regret regarding the episode. In March 2008, the Supreme Court reopened several cases related to the 2002 riots, including that of the Gulbarg Society massacre, and established a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the issue. In response to a petition from Zakia Jafri (widow of Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre), in April 2009 the court also asked the SIT to investigate the issue of Modi's complicity in the killings. The SIT questioned Modi in March 2010; in May, it presented to the court a report finding no evidence against him. In July 2011, the court-appointed amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran submitted his final report to the court. Contrary to the SIT's position, he said that Modi could be prosecuted based on the available evidence. The Supreme Court gave the matter to the magistrate's court. The SIT examined Ramachandran's report, and in March 2012 submitted its final report, asking for the case to be closed. Zakia Jafri filed a protest petition in response. In December 2013 the magistrate's court rejected the protest petition, accepting the SIT's finding that there was no evidence against the chief minister.
2002 election
In the aftermath of the violence there were widespread calls for Modi to resign as chief minister from within and outside the state, including from leaders of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Telugu Desam Party (allies in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition), and opposition parties stalled Parliament over the issue. Modi submitted his resignation at the April 2002 BJP national executive meeting in Goa, but it was not accepted. His cabinet had an emergency meeting on 19 July 2002, after which it offered its resignation to the Gujarat Governor S. S. Bhandari, and the state assembly was dissolved. Despite opposition from the election commissioner, who said that a number of voters were still displaced, Modi succeeded in advancing the election to December 2002. In the elections, the BJP won 127 seats in the 182-member assembly. Although Modi later denied it, he made significant use of anti-Muslim rhetoric during his campaign, and the BJP profited from religious polarisation among the voters. He won the Maninagar constituency, receiving of votes and defeating INC candidate Yatin Oza by 75,333 votes. On 22 December 2002, Bhandari swore Modi in for a second term. Modi framed the criticism of his government for human rights violations as an attack upon Gujarati pride, a strategy which led to the BJP winning two-thirds of the seats in the state assembly.
Second term
During Modi's second term the rhetoric of the government shifted from Hindutva to Gujarat's economic development. Modi curtailed the influence of Sangh Parivar organisations such as the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), entrenched in the state after the decline of Ahmedabad's textile industry, and dropped Gordhan Zadafia (an ally of former Sangh co-worker and VHP state chief Praveen Togadia) from his cabinet. When the BKS staged a farmers' demonstration Modi ordered their eviction from state-provided houses, and his decision to demolish 200 illegal temples in Gandhinagar deepened the rift with the Vishva Hindu Parishad. Sangh organisations were no longer consulted or informed in advance about Modi's administrative decisions. Nonetheless, Modi retained connections with some Hindu nationalists. Modi wrote a foreword to a textbook by Dinanath Batra released in 2014, which stated that ancient India possessed technologies including test-tube babies.
Modi's relationship with Muslims continued to attract criticism. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who asked Modi for tolerance in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat violence and supported his resignation as chief minister) distanced himself, reaching out to North Indian Muslims before the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. After the elections Vajpayee called the violence in Gujarat a reason for the BJP's electoral defeat and said it had been a mistake to leave Modi in office after the riots.
Questions about Modi's relationship with Muslims were also raised by many Western nations during his tenure as chief minister. Modi was barred from entering the United States by the State Department, in accordance with the recommendations of the Commission on International Religious Freedom formed under the aegis of the International Religious Freedom Act, the only person denied a US visa under this law. The UK and the European Union refused to admit him because of what they saw as his role in the riots. As Modi rose to prominence in India, the UK and the EU lifted their bans in October 2012 and March 2013, respectively, and after his election he was invited to Washington as the nation's prime minister.
During the run-up to the 2007 Gujarat Legislative Assembly election and the 2009 Indian general election, the BJP intensified its rhetoric on terrorism. In July 2006, Modi criticised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh " for his reluctance to revive anti-terror legislation" such as the 2002 Prevention of Terrorism Act. He asked the national government to allow states to invoke tougher laws in the wake of the 2006 Mumbai train bombings. In 2007 Modi authored Karmayog, a 101-page booklet discussing manual scavenging. In it, Modi argued that scavenging was a "spiritual experience" for Valmiks, a sub-caste of Dalits. However, this book was not circulated that time because of the election code of conduct. After the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, Modi held a meeting to discuss the security of Gujarat's -long coastline, resulting in government authorisation of 30 high-speed surveillance boats. In July 2007 Modi completed 2,063 consecutive days as chief minister of Gujarat, making him the longest-serving holder of that post, and the BJP won 122 of 182 state-assembly seats in that year's election.
Development projects
As Chief Minister, Modi favoured privatisation and small government, which was at odds with the philosophy of the RSS, usually described as anti-privatisation and anti-globalisation. His policies during his second term have been credited with reducing corruption in the state. He established financial and technology parks in Gujarat and during the 2007 Vibrant Gujarat summit, real-estate investment deals worth were signed.
The governments led by Patel and Modi supported NGOs and communities in the creation of groundwater-conservation projects. By December 2008, 500,000 structures had been built, of which 113,738 were check dams, which helped recharge the aquifers beneath them. Sixty of the 112 tehsils which had depleted the water table in 2004 had regained their normal groundwater levels by 2010. As a result, the state's production of genetically modified cotton increased to become the largest in India. The boom in cotton production and its semi-arid land use led to Gujarat's agricultural sector growing at an average rate of 9.6 percent from 2001 to 2007. Public irrigation measures in central and southern Gujarat, such as the Sardar Sarovar Dam, were less successful. The Sardar Sarovar project only irrigated 4–6% of the area intended. Nonetheless, from 2001 to 2010 Gujarat recorded an agricultural growth rate of 10.97 percent – the highest of any state. However, sociologists have pointed out that the growth rate under the 1992–97 INC government was 12.9 percent. In 2008 Modi offered land in Gujarat to Tata Motors to set up a plant manufacturing the Nano after a popular agitation had forced the company to move out of West Bengal. Several other companies followed the Tata to Gujarat.
The Modi government finished the process of bringing electricity to every village in Gujarat that its predecessor had almost completed. Modi significantly changed the state's system of power distribution, greatly impacting farmers. Gujarat expanded the Jyotigram Yojana scheme, in which agricultural electricity was separated from other rural electricity; the agricultural electricity was rationed to fit scheduled irrigation demands, reducing its cost. Although early protests by farmers ended when those who benefited found that their electricity supply had stabilised, according to an assessment study corporations and large farmers benefited from the policy at the expense of small farmers and labourers.
Development debate
A contentious debate surrounds the assessment of Gujarat's economic development during Modi's tenure as chief minister. The state's GDP growth rate averaged 10% during Modi's tenure, a value similar to other highly industrialised states, and above that of the country as a whole. Gujarat also had a high rate of economic growth in the 1990s, before Modi took office, and some scholars have stated that growth did not much accelerate during Modi's tenure, although the state is considered to have maintained a high growth rate during Modi's Chief Ministership. Under Narendra Modi, Gujarat topped the World Bank's "ease of doing business" rankings among Indian states for two consecutive years. In 2013, Gujarat was ranked first among Indian states for "economic freedom" by a report measuring governance, growth, citizens' rights and labour and business regulation among the country's 20 largest states. In the later years of Modi's government, Gujarat's economic growth was frequently used as an argument to counter allegations of communalism. Tax breaks for businesses were easier to obtain in Gujarat than in other states, as was land. Modi's policies to make Gujarat attractive for investment included the creation of Special Economic Zones, where labour laws were greatly weakened.
Despite its growth rate, Gujarat had a relatively poor record on human development, poverty relief, nutrition and education during Modi's tenure. In 2013, Gujarat ranked 13th in the country with respect to rates of poverty and 21st in education. Nearly 45 percent of children under five were underweight and 23 percent were undernourished, putting the state in the "alarming" category on the India State Hunger Index. A study by UNICEF and the Indian government found that Gujarat under Modi had a poor record with respect to immunisation in children.
Over the decade from 2001 to 2011, Gujarat did not change its position relative to the rest of the country with respect to poverty and female literacy, remaining near the median of the 29 Indian states. It showed a marginal improvement in rates of infant mortality, and its position with respect to individual consumption declined. With respect to the quality of education in government schools, the state ranked below many Indian states. The social policies of the government generally did not benefit Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis, and generally increased social inequalities. Development in Gujarat was generally limited to the urban middle class, and citizens in rural areas or from lower castes were increasingly marginalised. In 2013 the state ranked 10th of 21 Indian states in the Human Development Index. Under Modi, the state government spent less than the national average on education and healthcare.
Final years
Despite the BJP's shift away from explicit Hindutva, Modi's election campaign in 2007 and 2012 contained elements of Hindu nationalism. Modi only attended Hindu religious ceremonies, and had prominent associations with Hindu religious leaders. During his 2012 campaign he twice refused to wear articles of clothing gifted by Muslim leaders. He did, however, maintain relations with Dawoodi Bohra. His campaign included references to issues known to cause religious polarisation, including to Afzal Guru and the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. The BJP did not nominate any Muslim candidates for the assembly election of 2012. During the 2012 campaign, Modi attempted to identify himself with the state of Gujarat, a strategy similar to that used by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, and projected himself as protecting Gujarat against persecution by the rest of India.
While campaigning for the 2012 assembly elections, Modi made extensive use of holograms and other technologies allowing him to reach a large number of people, something he would repeat in the 2014 general election. In the 2012 Gujarat Legislative Assembly elections, Modi won the constituency of Maninagar by 86,373 votes over Shweta Bhatt, the INC candidate and wife of Sanjiv Bhatt. The BJP won 115 of the 182 seats, continuing its majority during his tenure and allowing the party to form the government (as it had in Gujarat since 1995). After his election as prime minister, Modi resigned as the chief minister and as an MLA from Maninagar on 21 May 2014. Anandiben Patel succeeded him as the chief minister.
Premiership campaigns
2014 Indian general election
In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi.
During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development, although Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately , and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances.
The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism.
Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi by 371,784 votes and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat.
2019 Indian general election
On 13 October 2018, Modi was renamed as the BJP candidate for prime minister for the 2019 general election. The chief campaigner for the party was BJP's president Amit Shah. Modi launched the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign ahead of the general election, against Chowkidar Chor Hai campaign slogan of INC. In the year 2018, end Party's, second-biggest alliance Telugu Desam Party split from NDA over the matter of special-status for Andhra Pradesh.
The campaign was started by Amit Shah on 8 April 2019. In the campaign, Modi was targeted by the opposition on corruption allegations over Rafale deal with France government. Highlighting this controversy the campaign "Chowkidar Chor Hai" was started, which was contrary to "Main Bhi Chowkidar" slogan. Modi made defence and national security among the foremost topics for the election campaign, especially after Pulwama attack, and the retaliatory attack of Balakot airstrike was counted as an achievement of the Modi administration. Other topics in the campaign were development and good foreign relations in the first premiership.
Modi contested the Lok Sabha elections as a candidate from Varanasi. He won the seat by defeating Shalini Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, who fought on SP-BSP alliance by a margin of votes. Modi was unanimously appointed the prime minister for a second time by the National Democratic Alliance, after the alliance won the election for the second time by securing 353 seats in the Lok Sabha with the BJP alone won 303 seats.
Prime Minister
After the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won a landslide in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India on 26 May 2014. He became the first Prime Minister born after India's independence from the British Empire in 1947. Modi started his second term after the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won again in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. On 6 December 2020, Modi became the 4th longest serving Prime Minister of India and the longest serving Non-Congress Prime Minister.
Governance and other initiatives
Modi's first year as prime minister saw significant centralisation of power relative to previous administrations. His efforts at centralisation have been linked to an increase in the number of senior administration officials resigning their positions. Initially lacking a majority in the Rajya Sabha, or upper house of Indian Parliament, Modi passed a number of ordinances to enact his policies, leading to further centralisation of power. The government also passed a bill increasing the control that it had over the appointment of judges, and reducing that of the judiciary.
In December 2014 Modi abolished the Planning Commission, replacing it with the National Institution for Transforming India, or NITI Aayog. The move had the effect of greatly centralising the power previously with the planning commission in the person of the prime minister. The planning commission had received heavy criticism in previous years for creating inefficiency in the government, and of not filling its role of improving social welfare: however, since the economic liberalisation of the 1990s, it had been the major government body responsible for measures related to social justice.
The Modi government launched investigations by the Intelligence Bureau against numerous civil society organisations and foreign non-governmental organisations in the first year of the administration. The investigations, on the grounds that these organisations were slowing economic growth, was criticised as a witch-hunt. International humanitarian aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres was among the groups that were put under pressure. Other organisations affected included the Sierra Club and Avaaz. Cases of sedition were filed against individuals criticising the government. This led to discontent within the BJP regarding Modi's style of functioning and drew comparisons to the governing style of Indira Gandhi.
Modi repealed 1,200 obsolete laws in first three years as prime minister; a total of 1,301 such laws had been repealed by previous governments over a span of 64 years. He started a monthly radio programme titled "Mann Ki Baat" on 3 October 2014. Modi also launched the Digital India programme, with the goal of ensuring that government services are available electronically, building infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet access to rural areas, boosting manufacturing of electronic goods in the country, and promoting digital literacy.
Modi launched Ujjwala scheme to provide free LPG connection to rural households. The scheme led to an increase in LPG consumption by 56% in 2019 as compared to 2014. In 2019, a law was passed to provide 10% reservation to Economically weaker sections.
He was again sworn in as prime minister on 30 May 2019. On 30 July 2019, Parliament of India declared the practice of Triple Talaq as illegal, unconstitutional and made it punishable act from 1 August 2019 which is deemed to be in effect from 19 September 2018. On 5 August 2019, the government moved resolution to scrap Article 370 in the Rajya Sabha, and also reorganise the state with Jammu and Kashmir serving as one of the union territory and Ladakh region separated out as a separate union territory.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how he Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. Reporters Without Borders in 2021 characterised Modi as a predator for curbing press freedom in India since 2014.
Economic policy
The economic policies of Modi's government focused on privatisation and liberalisation of the economy, based on a neoliberal framework. Modi liberalised India's foreign direct investment policies, allowing more foreign investment in several industries, including in defence and the railways. Other proposed reforms included making it harder for workers to form unions and easier for employers to hire and fire them; some of these proposals were dropped after protests. The reforms drew strong opposition from unions: on 2 September 2015, eleven of the country's largest unions went on strike, including one affiliated with the BJP. The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, a constituent of the Sangh Parivar, stated that the underlying motivation of labour reforms favoured corporations over labourers.
The funds dedicated to poverty reduction programmes and social welfare measures were greatly decreased by the Modi administration. The money spent on social programmes declined from 14.6% of GDP during the Congress government to 12.6% during Modi's first year in office. Spending on health and family welfare declined by 15%, and on primary and secondary education by 16%. The budgetary allocation for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, or the "education for all" programme, declined by 22%. The government also lowered corporate taxes, abolished the wealth tax, increased sales taxes, and reduced customs duties on gold, and jewellery. In October 2014, the Modi government deregulated diesel prices.
In September 2014, Modi introduced the Make in India initiative to encourage foreign companies to manufacture products in India, with the goal of turning the country into a global manufacturing hub. Supporters of economic liberalisation supported the initiative, while critics argued it would allow foreign corporations to capture a greater share of the Indian market. Modi's administration passed a land-reform bill that allowed it to acquire private agricultural land without conducting a social impact assessment, and without the consent of the farmers who owned it. The bill was passed via an executive order after it faced opposition in parliament, but was eventually allowed to lapse. Modi's government put in place the Goods and Services Tax, the biggest tax reform in the country since independence. It subsumed around 17 different taxes and became effective from 1 July 2017.
In his first cabinet decision, Modi set up a team to investigate black money. On 9 November 2016, the government demonetised ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes, with the stated intention of curbing corruption, black money, the use of counterfeit currency, and terrorism. The move led to severe cash shortages, a steep decline in the Indian stock indices BSE SENSEX and NIFTY 50, and sparked widespread protests throughout the country. Several deaths were linked to the rush to exchange cash. In the subsequent year, the number of income tax returns filed for individuals rose by 25%, and the number of digital transactions increased steeply.
Over the first four years of Modi's premiership, India's GDP grew at an average rate of 7.23%, higher than the rate of 6.39% under the previous government. The level of income inequality increased, while an internal government report said that in 2017, unemployment had increased to its highest level in 45 years. The loss of jobs was attributed to the 2016 demonetisation, and to the effects of the Goods and Services Tax.
In the next year, after 2018, Indian economy started a gradual recovery with a GDP growth of 6.12% in 2018-19 FY, with an inflation rate of 3.4%. Same year, India was successful in making a good economy in trade and manufacturing sector. While in the FY of 2019–20, due to the general election, Modi government focused more on their election campaign. In the year 2019–20, the GDP growth rate was 4.18% and inflation rate also increased to 4.7% from 3.4% in the previous year. Though being high unemployment, increase in inflation rate and budget deficiency, Modi's leadership won in 2019 elections.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous rating agencies downgraded India's GDP predictions for FY21 to negative figures, signalling a recession in India, the most severe since 1979. According to a Dun & Bradstreet report, the country is likely to suffer a recession in the third quarter of FY2020 as a result of the over 2-month long nation-wide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. This was also accompanied by the mass migration of migrant workers.
Health and sanitation
In his first year as prime minister, Modi reduced the amount of money spent by the central government on healthcare. The Modi government launched New Health Policy (NHP) in January 2015. The policy did not increase the government's spending on healthcare, instead emphasising the role of private healthcare organisations. This represented a shift away from the policy of the previous Congress government, which had supported programmes to assist public health goals, including reducing child and maternal mortality rates. The National Health Mission, which included public health programmes targeted at these indices received nearly 20% less funds in 2015 than in the previous year. 15 national health programmes, including those aimed at controlling tobacco use and supporting healthcare for the elderly, were merged with the National Health Mission. In its budget for the second year after it took office, the Modi government reduced healthcare spending by 15%. The healthcare budget for the following year rose by 19%. The budget was viewed positively by private insurance providers. Public health experts criticised its emphasis on the role of private healthcare providers, and suggested that it represented a shift away from public health facilities. The healthcare budget rose by 11.5% in 2018; the change included an allocation of for a government-funded health insurance program, and a decrease in the budget of the National Health Mission. The government introduced stricter packaging laws for tobacco which requires 85% of the packet size to be covered by pictorial warnings. An article in the medical journal Lancet stated that the country "might have taken a few steps back in public health" under Modi. In 2018 Modi launched the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, a government health insurance scheme intended to insure 500 million people. 100,000 people had signed up by October 2018.
Modi emphasised his government's efforts at sanitation as a means of ensuring good health. On 2 October 2014, Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission ("Clean India") campaign. The stated goals of the campaign included eliminating open defecation and manual scavenging within five years. As part of the programme, the Indian government began constructing millions of toilets in rural areas and encouraging people to use them. The government also announced plans to build new sewage treatment plants. The administration plans to construct 60 million toilets by 2019. The construction projects have faced allegations of corruption, and have faced severe difficulty in getting people to use the toilets constructed for them. Sanitation cover in the country increased from 38.7% in October 2014 to 84.1% in May 2018; however, usage of the new sanitary facilities lagged behind the government's targets. In 2018, the World Health Organization stated that at least 180,000 diarrhoeal deaths were averted in rural India after the launch of the sanitation effort.
Hindutva
During the 2014 election campaign, the BJP sought to identify itself with political leaders known to have opposed Hindu nationalism, including B. R. Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Ram Manohar Lohia. The campaign also saw the use of rhetoric based on Hindutva by BJP leaders in certain states. Communal tensions were played upon especially in Uttar Pradesh and the states of Northeast India. A proposal for the controversial Uniform Civil Code was a part of the BJP's election manifesto.
The activities of a number of Hindu nationalist organisations increased in scope after Modi's election as Prime Minister, sometimes with the support of the government. These activities included a Hindu religious conversion programme, a campaign against the alleged Islamic practice of "Love Jihad", and attempts to celebrate Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, by members of the right wing Hindu Mahasabha. Officials in the government, including the Home Minister, defended the conversion programmes.
Links between the BJP and the RSS grew stronger under Modi. The RSS provided organisational support to the BJP's electoral campaigns, while the Modi administration appointed a number of individuals affiliated with the RSS to prominent government positions. In 2014, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, who had previously been associated with the RSS, became the chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). Historians and former members of the ICHR, including those sympathetic to the BJP, questioned his credentials as a historian, and stated that the appointment was part of an agenda of cultural nationalism.
The North East Delhi riots, which left more than 40 dead and hundreds injured, were triggered by protests against a citizenship law seen by many critics as anti-Muslim and part of Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda. On 5 August 2020, Modi visited Ayodhya after the Supreme Court in 2019 ordered a contested land in Ayodhya to be handed over to a trust to build the Hindu temple and ordered the government to give alternate 5 acre land to Sunni Waqf Board for the purpose of building a mosque. He became the first prime minister to visit Ram Janmabhoomi and Hanuman Garhi.
Foreign policy
Foreign policy played a relatively small role in Modi's election campaign, and did not feature prominently in the BJP's election manifesto. Modi invited all the other leaders of SAARC countries to his swearing in ceremony as prime minister. He was the first Indian prime minister to do so.
Modi's foreign policy, similarly to that of the preceding INC government, focused on improving economic ties, security, and regional relations. Modi continued Manmohan Singh's policy of "multi-alignment." The Modi administration tried to attract foreign investment in the Indian economy from several sources, especially in East Asia, with the use of slogans such as "Make in India" and "Digital India". The government also tried to improve relations with Islamic nations in the Middle East, such as Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as with Israel.
The foreign relations of India with the USA also mended after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. During the run-up to the general election there was wide-ranging scepticism regarding future of the strategic bilateral relation under Modi's premiership as in 2005 he was, while Chief Minister of Gujarat, denied a U.S. visa during the Bush administration for his poor human rights records. However sensing Modi's inevitable victory well before the election, the US Ambassador Nancy Powell had reached out to him as part of greater rapprochement from the west. Moreover, following his 2014 election as the Prime Minister of India President Obama congratulated him over the telephone and invited him to visit the US. Modi government has been successful in making good foreign relations with the USA in the presidency of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
During the first few months after the election, Modi made trips to a number of different countries to further the goals of his policy, and attended the BRICS, ASEAN, and G20 summits. One of Modi's first visits as prime minister was to Nepal, during which he promised a billion USD in aid. Modi also made several overtures to the United States, including multiple visits to that country. While this was described as an unexpected development, due to the US having previously denied Modi a travel visa over his role during the 2002 Gujarat riots, the visits were expected to strengthen diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries.
In 2015, the Indian parliament ratified a land exchange deal with Bangladesh about the India–Bangladesh enclaves, which had been initiated by the government of Manmohan Singh. Modi's administration gave renewed attention to India's "Look East Policy", instituted in 1991. The policy was renamed the "Act East Policy", and involved directing Indian foreign policy towards East Asia and Southeast Asia. The government signed agreements to improve land connectivity with Myanmar, through the state of Manipur. This represented a break with India's historic engagement with Myanmar, which prioritised border security over trade. China–India relations have deteriorated rapidly following the 2020 China–India skirmishes. Modi has pledged aid of $900 million to Afghanistan, visited the nation twice and been honoured with the nation's highest civilian honour in 2016.
Defence policy
India's nominal military spending increased steadily under Modi. The military budget declined over Modi's tenure both as a fraction of GDP and when adjusted for inflation. A substantial portion of the military budget was devoted to personnel costs, leading commentators to write that the budget was constraining Indian military modernisation.
The BJP election manifesto had also promised to deal with illegal immigration into India in the Northeast, as well as to be more firm in its handling of insurgent groups. The Modi government issued a notification allowing Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh to legalise their residency in India. The government described the measure as being taken for humanitarian reasons but it drew criticism from several Assamese organisations.The Modi administration negotiated a peace agreement with the largest faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCM), which was announced in August 2015. The Naga insurgency in northeast India had begun in the 1950s. The NSCM and the government had agreed to a ceasefire in 1997, but a peace accord had not previously been signed. In 2015 the government abrogated a 15-year ceasefire with the Khaplang faction of the NSCM (NSCM-K). The NSCM-K responded with a series of attacks, which killed 18 people. The Modi government carried out a raid across the border with Myanmar as a result, and labelled the NSCM-K a terrorist organisation.
Modi promised to be "tough on Pakistan" during his election campaign, and repeatedly stated that Pakistan was an exporter of terrorism. On 29 September 2016, the Indian Army stated that it had conducted a surgical strike on terror launch pads in Azad Kashmir. The Indian media claimed that up to 50 terrorists and Pakistani soldiers had been killed in the strike. Pakistan initially denied that any strikes had taken place. Subsequent reports suggested that Indian claim about the scope of the strike and the number of casualties had been exaggerated, although cross-border strikes had been carried out. In February 2019 India carried out airstrikes in Pakistan against a supposed terrorist camp. Further military skirmishes followed, including cross-border shelling and the loss of an Indian aircraft.
Following his victory in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he focused more on Defence policies of India, especially against China and Pakistan. On 5 May 2020, Chinese and Indian troops engaged in aggressive melee, face-offs and skirmishes at locations along the Sino-Indian border, including near the disputed Pangong Lake in Ladakh and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and near the border between Sikkim and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Additional clashes also took place at locations in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). After which there was start of skirmishes between the nations leading to many border clashes, responses and reactions from both sides. A series of talks were also held between the two by both military and diplomatic means for peace. The first border clash reported in 2021 was on 20 January, referred to as a minor border clash in Sikkim.
Environmental policy
In naming his cabinet, Modi renamed the "Ministry of Environment and Forests" the "Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change." In the first budget of the government, the money allotted to this ministry was reduced by more than 50%. The new ministry also removed or diluted a number of laws related to environmental protection. These included no longer requiring clearance from the National Board for Wildlife for projects close to protected areas, and allowing certain projects to proceed before environmental clearance was received. The government also tried to reconstitute the Wildlife board such that it no longer had representatives from non-governmental organisations: however, this move was prevented by the Supreme Court.
Modi also relaxed or abolished a number of other environmental regulations, particularly those related to industrial activity. A government committee stated that the existing system only served to create corruption, and that the government should instead rely on the owners of industries to voluntarily inform the government about the pollution they were creating. Other changes included reducing ministry oversight on small mining projects, and no longer requiring approval from tribal councils for projects inside forested areas. In addition, Modi lifted a moratorium on new industrial activity in the most polluted areas in the countries. The changes were welcomed by businesspeople, but criticised by environmentalists.
Under the UPA government that preceded Modi's administration, field trials of Genetically Modified (GM) crops had essentially been put on hold, after protests from farmers fearing for their livelihoods. Under the Modi government these restrictions were gradually lifted. The government received some criticism for freezing the bank accounts of environmental group Greenpeace, citing financial irregularities, although a leaked government report said that the freeze had to do with Greenpeace's opposition to GM crops. At the COP26 conference Modi announced that India would target carbon neutrality by 2070, and also expand its renewable energy capacity. Though the date of net zero is far behind that of China and the USA and India's government wants to continue with the use of coal, Indian environmentalists and economists applauded the decision, describing it as a bold climate action.
Democratic backsliding
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how the Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. There have been several reports of the Modi government to be as an authoritarian conservative government, even due to lack of good opposition.
Electoral history
Personal life and image
Personal life
In accordance with Ghanchi tradition, Modi's marriage was arranged by his parents when he was a child. He was engaged at age 13 to Jashodaben Modi, marrying her when he was 18. They spent little time together and grew apart when Modi began two years of travel, including visits to Hindu ashrams. Reportedly, their marriage was never consummated, and he kept it a secret because otherwise he could not have become a 'pracharak' in the puritan Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Modi kept his marriage secret for most of his career. He acknowledged his wife for the first time when he filed his nomination for the 2014 general elections. Modi maintains a close relationship with his centenarian mother, Hiraben.
A vegetarian and teetotaler, Modi has a frugal lifestyle and is a workaholic and introvert. A person named Badri Meena has been his cook since 2002. Modi's 31 August 2012 post on Google Hangouts made him the first Indian politician to interact with citizens on a live chat. Modi has also been called a fashion-icon for his signature crisply ironed, half-sleeved kurta, as well as for a suit with his name embroidered repeatedly in the pinstripes that he wore during a state visit by US President Barack Obama, which drew public and media attention and criticism. Modi's personality has been variously described by scholars and biographers as energetic, arrogant, and charismatic.
He had published a Gujarati book titled Jyotipunj in 2008, containing profiles of various RSS leaders. The longest was of M. S. Golwalkar, under whose leadership the RSS expanded and whom Modi refers to as Pujniya Shri Guruji ("Guru worthy of worship"). According to The Economic Times, his intention was to explain the workings of the RSS to his readers and to reassure RSS members that he remained ideologically aligned with them. Modi authored eight other books, mostly containing short stories for children.
The nomination of Modi for the prime ministership drew attention to his reputation as "one of contemporary India's most controversial and divisive politicians." During the 2014 election campaign the BJP projected an image of Modi as a strong, masculine leader, who would be able to take difficult decisions. Campaigns in which he has participated have focused on Modi as an individual, in a manner unusual for the BJP and RSS. Modi has relied upon his reputation as a politician able to bring about economic growth and "development". Nonetheless, his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots continues to attract criticism and controversy. Modi's hardline Hindutva philosophy and the policies adopted by his government continue to draw criticism, and have been seen as evidence of a majoritarian and exclusionary social agenda.
In March 2021, Modi received his first COVID-19 vaccine dose at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
Personal donations
Modi has made donations for various causes and programmes. One such instance was when Modi donated towards the initial corpus of the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) Fund. In his role as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi had donated from personal savings for educating daughters of state government officials. Modi had also raised by auctioning all the gifts he received as chief minister and donated this to the Kanya Kelavani Fund. The money was spent on the education of girl children, through the scheme.
Approval ratings
As a Prime Minister, Modi has received consistently high approval ratings; at the end of his first year in office, he received an overall approval rating of 87% in a Pew Research poll, with 68% of people rating him "very favorably" and 93% approving of his government. His approval rating remained largely consistent at around 74% through his second year in office, according to a nationwide poll conducted by instaVaani. At the end of his second year in office, an updated Pew Research poll showed Modi continued to receive high overall approval ratings of 81%, with 57% of those polled rating him "very favorably." At the end of his third year in office, a further Pew Research poll showed Modi with an overall approval rating of 88%, his highest yet, with 69% of people polled rating him "very favorably." A poll conducted by The Times of India in May 2017 showed 77% of the respondents rated Modi as "very good" and "good". In early 2017, a survey from Pew Research Center showed Modi to be the most popular figure in Indian politics. In a weekly analysis by Morning Consult called the Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker, Modi had the highest net approval rating as of 22 December 2020 of all government leaders in the 13 countries being tracked.
Awards and recognition
In March 2012 and June 2014, Modi appeared on the cover of the Asian edition of Time Magazine, one of the few Indian politicians to have done so. He was awarded Indian of the Year by CNN-News18 (formally CNN-IBN) news network in 2014. In June 2015, Modi was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020 and 2021, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Forbes Magazine ranked him the 15th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2014 and the 9th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2015, 2016 and 2018. In 2015, Modi was ranked the 13th Most Influential Person in the World by Bloomberg Markets Magazine. Modi was ranked fifth on Fortune Magazines first annual list of the "World's Greatest Leaders" in 2015. In 2017, Gallup International Association (GIA) conducted a poll and ranked Modi as third top leader of the world. In 2016, a wax statue of Modi was unveiled at Madame Tussauds wax museum in London.
In 2015 he was named one of Times "30 Most Influential People on the Internet" as the second-most-followed politician on Twitter and Facebook. In 2018, he was the third most followed world leader on Twitter, and the most followed world leader on Facebook and Instagram. In October 2018, Modi received United Nations's highest environmental award, the 'Champions of the Earth', for policy leadership by "pioneering work in championing" the International Solar Alliance and "new areas of levels of cooperation on environmental action". He was conferred the 2018 Seoul Peace Prize in recognition of "his dedication to improving international co-operation, raising global economic growth, accelerating the Human Development of the people of India by fostering economic growth and furthering the development of democracy through anti-corruption and social integration efforts". He is the first Indian to win the award.
Following his second swearing-in ceremony as Prime Minister of India, a picture of Modi was displayed on the facade of the ADNOC building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Texas India Forum hosted a community event in honour of Modi on 22 September 2019 at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. The event was attended by over 50,000 people and several American politicians including President Donald Trump, making it the largest gathering for an invited foreign leader visiting the United States other than the Pope. At the same event, Modi was presented with the Key to the City of Houston by Mayor Sylvester Turner. He was awarded the Global Goalkeeper Award on 24 September 2019 in New York City by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in recognition for the Swachh Bharat Mission and "the progress India has made in providing safe sanitation under his leadership".
In 2020, Modi was among eight world leaders awarded the parodic Ig Nobel Prize in Medical Education "for using the COVID-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can". On 21 December 2020, President Donald Trump awarded Modi with the Legion of Merit for elevating the India–United States relations. The Legion of Merit was awarded to Modi along with Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison and former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, the "original architects" of the QUAD.
On 24 February 2021, the largest cricket stadium in the world at Ahmedabad was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by the Gujarat Cricket Association.
Modi is featured in TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2021 list, making it his fifth time after 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2020. TIME called him the third "pivotal leader" of independent India after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi who "dominated the country’s politics like no one since them".
State honours
Other honours
In popular culture
Modi Kaka Ka Gaon, a 2017 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Tushar Amrish Goel is the first biopic on Modi, starring Vikas Mahante in the titular role it was made halfway into his first-term as the prime minister which is shown in the film. PM Narendra Modi, a 2019 Indian Hindi-language biographical drama film by Omung Kumar, starred Vivek Oberoi in the titular role and covers his rise to prime ministership.An Indian web series, Modi: Journey of a Common Man, based on the same premise released in May 2019 on Eros Now with Ashish Sharma portraying Modi. Hu Narender Modi Banva Mangu Chu is a 2018 Indian Gujarati-language drama film by Anil Naryani about the aspirations of a young boy who wants to become like Narendra Modi.
7 RCR (7, Race Course Road), a 2014 Indian docudrama political television series which charts the political careers of prominent Indian politicians, covered Modi's rise to the PM's office in the episodes - "Story of Narendra Modi from 1950 to 2001", "Story of Narendra Modi in Controversial Years from 2001 to 2013", "Truth Behind Brand Modi", "Election Journey of Narendra Modi to 7 RCR", and "Masterplan of Narendra Modi's NDA Govt."; with Sangam Rai in the role of Modi.
Other portrayals of Modi include by Rajit Kapur in the film Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) and Vikram Gokhale in the web-television series Avrodh: The Siege Within (2020) both based on the 2016 Uri attack and the following Indian surgical strikes. Pratap Singh played a character based on Modi in Chand Bujh Gaya (2005) which is set in the backdrop of the Gujarat riots.
Premiered on 12 August 2019, Modi appeared in an episode - "Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls and Prime Minister Modi" - of Discovery Channel's show Man vs Wild with the host Bear Grylls, becoming the second world leader after Barack Obama to appear in the reality show. In the show he trekked the jungles and talked about nature and wildlife conservation with Grylls. The episode was shot in Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand and was broadcast in 180 countries along India. He has also appeared twice on the Indian television talk show Aap Ki Adalat before the 2009 and 2014 elections respectively.
Along with hosting the Mann Ki Baat monthly radio programme, on All India Radio, he has also conducted Pariksha Pe Charcha - a competition/discussion for students and the issues they face in examinations.
Bibliography
See also
List of prime ministers of India
Opinion polling on the Narendra Modi premiership
References
Notes
Citations
Further reading
External links
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1950 births
Living people
Gujarati people
People from Gujarat
People from Mehsana district
Indian Hindus
Prime Ministers of India
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17th Lok Sabha members
Members of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly
Delhi University alumni
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Recipients of the Legion of Merit
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Right-wing politics in India
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Right-wing populism in India
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Writers from Gujarat
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Writers about activism and social change
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Politicians from Varanasi
Time 100 | true | [
"Cost-shifting is either an economic situation where one individual, group, or government underpays for a service, resulting another individual, group or government overpaying for a service (shifting compared to expected burden). It can occur where one group pays a smaller share of costs than before, resulting in another group paying a larger share of costs than before (shifting compared to previous arrangement). Some commentators on health policy in the United States believe the former currently happens in Medicare and Medicaid as they underpay for services resulting in private insurers overpaying. \n\nIn 1995, Health Affairs started a study testing the \"cost-shifting\" theory using a unique new data set that combines MarketScan private claims data with Medicare hospital cost reports, the study ran from 1995–2009. In May 2013 when the findings were released, the study found that a 10 percent reduction in Medicare payment rates led to an estimated reduction in private payment rates of 3 percent or 8 percent, depending on the statistical model used. These payment rate spillovers may reflect an effort by hospitals to rein in their operating costs in the face of lower Medicare payment rates.\n\nCost shifting in Healthcare \n\nCost shifting can mean many different things. It can mean a situation where different groups are charged different prices. Or it can mean a situation where a group underpays for some services. But in the end, it is a situation, where the cost does not really equal the service.\n\nSome examples of cost shifting are for example; in America the commercial insurers pay the hospitals more than the Medicare. Some organisations are even charged less than health insurers.\n\nProblems of Cost shifting in Health care \nThe problem of cost shifting in health care is based on the fact that Medicare pays hospitals only a fraction of the patient's costs, which is often significantly lower than the replacement cost.\n\nThe government says that this gap (the cost gap between the patient’s real cost and the compensation), is because the compensation is paying only for the costs of the treatment (meaning, it pays the doctors and hospital for the expenses).\n\nSituation in 10s \nCost shifting has been discussed for a long time. It is still assumed to be one of controversial topics in USA healthcare politics. There are studies, which try to clarify why and where in the system this phenomenon originates. Researchers try to provide facts and studies to explain how private payers are charged more in response to shortfalls in public payments and so partly pay for state insured payers.\n\nCost shifting is a situation in which people may pay for the same goods or services at different prices. One of the biggest known examples is in the US healthcare system. Few causes could be that in the USA the health insurance is not obligatory, or there exist more systems of insurance. Workers are usually insured by their employer. However, the most people are state-insured by state insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid. Because of multiple insurance system and other factors (such as deals between insurers and hospitals and so on), a subsidy system which supports the healthcare in the USA. On one side are sited regular insurance payers who could subsidize healthcare for the other insured patience. On the other are people, who are state insured because they cannot afford any other kind of insurance. Cost-shifting is caused by some reasons mentioned in following paragraphs.\n\nCost-cutting as a cause of cost-shifting \nCost-shifting is a situation where one group of payers overpays costs for a good or a service for another group, which in total pays less than the first one.\n\nThis problem originates in hospitals. They need to pay for treatment and staff performing it. Hospitals need to balance their costs and incomes. Problem begins in communication between hospitals and insurers, who want to save as much money as possible. Therefore, hospitals cannot charge their patients higher prices. If they did, it could lead to terminating a contract between hospital and insurer and moving a patient into a different hospital. \n\nFurther there are public programs such as Medicare and Medicate, which are limited by law. \n\nMain reason is that revenue from state insured patients is lower than from private insured patients.\n\nFrom that reason hospitals and healthcare facilities could be forced to come to cost cutting or cross-subsidization, in order to balance their incomes and expenditures. That means that they for example charge private insurance for additional treatment, which was never did, because they need to obtain more money from private insurer. On of possible solutions could be deficit, which is not in long terms sustainable. Mendoza states that small deficit could be caused by revenue deficit, caused by change of insurer by payers, or by third-party payer, who refuses to pay the whole amount of money for his insured member. This situation could happen mainly with costs unrelated to a treatment.\n\nCost shifting is assumed to be present in medical facilities with a higher rate of state insured patients. According to the source there are studies which presents a development of differences in payments between private and public insurers. It suggests that Medicare and Medicaid payment reductions could cause significantly lower profits and so started cost cutting in hospitals necessary to avoid closing hospitals.\n\nAccording to the study written by Roger Lee Mendoza there could be assumed some discrimination premises which may lead to cost shifting:\n\n Hospitals may charge different payers different prices (including charges after a negotiated discount) for the same treatments and services, as some payers are more price-sensitive. \n The higher price charged to some payers (including self-payers) should average the relationship of cost to treatment or service for each patient served.\n The higher amount paid by certain payers might be intended not only to address below-cost reimbursements, but also the volume of payers and the desired total margin, especially of a for-profit hospital or healthcare organization. \n\nWhen fixed costs rise (i.e. administrative expenses) the willingness of medical facilities to cost cut of possible price shifting may increase. When a group of payers become less price-sensitive, hospitals may charge payers a higher price, and so compensate for their losses. But that commonly does not happen by state insured patients. Their charges paid by a public insurer remain the same, because they are formed by law and bargained when a contract between facility and insurer is made. That further leads to weakening of market power of hospitals and healthcare organisations.\n\nCost cutting \nMendoza in his study highlights that some studies suggest that hospital cost-cutting, if done efficiently, could absorb reimbursement shortfalls from either public or private payers. That means, if hospital management decides to cut costs, they can set an equilibrium. But they also have to exclude some services they have provided. However, there is no guarantee that it will be sustainable. Possible negative effect If policy makers fail to create proper borders could be a situation, which leads to unfair cost-shifting. \n\nThe Problem comes from the US government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, where prices are set low by law and so are not always able to cover all expenses. Another fact influencing a level of reimbursements are negotiations between healthcare providers and insurers. Insurance providers negotiate favourable prices which also have an influence on their own profit. Therefore, they prefer to set as low charges as possible.\n\nEffect of Medicare and Medicaid on medical facilities \nThe main influence on American healthcare system in the USA has the Medicare for All Act written in 2003. It was transformed in 2019 so it was more efficient. \n\nMedicare and Medicaid are mostly preferred in rural areas, where there is also highest concentration of not-insured patients. Therefore, medical facilities have a much higher percentage of Medicare and Medicaid users and form a significant part of their income.\n\nBecause there is a low presence of private insured patience, rural hospitals become dependent on these programs.\n\nA change of law in 2019 promised to change the percentage difference between private payers and the state-insured. That means that revenues of rural hospitals would increase. But on the other hand, there could be caused a loss in revenues of urban hospitals, which budgets could therefore decrease.\n\nAnother big change was that billing would be united into one single-payer healthcare system which was supposed to decrease administrative costs approximately by 50%.\n\nBenefits and Losses of Cost-shifting \nCost-shifting is perceived as the most beneficial for users of Medicare and Medicaid and for people who are not insured at all. It is likely that for users of Medicare and Medicaid could be in total paid lesser money in comparison with those, who pay classical insurance or are willing to pay on the spot. So, there could be caused a loss in a margin.\n\nFrom former paragraph follows that patients, who are insured or pay on the spot, pay for their own treatment. But because there is already a loss, these patients have to pay also for the others. So, it is not beneficial for them.\n\nEconomics of Cost shifting \nThe cost shifting is the possibility to set different prices for different groups of customers. There are two important definitions: static cost shifting (price discrimination), that is the ability to charge different prices to different customers. The other one is the dynamic cost shifting, which means charging the maximal amount of money that the customer is able to pay (not necessarily the highest possible value, but the value that people are still willing to pay for the service).\n\nFor example, the hospitals may have two groups of patients. There are those who are covered by the government. From this group the hospital get fixed costs from the government. On the other hand, the second group of patients are those, who pay for their treatments. Those patients can buy more hospital care at a lower price.\n\nThe hospital that wants to earn as much profit as it can, has to decide whether it will accept patients covered by the government (lower income for hospital), and how much it should charge to the patients that pay for their treatments. This is another case of cost shifting. Both groups pay for the same service (hospital), but each has to pay different sum.\n\nBut in a competitive market there is rarely any price discrimination, nor cost shifting, because as soon as the hospital would have raised a price to one of those two groups of patients, they would seek care in some other hospital, therefore the hospital would only lose money.\n\nReferences\n\nSee also\nCost externalizing\n\nHealth economics",
"France is currently competing at the 2018 Winter Paralympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Four people from France competed in para-snowboarding. Five people competed in para-alpine skiing. Six skiers and two guide skiers competed in para-alpine skiing. Marie Bochet carried the flag during the Opening Ceremony.\n\nMedalists\n\nTeam\nPeople from France went to the 2018 Winter Paralympics in para-alpine skiing, para-Nordic skiing and para-snowboarding. People on the team were Benjamin Daviet and Cécile Hernandez. Marie Bochet was chosen to carry the flag during the Opening Ceremony. She was chosen 100 days before the 2018 Games started. The first people were included on the team in September 2017. The list included Thomas Clarion.\n\nThe table below contains the list of members of people (called \"Team France\") that will be participating in the 2018 Games.\n\nPara-alpine skiing\nThere were five skiers from France. They were Arthur Bauchet, Marie Bochet, Jordan Broisin, Frederic François and Yohann Taberlet.\n\nPara-Nordic skiing\nBenjamin Daviet was at the 2014 Winter Paralympics. He did not win a medal. His best finish was seventh. The first medal he won at a major competition was in 2017 at a race in Finsterau.\n\nThomas Dubois first represented France at racing at the 2017 World Cup in Ukraine. Before that, he was the French junior champion in biathlon and cross-country skiing. He finished second in biathlon and cross-country skiing at the senior French championships. Dubois became blind when he was an 8-year-old because of a genetic disorder. He needs to ski with a guide skier. Unlike other countries, Fédération française handisport does not give money to guide skiers to help blind skiers with the cost of competing. To get the right to go to and practice for the Winter Paralympics, it cost €21,000. Dubois had to raise money to be able to pay for that. Maubourguet Lions Club helped Dubois get the money for the Winter Paralympics.\n\nPara-snowboarding\nThere were three snowboarders from France at the 2018 Winter Paralympics. Snowboarders from France went to Pyrénées at the last part of January 2018 to get ready for the 2018 Winter Paralympics. Cécile Hernandez was one of the snowboarders from France. She went to the 2014 Winter Paralympics. It was the first Paralympics for Montaggioni and Roulet. Hernandez and Roulet have arm disabilities. Montaggioni has a problem with her legs. They were coached by Olivier Noiret and Marcos Lorenzo.\n\nReferences\n\nNations at the 2018 Winter Paralympics\n2018\nParalympics"
] |
[
"Narendra Modi",
"2014 Indian general election",
"in what month was the election?",
"the 2014 Lok Sabha election.",
"what position did he run for in the election?",
"prime minister",
"what political party was he in?",
"the BJP's candidate",
"did he win the election?",
"Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment",
"how many votes did he get?",
"by 570,128 votes.",
"who was his opponent?",
"defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi",
"for how long was he prime minister?",
"To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat.",
"where did he do his campaigning?",
"The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately Rs50 billion",
"where did he get the money from to pay for that cost?",
"received extensive financial support from corporate donors."
] | C_b6a0c764bf0c443b9768973ff08ca8fb_0 | what did he do when he campaigned? | 10 | What did Narendra Modi do when he campaigned? | Narendra Modi | In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi. During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development. Although the BJP avoided issues of Hindu nationalism to an extent, Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately Rs50 billion (US$770 million), and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances. The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism. Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by 570,128 votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat. CANNOTANSWER | In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances. | Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from Varanasi. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organisation. He is the first prime minister to have been born after India's independence in 1947 and the second prime minister not belonging to the Indian National Congress to have won two consecutive majorities in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Indian of parliament.
Born and raised in Vadnagar, a small town in northeastern Gujarat, Modi completed his secondary education there. He was introduced to the RSS at age eight. He has drawn attention to having to work as a child in his father's tea stall on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that has not been reliably corroborated. At age 18, Modi was married to Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, whom he abandoned soon after. He left his parental home where she had come to live. He first publicly acknowledged her as his wife more than four decades later when required to do so by Indian law, but has made no contact with her since. Modi has asserted he had travelled in northern India for two years after leaving his parental home, visiting a number of religious centres, but few details of his travels have emerged. Upon his return to Gujarat in 1971, he became a full-time worker for the RSS. After the state of emergency declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, Modi went into hiding. The RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985 and he held several positions within the party hierarchy until 2001, rising to the rank of general secretary.
Modi was appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001 due to Keshubhai Patel's failing health and poor public image following the earthquake in Bhuj. Modi was elected to the legislative assembly soon after. His administration has been considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots in which 1044 people were killed, three-quarters of whom were Muslim, or otherwise criticised for its management of the crisis. The Supreme Court remarked that Narendra Modi was like a Modern-day Nero, looking the other way as innocent women and children were burning. A Supreme Court of India-appointed Special Investigation Team found no evidence to initiate prosecution proceedings against Modi personally. While his policies as chief minister—credited with encouraging economic growth—have received praise, his administration has been criticised for failing to significantly improve health, poverty and education indices in the state.
Modi led the BJP in the 2014 general election which gave the party a majority in the Indian lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, the first time for any single party since 1984. Modi's administration has tried to raise foreign direct investment in the Indian economy and reduced spending on healthcare and social welfare programmes. Modi has attempted to improve efficiency in the bureaucracy; he has centralised power by abolishing the Planning Commission. He began a high-profile sanitation campaign, controversially initiated a demonetisation of high-denomination banknotes and transformation of taxation regime, and weakened or abolished environmental and labour laws.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. Following his party's victory in the 2019 general election, his administration revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and also introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act, which resulted in widespread protests across the country. Described as engineering a political realignment towards right-wing politics, Modi remains a figure of controversy domestically and internationally over his Hindu nationalist beliefs and his handling of the 2002 Gujarat riots, cited as evidence of an exclusionary social agenda.
Early life and education
Narendra Damodardas Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a Gujarati Hindu family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district, Bombay State (present-day Gujarat). He was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi () and Hiraben Modi (born ). Modi's family belonged to the Modh-Ghanchi-Teli (oil-presser) community, which is categorised as an Other Backward Class by the Indian government.
Modi had only infrequently spoken of his family background during his 13 years as chief minister of Gujarat. In the run up to the 2014 national elections, he began to regularly draw attention to his low-ranking social origins and to having to work as a child in his father's tea shop on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that the evidence of neighbours does not entirely corroborate. Modi completed his higher secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where teachers described him as an average student and a keen gifted debater, with interest in theatre. Modi preferred playing larger-than-life characters in theatrical productions, which has influenced his political image.
When eight years old, Modi was introduced to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and began attending its local shakhas (training sessions). There, Modi met Lakshmanrao Inamdar, popularly known as Vakil Saheb, who inducted him as a balswayamsevak (junior cadet) in the RSS and became his political mentor. While Modi was training with the RSS, he also met Vasant Gajendragadkar and Nathalal Jaghda, Bharatiya Jana Sangh leaders who were founding members of the BJP's Gujarat unit in 1980.
In a custom traditional to Narendra Modi's caste, his family arranged a betrothal to a girl, Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, leading to their marriage when she was 17 and he was 18. Soon afterwards, he abandoned his bride, and left home, never divorcing her, but the marriage remaining unmentioned in Modi's public pronouncements for many decades. In April 2014, shortly before the national elections that swept him to power, Modi publicly affirmed that he was married and his spouse was Jashodaben; the couple has remained married, but estranged.
Modi spent the ensuing two years travelling across Northern and North-eastern India, though few details of where he went have emerged. In interviews, Modi has described visiting Hindu ashrams founded by Swami Vivekananda: the Belur Math near Kolkata, followed by the Advaita Ashrama in Almora and the Ramakrishna Mission in Rajkot. Modi remained only a short time at each, since he lacked the required college education. Vivekananda has been described as a large influence in Modi's life.
In the early summer of 1968, Modi reached the Belur Math but was turned away, after which Modi wandered through Calcutta, West Bengal and Assam, stopping in Siliguri and Guwahati. Modi then went to the Ramakrishna Ashram in Almora, where he was again rejected, before travelling back to Gujarat via Delhi and Rajasthan in 1968–69. Sometime in late 1969 or early 1970, Modi returned to Vadnagar for a brief visit before leaving again for Ahmedabad. There, Modi lived with his uncle, working in the latter's canteen at the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation.
In Ahmedabad, Modi renewed his acquaintance with Inamdar, who was based at the Hedgewar Bhavan (RSS headquarters) in the city. Modi's first known political activity as an adult was in 1971 when he, as per his remarks, joined a Jana Sangh Satyagraha in Delhi led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee to enlist for the battlefield during the Bangladesh Liberation War. But the Indira Gandhi-led central government disallowed open support for the Mukti Bahini and Modi, according to his own claim, was put in Tihar Jail for a short period. After the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he stopped working for his uncle and became a full-time pracharak (campaigner) for the RSS, working under Inamdar. Shortly before the war, Modi took part in a non-violent protest against the Indian government in New Delhi, for which he was arrested (as per his claim); this has been cited as a reason for Inamdar electing to mentor him. Many years later Modi would co-author a biography of Inamdar, published in 2001. Modi's claim that he was part of a Satyagraha led to a political war. Applications were filed with the PMO under the RTI Act seeking details of his arrest. In reply, the PMO claimed that it maintains official records on Modi only since he took charge as the Prime Minister of India in 2014. Despite this claim, the official website of the PMO contains specific information about Modi which dates back to the 1950s.
In 1978 Modi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the School of Open Learning (SOL) at the University of Delhi, graduating with a third class. Five years later, in 1983, he received a Master of Arts degree in political science from Gujarat University, graduating with a first class as an external distance learning student. But there is a big controversy surrounding his educational qualification. Replying to an RTI query, the SOL said it did not have any data of students who received a BA degree in 1978. Jayantibhai Patel, a former political science professor of Gujarat University, claimed that the subjects listed in Modi's MA degree were not offered by the university when Modi was studying there.
Early political career
In June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India which lasted until 1977. During this period, known as "The Emergency", many of her political opponents were jailed and opposition groups were banned. Modi was appointed general secretary of the "Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti", an RSS committee co-ordinating opposition to the Emergency in Gujarat. Shortly afterwards, the RSS was banned. Modi was forced to go underground in Gujarat and frequently travelled in disguise to avoid arrest. He became involved in printing pamphlets opposing the government, sending them to Delhi and organising demonstrations. Modi was also involved with creating a network of safe houses for individuals wanted by the government, and in raising funds for political refugees and activists. During this period, Modi wrote a book in Gujarati, Sangharsh Ma Gujarat (In The Struggles of Gujarat), describing events during the Emergency. Among the people he met in this role was trade unionist and socialist activist George Fernandes, as well as several other national political figures. In his travels during the Emergency, Modi was often forced to move in disguise, once dressing as a monk, and once as a Sikh.
Modi became an RSS sambhag pracharak (regional organiser) in 1978, overseeing RSS activities in the areas of Surat and Vadodara, and in 1979 he went to work for the RSS in Delhi, where he was put to work researching and writing the RSS's version of the history of the Emergency. He returned to Gujarat a short while later, and was assigned by the RSS to the BJP in 1985. In 1987 Modi helped organise the BJP's campaign in the Ahmedabad municipal election, which the BJP won comfortably; Modi's planning has been described as the reason for that result by biographers. After L. K. Advani became president of the BJP in 1986, the RSS decided to place its members in important positions within the BJP; Modi's work during the Ahmedabad election led to his selection for this role, and Modi was elected organising secretary of the BJP's Gujarat unit later in 1987.
Modi rose within the party and was named a member of the BJP's National Election Committee in 1990, helping organise L. K. Advani's 1990 Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 and Murli Manohar Joshi's 1991–92 Ekta Yatra (Journey for Unity). However, he took a brief break from politics in 1992, instead establishing a school in Ahmedabad; friction with Shankersinh Vaghela, a BJP MP from Gujarat at the time, also played a part in this decision. Modi returned to electoral politics in 1994, partly at the insistence of Advani, and as party secretary, Modi's electoral strategy was considered central to the BJP victory in the 1995 state assembly elections. In November of that year Modi was appointed BJP national secretary and transferred to New Delhi, where he assumed responsibility for party activities in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The following year, Shankersinh Vaghela, a prominent BJP leader from Gujarat, defected to the Indian National Congress (Congress, INC) after losing his parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha elections. Modi, on the selection committee for the 1998 Assembly elections in Gujarat, favoured supporters of BJP leader Keshubhai Patel over those supporting Vaghela to end factional division in the party. His strategy was credited as key to the BJP winning an overall majority in the 1998 elections, and Modi was promoted to BJP general secretary (organisation) in May of that year.
Chief Minister of Gujarat
Taking office
In 2001, Keshubhai Patel's health was failing and the BJP lost a few state assembly seats in by-elections. Allegations of abuse of power, corruption and poor administration were made, and Patel's standing had been damaged by his administration's handling of the earthquake in Bhuj in 2001. The BJP national leadership sought a new candidate for the chief ministership, and Modi, who had expressed misgivings about Patel's administration, was chosen as a replacement. Although BJP leader L. K. Advani did not want to ostracise Patel and was concerned about Modi's lack of experience in government, Modi declined an offer to be Patel's deputy chief minister, telling Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee that he was "going to be fully responsible for Gujarat or not at all". On 3 October 2001 he replaced Patel as Chief Minister of Gujarat, with the responsibility of preparing the BJP for the December 2002 elections. Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister on 7 October 2001, and entered the Gujarat state legislature on 24 February 2002 by winning a by-election to the Rajkot – II constituency, defeating Ashwin Mehta of the INC by 14,728 votes.
2002 Gujarat riots
On 27 February 2002, a train with several hundred passengers burned near Godhra, killing approximately 60 people. The train carried a large number of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya after a religious ceremony at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid. In making a public statement after the incident, Modi declared it a terrorist attack planned and orchestrated by local Muslims. The next day, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for a bandh across the state. Riots began during the bandh, and anti-Muslim violence spread through Gujarat. The government's decision to move the bodies of the train victims from Godhra to Ahmedabad further inflamed the violence. The state government stated later that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed. Independent sources put the death toll at over 2000, the vast majority Muslims Approximately 150,000 people were driven to refugee camps. Numerous women and children were among the victims; the violence included mass rapes and mutilations of women.
The government of Gujarat itself is generally considered by scholars to have been complicit in the riots, (with some blaming chief minister Modi explicitly) and has otherwise received heavy criticism for its handling of the situation. Several scholars have described the violence as a pogrom, while others have called it an example of state terrorism. Summarising academic views on the subject, Martha Nussbaum said: "There is by now a broad consensus that the Gujarat violence was a form of ethnic cleansing, that in many ways it was premeditated, and that it was carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law." The Modi government imposed a curfew in 26 major cities, issued shoot-at-sight orders and called for the army to patrol the streets, but was unable to prevent the violence from escalating. The president of the state unit of the BJP expressed support for the bandh, despite such actions being illegal at the time. State officials later prevented riot victims from leaving the refugee camps, and the camps were often unable to meet the needs of those living there. Muslim victims of the riots were subject to further discrimination when the state government announced that compensation for Muslim victims would be half of that offered to Hindus, although this decision was later reversed after the issue was taken to court. During the riots, police officers often did not intervene in situations where they were able.
Modi's personal involvement in the 2002 events has continued to be debated. During the riots, Modi said that "What is happening is a chain of action and reaction." Later in 2002, Modi said the way in which he had handled the media was his only regret regarding the episode. In March 2008, the Supreme Court reopened several cases related to the 2002 riots, including that of the Gulbarg Society massacre, and established a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the issue. In response to a petition from Zakia Jafri (widow of Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre), in April 2009 the court also asked the SIT to investigate the issue of Modi's complicity in the killings. The SIT questioned Modi in March 2010; in May, it presented to the court a report finding no evidence against him. In July 2011, the court-appointed amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran submitted his final report to the court. Contrary to the SIT's position, he said that Modi could be prosecuted based on the available evidence. The Supreme Court gave the matter to the magistrate's court. The SIT examined Ramachandran's report, and in March 2012 submitted its final report, asking for the case to be closed. Zakia Jafri filed a protest petition in response. In December 2013 the magistrate's court rejected the protest petition, accepting the SIT's finding that there was no evidence against the chief minister.
2002 election
In the aftermath of the violence there were widespread calls for Modi to resign as chief minister from within and outside the state, including from leaders of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Telugu Desam Party (allies in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition), and opposition parties stalled Parliament over the issue. Modi submitted his resignation at the April 2002 BJP national executive meeting in Goa, but it was not accepted. His cabinet had an emergency meeting on 19 July 2002, after which it offered its resignation to the Gujarat Governor S. S. Bhandari, and the state assembly was dissolved. Despite opposition from the election commissioner, who said that a number of voters were still displaced, Modi succeeded in advancing the election to December 2002. In the elections, the BJP won 127 seats in the 182-member assembly. Although Modi later denied it, he made significant use of anti-Muslim rhetoric during his campaign, and the BJP profited from religious polarisation among the voters. He won the Maninagar constituency, receiving of votes and defeating INC candidate Yatin Oza by 75,333 votes. On 22 December 2002, Bhandari swore Modi in for a second term. Modi framed the criticism of his government for human rights violations as an attack upon Gujarati pride, a strategy which led to the BJP winning two-thirds of the seats in the state assembly.
Second term
During Modi's second term the rhetoric of the government shifted from Hindutva to Gujarat's economic development. Modi curtailed the influence of Sangh Parivar organisations such as the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), entrenched in the state after the decline of Ahmedabad's textile industry, and dropped Gordhan Zadafia (an ally of former Sangh co-worker and VHP state chief Praveen Togadia) from his cabinet. When the BKS staged a farmers' demonstration Modi ordered their eviction from state-provided houses, and his decision to demolish 200 illegal temples in Gandhinagar deepened the rift with the Vishva Hindu Parishad. Sangh organisations were no longer consulted or informed in advance about Modi's administrative decisions. Nonetheless, Modi retained connections with some Hindu nationalists. Modi wrote a foreword to a textbook by Dinanath Batra released in 2014, which stated that ancient India possessed technologies including test-tube babies.
Modi's relationship with Muslims continued to attract criticism. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who asked Modi for tolerance in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat violence and supported his resignation as chief minister) distanced himself, reaching out to North Indian Muslims before the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. After the elections Vajpayee called the violence in Gujarat a reason for the BJP's electoral defeat and said it had been a mistake to leave Modi in office after the riots.
Questions about Modi's relationship with Muslims were also raised by many Western nations during his tenure as chief minister. Modi was barred from entering the United States by the State Department, in accordance with the recommendations of the Commission on International Religious Freedom formed under the aegis of the International Religious Freedom Act, the only person denied a US visa under this law. The UK and the European Union refused to admit him because of what they saw as his role in the riots. As Modi rose to prominence in India, the UK and the EU lifted their bans in October 2012 and March 2013, respectively, and after his election he was invited to Washington as the nation's prime minister.
During the run-up to the 2007 Gujarat Legislative Assembly election and the 2009 Indian general election, the BJP intensified its rhetoric on terrorism. In July 2006, Modi criticised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh " for his reluctance to revive anti-terror legislation" such as the 2002 Prevention of Terrorism Act. He asked the national government to allow states to invoke tougher laws in the wake of the 2006 Mumbai train bombings. In 2007 Modi authored Karmayog, a 101-page booklet discussing manual scavenging. In it, Modi argued that scavenging was a "spiritual experience" for Valmiks, a sub-caste of Dalits. However, this book was not circulated that time because of the election code of conduct. After the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, Modi held a meeting to discuss the security of Gujarat's -long coastline, resulting in government authorisation of 30 high-speed surveillance boats. In July 2007 Modi completed 2,063 consecutive days as chief minister of Gujarat, making him the longest-serving holder of that post, and the BJP won 122 of 182 state-assembly seats in that year's election.
Development projects
As Chief Minister, Modi favoured privatisation and small government, which was at odds with the philosophy of the RSS, usually described as anti-privatisation and anti-globalisation. His policies during his second term have been credited with reducing corruption in the state. He established financial and technology parks in Gujarat and during the 2007 Vibrant Gujarat summit, real-estate investment deals worth were signed.
The governments led by Patel and Modi supported NGOs and communities in the creation of groundwater-conservation projects. By December 2008, 500,000 structures had been built, of which 113,738 were check dams, which helped recharge the aquifers beneath them. Sixty of the 112 tehsils which had depleted the water table in 2004 had regained their normal groundwater levels by 2010. As a result, the state's production of genetically modified cotton increased to become the largest in India. The boom in cotton production and its semi-arid land use led to Gujarat's agricultural sector growing at an average rate of 9.6 percent from 2001 to 2007. Public irrigation measures in central and southern Gujarat, such as the Sardar Sarovar Dam, were less successful. The Sardar Sarovar project only irrigated 4–6% of the area intended. Nonetheless, from 2001 to 2010 Gujarat recorded an agricultural growth rate of 10.97 percent – the highest of any state. However, sociologists have pointed out that the growth rate under the 1992–97 INC government was 12.9 percent. In 2008 Modi offered land in Gujarat to Tata Motors to set up a plant manufacturing the Nano after a popular agitation had forced the company to move out of West Bengal. Several other companies followed the Tata to Gujarat.
The Modi government finished the process of bringing electricity to every village in Gujarat that its predecessor had almost completed. Modi significantly changed the state's system of power distribution, greatly impacting farmers. Gujarat expanded the Jyotigram Yojana scheme, in which agricultural electricity was separated from other rural electricity; the agricultural electricity was rationed to fit scheduled irrigation demands, reducing its cost. Although early protests by farmers ended when those who benefited found that their electricity supply had stabilised, according to an assessment study corporations and large farmers benefited from the policy at the expense of small farmers and labourers.
Development debate
A contentious debate surrounds the assessment of Gujarat's economic development during Modi's tenure as chief minister. The state's GDP growth rate averaged 10% during Modi's tenure, a value similar to other highly industrialised states, and above that of the country as a whole. Gujarat also had a high rate of economic growth in the 1990s, before Modi took office, and some scholars have stated that growth did not much accelerate during Modi's tenure, although the state is considered to have maintained a high growth rate during Modi's Chief Ministership. Under Narendra Modi, Gujarat topped the World Bank's "ease of doing business" rankings among Indian states for two consecutive years. In 2013, Gujarat was ranked first among Indian states for "economic freedom" by a report measuring governance, growth, citizens' rights and labour and business regulation among the country's 20 largest states. In the later years of Modi's government, Gujarat's economic growth was frequently used as an argument to counter allegations of communalism. Tax breaks for businesses were easier to obtain in Gujarat than in other states, as was land. Modi's policies to make Gujarat attractive for investment included the creation of Special Economic Zones, where labour laws were greatly weakened.
Despite its growth rate, Gujarat had a relatively poor record on human development, poverty relief, nutrition and education during Modi's tenure. In 2013, Gujarat ranked 13th in the country with respect to rates of poverty and 21st in education. Nearly 45 percent of children under five were underweight and 23 percent were undernourished, putting the state in the "alarming" category on the India State Hunger Index. A study by UNICEF and the Indian government found that Gujarat under Modi had a poor record with respect to immunisation in children.
Over the decade from 2001 to 2011, Gujarat did not change its position relative to the rest of the country with respect to poverty and female literacy, remaining near the median of the 29 Indian states. It showed a marginal improvement in rates of infant mortality, and its position with respect to individual consumption declined. With respect to the quality of education in government schools, the state ranked below many Indian states. The social policies of the government generally did not benefit Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis, and generally increased social inequalities. Development in Gujarat was generally limited to the urban middle class, and citizens in rural areas or from lower castes were increasingly marginalised. In 2013 the state ranked 10th of 21 Indian states in the Human Development Index. Under Modi, the state government spent less than the national average on education and healthcare.
Final years
Despite the BJP's shift away from explicit Hindutva, Modi's election campaign in 2007 and 2012 contained elements of Hindu nationalism. Modi only attended Hindu religious ceremonies, and had prominent associations with Hindu religious leaders. During his 2012 campaign he twice refused to wear articles of clothing gifted by Muslim leaders. He did, however, maintain relations with Dawoodi Bohra. His campaign included references to issues known to cause religious polarisation, including to Afzal Guru and the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. The BJP did not nominate any Muslim candidates for the assembly election of 2012. During the 2012 campaign, Modi attempted to identify himself with the state of Gujarat, a strategy similar to that used by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, and projected himself as protecting Gujarat against persecution by the rest of India.
While campaigning for the 2012 assembly elections, Modi made extensive use of holograms and other technologies allowing him to reach a large number of people, something he would repeat in the 2014 general election. In the 2012 Gujarat Legislative Assembly elections, Modi won the constituency of Maninagar by 86,373 votes over Shweta Bhatt, the INC candidate and wife of Sanjiv Bhatt. The BJP won 115 of the 182 seats, continuing its majority during his tenure and allowing the party to form the government (as it had in Gujarat since 1995). After his election as prime minister, Modi resigned as the chief minister and as an MLA from Maninagar on 21 May 2014. Anandiben Patel succeeded him as the chief minister.
Premiership campaigns
2014 Indian general election
In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi.
During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development, although Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately , and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances.
The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism.
Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi by 371,784 votes and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat.
2019 Indian general election
On 13 October 2018, Modi was renamed as the BJP candidate for prime minister for the 2019 general election. The chief campaigner for the party was BJP's president Amit Shah. Modi launched the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign ahead of the general election, against Chowkidar Chor Hai campaign slogan of INC. In the year 2018, end Party's, second-biggest alliance Telugu Desam Party split from NDA over the matter of special-status for Andhra Pradesh.
The campaign was started by Amit Shah on 8 April 2019. In the campaign, Modi was targeted by the opposition on corruption allegations over Rafale deal with France government. Highlighting this controversy the campaign "Chowkidar Chor Hai" was started, which was contrary to "Main Bhi Chowkidar" slogan. Modi made defence and national security among the foremost topics for the election campaign, especially after Pulwama attack, and the retaliatory attack of Balakot airstrike was counted as an achievement of the Modi administration. Other topics in the campaign were development and good foreign relations in the first premiership.
Modi contested the Lok Sabha elections as a candidate from Varanasi. He won the seat by defeating Shalini Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, who fought on SP-BSP alliance by a margin of votes. Modi was unanimously appointed the prime minister for a second time by the National Democratic Alliance, after the alliance won the election for the second time by securing 353 seats in the Lok Sabha with the BJP alone won 303 seats.
Prime Minister
After the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won a landslide in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India on 26 May 2014. He became the first Prime Minister born after India's independence from the British Empire in 1947. Modi started his second term after the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won again in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. On 6 December 2020, Modi became the 4th longest serving Prime Minister of India and the longest serving Non-Congress Prime Minister.
Governance and other initiatives
Modi's first year as prime minister saw significant centralisation of power relative to previous administrations. His efforts at centralisation have been linked to an increase in the number of senior administration officials resigning their positions. Initially lacking a majority in the Rajya Sabha, or upper house of Indian Parliament, Modi passed a number of ordinances to enact his policies, leading to further centralisation of power. The government also passed a bill increasing the control that it had over the appointment of judges, and reducing that of the judiciary.
In December 2014 Modi abolished the Planning Commission, replacing it with the National Institution for Transforming India, or NITI Aayog. The move had the effect of greatly centralising the power previously with the planning commission in the person of the prime minister. The planning commission had received heavy criticism in previous years for creating inefficiency in the government, and of not filling its role of improving social welfare: however, since the economic liberalisation of the 1990s, it had been the major government body responsible for measures related to social justice.
The Modi government launched investigations by the Intelligence Bureau against numerous civil society organisations and foreign non-governmental organisations in the first year of the administration. The investigations, on the grounds that these organisations were slowing economic growth, was criticised as a witch-hunt. International humanitarian aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres was among the groups that were put under pressure. Other organisations affected included the Sierra Club and Avaaz. Cases of sedition were filed against individuals criticising the government. This led to discontent within the BJP regarding Modi's style of functioning and drew comparisons to the governing style of Indira Gandhi.
Modi repealed 1,200 obsolete laws in first three years as prime minister; a total of 1,301 such laws had been repealed by previous governments over a span of 64 years. He started a monthly radio programme titled "Mann Ki Baat" on 3 October 2014. Modi also launched the Digital India programme, with the goal of ensuring that government services are available electronically, building infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet access to rural areas, boosting manufacturing of electronic goods in the country, and promoting digital literacy.
Modi launched Ujjwala scheme to provide free LPG connection to rural households. The scheme led to an increase in LPG consumption by 56% in 2019 as compared to 2014. In 2019, a law was passed to provide 10% reservation to Economically weaker sections.
He was again sworn in as prime minister on 30 May 2019. On 30 July 2019, Parliament of India declared the practice of Triple Talaq as illegal, unconstitutional and made it punishable act from 1 August 2019 which is deemed to be in effect from 19 September 2018. On 5 August 2019, the government moved resolution to scrap Article 370 in the Rajya Sabha, and also reorganise the state with Jammu and Kashmir serving as one of the union territory and Ladakh region separated out as a separate union territory.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how he Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. Reporters Without Borders in 2021 characterised Modi as a predator for curbing press freedom in India since 2014.
Economic policy
The economic policies of Modi's government focused on privatisation and liberalisation of the economy, based on a neoliberal framework. Modi liberalised India's foreign direct investment policies, allowing more foreign investment in several industries, including in defence and the railways. Other proposed reforms included making it harder for workers to form unions and easier for employers to hire and fire them; some of these proposals were dropped after protests. The reforms drew strong opposition from unions: on 2 September 2015, eleven of the country's largest unions went on strike, including one affiliated with the BJP. The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, a constituent of the Sangh Parivar, stated that the underlying motivation of labour reforms favoured corporations over labourers.
The funds dedicated to poverty reduction programmes and social welfare measures were greatly decreased by the Modi administration. The money spent on social programmes declined from 14.6% of GDP during the Congress government to 12.6% during Modi's first year in office. Spending on health and family welfare declined by 15%, and on primary and secondary education by 16%. The budgetary allocation for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, or the "education for all" programme, declined by 22%. The government also lowered corporate taxes, abolished the wealth tax, increased sales taxes, and reduced customs duties on gold, and jewellery. In October 2014, the Modi government deregulated diesel prices.
In September 2014, Modi introduced the Make in India initiative to encourage foreign companies to manufacture products in India, with the goal of turning the country into a global manufacturing hub. Supporters of economic liberalisation supported the initiative, while critics argued it would allow foreign corporations to capture a greater share of the Indian market. Modi's administration passed a land-reform bill that allowed it to acquire private agricultural land without conducting a social impact assessment, and without the consent of the farmers who owned it. The bill was passed via an executive order after it faced opposition in parliament, but was eventually allowed to lapse. Modi's government put in place the Goods and Services Tax, the biggest tax reform in the country since independence. It subsumed around 17 different taxes and became effective from 1 July 2017.
In his first cabinet decision, Modi set up a team to investigate black money. On 9 November 2016, the government demonetised ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes, with the stated intention of curbing corruption, black money, the use of counterfeit currency, and terrorism. The move led to severe cash shortages, a steep decline in the Indian stock indices BSE SENSEX and NIFTY 50, and sparked widespread protests throughout the country. Several deaths were linked to the rush to exchange cash. In the subsequent year, the number of income tax returns filed for individuals rose by 25%, and the number of digital transactions increased steeply.
Over the first four years of Modi's premiership, India's GDP grew at an average rate of 7.23%, higher than the rate of 6.39% under the previous government. The level of income inequality increased, while an internal government report said that in 2017, unemployment had increased to its highest level in 45 years. The loss of jobs was attributed to the 2016 demonetisation, and to the effects of the Goods and Services Tax.
In the next year, after 2018, Indian economy started a gradual recovery with a GDP growth of 6.12% in 2018-19 FY, with an inflation rate of 3.4%. Same year, India was successful in making a good economy in trade and manufacturing sector. While in the FY of 2019–20, due to the general election, Modi government focused more on their election campaign. In the year 2019–20, the GDP growth rate was 4.18% and inflation rate also increased to 4.7% from 3.4% in the previous year. Though being high unemployment, increase in inflation rate and budget deficiency, Modi's leadership won in 2019 elections.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous rating agencies downgraded India's GDP predictions for FY21 to negative figures, signalling a recession in India, the most severe since 1979. According to a Dun & Bradstreet report, the country is likely to suffer a recession in the third quarter of FY2020 as a result of the over 2-month long nation-wide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. This was also accompanied by the mass migration of migrant workers.
Health and sanitation
In his first year as prime minister, Modi reduced the amount of money spent by the central government on healthcare. The Modi government launched New Health Policy (NHP) in January 2015. The policy did not increase the government's spending on healthcare, instead emphasising the role of private healthcare organisations. This represented a shift away from the policy of the previous Congress government, which had supported programmes to assist public health goals, including reducing child and maternal mortality rates. The National Health Mission, which included public health programmes targeted at these indices received nearly 20% less funds in 2015 than in the previous year. 15 national health programmes, including those aimed at controlling tobacco use and supporting healthcare for the elderly, were merged with the National Health Mission. In its budget for the second year after it took office, the Modi government reduced healthcare spending by 15%. The healthcare budget for the following year rose by 19%. The budget was viewed positively by private insurance providers. Public health experts criticised its emphasis on the role of private healthcare providers, and suggested that it represented a shift away from public health facilities. The healthcare budget rose by 11.5% in 2018; the change included an allocation of for a government-funded health insurance program, and a decrease in the budget of the National Health Mission. The government introduced stricter packaging laws for tobacco which requires 85% of the packet size to be covered by pictorial warnings. An article in the medical journal Lancet stated that the country "might have taken a few steps back in public health" under Modi. In 2018 Modi launched the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, a government health insurance scheme intended to insure 500 million people. 100,000 people had signed up by October 2018.
Modi emphasised his government's efforts at sanitation as a means of ensuring good health. On 2 October 2014, Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission ("Clean India") campaign. The stated goals of the campaign included eliminating open defecation and manual scavenging within five years. As part of the programme, the Indian government began constructing millions of toilets in rural areas and encouraging people to use them. The government also announced plans to build new sewage treatment plants. The administration plans to construct 60 million toilets by 2019. The construction projects have faced allegations of corruption, and have faced severe difficulty in getting people to use the toilets constructed for them. Sanitation cover in the country increased from 38.7% in October 2014 to 84.1% in May 2018; however, usage of the new sanitary facilities lagged behind the government's targets. In 2018, the World Health Organization stated that at least 180,000 diarrhoeal deaths were averted in rural India after the launch of the sanitation effort.
Hindutva
During the 2014 election campaign, the BJP sought to identify itself with political leaders known to have opposed Hindu nationalism, including B. R. Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Ram Manohar Lohia. The campaign also saw the use of rhetoric based on Hindutva by BJP leaders in certain states. Communal tensions were played upon especially in Uttar Pradesh and the states of Northeast India. A proposal for the controversial Uniform Civil Code was a part of the BJP's election manifesto.
The activities of a number of Hindu nationalist organisations increased in scope after Modi's election as Prime Minister, sometimes with the support of the government. These activities included a Hindu religious conversion programme, a campaign against the alleged Islamic practice of "Love Jihad", and attempts to celebrate Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, by members of the right wing Hindu Mahasabha. Officials in the government, including the Home Minister, defended the conversion programmes.
Links between the BJP and the RSS grew stronger under Modi. The RSS provided organisational support to the BJP's electoral campaigns, while the Modi administration appointed a number of individuals affiliated with the RSS to prominent government positions. In 2014, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, who had previously been associated with the RSS, became the chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). Historians and former members of the ICHR, including those sympathetic to the BJP, questioned his credentials as a historian, and stated that the appointment was part of an agenda of cultural nationalism.
The North East Delhi riots, which left more than 40 dead and hundreds injured, were triggered by protests against a citizenship law seen by many critics as anti-Muslim and part of Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda. On 5 August 2020, Modi visited Ayodhya after the Supreme Court in 2019 ordered a contested land in Ayodhya to be handed over to a trust to build the Hindu temple and ordered the government to give alternate 5 acre land to Sunni Waqf Board for the purpose of building a mosque. He became the first prime minister to visit Ram Janmabhoomi and Hanuman Garhi.
Foreign policy
Foreign policy played a relatively small role in Modi's election campaign, and did not feature prominently in the BJP's election manifesto. Modi invited all the other leaders of SAARC countries to his swearing in ceremony as prime minister. He was the first Indian prime minister to do so.
Modi's foreign policy, similarly to that of the preceding INC government, focused on improving economic ties, security, and regional relations. Modi continued Manmohan Singh's policy of "multi-alignment." The Modi administration tried to attract foreign investment in the Indian economy from several sources, especially in East Asia, with the use of slogans such as "Make in India" and "Digital India". The government also tried to improve relations with Islamic nations in the Middle East, such as Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as with Israel.
The foreign relations of India with the USA also mended after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. During the run-up to the general election there was wide-ranging scepticism regarding future of the strategic bilateral relation under Modi's premiership as in 2005 he was, while Chief Minister of Gujarat, denied a U.S. visa during the Bush administration for his poor human rights records. However sensing Modi's inevitable victory well before the election, the US Ambassador Nancy Powell had reached out to him as part of greater rapprochement from the west. Moreover, following his 2014 election as the Prime Minister of India President Obama congratulated him over the telephone and invited him to visit the US. Modi government has been successful in making good foreign relations with the USA in the presidency of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
During the first few months after the election, Modi made trips to a number of different countries to further the goals of his policy, and attended the BRICS, ASEAN, and G20 summits. One of Modi's first visits as prime minister was to Nepal, during which he promised a billion USD in aid. Modi also made several overtures to the United States, including multiple visits to that country. While this was described as an unexpected development, due to the US having previously denied Modi a travel visa over his role during the 2002 Gujarat riots, the visits were expected to strengthen diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries.
In 2015, the Indian parliament ratified a land exchange deal with Bangladesh about the India–Bangladesh enclaves, which had been initiated by the government of Manmohan Singh. Modi's administration gave renewed attention to India's "Look East Policy", instituted in 1991. The policy was renamed the "Act East Policy", and involved directing Indian foreign policy towards East Asia and Southeast Asia. The government signed agreements to improve land connectivity with Myanmar, through the state of Manipur. This represented a break with India's historic engagement with Myanmar, which prioritised border security over trade. China–India relations have deteriorated rapidly following the 2020 China–India skirmishes. Modi has pledged aid of $900 million to Afghanistan, visited the nation twice and been honoured with the nation's highest civilian honour in 2016.
Defence policy
India's nominal military spending increased steadily under Modi. The military budget declined over Modi's tenure both as a fraction of GDP and when adjusted for inflation. A substantial portion of the military budget was devoted to personnel costs, leading commentators to write that the budget was constraining Indian military modernisation.
The BJP election manifesto had also promised to deal with illegal immigration into India in the Northeast, as well as to be more firm in its handling of insurgent groups. The Modi government issued a notification allowing Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh to legalise their residency in India. The government described the measure as being taken for humanitarian reasons but it drew criticism from several Assamese organisations.The Modi administration negotiated a peace agreement with the largest faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCM), which was announced in August 2015. The Naga insurgency in northeast India had begun in the 1950s. The NSCM and the government had agreed to a ceasefire in 1997, but a peace accord had not previously been signed. In 2015 the government abrogated a 15-year ceasefire with the Khaplang faction of the NSCM (NSCM-K). The NSCM-K responded with a series of attacks, which killed 18 people. The Modi government carried out a raid across the border with Myanmar as a result, and labelled the NSCM-K a terrorist organisation.
Modi promised to be "tough on Pakistan" during his election campaign, and repeatedly stated that Pakistan was an exporter of terrorism. On 29 September 2016, the Indian Army stated that it had conducted a surgical strike on terror launch pads in Azad Kashmir. The Indian media claimed that up to 50 terrorists and Pakistani soldiers had been killed in the strike. Pakistan initially denied that any strikes had taken place. Subsequent reports suggested that Indian claim about the scope of the strike and the number of casualties had been exaggerated, although cross-border strikes had been carried out. In February 2019 India carried out airstrikes in Pakistan against a supposed terrorist camp. Further military skirmishes followed, including cross-border shelling and the loss of an Indian aircraft.
Following his victory in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he focused more on Defence policies of India, especially against China and Pakistan. On 5 May 2020, Chinese and Indian troops engaged in aggressive melee, face-offs and skirmishes at locations along the Sino-Indian border, including near the disputed Pangong Lake in Ladakh and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and near the border between Sikkim and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Additional clashes also took place at locations in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). After which there was start of skirmishes between the nations leading to many border clashes, responses and reactions from both sides. A series of talks were also held between the two by both military and diplomatic means for peace. The first border clash reported in 2021 was on 20 January, referred to as a minor border clash in Sikkim.
Environmental policy
In naming his cabinet, Modi renamed the "Ministry of Environment and Forests" the "Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change." In the first budget of the government, the money allotted to this ministry was reduced by more than 50%. The new ministry also removed or diluted a number of laws related to environmental protection. These included no longer requiring clearance from the National Board for Wildlife for projects close to protected areas, and allowing certain projects to proceed before environmental clearance was received. The government also tried to reconstitute the Wildlife board such that it no longer had representatives from non-governmental organisations: however, this move was prevented by the Supreme Court.
Modi also relaxed or abolished a number of other environmental regulations, particularly those related to industrial activity. A government committee stated that the existing system only served to create corruption, and that the government should instead rely on the owners of industries to voluntarily inform the government about the pollution they were creating. Other changes included reducing ministry oversight on small mining projects, and no longer requiring approval from tribal councils for projects inside forested areas. In addition, Modi lifted a moratorium on new industrial activity in the most polluted areas in the countries. The changes were welcomed by businesspeople, but criticised by environmentalists.
Under the UPA government that preceded Modi's administration, field trials of Genetically Modified (GM) crops had essentially been put on hold, after protests from farmers fearing for their livelihoods. Under the Modi government these restrictions were gradually lifted. The government received some criticism for freezing the bank accounts of environmental group Greenpeace, citing financial irregularities, although a leaked government report said that the freeze had to do with Greenpeace's opposition to GM crops. At the COP26 conference Modi announced that India would target carbon neutrality by 2070, and also expand its renewable energy capacity. Though the date of net zero is far behind that of China and the USA and India's government wants to continue with the use of coal, Indian environmentalists and economists applauded the decision, describing it as a bold climate action.
Democratic backsliding
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how the Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. There have been several reports of the Modi government to be as an authoritarian conservative government, even due to lack of good opposition.
Electoral history
Personal life and image
Personal life
In accordance with Ghanchi tradition, Modi's marriage was arranged by his parents when he was a child. He was engaged at age 13 to Jashodaben Modi, marrying her when he was 18. They spent little time together and grew apart when Modi began two years of travel, including visits to Hindu ashrams. Reportedly, their marriage was never consummated, and he kept it a secret because otherwise he could not have become a 'pracharak' in the puritan Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Modi kept his marriage secret for most of his career. He acknowledged his wife for the first time when he filed his nomination for the 2014 general elections. Modi maintains a close relationship with his centenarian mother, Hiraben.
A vegetarian and teetotaler, Modi has a frugal lifestyle and is a workaholic and introvert. A person named Badri Meena has been his cook since 2002. Modi's 31 August 2012 post on Google Hangouts made him the first Indian politician to interact with citizens on a live chat. Modi has also been called a fashion-icon for his signature crisply ironed, half-sleeved kurta, as well as for a suit with his name embroidered repeatedly in the pinstripes that he wore during a state visit by US President Barack Obama, which drew public and media attention and criticism. Modi's personality has been variously described by scholars and biographers as energetic, arrogant, and charismatic.
He had published a Gujarati book titled Jyotipunj in 2008, containing profiles of various RSS leaders. The longest was of M. S. Golwalkar, under whose leadership the RSS expanded and whom Modi refers to as Pujniya Shri Guruji ("Guru worthy of worship"). According to The Economic Times, his intention was to explain the workings of the RSS to his readers and to reassure RSS members that he remained ideologically aligned with them. Modi authored eight other books, mostly containing short stories for children.
The nomination of Modi for the prime ministership drew attention to his reputation as "one of contemporary India's most controversial and divisive politicians." During the 2014 election campaign the BJP projected an image of Modi as a strong, masculine leader, who would be able to take difficult decisions. Campaigns in which he has participated have focused on Modi as an individual, in a manner unusual for the BJP and RSS. Modi has relied upon his reputation as a politician able to bring about economic growth and "development". Nonetheless, his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots continues to attract criticism and controversy. Modi's hardline Hindutva philosophy and the policies adopted by his government continue to draw criticism, and have been seen as evidence of a majoritarian and exclusionary social agenda.
In March 2021, Modi received his first COVID-19 vaccine dose at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
Personal donations
Modi has made donations for various causes and programmes. One such instance was when Modi donated towards the initial corpus of the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) Fund. In his role as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi had donated from personal savings for educating daughters of state government officials. Modi had also raised by auctioning all the gifts he received as chief minister and donated this to the Kanya Kelavani Fund. The money was spent on the education of girl children, through the scheme.
Approval ratings
As a Prime Minister, Modi has received consistently high approval ratings; at the end of his first year in office, he received an overall approval rating of 87% in a Pew Research poll, with 68% of people rating him "very favorably" and 93% approving of his government. His approval rating remained largely consistent at around 74% through his second year in office, according to a nationwide poll conducted by instaVaani. At the end of his second year in office, an updated Pew Research poll showed Modi continued to receive high overall approval ratings of 81%, with 57% of those polled rating him "very favorably." At the end of his third year in office, a further Pew Research poll showed Modi with an overall approval rating of 88%, his highest yet, with 69% of people polled rating him "very favorably." A poll conducted by The Times of India in May 2017 showed 77% of the respondents rated Modi as "very good" and "good". In early 2017, a survey from Pew Research Center showed Modi to be the most popular figure in Indian politics. In a weekly analysis by Morning Consult called the Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker, Modi had the highest net approval rating as of 22 December 2020 of all government leaders in the 13 countries being tracked.
Awards and recognition
In March 2012 and June 2014, Modi appeared on the cover of the Asian edition of Time Magazine, one of the few Indian politicians to have done so. He was awarded Indian of the Year by CNN-News18 (formally CNN-IBN) news network in 2014. In June 2015, Modi was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020 and 2021, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Forbes Magazine ranked him the 15th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2014 and the 9th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2015, 2016 and 2018. In 2015, Modi was ranked the 13th Most Influential Person in the World by Bloomberg Markets Magazine. Modi was ranked fifth on Fortune Magazines first annual list of the "World's Greatest Leaders" in 2015. In 2017, Gallup International Association (GIA) conducted a poll and ranked Modi as third top leader of the world. In 2016, a wax statue of Modi was unveiled at Madame Tussauds wax museum in London.
In 2015 he was named one of Times "30 Most Influential People on the Internet" as the second-most-followed politician on Twitter and Facebook. In 2018, he was the third most followed world leader on Twitter, and the most followed world leader on Facebook and Instagram. In October 2018, Modi received United Nations's highest environmental award, the 'Champions of the Earth', for policy leadership by "pioneering work in championing" the International Solar Alliance and "new areas of levels of cooperation on environmental action". He was conferred the 2018 Seoul Peace Prize in recognition of "his dedication to improving international co-operation, raising global economic growth, accelerating the Human Development of the people of India by fostering economic growth and furthering the development of democracy through anti-corruption and social integration efforts". He is the first Indian to win the award.
Following his second swearing-in ceremony as Prime Minister of India, a picture of Modi was displayed on the facade of the ADNOC building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Texas India Forum hosted a community event in honour of Modi on 22 September 2019 at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. The event was attended by over 50,000 people and several American politicians including President Donald Trump, making it the largest gathering for an invited foreign leader visiting the United States other than the Pope. At the same event, Modi was presented with the Key to the City of Houston by Mayor Sylvester Turner. He was awarded the Global Goalkeeper Award on 24 September 2019 in New York City by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in recognition for the Swachh Bharat Mission and "the progress India has made in providing safe sanitation under his leadership".
In 2020, Modi was among eight world leaders awarded the parodic Ig Nobel Prize in Medical Education "for using the COVID-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can". On 21 December 2020, President Donald Trump awarded Modi with the Legion of Merit for elevating the India–United States relations. The Legion of Merit was awarded to Modi along with Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison and former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, the "original architects" of the QUAD.
On 24 February 2021, the largest cricket stadium in the world at Ahmedabad was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by the Gujarat Cricket Association.
Modi is featured in TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2021 list, making it his fifth time after 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2020. TIME called him the third "pivotal leader" of independent India after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi who "dominated the country’s politics like no one since them".
State honours
Other honours
In popular culture
Modi Kaka Ka Gaon, a 2017 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Tushar Amrish Goel is the first biopic on Modi, starring Vikas Mahante in the titular role it was made halfway into his first-term as the prime minister which is shown in the film. PM Narendra Modi, a 2019 Indian Hindi-language biographical drama film by Omung Kumar, starred Vivek Oberoi in the titular role and covers his rise to prime ministership.An Indian web series, Modi: Journey of a Common Man, based on the same premise released in May 2019 on Eros Now with Ashish Sharma portraying Modi. Hu Narender Modi Banva Mangu Chu is a 2018 Indian Gujarati-language drama film by Anil Naryani about the aspirations of a young boy who wants to become like Narendra Modi.
7 RCR (7, Race Course Road), a 2014 Indian docudrama political television series which charts the political careers of prominent Indian politicians, covered Modi's rise to the PM's office in the episodes - "Story of Narendra Modi from 1950 to 2001", "Story of Narendra Modi in Controversial Years from 2001 to 2013", "Truth Behind Brand Modi", "Election Journey of Narendra Modi to 7 RCR", and "Masterplan of Narendra Modi's NDA Govt."; with Sangam Rai in the role of Modi.
Other portrayals of Modi include by Rajit Kapur in the film Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) and Vikram Gokhale in the web-television series Avrodh: The Siege Within (2020) both based on the 2016 Uri attack and the following Indian surgical strikes. Pratap Singh played a character based on Modi in Chand Bujh Gaya (2005) which is set in the backdrop of the Gujarat riots.
Premiered on 12 August 2019, Modi appeared in an episode - "Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls and Prime Minister Modi" - of Discovery Channel's show Man vs Wild with the host Bear Grylls, becoming the second world leader after Barack Obama to appear in the reality show. In the show he trekked the jungles and talked about nature and wildlife conservation with Grylls. The episode was shot in Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand and was broadcast in 180 countries along India. He has also appeared twice on the Indian television talk show Aap Ki Adalat before the 2009 and 2014 elections respectively.
Along with hosting the Mann Ki Baat monthly radio programme, on All India Radio, he has also conducted Pariksha Pe Charcha - a competition/discussion for students and the issues they face in examinations.
Bibliography
See also
List of prime ministers of India
Opinion polling on the Narendra Modi premiership
References
Notes
Citations
Further reading
External links
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Politicians from Varanasi
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"\"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"
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[
"Narendra Modi",
"2014 Indian general election",
"in what month was the election?",
"the 2014 Lok Sabha election.",
"what position did he run for in the election?",
"prime minister",
"what political party was he in?",
"the BJP's candidate",
"did he win the election?",
"Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment",
"how many votes did he get?",
"by 570,128 votes.",
"who was his opponent?",
"defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi",
"for how long was he prime minister?",
"To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat.",
"where did he do his campaigning?",
"The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately Rs50 billion",
"where did he get the money from to pay for that cost?",
"received extensive financial support from corporate donors.",
"what did he do when he campaigned?",
"In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances."
] | C_b6a0c764bf0c443b9768973ff08ca8fb_0 | what social media did he use? | 11 | What social media did Narendra Modi use while campaigning? | Narendra Modi | In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi. During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development. Although the BJP avoided issues of Hindu nationalism to an extent, Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately Rs50 billion (US$770 million), and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances. The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism. Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by 570,128 votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from Varanasi. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organisation. He is the first prime minister to have been born after India's independence in 1947 and the second prime minister not belonging to the Indian National Congress to have won two consecutive majorities in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Indian of parliament.
Born and raised in Vadnagar, a small town in northeastern Gujarat, Modi completed his secondary education there. He was introduced to the RSS at age eight. He has drawn attention to having to work as a child in his father's tea stall on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that has not been reliably corroborated. At age 18, Modi was married to Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, whom he abandoned soon after. He left his parental home where she had come to live. He first publicly acknowledged her as his wife more than four decades later when required to do so by Indian law, but has made no contact with her since. Modi has asserted he had travelled in northern India for two years after leaving his parental home, visiting a number of religious centres, but few details of his travels have emerged. Upon his return to Gujarat in 1971, he became a full-time worker for the RSS. After the state of emergency declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, Modi went into hiding. The RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985 and he held several positions within the party hierarchy until 2001, rising to the rank of general secretary.
Modi was appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001 due to Keshubhai Patel's failing health and poor public image following the earthquake in Bhuj. Modi was elected to the legislative assembly soon after. His administration has been considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots in which 1044 people were killed, three-quarters of whom were Muslim, or otherwise criticised for its management of the crisis. The Supreme Court remarked that Narendra Modi was like a Modern-day Nero, looking the other way as innocent women and children were burning. A Supreme Court of India-appointed Special Investigation Team found no evidence to initiate prosecution proceedings against Modi personally. While his policies as chief minister—credited with encouraging economic growth—have received praise, his administration has been criticised for failing to significantly improve health, poverty and education indices in the state.
Modi led the BJP in the 2014 general election which gave the party a majority in the Indian lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, the first time for any single party since 1984. Modi's administration has tried to raise foreign direct investment in the Indian economy and reduced spending on healthcare and social welfare programmes. Modi has attempted to improve efficiency in the bureaucracy; he has centralised power by abolishing the Planning Commission. He began a high-profile sanitation campaign, controversially initiated a demonetisation of high-denomination banknotes and transformation of taxation regime, and weakened or abolished environmental and labour laws.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. Following his party's victory in the 2019 general election, his administration revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and also introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act, which resulted in widespread protests across the country. Described as engineering a political realignment towards right-wing politics, Modi remains a figure of controversy domestically and internationally over his Hindu nationalist beliefs and his handling of the 2002 Gujarat riots, cited as evidence of an exclusionary social agenda.
Early life and education
Narendra Damodardas Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a Gujarati Hindu family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district, Bombay State (present-day Gujarat). He was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi () and Hiraben Modi (born ). Modi's family belonged to the Modh-Ghanchi-Teli (oil-presser) community, which is categorised as an Other Backward Class by the Indian government.
Modi had only infrequently spoken of his family background during his 13 years as chief minister of Gujarat. In the run up to the 2014 national elections, he began to regularly draw attention to his low-ranking social origins and to having to work as a child in his father's tea shop on the Vadnagar railway station platform, a description that the evidence of neighbours does not entirely corroborate. Modi completed his higher secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where teachers described him as an average student and a keen gifted debater, with interest in theatre. Modi preferred playing larger-than-life characters in theatrical productions, which has influenced his political image.
When eight years old, Modi was introduced to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and began attending its local shakhas (training sessions). There, Modi met Lakshmanrao Inamdar, popularly known as Vakil Saheb, who inducted him as a balswayamsevak (junior cadet) in the RSS and became his political mentor. While Modi was training with the RSS, he also met Vasant Gajendragadkar and Nathalal Jaghda, Bharatiya Jana Sangh leaders who were founding members of the BJP's Gujarat unit in 1980.
In a custom traditional to Narendra Modi's caste, his family arranged a betrothal to a girl, Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, leading to their marriage when she was 17 and he was 18. Soon afterwards, he abandoned his bride, and left home, never divorcing her, but the marriage remaining unmentioned in Modi's public pronouncements for many decades. In April 2014, shortly before the national elections that swept him to power, Modi publicly affirmed that he was married and his spouse was Jashodaben; the couple has remained married, but estranged.
Modi spent the ensuing two years travelling across Northern and North-eastern India, though few details of where he went have emerged. In interviews, Modi has described visiting Hindu ashrams founded by Swami Vivekananda: the Belur Math near Kolkata, followed by the Advaita Ashrama in Almora and the Ramakrishna Mission in Rajkot. Modi remained only a short time at each, since he lacked the required college education. Vivekananda has been described as a large influence in Modi's life.
In the early summer of 1968, Modi reached the Belur Math but was turned away, after which Modi wandered through Calcutta, West Bengal and Assam, stopping in Siliguri and Guwahati. Modi then went to the Ramakrishna Ashram in Almora, where he was again rejected, before travelling back to Gujarat via Delhi and Rajasthan in 1968–69. Sometime in late 1969 or early 1970, Modi returned to Vadnagar for a brief visit before leaving again for Ahmedabad. There, Modi lived with his uncle, working in the latter's canteen at the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation.
In Ahmedabad, Modi renewed his acquaintance with Inamdar, who was based at the Hedgewar Bhavan (RSS headquarters) in the city. Modi's first known political activity as an adult was in 1971 when he, as per his remarks, joined a Jana Sangh Satyagraha in Delhi led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee to enlist for the battlefield during the Bangladesh Liberation War. But the Indira Gandhi-led central government disallowed open support for the Mukti Bahini and Modi, according to his own claim, was put in Tihar Jail for a short period. After the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he stopped working for his uncle and became a full-time pracharak (campaigner) for the RSS, working under Inamdar. Shortly before the war, Modi took part in a non-violent protest against the Indian government in New Delhi, for which he was arrested (as per his claim); this has been cited as a reason for Inamdar electing to mentor him. Many years later Modi would co-author a biography of Inamdar, published in 2001. Modi's claim that he was part of a Satyagraha led to a political war. Applications were filed with the PMO under the RTI Act seeking details of his arrest. In reply, the PMO claimed that it maintains official records on Modi only since he took charge as the Prime Minister of India in 2014. Despite this claim, the official website of the PMO contains specific information about Modi which dates back to the 1950s.
In 1978 Modi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the School of Open Learning (SOL) at the University of Delhi, graduating with a third class. Five years later, in 1983, he received a Master of Arts degree in political science from Gujarat University, graduating with a first class as an external distance learning student. But there is a big controversy surrounding his educational qualification. Replying to an RTI query, the SOL said it did not have any data of students who received a BA degree in 1978. Jayantibhai Patel, a former political science professor of Gujarat University, claimed that the subjects listed in Modi's MA degree were not offered by the university when Modi was studying there.
Early political career
In June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India which lasted until 1977. During this period, known as "The Emergency", many of her political opponents were jailed and opposition groups were banned. Modi was appointed general secretary of the "Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti", an RSS committee co-ordinating opposition to the Emergency in Gujarat. Shortly afterwards, the RSS was banned. Modi was forced to go underground in Gujarat and frequently travelled in disguise to avoid arrest. He became involved in printing pamphlets opposing the government, sending them to Delhi and organising demonstrations. Modi was also involved with creating a network of safe houses for individuals wanted by the government, and in raising funds for political refugees and activists. During this period, Modi wrote a book in Gujarati, Sangharsh Ma Gujarat (In The Struggles of Gujarat), describing events during the Emergency. Among the people he met in this role was trade unionist and socialist activist George Fernandes, as well as several other national political figures. In his travels during the Emergency, Modi was often forced to move in disguise, once dressing as a monk, and once as a Sikh.
Modi became an RSS sambhag pracharak (regional organiser) in 1978, overseeing RSS activities in the areas of Surat and Vadodara, and in 1979 he went to work for the RSS in Delhi, where he was put to work researching and writing the RSS's version of the history of the Emergency. He returned to Gujarat a short while later, and was assigned by the RSS to the BJP in 1985. In 1987 Modi helped organise the BJP's campaign in the Ahmedabad municipal election, which the BJP won comfortably; Modi's planning has been described as the reason for that result by biographers. After L. K. Advani became president of the BJP in 1986, the RSS decided to place its members in important positions within the BJP; Modi's work during the Ahmedabad election led to his selection for this role, and Modi was elected organising secretary of the BJP's Gujarat unit later in 1987.
Modi rose within the party and was named a member of the BJP's National Election Committee in 1990, helping organise L. K. Advani's 1990 Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 and Murli Manohar Joshi's 1991–92 Ekta Yatra (Journey for Unity). However, he took a brief break from politics in 1992, instead establishing a school in Ahmedabad; friction with Shankersinh Vaghela, a BJP MP from Gujarat at the time, also played a part in this decision. Modi returned to electoral politics in 1994, partly at the insistence of Advani, and as party secretary, Modi's electoral strategy was considered central to the BJP victory in the 1995 state assembly elections. In November of that year Modi was appointed BJP national secretary and transferred to New Delhi, where he assumed responsibility for party activities in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The following year, Shankersinh Vaghela, a prominent BJP leader from Gujarat, defected to the Indian National Congress (Congress, INC) after losing his parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha elections. Modi, on the selection committee for the 1998 Assembly elections in Gujarat, favoured supporters of BJP leader Keshubhai Patel over those supporting Vaghela to end factional division in the party. His strategy was credited as key to the BJP winning an overall majority in the 1998 elections, and Modi was promoted to BJP general secretary (organisation) in May of that year.
Chief Minister of Gujarat
Taking office
In 2001, Keshubhai Patel's health was failing and the BJP lost a few state assembly seats in by-elections. Allegations of abuse of power, corruption and poor administration were made, and Patel's standing had been damaged by his administration's handling of the earthquake in Bhuj in 2001. The BJP national leadership sought a new candidate for the chief ministership, and Modi, who had expressed misgivings about Patel's administration, was chosen as a replacement. Although BJP leader L. K. Advani did not want to ostracise Patel and was concerned about Modi's lack of experience in government, Modi declined an offer to be Patel's deputy chief minister, telling Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee that he was "going to be fully responsible for Gujarat or not at all". On 3 October 2001 he replaced Patel as Chief Minister of Gujarat, with the responsibility of preparing the BJP for the December 2002 elections. Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister on 7 October 2001, and entered the Gujarat state legislature on 24 February 2002 by winning a by-election to the Rajkot – II constituency, defeating Ashwin Mehta of the INC by 14,728 votes.
2002 Gujarat riots
On 27 February 2002, a train with several hundred passengers burned near Godhra, killing approximately 60 people. The train carried a large number of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya after a religious ceremony at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid. In making a public statement after the incident, Modi declared it a terrorist attack planned and orchestrated by local Muslims. The next day, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for a bandh across the state. Riots began during the bandh, and anti-Muslim violence spread through Gujarat. The government's decision to move the bodies of the train victims from Godhra to Ahmedabad further inflamed the violence. The state government stated later that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed. Independent sources put the death toll at over 2000, the vast majority Muslims Approximately 150,000 people were driven to refugee camps. Numerous women and children were among the victims; the violence included mass rapes and mutilations of women.
The government of Gujarat itself is generally considered by scholars to have been complicit in the riots, (with some blaming chief minister Modi explicitly) and has otherwise received heavy criticism for its handling of the situation. Several scholars have described the violence as a pogrom, while others have called it an example of state terrorism. Summarising academic views on the subject, Martha Nussbaum said: "There is by now a broad consensus that the Gujarat violence was a form of ethnic cleansing, that in many ways it was premeditated, and that it was carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law." The Modi government imposed a curfew in 26 major cities, issued shoot-at-sight orders and called for the army to patrol the streets, but was unable to prevent the violence from escalating. The president of the state unit of the BJP expressed support for the bandh, despite such actions being illegal at the time. State officials later prevented riot victims from leaving the refugee camps, and the camps were often unable to meet the needs of those living there. Muslim victims of the riots were subject to further discrimination when the state government announced that compensation for Muslim victims would be half of that offered to Hindus, although this decision was later reversed after the issue was taken to court. During the riots, police officers often did not intervene in situations where they were able.
Modi's personal involvement in the 2002 events has continued to be debated. During the riots, Modi said that "What is happening is a chain of action and reaction." Later in 2002, Modi said the way in which he had handled the media was his only regret regarding the episode. In March 2008, the Supreme Court reopened several cases related to the 2002 riots, including that of the Gulbarg Society massacre, and established a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the issue. In response to a petition from Zakia Jafri (widow of Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre), in April 2009 the court also asked the SIT to investigate the issue of Modi's complicity in the killings. The SIT questioned Modi in March 2010; in May, it presented to the court a report finding no evidence against him. In July 2011, the court-appointed amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran submitted his final report to the court. Contrary to the SIT's position, he said that Modi could be prosecuted based on the available evidence. The Supreme Court gave the matter to the magistrate's court. The SIT examined Ramachandran's report, and in March 2012 submitted its final report, asking for the case to be closed. Zakia Jafri filed a protest petition in response. In December 2013 the magistrate's court rejected the protest petition, accepting the SIT's finding that there was no evidence against the chief minister.
2002 election
In the aftermath of the violence there were widespread calls for Modi to resign as chief minister from within and outside the state, including from leaders of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Telugu Desam Party (allies in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition), and opposition parties stalled Parliament over the issue. Modi submitted his resignation at the April 2002 BJP national executive meeting in Goa, but it was not accepted. His cabinet had an emergency meeting on 19 July 2002, after which it offered its resignation to the Gujarat Governor S. S. Bhandari, and the state assembly was dissolved. Despite opposition from the election commissioner, who said that a number of voters were still displaced, Modi succeeded in advancing the election to December 2002. In the elections, the BJP won 127 seats in the 182-member assembly. Although Modi later denied it, he made significant use of anti-Muslim rhetoric during his campaign, and the BJP profited from religious polarisation among the voters. He won the Maninagar constituency, receiving of votes and defeating INC candidate Yatin Oza by 75,333 votes. On 22 December 2002, Bhandari swore Modi in for a second term. Modi framed the criticism of his government for human rights violations as an attack upon Gujarati pride, a strategy which led to the BJP winning two-thirds of the seats in the state assembly.
Second term
During Modi's second term the rhetoric of the government shifted from Hindutva to Gujarat's economic development. Modi curtailed the influence of Sangh Parivar organisations such as the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), entrenched in the state after the decline of Ahmedabad's textile industry, and dropped Gordhan Zadafia (an ally of former Sangh co-worker and VHP state chief Praveen Togadia) from his cabinet. When the BKS staged a farmers' demonstration Modi ordered their eviction from state-provided houses, and his decision to demolish 200 illegal temples in Gandhinagar deepened the rift with the Vishva Hindu Parishad. Sangh organisations were no longer consulted or informed in advance about Modi's administrative decisions. Nonetheless, Modi retained connections with some Hindu nationalists. Modi wrote a foreword to a textbook by Dinanath Batra released in 2014, which stated that ancient India possessed technologies including test-tube babies.
Modi's relationship with Muslims continued to attract criticism. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who asked Modi for tolerance in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat violence and supported his resignation as chief minister) distanced himself, reaching out to North Indian Muslims before the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. After the elections Vajpayee called the violence in Gujarat a reason for the BJP's electoral defeat and said it had been a mistake to leave Modi in office after the riots.
Questions about Modi's relationship with Muslims were also raised by many Western nations during his tenure as chief minister. Modi was barred from entering the United States by the State Department, in accordance with the recommendations of the Commission on International Religious Freedom formed under the aegis of the International Religious Freedom Act, the only person denied a US visa under this law. The UK and the European Union refused to admit him because of what they saw as his role in the riots. As Modi rose to prominence in India, the UK and the EU lifted their bans in October 2012 and March 2013, respectively, and after his election he was invited to Washington as the nation's prime minister.
During the run-up to the 2007 Gujarat Legislative Assembly election and the 2009 Indian general election, the BJP intensified its rhetoric on terrorism. In July 2006, Modi criticised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh " for his reluctance to revive anti-terror legislation" such as the 2002 Prevention of Terrorism Act. He asked the national government to allow states to invoke tougher laws in the wake of the 2006 Mumbai train bombings. In 2007 Modi authored Karmayog, a 101-page booklet discussing manual scavenging. In it, Modi argued that scavenging was a "spiritual experience" for Valmiks, a sub-caste of Dalits. However, this book was not circulated that time because of the election code of conduct. After the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, Modi held a meeting to discuss the security of Gujarat's -long coastline, resulting in government authorisation of 30 high-speed surveillance boats. In July 2007 Modi completed 2,063 consecutive days as chief minister of Gujarat, making him the longest-serving holder of that post, and the BJP won 122 of 182 state-assembly seats in that year's election.
Development projects
As Chief Minister, Modi favoured privatisation and small government, which was at odds with the philosophy of the RSS, usually described as anti-privatisation and anti-globalisation. His policies during his second term have been credited with reducing corruption in the state. He established financial and technology parks in Gujarat and during the 2007 Vibrant Gujarat summit, real-estate investment deals worth were signed.
The governments led by Patel and Modi supported NGOs and communities in the creation of groundwater-conservation projects. By December 2008, 500,000 structures had been built, of which 113,738 were check dams, which helped recharge the aquifers beneath them. Sixty of the 112 tehsils which had depleted the water table in 2004 had regained their normal groundwater levels by 2010. As a result, the state's production of genetically modified cotton increased to become the largest in India. The boom in cotton production and its semi-arid land use led to Gujarat's agricultural sector growing at an average rate of 9.6 percent from 2001 to 2007. Public irrigation measures in central and southern Gujarat, such as the Sardar Sarovar Dam, were less successful. The Sardar Sarovar project only irrigated 4–6% of the area intended. Nonetheless, from 2001 to 2010 Gujarat recorded an agricultural growth rate of 10.97 percent – the highest of any state. However, sociologists have pointed out that the growth rate under the 1992–97 INC government was 12.9 percent. In 2008 Modi offered land in Gujarat to Tata Motors to set up a plant manufacturing the Nano after a popular agitation had forced the company to move out of West Bengal. Several other companies followed the Tata to Gujarat.
The Modi government finished the process of bringing electricity to every village in Gujarat that its predecessor had almost completed. Modi significantly changed the state's system of power distribution, greatly impacting farmers. Gujarat expanded the Jyotigram Yojana scheme, in which agricultural electricity was separated from other rural electricity; the agricultural electricity was rationed to fit scheduled irrigation demands, reducing its cost. Although early protests by farmers ended when those who benefited found that their electricity supply had stabilised, according to an assessment study corporations and large farmers benefited from the policy at the expense of small farmers and labourers.
Development debate
A contentious debate surrounds the assessment of Gujarat's economic development during Modi's tenure as chief minister. The state's GDP growth rate averaged 10% during Modi's tenure, a value similar to other highly industrialised states, and above that of the country as a whole. Gujarat also had a high rate of economic growth in the 1990s, before Modi took office, and some scholars have stated that growth did not much accelerate during Modi's tenure, although the state is considered to have maintained a high growth rate during Modi's Chief Ministership. Under Narendra Modi, Gujarat topped the World Bank's "ease of doing business" rankings among Indian states for two consecutive years. In 2013, Gujarat was ranked first among Indian states for "economic freedom" by a report measuring governance, growth, citizens' rights and labour and business regulation among the country's 20 largest states. In the later years of Modi's government, Gujarat's economic growth was frequently used as an argument to counter allegations of communalism. Tax breaks for businesses were easier to obtain in Gujarat than in other states, as was land. Modi's policies to make Gujarat attractive for investment included the creation of Special Economic Zones, where labour laws were greatly weakened.
Despite its growth rate, Gujarat had a relatively poor record on human development, poverty relief, nutrition and education during Modi's tenure. In 2013, Gujarat ranked 13th in the country with respect to rates of poverty and 21st in education. Nearly 45 percent of children under five were underweight and 23 percent were undernourished, putting the state in the "alarming" category on the India State Hunger Index. A study by UNICEF and the Indian government found that Gujarat under Modi had a poor record with respect to immunisation in children.
Over the decade from 2001 to 2011, Gujarat did not change its position relative to the rest of the country with respect to poverty and female literacy, remaining near the median of the 29 Indian states. It showed a marginal improvement in rates of infant mortality, and its position with respect to individual consumption declined. With respect to the quality of education in government schools, the state ranked below many Indian states. The social policies of the government generally did not benefit Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis, and generally increased social inequalities. Development in Gujarat was generally limited to the urban middle class, and citizens in rural areas or from lower castes were increasingly marginalised. In 2013 the state ranked 10th of 21 Indian states in the Human Development Index. Under Modi, the state government spent less than the national average on education and healthcare.
Final years
Despite the BJP's shift away from explicit Hindutva, Modi's election campaign in 2007 and 2012 contained elements of Hindu nationalism. Modi only attended Hindu religious ceremonies, and had prominent associations with Hindu religious leaders. During his 2012 campaign he twice refused to wear articles of clothing gifted by Muslim leaders. He did, however, maintain relations with Dawoodi Bohra. His campaign included references to issues known to cause religious polarisation, including to Afzal Guru and the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. The BJP did not nominate any Muslim candidates for the assembly election of 2012. During the 2012 campaign, Modi attempted to identify himself with the state of Gujarat, a strategy similar to that used by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, and projected himself as protecting Gujarat against persecution by the rest of India.
While campaigning for the 2012 assembly elections, Modi made extensive use of holograms and other technologies allowing him to reach a large number of people, something he would repeat in the 2014 general election. In the 2012 Gujarat Legislative Assembly elections, Modi won the constituency of Maninagar by 86,373 votes over Shweta Bhatt, the INC candidate and wife of Sanjiv Bhatt. The BJP won 115 of the 182 seats, continuing its majority during his tenure and allowing the party to form the government (as it had in Gujarat since 1995). After his election as prime minister, Modi resigned as the chief minister and as an MLA from Maninagar on 21 May 2014. Anandiben Patel succeeded him as the chief minister.
Premiership campaigns
2014 Indian general election
In September 2013 Modi was named the BJP's candidate for prime minister ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Several BJP leaders expressed opposition to Modi's candidature, including BJP founding member L. K. Advani, who cited concern with leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". Modi played a dominant role in the BJP's election campaign. Several people who voted for the BJP stated that if Modi had not been the prime-ministerial candidate, they would have voted for another party. The focus on Modi as an individual was unusual for a BJP election campaign. The election was described as a referendum on Narendra Modi.
During the campaign, Modi focused on the corruption scandals under the previous INC government, and played on his image as a politician who had created a high rate of GDP growth in Gujarat. Modi projected himself as a person who could bring about "development," without focus on any specific policies. His message found support among young Indians and among middle-class citizens. The BJP under Modi was able to downplay concerns about the protection of religious minorities and Modi's commitment to secularism, areas in which he had previously received criticism. Prior to the election Modi's image in the media had centered around his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, but during the campaign the BJP was able to shift this to a focus on Modi's neoliberal ideology and the Gujarat model of development, although Hindutva remained a significant part of its campaign. The BJP's campaign was assisted by its wide influence in the media. Modi's campaign blitz cost approximately , and received extensive financial support from corporate donors. In addition to more conventional campaign methods, Modi made extensive use of social media, and addressed more than 1000 rallies via hologram appearances.
The BJP won 31% of the vote, and more than doubled its tally in the Lok Sabha to 282, becoming the first party to win a majority of seats on its own since 1984. Voter dissatisfaction with the INC, as well as with regional parties in North India, was another reason for the success of the BJP, as was the support from the RSS. In states such as Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP performed well, it drew exceptionally high support from upper-caste Hindus, although the 10 percent of Muslim votes won was more than it had won before. It performed particularly well in parts of the country that had recently experienced violence between Hindus and Muslims. The magnitude of the BJP's victory led many commentators to say that the election constituted a political realignment away from progressive parties and towards the right-wing. Modi's tweet announcing his victory was described as being emblematic of the political realignment away from a secular, socialist state towards capitalism and Hindu cultural nationalism.
Modi himself was a candidate for the Lok Sabha in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi by 371,784 votes and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by votes. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP, was appointed prime minister by India's president. To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat.
2019 Indian general election
On 13 October 2018, Modi was renamed as the BJP candidate for prime minister for the 2019 general election. The chief campaigner for the party was BJP's president Amit Shah. Modi launched the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign ahead of the general election, against Chowkidar Chor Hai campaign slogan of INC. In the year 2018, end Party's, second-biggest alliance Telugu Desam Party split from NDA over the matter of special-status for Andhra Pradesh.
The campaign was started by Amit Shah on 8 April 2019. In the campaign, Modi was targeted by the opposition on corruption allegations over Rafale deal with France government. Highlighting this controversy the campaign "Chowkidar Chor Hai" was started, which was contrary to "Main Bhi Chowkidar" slogan. Modi made defence and national security among the foremost topics for the election campaign, especially after Pulwama attack, and the retaliatory attack of Balakot airstrike was counted as an achievement of the Modi administration. Other topics in the campaign were development and good foreign relations in the first premiership.
Modi contested the Lok Sabha elections as a candidate from Varanasi. He won the seat by defeating Shalini Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, who fought on SP-BSP alliance by a margin of votes. Modi was unanimously appointed the prime minister for a second time by the National Democratic Alliance, after the alliance won the election for the second time by securing 353 seats in the Lok Sabha with the BJP alone won 303 seats.
Prime Minister
After the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won a landslide in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India on 26 May 2014. He became the first Prime Minister born after India's independence from the British Empire in 1947. Modi started his second term after the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won again in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. On 6 December 2020, Modi became the 4th longest serving Prime Minister of India and the longest serving Non-Congress Prime Minister.
Governance and other initiatives
Modi's first year as prime minister saw significant centralisation of power relative to previous administrations. His efforts at centralisation have been linked to an increase in the number of senior administration officials resigning their positions. Initially lacking a majority in the Rajya Sabha, or upper house of Indian Parliament, Modi passed a number of ordinances to enact his policies, leading to further centralisation of power. The government also passed a bill increasing the control that it had over the appointment of judges, and reducing that of the judiciary.
In December 2014 Modi abolished the Planning Commission, replacing it with the National Institution for Transforming India, or NITI Aayog. The move had the effect of greatly centralising the power previously with the planning commission in the person of the prime minister. The planning commission had received heavy criticism in previous years for creating inefficiency in the government, and of not filling its role of improving social welfare: however, since the economic liberalisation of the 1990s, it had been the major government body responsible for measures related to social justice.
The Modi government launched investigations by the Intelligence Bureau against numerous civil society organisations and foreign non-governmental organisations in the first year of the administration. The investigations, on the grounds that these organisations were slowing economic growth, was criticised as a witch-hunt. International humanitarian aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres was among the groups that were put under pressure. Other organisations affected included the Sierra Club and Avaaz. Cases of sedition were filed against individuals criticising the government. This led to discontent within the BJP regarding Modi's style of functioning and drew comparisons to the governing style of Indira Gandhi.
Modi repealed 1,200 obsolete laws in first three years as prime minister; a total of 1,301 such laws had been repealed by previous governments over a span of 64 years. He started a monthly radio programme titled "Mann Ki Baat" on 3 October 2014. Modi also launched the Digital India programme, with the goal of ensuring that government services are available electronically, building infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet access to rural areas, boosting manufacturing of electronic goods in the country, and promoting digital literacy.
Modi launched Ujjwala scheme to provide free LPG connection to rural households. The scheme led to an increase in LPG consumption by 56% in 2019 as compared to 2014. In 2019, a law was passed to provide 10% reservation to Economically weaker sections.
He was again sworn in as prime minister on 30 May 2019. On 30 July 2019, Parliament of India declared the practice of Triple Talaq as illegal, unconstitutional and made it punishable act from 1 August 2019 which is deemed to be in effect from 19 September 2018. On 5 August 2019, the government moved resolution to scrap Article 370 in the Rajya Sabha, and also reorganise the state with Jammu and Kashmir serving as one of the union territory and Ladakh region separated out as a separate union territory.
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how he Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. Reporters Without Borders in 2021 characterised Modi as a predator for curbing press freedom in India since 2014.
Economic policy
The economic policies of Modi's government focused on privatisation and liberalisation of the economy, based on a neoliberal framework. Modi liberalised India's foreign direct investment policies, allowing more foreign investment in several industries, including in defence and the railways. Other proposed reforms included making it harder for workers to form unions and easier for employers to hire and fire them; some of these proposals were dropped after protests. The reforms drew strong opposition from unions: on 2 September 2015, eleven of the country's largest unions went on strike, including one affiliated with the BJP. The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, a constituent of the Sangh Parivar, stated that the underlying motivation of labour reforms favoured corporations over labourers.
The funds dedicated to poverty reduction programmes and social welfare measures were greatly decreased by the Modi administration. The money spent on social programmes declined from 14.6% of GDP during the Congress government to 12.6% during Modi's first year in office. Spending on health and family welfare declined by 15%, and on primary and secondary education by 16%. The budgetary allocation for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, or the "education for all" programme, declined by 22%. The government also lowered corporate taxes, abolished the wealth tax, increased sales taxes, and reduced customs duties on gold, and jewellery. In October 2014, the Modi government deregulated diesel prices.
In September 2014, Modi introduced the Make in India initiative to encourage foreign companies to manufacture products in India, with the goal of turning the country into a global manufacturing hub. Supporters of economic liberalisation supported the initiative, while critics argued it would allow foreign corporations to capture a greater share of the Indian market. Modi's administration passed a land-reform bill that allowed it to acquire private agricultural land without conducting a social impact assessment, and without the consent of the farmers who owned it. The bill was passed via an executive order after it faced opposition in parliament, but was eventually allowed to lapse. Modi's government put in place the Goods and Services Tax, the biggest tax reform in the country since independence. It subsumed around 17 different taxes and became effective from 1 July 2017.
In his first cabinet decision, Modi set up a team to investigate black money. On 9 November 2016, the government demonetised ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes, with the stated intention of curbing corruption, black money, the use of counterfeit currency, and terrorism. The move led to severe cash shortages, a steep decline in the Indian stock indices BSE SENSEX and NIFTY 50, and sparked widespread protests throughout the country. Several deaths were linked to the rush to exchange cash. In the subsequent year, the number of income tax returns filed for individuals rose by 25%, and the number of digital transactions increased steeply.
Over the first four years of Modi's premiership, India's GDP grew at an average rate of 7.23%, higher than the rate of 6.39% under the previous government. The level of income inequality increased, while an internal government report said that in 2017, unemployment had increased to its highest level in 45 years. The loss of jobs was attributed to the 2016 demonetisation, and to the effects of the Goods and Services Tax.
In the next year, after 2018, Indian economy started a gradual recovery with a GDP growth of 6.12% in 2018-19 FY, with an inflation rate of 3.4%. Same year, India was successful in making a good economy in trade and manufacturing sector. While in the FY of 2019–20, due to the general election, Modi government focused more on their election campaign. In the year 2019–20, the GDP growth rate was 4.18% and inflation rate also increased to 4.7% from 3.4% in the previous year. Though being high unemployment, increase in inflation rate and budget deficiency, Modi's leadership won in 2019 elections.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous rating agencies downgraded India's GDP predictions for FY21 to negative figures, signalling a recession in India, the most severe since 1979. According to a Dun & Bradstreet report, the country is likely to suffer a recession in the third quarter of FY2020 as a result of the over 2-month long nation-wide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. This was also accompanied by the mass migration of migrant workers.
Health and sanitation
In his first year as prime minister, Modi reduced the amount of money spent by the central government on healthcare. The Modi government launched New Health Policy (NHP) in January 2015. The policy did not increase the government's spending on healthcare, instead emphasising the role of private healthcare organisations. This represented a shift away from the policy of the previous Congress government, which had supported programmes to assist public health goals, including reducing child and maternal mortality rates. The National Health Mission, which included public health programmes targeted at these indices received nearly 20% less funds in 2015 than in the previous year. 15 national health programmes, including those aimed at controlling tobacco use and supporting healthcare for the elderly, were merged with the National Health Mission. In its budget for the second year after it took office, the Modi government reduced healthcare spending by 15%. The healthcare budget for the following year rose by 19%. The budget was viewed positively by private insurance providers. Public health experts criticised its emphasis on the role of private healthcare providers, and suggested that it represented a shift away from public health facilities. The healthcare budget rose by 11.5% in 2018; the change included an allocation of for a government-funded health insurance program, and a decrease in the budget of the National Health Mission. The government introduced stricter packaging laws for tobacco which requires 85% of the packet size to be covered by pictorial warnings. An article in the medical journal Lancet stated that the country "might have taken a few steps back in public health" under Modi. In 2018 Modi launched the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, a government health insurance scheme intended to insure 500 million people. 100,000 people had signed up by October 2018.
Modi emphasised his government's efforts at sanitation as a means of ensuring good health. On 2 October 2014, Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission ("Clean India") campaign. The stated goals of the campaign included eliminating open defecation and manual scavenging within five years. As part of the programme, the Indian government began constructing millions of toilets in rural areas and encouraging people to use them. The government also announced plans to build new sewage treatment plants. The administration plans to construct 60 million toilets by 2019. The construction projects have faced allegations of corruption, and have faced severe difficulty in getting people to use the toilets constructed for them. Sanitation cover in the country increased from 38.7% in October 2014 to 84.1% in May 2018; however, usage of the new sanitary facilities lagged behind the government's targets. In 2018, the World Health Organization stated that at least 180,000 diarrhoeal deaths were averted in rural India after the launch of the sanitation effort.
Hindutva
During the 2014 election campaign, the BJP sought to identify itself with political leaders known to have opposed Hindu nationalism, including B. R. Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Ram Manohar Lohia. The campaign also saw the use of rhetoric based on Hindutva by BJP leaders in certain states. Communal tensions were played upon especially in Uttar Pradesh and the states of Northeast India. A proposal for the controversial Uniform Civil Code was a part of the BJP's election manifesto.
The activities of a number of Hindu nationalist organisations increased in scope after Modi's election as Prime Minister, sometimes with the support of the government. These activities included a Hindu religious conversion programme, a campaign against the alleged Islamic practice of "Love Jihad", and attempts to celebrate Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, by members of the right wing Hindu Mahasabha. Officials in the government, including the Home Minister, defended the conversion programmes.
Links between the BJP and the RSS grew stronger under Modi. The RSS provided organisational support to the BJP's electoral campaigns, while the Modi administration appointed a number of individuals affiliated with the RSS to prominent government positions. In 2014, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, who had previously been associated with the RSS, became the chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). Historians and former members of the ICHR, including those sympathetic to the BJP, questioned his credentials as a historian, and stated that the appointment was part of an agenda of cultural nationalism.
The North East Delhi riots, which left more than 40 dead and hundreds injured, were triggered by protests against a citizenship law seen by many critics as anti-Muslim and part of Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda. On 5 August 2020, Modi visited Ayodhya after the Supreme Court in 2019 ordered a contested land in Ayodhya to be handed over to a trust to build the Hindu temple and ordered the government to give alternate 5 acre land to Sunni Waqf Board for the purpose of building a mosque. He became the first prime minister to visit Ram Janmabhoomi and Hanuman Garhi.
Foreign policy
Foreign policy played a relatively small role in Modi's election campaign, and did not feature prominently in the BJP's election manifesto. Modi invited all the other leaders of SAARC countries to his swearing in ceremony as prime minister. He was the first Indian prime minister to do so.
Modi's foreign policy, similarly to that of the preceding INC government, focused on improving economic ties, security, and regional relations. Modi continued Manmohan Singh's policy of "multi-alignment." The Modi administration tried to attract foreign investment in the Indian economy from several sources, especially in East Asia, with the use of slogans such as "Make in India" and "Digital India". The government also tried to improve relations with Islamic nations in the Middle East, such as Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as with Israel.
The foreign relations of India with the USA also mended after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. During the run-up to the general election there was wide-ranging scepticism regarding future of the strategic bilateral relation under Modi's premiership as in 2005 he was, while Chief Minister of Gujarat, denied a U.S. visa during the Bush administration for his poor human rights records. However sensing Modi's inevitable victory well before the election, the US Ambassador Nancy Powell had reached out to him as part of greater rapprochement from the west. Moreover, following his 2014 election as the Prime Minister of India President Obama congratulated him over the telephone and invited him to visit the US. Modi government has been successful in making good foreign relations with the USA in the presidency of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
During the first few months after the election, Modi made trips to a number of different countries to further the goals of his policy, and attended the BRICS, ASEAN, and G20 summits. One of Modi's first visits as prime minister was to Nepal, during which he promised a billion USD in aid. Modi also made several overtures to the United States, including multiple visits to that country. While this was described as an unexpected development, due to the US having previously denied Modi a travel visa over his role during the 2002 Gujarat riots, the visits were expected to strengthen diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries.
In 2015, the Indian parliament ratified a land exchange deal with Bangladesh about the India–Bangladesh enclaves, which had been initiated by the government of Manmohan Singh. Modi's administration gave renewed attention to India's "Look East Policy", instituted in 1991. The policy was renamed the "Act East Policy", and involved directing Indian foreign policy towards East Asia and Southeast Asia. The government signed agreements to improve land connectivity with Myanmar, through the state of Manipur. This represented a break with India's historic engagement with Myanmar, which prioritised border security over trade. China–India relations have deteriorated rapidly following the 2020 China–India skirmishes. Modi has pledged aid of $900 million to Afghanistan, visited the nation twice and been honoured with the nation's highest civilian honour in 2016.
Defence policy
India's nominal military spending increased steadily under Modi. The military budget declined over Modi's tenure both as a fraction of GDP and when adjusted for inflation. A substantial portion of the military budget was devoted to personnel costs, leading commentators to write that the budget was constraining Indian military modernisation.
The BJP election manifesto had also promised to deal with illegal immigration into India in the Northeast, as well as to be more firm in its handling of insurgent groups. The Modi government issued a notification allowing Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh to legalise their residency in India. The government described the measure as being taken for humanitarian reasons but it drew criticism from several Assamese organisations.The Modi administration negotiated a peace agreement with the largest faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCM), which was announced in August 2015. The Naga insurgency in northeast India had begun in the 1950s. The NSCM and the government had agreed to a ceasefire in 1997, but a peace accord had not previously been signed. In 2015 the government abrogated a 15-year ceasefire with the Khaplang faction of the NSCM (NSCM-K). The NSCM-K responded with a series of attacks, which killed 18 people. The Modi government carried out a raid across the border with Myanmar as a result, and labelled the NSCM-K a terrorist organisation.
Modi promised to be "tough on Pakistan" during his election campaign, and repeatedly stated that Pakistan was an exporter of terrorism. On 29 September 2016, the Indian Army stated that it had conducted a surgical strike on terror launch pads in Azad Kashmir. The Indian media claimed that up to 50 terrorists and Pakistani soldiers had been killed in the strike. Pakistan initially denied that any strikes had taken place. Subsequent reports suggested that Indian claim about the scope of the strike and the number of casualties had been exaggerated, although cross-border strikes had been carried out. In February 2019 India carried out airstrikes in Pakistan against a supposed terrorist camp. Further military skirmishes followed, including cross-border shelling and the loss of an Indian aircraft.
Following his victory in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he focused more on Defence policies of India, especially against China and Pakistan. On 5 May 2020, Chinese and Indian troops engaged in aggressive melee, face-offs and skirmishes at locations along the Sino-Indian border, including near the disputed Pangong Lake in Ladakh and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and near the border between Sikkim and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Additional clashes also took place at locations in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). After which there was start of skirmishes between the nations leading to many border clashes, responses and reactions from both sides. A series of talks were also held between the two by both military and diplomatic means for peace. The first border clash reported in 2021 was on 20 January, referred to as a minor border clash in Sikkim.
Environmental policy
In naming his cabinet, Modi renamed the "Ministry of Environment and Forests" the "Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change." In the first budget of the government, the money allotted to this ministry was reduced by more than 50%. The new ministry also removed or diluted a number of laws related to environmental protection. These included no longer requiring clearance from the National Board for Wildlife for projects close to protected areas, and allowing certain projects to proceed before environmental clearance was received. The government also tried to reconstitute the Wildlife board such that it no longer had representatives from non-governmental organisations: however, this move was prevented by the Supreme Court.
Modi also relaxed or abolished a number of other environmental regulations, particularly those related to industrial activity. A government committee stated that the existing system only served to create corruption, and that the government should instead rely on the owners of industries to voluntarily inform the government about the pollution they were creating. Other changes included reducing ministry oversight on small mining projects, and no longer requiring approval from tribal councils for projects inside forested areas. In addition, Modi lifted a moratorium on new industrial activity in the most polluted areas in the countries. The changes were welcomed by businesspeople, but criticised by environmentalists.
Under the UPA government that preceded Modi's administration, field trials of Genetically Modified (GM) crops had essentially been put on hold, after protests from farmers fearing for their livelihoods. Under the Modi government these restrictions were gradually lifted. The government received some criticism for freezing the bank accounts of environmental group Greenpeace, citing financial irregularities, although a leaked government report said that the freeze had to do with Greenpeace's opposition to GM crops. At the COP26 conference Modi announced that India would target carbon neutrality by 2070, and also expand its renewable energy capacity. Though the date of net zero is far behind that of China and the USA and India's government wants to continue with the use of coal, Indian environmentalists and economists applauded the decision, describing it as a bold climate action.
Democratic backsliding
Under Modi's tenure, India has experienced democratic backsliding. According to one study, "The BJP government incrementally but systemically attacked nearly all existing mechanisms that are in place to hold the political executive to account, either by ensuring that these mechanisms became subservient to the political executive or were captured by party loyalists." Scholars also point to how the Modi government has used state power to intimidate and stifle critics in the media and academia, thus undermining freedom of expression and alternative sources of information. There have been several reports of the Modi government to be as an authoritarian conservative government, even due to lack of good opposition.
Electoral history
Personal life and image
Personal life
In accordance with Ghanchi tradition, Modi's marriage was arranged by his parents when he was a child. He was engaged at age 13 to Jashodaben Modi, marrying her when he was 18. They spent little time together and grew apart when Modi began two years of travel, including visits to Hindu ashrams. Reportedly, their marriage was never consummated, and he kept it a secret because otherwise he could not have become a 'pracharak' in the puritan Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Modi kept his marriage secret for most of his career. He acknowledged his wife for the first time when he filed his nomination for the 2014 general elections. Modi maintains a close relationship with his centenarian mother, Hiraben.
A vegetarian and teetotaler, Modi has a frugal lifestyle and is a workaholic and introvert. A person named Badri Meena has been his cook since 2002. Modi's 31 August 2012 post on Google Hangouts made him the first Indian politician to interact with citizens on a live chat. Modi has also been called a fashion-icon for his signature crisply ironed, half-sleeved kurta, as well as for a suit with his name embroidered repeatedly in the pinstripes that he wore during a state visit by US President Barack Obama, which drew public and media attention and criticism. Modi's personality has been variously described by scholars and biographers as energetic, arrogant, and charismatic.
He had published a Gujarati book titled Jyotipunj in 2008, containing profiles of various RSS leaders. The longest was of M. S. Golwalkar, under whose leadership the RSS expanded and whom Modi refers to as Pujniya Shri Guruji ("Guru worthy of worship"). According to The Economic Times, his intention was to explain the workings of the RSS to his readers and to reassure RSS members that he remained ideologically aligned with them. Modi authored eight other books, mostly containing short stories for children.
The nomination of Modi for the prime ministership drew attention to his reputation as "one of contemporary India's most controversial and divisive politicians." During the 2014 election campaign the BJP projected an image of Modi as a strong, masculine leader, who would be able to take difficult decisions. Campaigns in which he has participated have focused on Modi as an individual, in a manner unusual for the BJP and RSS. Modi has relied upon his reputation as a politician able to bring about economic growth and "development". Nonetheless, his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots continues to attract criticism and controversy. Modi's hardline Hindutva philosophy and the policies adopted by his government continue to draw criticism, and have been seen as evidence of a majoritarian and exclusionary social agenda.
In March 2021, Modi received his first COVID-19 vaccine dose at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
Personal donations
Modi has made donations for various causes and programmes. One such instance was when Modi donated towards the initial corpus of the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) Fund. In his role as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi had donated from personal savings for educating daughters of state government officials. Modi had also raised by auctioning all the gifts he received as chief minister and donated this to the Kanya Kelavani Fund. The money was spent on the education of girl children, through the scheme.
Approval ratings
As a Prime Minister, Modi has received consistently high approval ratings; at the end of his first year in office, he received an overall approval rating of 87% in a Pew Research poll, with 68% of people rating him "very favorably" and 93% approving of his government. His approval rating remained largely consistent at around 74% through his second year in office, according to a nationwide poll conducted by instaVaani. At the end of his second year in office, an updated Pew Research poll showed Modi continued to receive high overall approval ratings of 81%, with 57% of those polled rating him "very favorably." At the end of his third year in office, a further Pew Research poll showed Modi with an overall approval rating of 88%, his highest yet, with 69% of people polled rating him "very favorably." A poll conducted by The Times of India in May 2017 showed 77% of the respondents rated Modi as "very good" and "good". In early 2017, a survey from Pew Research Center showed Modi to be the most popular figure in Indian politics. In a weekly analysis by Morning Consult called the Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker, Modi had the highest net approval rating as of 22 December 2020 of all government leaders in the 13 countries being tracked.
Awards and recognition
In March 2012 and June 2014, Modi appeared on the cover of the Asian edition of Time Magazine, one of the few Indian politicians to have done so. He was awarded Indian of the Year by CNN-News18 (formally CNN-IBN) news network in 2014. In June 2015, Modi was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020 and 2021, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Forbes Magazine ranked him the 15th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2014 and the 9th Most Powerful Person in the World in 2015, 2016 and 2018. In 2015, Modi was ranked the 13th Most Influential Person in the World by Bloomberg Markets Magazine. Modi was ranked fifth on Fortune Magazines first annual list of the "World's Greatest Leaders" in 2015. In 2017, Gallup International Association (GIA) conducted a poll and ranked Modi as third top leader of the world. In 2016, a wax statue of Modi was unveiled at Madame Tussauds wax museum in London.
In 2015 he was named one of Times "30 Most Influential People on the Internet" as the second-most-followed politician on Twitter and Facebook. In 2018, he was the third most followed world leader on Twitter, and the most followed world leader on Facebook and Instagram. In October 2018, Modi received United Nations's highest environmental award, the 'Champions of the Earth', for policy leadership by "pioneering work in championing" the International Solar Alliance and "new areas of levels of cooperation on environmental action". He was conferred the 2018 Seoul Peace Prize in recognition of "his dedication to improving international co-operation, raising global economic growth, accelerating the Human Development of the people of India by fostering economic growth and furthering the development of democracy through anti-corruption and social integration efforts". He is the first Indian to win the award.
Following his second swearing-in ceremony as Prime Minister of India, a picture of Modi was displayed on the facade of the ADNOC building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Texas India Forum hosted a community event in honour of Modi on 22 September 2019 at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. The event was attended by over 50,000 people and several American politicians including President Donald Trump, making it the largest gathering for an invited foreign leader visiting the United States other than the Pope. At the same event, Modi was presented with the Key to the City of Houston by Mayor Sylvester Turner. He was awarded the Global Goalkeeper Award on 24 September 2019 in New York City by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in recognition for the Swachh Bharat Mission and "the progress India has made in providing safe sanitation under his leadership".
In 2020, Modi was among eight world leaders awarded the parodic Ig Nobel Prize in Medical Education "for using the COVID-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can". On 21 December 2020, President Donald Trump awarded Modi with the Legion of Merit for elevating the India–United States relations. The Legion of Merit was awarded to Modi along with Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison and former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, the "original architects" of the QUAD.
On 24 February 2021, the largest cricket stadium in the world at Ahmedabad was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by the Gujarat Cricket Association.
Modi is featured in TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2021 list, making it his fifth time after 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2020. TIME called him the third "pivotal leader" of independent India after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi who "dominated the country’s politics like no one since them".
State honours
Other honours
In popular culture
Modi Kaka Ka Gaon, a 2017 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Tushar Amrish Goel is the first biopic on Modi, starring Vikas Mahante in the titular role it was made halfway into his first-term as the prime minister which is shown in the film. PM Narendra Modi, a 2019 Indian Hindi-language biographical drama film by Omung Kumar, starred Vivek Oberoi in the titular role and covers his rise to prime ministership.An Indian web series, Modi: Journey of a Common Man, based on the same premise released in May 2019 on Eros Now with Ashish Sharma portraying Modi. Hu Narender Modi Banva Mangu Chu is a 2018 Indian Gujarati-language drama film by Anil Naryani about the aspirations of a young boy who wants to become like Narendra Modi.
7 RCR (7, Race Course Road), a 2014 Indian docudrama political television series which charts the political careers of prominent Indian politicians, covered Modi's rise to the PM's office in the episodes - "Story of Narendra Modi from 1950 to 2001", "Story of Narendra Modi in Controversial Years from 2001 to 2013", "Truth Behind Brand Modi", "Election Journey of Narendra Modi to 7 RCR", and "Masterplan of Narendra Modi's NDA Govt."; with Sangam Rai in the role of Modi.
Other portrayals of Modi include by Rajit Kapur in the film Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) and Vikram Gokhale in the web-television series Avrodh: The Siege Within (2020) both based on the 2016 Uri attack and the following Indian surgical strikes. Pratap Singh played a character based on Modi in Chand Bujh Gaya (2005) which is set in the backdrop of the Gujarat riots.
Premiered on 12 August 2019, Modi appeared in an episode - "Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls and Prime Minister Modi" - of Discovery Channel's show Man vs Wild with the host Bear Grylls, becoming the second world leader after Barack Obama to appear in the reality show. In the show he trekked the jungles and talked about nature and wildlife conservation with Grylls. The episode was shot in Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand and was broadcast in 180 countries along India. He has also appeared twice on the Indian television talk show Aap Ki Adalat before the 2009 and 2014 elections respectively.
Along with hosting the Mann Ki Baat monthly radio programme, on All India Radio, he has also conducted Pariksha Pe Charcha - a competition/discussion for students and the issues they face in examinations.
Bibliography
See also
List of prime ministers of India
Opinion polling on the Narendra Modi premiership
References
Notes
Citations
Further reading
External links
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1950 births
Living people
Gujarati people
People from Gujarat
People from Mehsana district
Indian Hindus
Prime Ministers of India
Leaders of the Lok Sabha
Chief Ministers of Gujarat
Chief ministers from Bharatiya Janata Party
16th Lok Sabha members
17th Lok Sabha members
Members of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly
Delhi University alumni
Gujarat University alumni
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pracharaks
Indian nationalists
Indian writers
Recipients of the Legion of Merit
Hindu nationalists
Right-wing politics in India
20th-century Indian writers
Members of the Planning Commission of India
Right-wing populism in India
Bharatiya Jana Sangh politicians
Bharatiya Janata Party politicians from Gujarat
Lok Sabha members from Gujarat
Lok Sabha members from Uttar Pradesh
National Democratic Alliance candidates in the 2019 Indian general election
Writers from Gujarat
Candidates in the 2014 Indian general election
Hindu pacifists
Narendra Modi ministry
Candidates in the 2019 Indian general election
Hindu revivalists
Writers about activism and social change
Indian political people
21st-century prime ministers of India
Gujarat MLAs 1998–2002
Politicians of Hindu political parties
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Indian anti-communists
Gandhians
Gujarat MLAs 2002–2007
Gujarat MLAs 2007–2012
Gujarat MLAs 2012–2017
21st-century Indian non-fiction writers
Politicians from Varanasi
Time 100 | false | [
"Corporate social media is the use of social media websites and social media marketing techniques by and within corporations, ranging from small businesses and tiny entrepreneurial startups to mid-size businesses to huge multinational firms. Within the definition of social media, there are different ways corporations utilize it. Although there is no systematic way in which social media applications can be categorized, there are various methods and approaches to having a strong social media presence. In the 2010s, an increasing number of corporations, across most industries, have adopted the use of social media either within in the workplace, for employees, as part of an Intranet or using the publicly available Internet. As a result, corporate use of social networking and micro blogging sites such as Facebook, Twitter,Pinterest, and LinkedIn, has substantially increased. According to research conducted in 2021, 91.9 percent of marketing employees working for large corporations (100 or more people) use social media on a daily basis in their jobs. This statistic has changed a lot over the years, and continues to grow. Using social media in one's corporate job isn't just common, it's required and expected in most every corporation in the United States. Budgets for utilizing corporate social media is growing every year by millions of dollars. Jobs like social media managers and coordinators have made it so this is an entire department of a company. It goes hand in hand with the marketing, communications, and PR teams in order to optimize strategies for the corporation to be connected to their audience. According to an article by the Harvard Business Review, \"Fifty-eight percent of companies are currently engaged in social networks like Facebook, micro blogs like Twitter, and sharing multimedia on platforms such as YouTube.\" The Harvard Business Review cites an additional 21% of companies as being in the process of implementing a formal social media initiative. The 2014 HBR report indicates 79% of companies have or will have social media initiatives in place. This percentage is an increase over a similar 2010 report that indicated that two-thirds of companies had or would have social media initiatives in place. Social media currently can be crucial to the success of growing numbers in a companies value chain activities. For marketers, Social media is a mandatory element within the promotional mix. Marketers also need to understand that marketing on social media can come with difficulties and challenges, and face both reputation and economic risks. This big push to move to Social Media to is thought to create a better experience with the consumers, as corporations are able to target specific content to their target audience. Another benefit for corporations through usage of media is that this will attract more people, and in return also create a more well known brand.\n\nTypes of social media \n(Chart provided via )\n\nPolicies\nSocial media has grown rapidly over the last decade and has become an integral component of business models. Because of the global use of social media, corporations are developing and implementing formal written policies for how their corporation will present itself on social media. In addition to this, corporations are often conscious about how their employees present themselves and their company on social media. Before social media, a company had complete control with what they communicated to the public. Now, virtually any employee can speak on behalf of the company, even without proper permission or following protocol. This can create conflict between corporate policy and those in decision making roles versus employees. For example, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, a consortium of bank and credit union regulators, implemented in December 2013, formal social media guidance for its banks and credit unions. In the eyes of regulators, risks associated with social media use are of a level that requires formal attention. At a minimum, regulators require that organizations \"listen\" to what is being said about them on social media platforms in an effort to identify legal, compliance, and reputational concerns.\n\nCorporations have legitimate concerns when it comes to their employees’ use of social media. Social media environments have created the need for distinct and often strict reputation management practices. Some corporations have resorted to monitoring the social media accounts of its employees in order to spot posts and comments that are related to workplace issues or the employer, potentially harmful to business or even leak private corporate information.\n\nMany corporations have used social media during the hiring process as well. Survey data shows that within a one-year period 15 percent of finance and accounting professionals found new jobs through social media. Social media can be both helpful and detrimental to those searching for employment. Hiring managers sometimes search social media to look for reasons not to hire a job applicant. According to a 2013 survey from CareerBuilder.com, 43 percent of employers use social networking sites to research potential hires. Another 45 percent are researching the \"fit\" of a job candidate with their company by conducting a search via Google or another search engine. 51 percent of employers who research candidates on social media say they've found postings which have caused them to not hire a candidate. Job applicants who have racist or homophobic jokes, inappropriate photos, offensive content, or photos depicting drunkenness or other potentially undesirable behaviors may be screened out of hiring processes. Some observers have stated that employer viewing of job candidates' social media profiles may raise privacy concerns.\n\nBenefits and risks\nDespite there being risks to consider when utilizing social media, corporations are identifying the benefits associated with adopting a comprehensive corporate social media strategy. Benefits include lower cost and more effective, personal, and engaging marketing and advertising initiatives (as compared with traditional marketing methods such as billboard ads and TV commercials), improved internal and external corporate communications, enhanced overall brand awareness, and better operational efficiency and innovativeness. As a result, corporations are investing at an increasing rate in social media software and external services to strengthen their online presence. The belief is that the benefits outweigh the potential risks of bad press, customer complaints, and brand bashing. Benefits also include being able to interact one on one with the consumers and talking directly to them through social media platforms. This creates trust in businesses and gives customers more chances to build loyalty and commitment to a brand.\n\nConversely, businesses can find themselves in a bad situation when they use social media poorly. An example of poor social media execution came in November 2013 when JP Morgan decided to have a question and answer session via Twitter. During that time, 2 out of 3 tweets received were negative due to prior scrutiny they had faced. In this case, using social media and interacting with the public did not help to promote them in a positive way. Another example came on September 11, 2013, when AT&T posted a picture on Twitter of a cell phone capturing a picture of the Twin Towers memorial lights with the caption \"Never forget.\" The tweet was met with great backlash from consumers for using a tragedy as a marketing opportunity, with many customers threatening to leave AT&T. After seeing the backlash it was receiving, AT&T removed the post and apologized within about an hour of its posting. Risks also include, losing the interest of the people on social media because there is a lack of activity, the content is not interesting, or it is not professional or honest.\n\nSee also\nEnterprise social networking\nEnterprise social software\nSocial media use by businesses\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading\n Navigating Social Media Legal Risks: Safeguarding Your Business\n 2011 Fortune 500 - UMass Dartmouth\n Big Bird Tweets: How corporations use social media to gauge public persona - Computerworld\n Social media is reinventing how business is done – USATODAY.com\n How To Use Social Media To Promote Your Small Business - Forbes\n Brand Ambassadors in the Age of Social Media \n Social Media Growth From 2010 To 2018\n\nSocial media\nPromotion and marketing communications\nWeb 2.0\nNew media",
"A social media policy is a policy which advises representatives of an organization on their use of social media.\n\nVarious businesses have social media policies.\n\nVarious health care organizations have social media policies.\n\nGovernment use of social media has special considerations.\n\nLibraries can have social media policies.\n\nAthletic programs can have social media policies.\n\nThere has been social media policy research in Sweden.\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading\nDesigning Social Media Policy for Government, 2010\n\nSocial media\nSocial policy"
] |
[
"Son House",
"Blues performer"
] | C_046ed8f9fead44f1aac80b6df180076c_0 | What were the names of some of the songs he sang? | 1 | What were the names of some of the songs Son House sang? | Son House | In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style. Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the cafe and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately. CANNOTANSWER | My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". | Edward James "Son" House Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) was an American delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.
After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also working as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. In a short career interrupted by a spell in Parchman Farm penitentiary, he developed his musicianship to the point that Charley Patton, the foremost blues artist of the Mississippi Delta region, invited him to share engagements and to accompany him to a 1930 recording session for Paramount Records.
Issued at the start of the Great Depression, the records did not sell and did not lead to national recognition. Locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton's associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County. There he was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax and John W. Work for the Library of Congress and Fisk University. The following year, he left the Delta for Rochester, New York, and gave up music.
In 1964, a group of young record collectors discovered House, whom they knew of from his records issued by Paramount and by the Library of Congress. With their encouragement, he relearned his repertoire and established a career as an entertainer, performing for young, mostly white audiences in coffeehouses, at folk festivals and on concert tours during the American folk music revival, billed as a "folk blues" singer. He recorded several albums, and some informally taped concerts have also been issued as albums. House died in 1988. In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Biography
Early life
House was born in the hamlet of Lyon, north of Clarksdale, Mississippi, the second of three brothers, and lived in the rural Mississippi Delta until his parents separated, when he was about seven or eight years old. His father, Eddie House, Sr., was a musician, playing the tuba in a band with his brothers and sometimes playing the guitar. He was a church member but also a drinker; he left the church for a time, on account of his drinking, but then gave up alcohol and became a Baptist deacon. Young Eddie House adopted the family commitment to religion and churchgoing. He also absorbed the family love of music but confined himself to singing, showing no interest in the family instrumental band, and hostile to the blues on religious grounds.
When House's parents separated, his mother took him to Tallulah, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi. When he was in his early teens, they moved to Algiers, New Orleans. Recalling these years, he would later speak of his hatred of blues and his passion for churchgoing (he described himself as "churchy" and "churchified"). At fifteen, probably while living in Algiers, he began preaching sermons.
At the age of nineteen, while living in the Delta, he married Carrie Martin, an older woman from New Orleans. This was a significant step for House; he married in church and against family opposition. The couple moved to her hometown of Centerville, Louisiana, to help run her father's farm. After a couple of years, feeling used and disillusioned, House recalled, "I left her hanging on the gatepost, with her father tellin' me to come back so we could plow some more." Around the same time, probably 1922, House's mother died. In later years, he was still angry about his marriage and said of Carrie, "She wasn't nothin' but one of them New Orleans whores".
House's resentment of farming extended to the many menial jobs he took as a young adult. He moved frequently, on one occasion taking off to East Saint Louis to work in a steel plant. The one job he enjoyed was on a Louisiana horse ranch, which later he celebrated by wearing a cowboy hat in his performances. He found an escape from manual labor when, following a conversion experience ("getting religion") in his early twenties, he was accepted as a paid pastor, first in the Baptist Church and then in the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. However, he fell into habits which conflicted with his calling—drinking like his father and probably also womanizing. This led him after several years of conflict to leave the church, ceasing his full-time commitment, although he continued to preach sermons from time to time.
Blues performer
In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style.
Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the café and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately.
Recording
In 1930, Art Laibly of Paramount Records traveled to Lula to persuade Patton to record several more sides in Grafton, Wisconsin. Along with Patton came House, Brown, and the pianist Louise Johnson, all of whom recorded sides for the label. House recorded nine songs during that session, eight of which were released, but they were commercial failures. He did not record again commercially for 35 years, but he continued to play with Patton and Brown, and with Brown after Patton's death in 1934. During this time, House worked as a tractor driver for various plantations in the Lake Cormorant area.
Alan Lomax recorded House for the Library of Congress in 1941. Willie Brown, the mandolin player Fiddlin' Joe Martin, and the harmonica player Leroy Williams played with House on these recordings. Lomax returned to the area in 1942, where he recorded House once more.
House then faded from the public view, moving to Rochester, New York, in 1943, and working as a railroad porter for the New York Central Railroad and as a chef.
Rediscovery
In 1964, after a long search of the Mississippi Delta region by Nick Perls, Dick Waterman and Phil Spiro, House was "rediscovered" in Rochester, New York working at a train station. He had been retired from the music business for many years and was unaware of the 1960s folk blues revival and international enthusiasm for his early recordings.
He subsequently toured extensively in the United States and Europe and recorded for CBS Records. Like Mississippi John Hurt, he was welcomed into the music scene of the 1960s and played at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, the New York Folk Festival in July 1965, and the October 1967 European tour of the American Folk Festival, along with Skip James and Bukka White.
The young guitarist Alan Wilson (later of Canned Heat) was a fan of House's. The producer John Hammond asked Wilson, who was just 22 years old, to teach "Son House how to play like Son House," because Wilson had such a good knowledge of blues styles. House subsequently recorded the album Father of Folk Blues, later reissued as a 2-CD set Father of Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions. House performed with Wilson live, as can be heard on "Levee Camp Moan" on the album John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions.
House appeared in Seattle on March 19, 1968, arranged by the Seattle Folklore Society. The concert was recorded by Bob West and issued on Acola Records as a CD in 2006. The Arcola CD also included an interview of House recorded on November 15, 1969 in Seattle.
In the summer of 1970, House toured Europe once again, including an appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival; a recording of his London concerts was released by Liberty Records. He also played at the two Days of Blues Festival in Toronto in 1974. On an appearance on the TV arts show Camera Three, he was accompanied by the blues guitarist Buddy Guy.
Ill health plagued House in his later years, and in 1974 he retired once again. He later moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he remained until his death from cancer of the larynx. He had been married five times. He was buried at the Mt. Hazel Cemetery. Members of the Detroit Blues Society raised money through benefit concerts to put a monument on his grave.
Honors
In 2007, House was honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Tunica, Mississippi.
In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Discography
78-RPM recordings
Recorded May 28, 1930, in Grafton, Wisconsin, for Paramount Records
"Walking Blues" (unissued and lost until 1985)
"My Black Mama – Part I"
"My Black Mama – Part II"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part I"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part II"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part I"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part II"
"Clarksdale Moan" (unissued and lost until 2006)
"Mississippi County Farm Blues" (unissued and lost until 2006)
Recordings for Library of Congress and Fisk University
Recorded August 1941, at Klack's Store, Lake Cormorant, Mississippi.
There are some railway noises in the background on some titles, as the store (which had electricity necessary for the recording) was close to a branch line between Lake Cormorant and Robinsonville.
"Levee Camp Blues", with Willie Brown, Fiddlin' Joe Martin, Leroy Williams
"Government Fleet Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Walking Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Shetland Pony Blues", with Brown
"Fo' Clock Blues", with Brown, Martin
"Camp Hollers", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Delta Blues", with Williams
Recorded July 17, 1942, Robinsonville, Mississippi
"Special Rider Blues" [test]
"Special Rider Blues"
"Low Down Dirty Dog Blues"
"Depot Blues"
"Key of Minor" (Interviews: Demonstration of concert guitar tuning)
"American Defense"
"Am I Right or Wrong"
"Walking Blues"
"County Farm Blues"
"The Pony Blues"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 1)"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 2)"
The music from both sessions and most of the recorded interviews have been reissued on LP and CD.
Singles
"The Pony Blues" / "The Jinx Blues", Part 1 (1967)
"Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" (Willie Brown) / "Shetland Pony Blues" (1967)
"Death Letter" (1985)
Other albums
This list is incomplete. For a complete list, see external links.
The Complete Library of Congress Sessions (1964), Travelin' Man CD 02
Blues from the Mississippi Delta, with J. D. Short (1964), Folkways Records
The Legendary Son House: Father of Folk Blues (1965), Columbia 2417
In Concert (Oberlin College, 1965), Stack-O-Hits 9004
Delta Blues (1941–1942), Smithsonian 31028
Son House & Blind Lemon Jefferson (1926–1941), Biograph 12040
The Real Delta Blues (1964–1965 recordings), Blue Goose Records 2016
Son House & the Great Delta Blues Singers, with Willie Brown and others, Document CD 5002
Son House at Home: Complete 1969, Document 5148
Son House (Library of Congress), Folk Lyric 9002
John the Revelator, Liberty 83391
American Folk Blues Festival '67 (1 cut), Optimism CD 2070
Son House (1965-1969), Private Record PR 1
Son House – Vol. 2 (1964–1974), Private Record PR 2 (1987)
Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions, Sony/Legacy CD 48867
Living Legends (1 cut, 1966), Verve/Folkways 3010
Real Blues (1 cut, University of Chicago, 1964), Takoma 7081
John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions, Sequel CD 207
Son House (1964–1970), Document (limited edition of 20 copies)
Great Bluesmen/Newport, (2 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77/78
Blues with a Feeling (3 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77005
Masters of the Country Blues, House and Bukka White, Yazoo Video 500
Delta Blues and Spirituals (1995)
In Concert (Live) (1996)
"Live" at Gaslight Cafe, N.Y.C., January 3, 1965 (2000)
New York Central Live (2003)
Delta Blues (1941–1942) (2003), Biograph CD 118
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40134
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways, vol. 2 (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40148
The Very Best of Son House: Heroes of the Blues (2003), Shout! Factory 30251
Proper Introduction to Son House (2004), Proper
References
External links
Memphis Beale Street Brass Note Submission Biography
Illustrated Son House discography
Inaugural (1980) inductee to Blues Hall of Fame (bio by Jim O'Neal)
, History of National Reso-Phonic Guitars, Part 3
House Discography at Smithsonian Folkways
(biography by Cub Koda)
Bob West interview of Son House March 16, 1968
Delta blues musicians
Country blues musicians
Blues revival musicians
Gospel blues musicians
Country blues singers
American blues guitarists
American male guitarists
Blues musicians from Mississippi
Resonator guitarists
Juke Joint blues musicians
Slide guitarists
Columbia Records artists
1902 births
1988 deaths
20th-century American criminals
People from Coahoma County, Mississippi
Deaths from cancer in Michigan
Paramount Records artists
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Mississippi
People from Lula, Mississippi
American male criminals
Mississippi Blues Trail
African-American guitarists
20th-century African-American male singers | true | [
"Sang is a rare Korean family name, a single-syllable Korean unisex given name, and an element in many two-syllable Korean given names. Its meaning differs based on the hanja used to write it.\n\nFamily name\nAs a family name, Sang may be written with only one hanja, meaning \"yet\" or \"still\" (; 오히려 상 ohiryeo sang). The 2000 South Korean Census found 2,298 people and 702 households with this family name. All but five of those listed a single bon-gwan (origin of a clan lineage, not necessarily the actual residence of clan members): Mokcheon (today Mokcheon-eup ), Dongnam District, Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province. One person listed a different bon-gwan, while four others had their bon-gwan listed as unknown. They claim descent from Sang Guk-jin (상국진; 尙國珍), an official of the early Goryeo period who was born in Mokcheon and rose to the post of jangri (장리, 長吏) there.\n\nGiven name\n\nHanja and meaning\nThere are 35 hanja with the reading \"sang\" on the South Korean government's official list of hanja which may be registered for use in given names; they are.\n\n (윗 상 wit sang): \"above\"\n (오히려 상 ohiryeo sang): \"yet\", \"still\"\n (항상 상 hangsang sang): \"always\"\n (상줄 상 sangjul sang): \"to reward\"\n (장사 상 jangsa sang): \"business\"\n (서로 상 seoro sang): \"mutually\"\n (서리 상 seori sang): \"frost\"\n (생각 상 saenggak sang): \"think\"\n (다칠 상 tachil sang): \"wound\"\n (잃을 상 ilheul sang): \"to lose\"\n (맛볼 상 matbol sang): \"to taste\"\n (치마 상 chima sang): \"skirt\"\n (자세할 상 jasehal sang): \"detailed\"\n (상서 상 sangseo sang): \"auspicious\"\n (코끼리 상 kokkiri sang): \"elephant\"\n (모양 상 moyang sang): \"shape\"\n (평상 상 pyeongsang sang): \"bench\"\n (뽕나무 상 bbongnamu sang): \"mulberry tree\"\n (형상 상 hyeongsang sang): \"shape\"\n (갚을 상 gapeul sang): \"to pay a debt\"\n (학교 상 hakgyo sang): \"school\"\n (강 이름 상 gang ireum sang): name of a river (the Xiang River in Guangxi, China)\n (상자 상 sangja sang): \"box\"\n (날 상 nal sang): \"to fly\"\n (시원할 상 siwonhal sang): \"refreshing\"\n (높고 밝은 땅 상 nopgo balgeun ttang sang): \"plateau\"\n (홀어머니 상 horeomeoni sang): \"widow\"\n (고개 상 gogae sang): \"mountain pass\"\n (행랑 상 haengrang sang): \"servant's quarters\"\n (상수리나무 상 sangsurinamu sang): \"oak tree\"\n (잔 상 jan sang): \"cup\"\n (상수리나무 상 sangsurinamu sang): \"oak tree\"\n (평상 상 pyeongsang sang): \"bench\"\n (성품 밝을 상 seongpum balgeul sang): \"bright disposition\"\n (세찰 상 sechal sang): \"to flow violently\"\n\nPeople\nPeople with the single-syllable Korean given name Sang include:\nYi Sang (1910–1937), birth name Kim Haikyung, Korean writer of the Japanese colonial period\nKu Sang (1919–2004), South Korean poet\nChang Sang (born 1939), South Korean politician, country's first female prime minister\n\nAs name element\nTwo names beginning with this syllable were popular names for newborn South Korean boys in the mid-20th century: Sang-chul (10th place in 1950) and Sang-hoon (9th place in 1960 and 1970). Names containing this syllable include:\n\nEun-sang\nJun-sang\nSang-chul\nSang-eun\nSang-hoon\nSang-hyun\nSang-jun\nSang-mi\nSang-won\nSang-woo\nSang-wook\n\nSee also\nList of Korean family names\nList of Korean given names\n\nReferences\n\nKorean-language surnames\nKorean unisex given names",
"\"What If\" is a song recorded by Russian singer Dina Garipova. The song was written by Gabriel Alares, Joakim Björnberg and Leonid Gutkin. It is best known as Russia's entry to the Eurovision Song Contest 2013 to be held in Malmö, Sweden. The song qualified the first semi-final of the competition on 14 May 2013 and placed 5th in the final on 18 May 2013, scoring 174 points. Dina also sang the song at the closing ceremonies of 2013 Summer Universiade in her hometown Kazan.\n\nTrack listing\nDigital download \n What If – 3:04\n What If (Karaoke version) – 3:05\n\nControversies\nQuickly after the premiere of the song, some music portals reported possible plagiarism and copyright infringement. There was talk about the similarity to songs: \"Skin on Skin\" by Sarah Connor, \"Pozwól żyć\" by Gosia Andrzejewicz, \"Painting Flowers\" by All Time Low, \"All Over The World\" by Brian Kennedy and \"Carried Away\" by Hear'Say. However, the songwriters have denied the allegations.\n\nChart performance\n\nReferences\n\n2013 singles\nEurovision songs of 2013\nEurovision songs of Russia\n2013 songs\nUniversal Music Group singles\nSongs written by Gabriel Alares\nEnglish-language Russian songs"
] |
[
"Son House",
"Blues performer",
"What were the names of some of the songs he sang?",
"My Black Mama\" and \"Preachin' the Blues\"."
] | C_046ed8f9fead44f1aac80b6df180076c_0 | Were they his original songs or covers? | 2 | Were "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues" Son House's original songs or covers? | Son House | In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style. Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the cafe and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately. CANNOTANSWER | Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: " | Edward James "Son" House Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) was an American delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.
After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also working as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. In a short career interrupted by a spell in Parchman Farm penitentiary, he developed his musicianship to the point that Charley Patton, the foremost blues artist of the Mississippi Delta region, invited him to share engagements and to accompany him to a 1930 recording session for Paramount Records.
Issued at the start of the Great Depression, the records did not sell and did not lead to national recognition. Locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton's associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County. There he was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax and John W. Work for the Library of Congress and Fisk University. The following year, he left the Delta for Rochester, New York, and gave up music.
In 1964, a group of young record collectors discovered House, whom they knew of from his records issued by Paramount and by the Library of Congress. With their encouragement, he relearned his repertoire and established a career as an entertainer, performing for young, mostly white audiences in coffeehouses, at folk festivals and on concert tours during the American folk music revival, billed as a "folk blues" singer. He recorded several albums, and some informally taped concerts have also been issued as albums. House died in 1988. In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Biography
Early life
House was born in the hamlet of Lyon, north of Clarksdale, Mississippi, the second of three brothers, and lived in the rural Mississippi Delta until his parents separated, when he was about seven or eight years old. His father, Eddie House, Sr., was a musician, playing the tuba in a band with his brothers and sometimes playing the guitar. He was a church member but also a drinker; he left the church for a time, on account of his drinking, but then gave up alcohol and became a Baptist deacon. Young Eddie House adopted the family commitment to religion and churchgoing. He also absorbed the family love of music but confined himself to singing, showing no interest in the family instrumental band, and hostile to the blues on religious grounds.
When House's parents separated, his mother took him to Tallulah, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi. When he was in his early teens, they moved to Algiers, New Orleans. Recalling these years, he would later speak of his hatred of blues and his passion for churchgoing (he described himself as "churchy" and "churchified"). At fifteen, probably while living in Algiers, he began preaching sermons.
At the age of nineteen, while living in the Delta, he married Carrie Martin, an older woman from New Orleans. This was a significant step for House; he married in church and against family opposition. The couple moved to her hometown of Centerville, Louisiana, to help run her father's farm. After a couple of years, feeling used and disillusioned, House recalled, "I left her hanging on the gatepost, with her father tellin' me to come back so we could plow some more." Around the same time, probably 1922, House's mother died. In later years, he was still angry about his marriage and said of Carrie, "She wasn't nothin' but one of them New Orleans whores".
House's resentment of farming extended to the many menial jobs he took as a young adult. He moved frequently, on one occasion taking off to East Saint Louis to work in a steel plant. The one job he enjoyed was on a Louisiana horse ranch, which later he celebrated by wearing a cowboy hat in his performances. He found an escape from manual labor when, following a conversion experience ("getting religion") in his early twenties, he was accepted as a paid pastor, first in the Baptist Church and then in the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. However, he fell into habits which conflicted with his calling—drinking like his father and probably also womanizing. This led him after several years of conflict to leave the church, ceasing his full-time commitment, although he continued to preach sermons from time to time.
Blues performer
In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style.
Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the café and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately.
Recording
In 1930, Art Laibly of Paramount Records traveled to Lula to persuade Patton to record several more sides in Grafton, Wisconsin. Along with Patton came House, Brown, and the pianist Louise Johnson, all of whom recorded sides for the label. House recorded nine songs during that session, eight of which were released, but they were commercial failures. He did not record again commercially for 35 years, but he continued to play with Patton and Brown, and with Brown after Patton's death in 1934. During this time, House worked as a tractor driver for various plantations in the Lake Cormorant area.
Alan Lomax recorded House for the Library of Congress in 1941. Willie Brown, the mandolin player Fiddlin' Joe Martin, and the harmonica player Leroy Williams played with House on these recordings. Lomax returned to the area in 1942, where he recorded House once more.
House then faded from the public view, moving to Rochester, New York, in 1943, and working as a railroad porter for the New York Central Railroad and as a chef.
Rediscovery
In 1964, after a long search of the Mississippi Delta region by Nick Perls, Dick Waterman and Phil Spiro, House was "rediscovered" in Rochester, New York working at a train station. He had been retired from the music business for many years and was unaware of the 1960s folk blues revival and international enthusiasm for his early recordings.
He subsequently toured extensively in the United States and Europe and recorded for CBS Records. Like Mississippi John Hurt, he was welcomed into the music scene of the 1960s and played at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, the New York Folk Festival in July 1965, and the October 1967 European tour of the American Folk Festival, along with Skip James and Bukka White.
The young guitarist Alan Wilson (later of Canned Heat) was a fan of House's. The producer John Hammond asked Wilson, who was just 22 years old, to teach "Son House how to play like Son House," because Wilson had such a good knowledge of blues styles. House subsequently recorded the album Father of Folk Blues, later reissued as a 2-CD set Father of Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions. House performed with Wilson live, as can be heard on "Levee Camp Moan" on the album John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions.
House appeared in Seattle on March 19, 1968, arranged by the Seattle Folklore Society. The concert was recorded by Bob West and issued on Acola Records as a CD in 2006. The Arcola CD also included an interview of House recorded on November 15, 1969 in Seattle.
In the summer of 1970, House toured Europe once again, including an appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival; a recording of his London concerts was released by Liberty Records. He also played at the two Days of Blues Festival in Toronto in 1974. On an appearance on the TV arts show Camera Three, he was accompanied by the blues guitarist Buddy Guy.
Ill health plagued House in his later years, and in 1974 he retired once again. He later moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he remained until his death from cancer of the larynx. He had been married five times. He was buried at the Mt. Hazel Cemetery. Members of the Detroit Blues Society raised money through benefit concerts to put a monument on his grave.
Honors
In 2007, House was honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Tunica, Mississippi.
In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Discography
78-RPM recordings
Recorded May 28, 1930, in Grafton, Wisconsin, for Paramount Records
"Walking Blues" (unissued and lost until 1985)
"My Black Mama – Part I"
"My Black Mama – Part II"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part I"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part II"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part I"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part II"
"Clarksdale Moan" (unissued and lost until 2006)
"Mississippi County Farm Blues" (unissued and lost until 2006)
Recordings for Library of Congress and Fisk University
Recorded August 1941, at Klack's Store, Lake Cormorant, Mississippi.
There are some railway noises in the background on some titles, as the store (which had electricity necessary for the recording) was close to a branch line between Lake Cormorant and Robinsonville.
"Levee Camp Blues", with Willie Brown, Fiddlin' Joe Martin, Leroy Williams
"Government Fleet Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Walking Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Shetland Pony Blues", with Brown
"Fo' Clock Blues", with Brown, Martin
"Camp Hollers", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Delta Blues", with Williams
Recorded July 17, 1942, Robinsonville, Mississippi
"Special Rider Blues" [test]
"Special Rider Blues"
"Low Down Dirty Dog Blues"
"Depot Blues"
"Key of Minor" (Interviews: Demonstration of concert guitar tuning)
"American Defense"
"Am I Right or Wrong"
"Walking Blues"
"County Farm Blues"
"The Pony Blues"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 1)"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 2)"
The music from both sessions and most of the recorded interviews have been reissued on LP and CD.
Singles
"The Pony Blues" / "The Jinx Blues", Part 1 (1967)
"Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" (Willie Brown) / "Shetland Pony Blues" (1967)
"Death Letter" (1985)
Other albums
This list is incomplete. For a complete list, see external links.
The Complete Library of Congress Sessions (1964), Travelin' Man CD 02
Blues from the Mississippi Delta, with J. D. Short (1964), Folkways Records
The Legendary Son House: Father of Folk Blues (1965), Columbia 2417
In Concert (Oberlin College, 1965), Stack-O-Hits 9004
Delta Blues (1941–1942), Smithsonian 31028
Son House & Blind Lemon Jefferson (1926–1941), Biograph 12040
The Real Delta Blues (1964–1965 recordings), Blue Goose Records 2016
Son House & the Great Delta Blues Singers, with Willie Brown and others, Document CD 5002
Son House at Home: Complete 1969, Document 5148
Son House (Library of Congress), Folk Lyric 9002
John the Revelator, Liberty 83391
American Folk Blues Festival '67 (1 cut), Optimism CD 2070
Son House (1965-1969), Private Record PR 1
Son House – Vol. 2 (1964–1974), Private Record PR 2 (1987)
Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions, Sony/Legacy CD 48867
Living Legends (1 cut, 1966), Verve/Folkways 3010
Real Blues (1 cut, University of Chicago, 1964), Takoma 7081
John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions, Sequel CD 207
Son House (1964–1970), Document (limited edition of 20 copies)
Great Bluesmen/Newport, (2 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77/78
Blues with a Feeling (3 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77005
Masters of the Country Blues, House and Bukka White, Yazoo Video 500
Delta Blues and Spirituals (1995)
In Concert (Live) (1996)
"Live" at Gaslight Cafe, N.Y.C., January 3, 1965 (2000)
New York Central Live (2003)
Delta Blues (1941–1942) (2003), Biograph CD 118
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40134
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways, vol. 2 (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40148
The Very Best of Son House: Heroes of the Blues (2003), Shout! Factory 30251
Proper Introduction to Son House (2004), Proper
References
External links
Memphis Beale Street Brass Note Submission Biography
Illustrated Son House discography
Inaugural (1980) inductee to Blues Hall of Fame (bio by Jim O'Neal)
, History of National Reso-Phonic Guitars, Part 3
House Discography at Smithsonian Folkways
(biography by Cub Koda)
Bob West interview of Son House March 16, 1968
Delta blues musicians
Country blues musicians
Blues revival musicians
Gospel blues musicians
Country blues singers
American blues guitarists
American male guitarists
Blues musicians from Mississippi
Resonator guitarists
Juke Joint blues musicians
Slide guitarists
Columbia Records artists
1902 births
1988 deaths
20th-century American criminals
People from Coahoma County, Mississippi
Deaths from cancer in Michigan
Paramount Records artists
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Mississippi
People from Lula, Mississippi
American male criminals
Mississippi Blues Trail
African-American guitarists
20th-century African-American male singers | true | [
"A cover band (or covers band) is a band that plays songs recorded by someone else, sometimes mimicking the original as accurately as possible, and sometimes re-interpreting or changing the original. These remade songs are known as cover songs. New or unknown bands often find the format marketable for smaller venues, such as pubs, clubs or parks. The bands also perform at private events, for example, weddings and birthday parties, and may be known as a wedding band, party band, function band or band-for-hire. A band whose covers consist mainly of songs that were chart hits is often called a top 40 band. Some bands, however, start as cover bands, then grow to perform original material. For example, The Rolling Stones released three albums consisting primarily of covers before recording one with their own original material.\n\nCover bands play several types of venues. When a band is starting out, they might play private parties and fundraisers, often for little or no money, or in return for food and bar privileges, although many professional musicians refuse to do this. With enough experience, a band will begin to \"play out\" professionally at bars and night clubs. Some cover bands are made up of full-time professional musicians. These bands are usually represented by an entertainment agency.\n\nWhen cover bands consist of professional musicians, they often do not have a fixed lineup; rather, they are often made up of a flexible lineup of session musicians, utilizing \"dep\" (deputy, that is, stand-in) musicians where necessary. The music industry is considered by many musicians as a relatively difficult industry to make an income in, and cover bands can be a good source of income for professional musicians alongside other work.\n\nMusic\nCover bands play songs written and recorded by other artists, usually well-known songs (as compared to \"original\" bands which play music they themselves have written). There are a wide variety of cover bands – some cover bands play material from particular decades, for example, a 1980s cover band. Others focus exclusively on the music of a particular group, usually iconic groups, and are called tribute bands. It is not uncommon to find tribute bands performing the songs of The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Pink Floyd, Oasis, Duran Duran, Aerosmith, or U2. Some cover bands will play a variety of song styles, from different artists, genres, and decades. Another type of cover band is one that plays songs in a different genre or style than that of the original composition (e.g., jazz versions of what were originally hard rock songs).\n\nSome cover bands perform covers that are of a different musical genre from the originals. For instance:\n\n Richard Cheese covers rock and rap songs in the style of lounge music.\n Gregorian covers pop and rock songs in the style of Gregorian chant.\n Gabba covers the pop songs of ABBA in the punk style of the Ramones (the name is also a reference to the chant \"Gabba Gabba Hey\" from the Ramones' song \"Pinhead\" from their Leave Home album).\n Nouvelle Vague covers new wave-era bands with a bossa nova twist.\n Me First and the Gimme Gimmes is known for punk covers of other artists, with each album picking a different genre or era (i.e. hits of the 1970s, showtunes, etc.)\n Dread Zeppelin specialized in reggae versions of Led Zeppelin songs, with an Elvis impersonator on lead vocals.\n Hayseed Dixie started as a \"hillbilly tribute to AC/DC\" and has become a bluegrass tribute band covering many well-known rock bands in their own \"rockgrass\" style.\n Run C&W performed bluegrass arrangements of 1960s soul music, primarily classics from the Motown catalog.\n Turetsky's Choir, a former synagogue choir from Moscow is famous for its remakes of music pieces from different styles, ranging from opera classic to pop hits. The band's repertoire usually includes covers only. Some of them are arranged into medleys.\n The Baseballs are a German band, known for doing rockabilly covers of modern pop songs, like \"Bleeding Love\" and \"Umbrella\".\n UB40 were an English band best known for reggae versions of 1950s and 1960s pop songs.\n Mallavoodoo, a Brazilian band from Recife, plays instrumental covers of hard rock with keyboards and saxophone.\n DMK, a Colombian band featuring Dicken Schrader and his children Milah and Korben, plays Depeche Mode songs using an old keyboard, toys and various household items as instruments.\n Postmodern Jukebox reimagines popular music in classic pre-rock era styles such as jazz, gospel and rhythm and blues.\n\nExamples of cover acts\n\n Apocalyptica – Finnish metal band with covers of Metallica, Faith No More, Sepultura, Slipknot, David Bowie, and Pantera performed by four cellists and a drummer, among original music.\n Billy Murray – One of the early 20th century's most prolific recording artists, his covers of popular songs and show tunes of the time serve as some of the earliest recordings of popular music \n Blue Swede – Swedish cover band, active between 1973 and 1975, best known for their international hit cover of \"Hooked on a Feeling\"\n Bo Donaldson and The Heywoods – American band whose greatest success came with covers of British hits that failed to chart in the United States\n Camp Freddy – Cover band featuring Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction, and several other successful musicians.\n Clout – Late 1970s South African cover band, best known for their international hit cover of \"Substitute\"\n Danny Marino - Finnish singer, who in addition to his own English language songs regularly covered hits in the Finnish language\n Dark Star Orchestra – Grateful Dead cover band that recreates the feel of individual Grateful Dead performances.\n Donny Osmond – 1970s teen idol whose greatest hits as a solo artist (and with duets with sister Marie Osmond) came from re-recordings of 1950s and 1960s pop songs. (In contrast, The Osmonds as a whole typically recorded their own music.)\n Engelbert Humperdinck – English singer who spent much of his early career as a cover artist, including a string of covers of American country songs.\n The Happenings – A 1960s cover band who charted several covers on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.\n The Human Beinz – A 1960s blue-eyed soul cover band, one-hit wonders in the U.S. for their version of the Isley Brothers' \"Nobody but Me\"\n Jimmy and the Soulblazers – Covers of 1960s and 1970s Soul music.\n Joe Cocker – The \"Sheffield Soul Shouter\" has covered music by many artists including The Beatles, Dave Mason, and The Lovin' Spoonful.\n Joe Dassin – American singer who was a major success in France through his French-language covers of English language hits.\n Johnny Rivers – A substantial portion of Rivers's hit discography came from covers of blues and R&B songs.\n Kidz Bop – Children cover pop songs. Songs with explicit lyrics are adjusted to be more kid-appropriate.\n Liquid Blue – Cover band from San Diego, California that mixes covers and originals and has performed in over 100 countries.\n Lt. Dan Band – a cover band founded by Kimo Williams and actor Gary Sinise. The band is named after the character Lieutenant Dan Taylor, whom Sinise portrayed in the film Forrest Gump.\nRichard Cheese and Lounge Against The Machine - a parody cover band created by comedian Mark Jonathan Davis. The band performs popular songs (typically from rock bands) in a lounge, big band, or swing style.\n Sha Na Na – Another 1960s and 1970s rock band that plays rock and roll music from the 1950s and early-1960s. They burst onto the scene in 1969 when they performed at the Woodstock music festival and went on to have their own variety show similar to The Monkees.\n Three Dog Night – 1960s and 1970s rock band that almost exclusively recorded covers of songs by many different artists and genres.\n Ty Taylor – Ty Taylor and the Powder River Band, a Top 40 country music cover band.\n Vicious White Kids – a short-lived punk rock band founded by former Sex Pistols members, Sid Vicious and Glen Matlock, that mainly covered songs by Sex Pistols, the Stooges and most notably Frank Sinatra's \"My Way\".\n Michael Bublé and Susan Boyle are internationally successful and most of their music consists of covers.\n Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain – A ukulele cover band parodying a orchestra who have performed at the 50th anniversary VE day celebrations before an estimated audience of 170,000 and at WOMAD, Glastonbury festival, New York's Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House and at the BBC Proms 2009 Season at London's Royal Albert Hall which was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. A typical UOGB concert is an eclectic mixture of songs ranging from the Sex Pistols, David Bowie, Blur, Hawkwind, Grace Jones, Clean Bandit, Nirvana to Bach and Beethoven to Spaghetti Western soundtracks; a mix of music genres, from classical music to punk, grunge, rock and roll, and the whole range of popular music, with parody, musical humour and mixing genres long being part of their act.\n William Shatner - infamous for his spoken word covers of popular songs\n\nFictional cover acts\n Rock Star starring Mark Wahlberg who had a small group that performs cover songs from a fictional band called Steel Dragon. He eventually became the lead singer of the said band when a recorded performance was seen by the band members.\n The Wedding Singer features Adam Sandler as a cover singer who performs for wedding parties.\n Detroit Rock City is the story of four teenagers in the 1970s who are in a Kiss cover band called \"Mystery.\"\n Full House the character, Jesse Katsopolis is the frontman and guitarist for \"Jesse and the Rippers\" which was a local rock band who mostly did Beach Boys and Elvis Presley covers.\n Saving Silverman features three friends who are diehard Neil Diamond fans, and they form a cover band called \"Diamonds in the Rough.\"\n In an episode of The Simpsons, Otto Mann hires a cover band called \"Cyanide,\" which he says is a tribute to Poison. In another episode, \"Covercraft,\" Homer and several other characters form a band that covers the fictional 1980s band Sungazer, with Apu as the lead singer, but when the real band's lead singer dies, the remaining Sungazer musicians make Apu their singer.\n In the American Dad! episode \"Finances with Wolves,\" Klaus the goldfish swaps brains with the lead singer of an Earth, Wind and Fire cover band.\n\nSee also\nTribute act\nElvis impersonator\nEntertainment Agency\n\nReferences\n\nTypes of musical groups\nOccupations in music\nMusical terminology",
"The discography of British singer-songwriter and YouTuber Dorothy Miranda \"Dodie\" Clark consists of one studio album, four extended plays, 13 singles, and 36 music videos. She has also uploaded multiple original songs and covers to her YouTube channels doddleoddle and doddlevloggle.\n\nStudio albums\n\nExtended plays\n\nSingles\n\nAs lead artist\n\nAs featured artist\n\nGuest appearances\n\nYouTube songs\nAll original songs and covers uploaded on Dodie's YouTube channels.\n\nOriginal songs\n\nCovers\n\nMusic videos\n\nReferences\n\nClark, Dodie"
] |
[
"Son House",
"Blues performer",
"What were the names of some of the songs he sang?",
"My Black Mama\" and \"Preachin' the Blues\".",
"Were they his original songs or covers?",
"Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: \""
] | C_046ed8f9fead44f1aac80b6df180076c_0 | How did he become a blues singer? | 3 | How did Son House become a blues singer? | Son House | In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style. Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the cafe and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately. CANNOTANSWER | He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, | Edward James "Son" House Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) was an American delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.
After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also working as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. In a short career interrupted by a spell in Parchman Farm penitentiary, he developed his musicianship to the point that Charley Patton, the foremost blues artist of the Mississippi Delta region, invited him to share engagements and to accompany him to a 1930 recording session for Paramount Records.
Issued at the start of the Great Depression, the records did not sell and did not lead to national recognition. Locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton's associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County. There he was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax and John W. Work for the Library of Congress and Fisk University. The following year, he left the Delta for Rochester, New York, and gave up music.
In 1964, a group of young record collectors discovered House, whom they knew of from his records issued by Paramount and by the Library of Congress. With their encouragement, he relearned his repertoire and established a career as an entertainer, performing for young, mostly white audiences in coffeehouses, at folk festivals and on concert tours during the American folk music revival, billed as a "folk blues" singer. He recorded several albums, and some informally taped concerts have also been issued as albums. House died in 1988. In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Biography
Early life
House was born in the hamlet of Lyon, north of Clarksdale, Mississippi, the second of three brothers, and lived in the rural Mississippi Delta until his parents separated, when he was about seven or eight years old. His father, Eddie House, Sr., was a musician, playing the tuba in a band with his brothers and sometimes playing the guitar. He was a church member but also a drinker; he left the church for a time, on account of his drinking, but then gave up alcohol and became a Baptist deacon. Young Eddie House adopted the family commitment to religion and churchgoing. He also absorbed the family love of music but confined himself to singing, showing no interest in the family instrumental band, and hostile to the blues on religious grounds.
When House's parents separated, his mother took him to Tallulah, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi. When he was in his early teens, they moved to Algiers, New Orleans. Recalling these years, he would later speak of his hatred of blues and his passion for churchgoing (he described himself as "churchy" and "churchified"). At fifteen, probably while living in Algiers, he began preaching sermons.
At the age of nineteen, while living in the Delta, he married Carrie Martin, an older woman from New Orleans. This was a significant step for House; he married in church and against family opposition. The couple moved to her hometown of Centerville, Louisiana, to help run her father's farm. After a couple of years, feeling used and disillusioned, House recalled, "I left her hanging on the gatepost, with her father tellin' me to come back so we could plow some more." Around the same time, probably 1922, House's mother died. In later years, he was still angry about his marriage and said of Carrie, "She wasn't nothin' but one of them New Orleans whores".
House's resentment of farming extended to the many menial jobs he took as a young adult. He moved frequently, on one occasion taking off to East Saint Louis to work in a steel plant. The one job he enjoyed was on a Louisiana horse ranch, which later he celebrated by wearing a cowboy hat in his performances. He found an escape from manual labor when, following a conversion experience ("getting religion") in his early twenties, he was accepted as a paid pastor, first in the Baptist Church and then in the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. However, he fell into habits which conflicted with his calling—drinking like his father and probably also womanizing. This led him after several years of conflict to leave the church, ceasing his full-time commitment, although he continued to preach sermons from time to time.
Blues performer
In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style.
Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the café and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately.
Recording
In 1930, Art Laibly of Paramount Records traveled to Lula to persuade Patton to record several more sides in Grafton, Wisconsin. Along with Patton came House, Brown, and the pianist Louise Johnson, all of whom recorded sides for the label. House recorded nine songs during that session, eight of which were released, but they were commercial failures. He did not record again commercially for 35 years, but he continued to play with Patton and Brown, and with Brown after Patton's death in 1934. During this time, House worked as a tractor driver for various plantations in the Lake Cormorant area.
Alan Lomax recorded House for the Library of Congress in 1941. Willie Brown, the mandolin player Fiddlin' Joe Martin, and the harmonica player Leroy Williams played with House on these recordings. Lomax returned to the area in 1942, where he recorded House once more.
House then faded from the public view, moving to Rochester, New York, in 1943, and working as a railroad porter for the New York Central Railroad and as a chef.
Rediscovery
In 1964, after a long search of the Mississippi Delta region by Nick Perls, Dick Waterman and Phil Spiro, House was "rediscovered" in Rochester, New York working at a train station. He had been retired from the music business for many years and was unaware of the 1960s folk blues revival and international enthusiasm for his early recordings.
He subsequently toured extensively in the United States and Europe and recorded for CBS Records. Like Mississippi John Hurt, he was welcomed into the music scene of the 1960s and played at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, the New York Folk Festival in July 1965, and the October 1967 European tour of the American Folk Festival, along with Skip James and Bukka White.
The young guitarist Alan Wilson (later of Canned Heat) was a fan of House's. The producer John Hammond asked Wilson, who was just 22 years old, to teach "Son House how to play like Son House," because Wilson had such a good knowledge of blues styles. House subsequently recorded the album Father of Folk Blues, later reissued as a 2-CD set Father of Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions. House performed with Wilson live, as can be heard on "Levee Camp Moan" on the album John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions.
House appeared in Seattle on March 19, 1968, arranged by the Seattle Folklore Society. The concert was recorded by Bob West and issued on Acola Records as a CD in 2006. The Arcola CD also included an interview of House recorded on November 15, 1969 in Seattle.
In the summer of 1970, House toured Europe once again, including an appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival; a recording of his London concerts was released by Liberty Records. He also played at the two Days of Blues Festival in Toronto in 1974. On an appearance on the TV arts show Camera Three, he was accompanied by the blues guitarist Buddy Guy.
Ill health plagued House in his later years, and in 1974 he retired once again. He later moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he remained until his death from cancer of the larynx. He had been married five times. He was buried at the Mt. Hazel Cemetery. Members of the Detroit Blues Society raised money through benefit concerts to put a monument on his grave.
Honors
In 2007, House was honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Tunica, Mississippi.
In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Discography
78-RPM recordings
Recorded May 28, 1930, in Grafton, Wisconsin, for Paramount Records
"Walking Blues" (unissued and lost until 1985)
"My Black Mama – Part I"
"My Black Mama – Part II"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part I"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part II"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part I"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part II"
"Clarksdale Moan" (unissued and lost until 2006)
"Mississippi County Farm Blues" (unissued and lost until 2006)
Recordings for Library of Congress and Fisk University
Recorded August 1941, at Klack's Store, Lake Cormorant, Mississippi.
There are some railway noises in the background on some titles, as the store (which had electricity necessary for the recording) was close to a branch line between Lake Cormorant and Robinsonville.
"Levee Camp Blues", with Willie Brown, Fiddlin' Joe Martin, Leroy Williams
"Government Fleet Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Walking Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Shetland Pony Blues", with Brown
"Fo' Clock Blues", with Brown, Martin
"Camp Hollers", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Delta Blues", with Williams
Recorded July 17, 1942, Robinsonville, Mississippi
"Special Rider Blues" [test]
"Special Rider Blues"
"Low Down Dirty Dog Blues"
"Depot Blues"
"Key of Minor" (Interviews: Demonstration of concert guitar tuning)
"American Defense"
"Am I Right or Wrong"
"Walking Blues"
"County Farm Blues"
"The Pony Blues"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 1)"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 2)"
The music from both sessions and most of the recorded interviews have been reissued on LP and CD.
Singles
"The Pony Blues" / "The Jinx Blues", Part 1 (1967)
"Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" (Willie Brown) / "Shetland Pony Blues" (1967)
"Death Letter" (1985)
Other albums
This list is incomplete. For a complete list, see external links.
The Complete Library of Congress Sessions (1964), Travelin' Man CD 02
Blues from the Mississippi Delta, with J. D. Short (1964), Folkways Records
The Legendary Son House: Father of Folk Blues (1965), Columbia 2417
In Concert (Oberlin College, 1965), Stack-O-Hits 9004
Delta Blues (1941–1942), Smithsonian 31028
Son House & Blind Lemon Jefferson (1926–1941), Biograph 12040
The Real Delta Blues (1964–1965 recordings), Blue Goose Records 2016
Son House & the Great Delta Blues Singers, with Willie Brown and others, Document CD 5002
Son House at Home: Complete 1969, Document 5148
Son House (Library of Congress), Folk Lyric 9002
John the Revelator, Liberty 83391
American Folk Blues Festival '67 (1 cut), Optimism CD 2070
Son House (1965-1969), Private Record PR 1
Son House – Vol. 2 (1964–1974), Private Record PR 2 (1987)
Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions, Sony/Legacy CD 48867
Living Legends (1 cut, 1966), Verve/Folkways 3010
Real Blues (1 cut, University of Chicago, 1964), Takoma 7081
John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions, Sequel CD 207
Son House (1964–1970), Document (limited edition of 20 copies)
Great Bluesmen/Newport, (2 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77/78
Blues with a Feeling (3 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77005
Masters of the Country Blues, House and Bukka White, Yazoo Video 500
Delta Blues and Spirituals (1995)
In Concert (Live) (1996)
"Live" at Gaslight Cafe, N.Y.C., January 3, 1965 (2000)
New York Central Live (2003)
Delta Blues (1941–1942) (2003), Biograph CD 118
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40134
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways, vol. 2 (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40148
The Very Best of Son House: Heroes of the Blues (2003), Shout! Factory 30251
Proper Introduction to Son House (2004), Proper
References
External links
Memphis Beale Street Brass Note Submission Biography
Illustrated Son House discography
Inaugural (1980) inductee to Blues Hall of Fame (bio by Jim O'Neal)
, History of National Reso-Phonic Guitars, Part 3
House Discography at Smithsonian Folkways
(biography by Cub Koda)
Bob West interview of Son House March 16, 1968
Delta blues musicians
Country blues musicians
Blues revival musicians
Gospel blues musicians
Country blues singers
American blues guitarists
American male guitarists
Blues musicians from Mississippi
Resonator guitarists
Juke Joint blues musicians
Slide guitarists
Columbia Records artists
1902 births
1988 deaths
20th-century American criminals
People from Coahoma County, Mississippi
Deaths from cancer in Michigan
Paramount Records artists
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Mississippi
People from Lula, Mississippi
American male criminals
Mississippi Blues Trail
African-American guitarists
20th-century African-American male singers | true | [
"Cecil Augusta (born 1920) was an American Delta blues singer and guitarist. He recorded a single track, \"Stop All the Buses\", for Alan Lomax in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1959, which was ignored until it was released on the album Blues Songbook, a selection of Lomax's field recordings, in 2003. The musicologist David Evans described Augusta as \"the perfect example of an artist who shows up at a field recording session and leaves before anyone realizes how good he was\" and noted his unique acoustic guitar technique, elements of which later became integral to electric blues playing.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Cecil Augusta, \"Stop All The Blues\" (1959), Association for Cultural Equity\n\n1920 births\nPossibly living people\nDelta blues musicians\nAfrican-American guitarists\nAfrican-American male singer-songwriters\nCountry blues singers\nBlues musicians from Mississippi\nAmerican blues guitarists\nAmerican male guitarists\nAmerican blues singer-songwriters\nSinger-songwriters from Mississippi\nGuitarists from Mississippi\n20th-century American guitarists\n20th-century African-American male singers",
"\"How Long, How Long Blues\" (also known as \"How Long Blues\" or \"How Long How Long\") is a blues song recorded by the American blues duo Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell in 1928. It became an early blues standard and its melody inspired many later songs.\n\nOriginal song\n\"How Long, How Long Blues\" is based on \"How Long Daddy\", recorded in 1925 by Ida Cox with Papa Charlie Jackson. On June 19, 1928, Leroy Carr, who sang and played piano, and guitarist Scrapper Blackwell recorded the song in Indianapolis, Indiana, for Vocalion Records, shortly after they began performing together. It is a moderately slow-tempo blues with an eight-bar structure. Carr is credited with the lyrics and music for the song, which uses a departed train as a metaphor for a lover who has left:\n\nCarr's and Blackwell's songs reflected a more urban and sophisticated blues, in contrast to the music of rural bluesmen of the time. Carr's blues were \"expressive and evocative\", although his vocals have also been described as emotionally detached, high-pitched and smooth, with clear diction.\n\n\"How Long, How Long Blues\" was Carr and Scrapwell's biggest hit. They subsequently recorded six more versions of the song (two of them, unissued at the time), as \"How Long, How Long Blues, Part 2\", \"Part 3\", \"How Long Has That Evening Train Been Gone\", \"The New How Long, How Long Blues\", etc. There are considerable variations in the lyrics, but most versions begin with the lyric \"How long, how long, has that evening train been gone?\"\n\nLegacy\n\"How Long, How Long Blues\" became an early blues standard and \"its lilting melody inspired hundreds of later compositions\", including the Mississippi Sheiks' \"Sitting on Top of the World\" and Robert Johnson's \"Come On in My Kitchen\". Although his later style would not suggest it, Muddy Waters recalled that it was the first song he learned to play \"off the Leroy Carr record\".\n\nIn 1988, Carr's \"How Long, How Long Blues\" was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in the category \"Classics of Blues Recordings – Singles or Album Tracks\". Blues historian Jim O'Neal commented in the induction statement, \"'How Long, How Long Blues' was a massive hit in the prewar blues era, a song that every blues singer and piano player had to know, and one that has continued to inspire dozens of cover versions.\" In 2012, the song received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award, which \"honor[s] recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance\".\n\nSee also\nList of train songs\n\nReferences\n\nBlues songs\n1928 songs\nGrammy Hall of Fame Award recipients\nVocalion Records singles\nSongs about trains"
] |
[
"Son House",
"Blues performer",
"What were the names of some of the songs he sang?",
"My Black Mama\" and \"Preachin' the Blues\".",
"Were they his original songs or covers?",
"Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: \"",
"How did he become a blues singer?",
"He immediately changed his attitude about the blues,"
] | C_046ed8f9fead44f1aac80b6df180076c_0 | How did his attitude change? | 4 | How did Son House change attitude about the blues? | Son House | In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style. Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the cafe and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately. CANNOTANSWER | Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, | Edward James "Son" House Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) was an American delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.
After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also working as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. In a short career interrupted by a spell in Parchman Farm penitentiary, he developed his musicianship to the point that Charley Patton, the foremost blues artist of the Mississippi Delta region, invited him to share engagements and to accompany him to a 1930 recording session for Paramount Records.
Issued at the start of the Great Depression, the records did not sell and did not lead to national recognition. Locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton's associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County. There he was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax and John W. Work for the Library of Congress and Fisk University. The following year, he left the Delta for Rochester, New York, and gave up music.
In 1964, a group of young record collectors discovered House, whom they knew of from his records issued by Paramount and by the Library of Congress. With their encouragement, he relearned his repertoire and established a career as an entertainer, performing for young, mostly white audiences in coffeehouses, at folk festivals and on concert tours during the American folk music revival, billed as a "folk blues" singer. He recorded several albums, and some informally taped concerts have also been issued as albums. House died in 1988. In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Biography
Early life
House was born in the hamlet of Lyon, north of Clarksdale, Mississippi, the second of three brothers, and lived in the rural Mississippi Delta until his parents separated, when he was about seven or eight years old. His father, Eddie House, Sr., was a musician, playing the tuba in a band with his brothers and sometimes playing the guitar. He was a church member but also a drinker; he left the church for a time, on account of his drinking, but then gave up alcohol and became a Baptist deacon. Young Eddie House adopted the family commitment to religion and churchgoing. He also absorbed the family love of music but confined himself to singing, showing no interest in the family instrumental band, and hostile to the blues on religious grounds.
When House's parents separated, his mother took him to Tallulah, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi. When he was in his early teens, they moved to Algiers, New Orleans. Recalling these years, he would later speak of his hatred of blues and his passion for churchgoing (he described himself as "churchy" and "churchified"). At fifteen, probably while living in Algiers, he began preaching sermons.
At the age of nineteen, while living in the Delta, he married Carrie Martin, an older woman from New Orleans. This was a significant step for House; he married in church and against family opposition. The couple moved to her hometown of Centerville, Louisiana, to help run her father's farm. After a couple of years, feeling used and disillusioned, House recalled, "I left her hanging on the gatepost, with her father tellin' me to come back so we could plow some more." Around the same time, probably 1922, House's mother died. In later years, he was still angry about his marriage and said of Carrie, "She wasn't nothin' but one of them New Orleans whores".
House's resentment of farming extended to the many menial jobs he took as a young adult. He moved frequently, on one occasion taking off to East Saint Louis to work in a steel plant. The one job he enjoyed was on a Louisiana horse ranch, which later he celebrated by wearing a cowboy hat in his performances. He found an escape from manual labor when, following a conversion experience ("getting religion") in his early twenties, he was accepted as a paid pastor, first in the Baptist Church and then in the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. However, he fell into habits which conflicted with his calling—drinking like his father and probably also womanizing. This led him after several years of conflict to leave the church, ceasing his full-time commitment, although he continued to preach sermons from time to time.
Blues performer
In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style.
Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the café and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately.
Recording
In 1930, Art Laibly of Paramount Records traveled to Lula to persuade Patton to record several more sides in Grafton, Wisconsin. Along with Patton came House, Brown, and the pianist Louise Johnson, all of whom recorded sides for the label. House recorded nine songs during that session, eight of which were released, but they were commercial failures. He did not record again commercially for 35 years, but he continued to play with Patton and Brown, and with Brown after Patton's death in 1934. During this time, House worked as a tractor driver for various plantations in the Lake Cormorant area.
Alan Lomax recorded House for the Library of Congress in 1941. Willie Brown, the mandolin player Fiddlin' Joe Martin, and the harmonica player Leroy Williams played with House on these recordings. Lomax returned to the area in 1942, where he recorded House once more.
House then faded from the public view, moving to Rochester, New York, in 1943, and working as a railroad porter for the New York Central Railroad and as a chef.
Rediscovery
In 1964, after a long search of the Mississippi Delta region by Nick Perls, Dick Waterman and Phil Spiro, House was "rediscovered" in Rochester, New York working at a train station. He had been retired from the music business for many years and was unaware of the 1960s folk blues revival and international enthusiasm for his early recordings.
He subsequently toured extensively in the United States and Europe and recorded for CBS Records. Like Mississippi John Hurt, he was welcomed into the music scene of the 1960s and played at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, the New York Folk Festival in July 1965, and the October 1967 European tour of the American Folk Festival, along with Skip James and Bukka White.
The young guitarist Alan Wilson (later of Canned Heat) was a fan of House's. The producer John Hammond asked Wilson, who was just 22 years old, to teach "Son House how to play like Son House," because Wilson had such a good knowledge of blues styles. House subsequently recorded the album Father of Folk Blues, later reissued as a 2-CD set Father of Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions. House performed with Wilson live, as can be heard on "Levee Camp Moan" on the album John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions.
House appeared in Seattle on March 19, 1968, arranged by the Seattle Folklore Society. The concert was recorded by Bob West and issued on Acola Records as a CD in 2006. The Arcola CD also included an interview of House recorded on November 15, 1969 in Seattle.
In the summer of 1970, House toured Europe once again, including an appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival; a recording of his London concerts was released by Liberty Records. He also played at the two Days of Blues Festival in Toronto in 1974. On an appearance on the TV arts show Camera Three, he was accompanied by the blues guitarist Buddy Guy.
Ill health plagued House in his later years, and in 1974 he retired once again. He later moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he remained until his death from cancer of the larynx. He had been married five times. He was buried at the Mt. Hazel Cemetery. Members of the Detroit Blues Society raised money through benefit concerts to put a monument on his grave.
Honors
In 2007, House was honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Tunica, Mississippi.
In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Discography
78-RPM recordings
Recorded May 28, 1930, in Grafton, Wisconsin, for Paramount Records
"Walking Blues" (unissued and lost until 1985)
"My Black Mama – Part I"
"My Black Mama – Part II"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part I"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part II"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part I"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part II"
"Clarksdale Moan" (unissued and lost until 2006)
"Mississippi County Farm Blues" (unissued and lost until 2006)
Recordings for Library of Congress and Fisk University
Recorded August 1941, at Klack's Store, Lake Cormorant, Mississippi.
There are some railway noises in the background on some titles, as the store (which had electricity necessary for the recording) was close to a branch line between Lake Cormorant and Robinsonville.
"Levee Camp Blues", with Willie Brown, Fiddlin' Joe Martin, Leroy Williams
"Government Fleet Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Walking Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Shetland Pony Blues", with Brown
"Fo' Clock Blues", with Brown, Martin
"Camp Hollers", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Delta Blues", with Williams
Recorded July 17, 1942, Robinsonville, Mississippi
"Special Rider Blues" [test]
"Special Rider Blues"
"Low Down Dirty Dog Blues"
"Depot Blues"
"Key of Minor" (Interviews: Demonstration of concert guitar tuning)
"American Defense"
"Am I Right or Wrong"
"Walking Blues"
"County Farm Blues"
"The Pony Blues"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 1)"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 2)"
The music from both sessions and most of the recorded interviews have been reissued on LP and CD.
Singles
"The Pony Blues" / "The Jinx Blues", Part 1 (1967)
"Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" (Willie Brown) / "Shetland Pony Blues" (1967)
"Death Letter" (1985)
Other albums
This list is incomplete. For a complete list, see external links.
The Complete Library of Congress Sessions (1964), Travelin' Man CD 02
Blues from the Mississippi Delta, with J. D. Short (1964), Folkways Records
The Legendary Son House: Father of Folk Blues (1965), Columbia 2417
In Concert (Oberlin College, 1965), Stack-O-Hits 9004
Delta Blues (1941–1942), Smithsonian 31028
Son House & Blind Lemon Jefferson (1926–1941), Biograph 12040
The Real Delta Blues (1964–1965 recordings), Blue Goose Records 2016
Son House & the Great Delta Blues Singers, with Willie Brown and others, Document CD 5002
Son House at Home: Complete 1969, Document 5148
Son House (Library of Congress), Folk Lyric 9002
John the Revelator, Liberty 83391
American Folk Blues Festival '67 (1 cut), Optimism CD 2070
Son House (1965-1969), Private Record PR 1
Son House – Vol. 2 (1964–1974), Private Record PR 2 (1987)
Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions, Sony/Legacy CD 48867
Living Legends (1 cut, 1966), Verve/Folkways 3010
Real Blues (1 cut, University of Chicago, 1964), Takoma 7081
John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions, Sequel CD 207
Son House (1964–1970), Document (limited edition of 20 copies)
Great Bluesmen/Newport, (2 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77/78
Blues with a Feeling (3 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77005
Masters of the Country Blues, House and Bukka White, Yazoo Video 500
Delta Blues and Spirituals (1995)
In Concert (Live) (1996)
"Live" at Gaslight Cafe, N.Y.C., January 3, 1965 (2000)
New York Central Live (2003)
Delta Blues (1941–1942) (2003), Biograph CD 118
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40134
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways, vol. 2 (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40148
The Very Best of Son House: Heroes of the Blues (2003), Shout! Factory 30251
Proper Introduction to Son House (2004), Proper
References
External links
Memphis Beale Street Brass Note Submission Biography
Illustrated Son House discography
Inaugural (1980) inductee to Blues Hall of Fame (bio by Jim O'Neal)
, History of National Reso-Phonic Guitars, Part 3
House Discography at Smithsonian Folkways
(biography by Cub Koda)
Bob West interview of Son House March 16, 1968
Delta blues musicians
Country blues musicians
Blues revival musicians
Gospel blues musicians
Country blues singers
American blues guitarists
American male guitarists
Blues musicians from Mississippi
Resonator guitarists
Juke Joint blues musicians
Slide guitarists
Columbia Records artists
1902 births
1988 deaths
20th-century American criminals
People from Coahoma County, Mississippi
Deaths from cancer in Michigan
Paramount Records artists
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Mississippi
People from Lula, Mississippi
American male criminals
Mississippi Blues Trail
African-American guitarists
20th-century African-American male singers | true | [
"Attitudes are associated beliefs and behaviors towards some object. They are not stable, and because of the communication and behavior of other people, are subject to change by social influences, as well as by the individual's motivation to maintain cognitive consistency when cognitive dissonance occurs—when two attitudes or attitude and behavior conflict. Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of affective and cognitive components. It has been suggested that the inter-structural composition of an associative network can be altered by the activation of a single node. Thus, by activating an affective or emotional node, attitude change may be possible, though affective and cognitive components tend to be intertwined.\n\nBases\nThere are three bases for attitude change: compliance, identification, and internalization. These three processes represent the different levels of attitude change.\n\nCompliance\n\nCompliance refers to a change in behavior based on consequences, such as an individual's hopes to gain rewards or avoid punishment from another group or person. The individual does not necessarily experience changes in beliefs or evaluations of an attitude object, but rather is influenced by the social outcomes of adopting a change in behavior. \nThe individual is also often aware that he or she is being urged to respond in a certain way.\n\nCompliance was demonstrated through a series of laboratory experiments known as the Asch experiments. Experiments led by Solomon Asch of Swarthmore College asked groups of students to participate in a \"vision test\". In reality, all but one of the participants were confederates of the experimenter, and the study was really about how the remaining student would react to the confederates' behavior. Participants were asked to pick, out of three line options, the line that is the same length as a sample and were asked to give the answer out loud. Unbeknown to the participants, Asch had placed a number of confederates to deliberately give the wrong answer before the participant. The results showed that 75% of responses were in line with majority influence and were the same answers the confederates picked. Variations in the experiments showed that compliance rates increased as the number of confederates increased, and the plateau was reached with around 15 confederates. The likelihood of compliance dropped with minority opposition, even if only one confederate gave the correct answer. The basis for compliance is founded on the fundamental idea that people want to be accurate and right.\n\nIdentification\nIdentification explains one's change of beliefs and affect in order to be similar to someone one admires or likes. In this case, the individual adopts the new attitude, not due to the specific content of the attitude object, but because it is associated with the desired relationship. Often, children's attitudes on race, or their political party affiliations are adopted from their parents' attitudes and beliefs.\n\nInternalization\nInternalization refers to the change in beliefs and affect when one finds the content of the attitude to be intrinsically rewarding, and thus leads to actual change in beliefs or evaluations of an attitude object. The new attitude or behavior is consistent with the individual's value system, and tends to be merged with the individual's existing values and beliefs. Therefore, behaviors adopted through internalization are due to the content of the attitude object.\n\nThe expectancy-value theory is based on internalization of attitude change. This model states that the behavior towards some object is a function of an individual's intent, which is a function of one's overall attitude towards the action.\n\nEmotion-based\nEmotion plays a major role in persuasion, social influence, and attitude change. Much of attitude research has emphasised the importance of affective or emotion components. Emotion works hand-in-hand with the cognitive process, or the way we think, about an issue or situation. Emotional appeals are commonly found in advertising, health campaigns and political messages. Recent examples include no-smoking health campaigns (see tobacco advertising) and political campaigns emphasizing the fear of terrorism. Attitude change based on emotions can be seen vividly in serial killers who are faced with major stress. There is considerable empirical support for the idea that emotions in the form of fear arousal, empathy, or a positive mood can enhance attitude change under certain conditions.\n\nImportant factors that influence the impact of emotional appeals include self-efficacy, attitude accessibility, issue involvement, and message/source features. Attitudes that are central to one's being are highly resistant to change while others that are less fixed may change with new experiences or information. A new attitude (e.g. to time-keeping or absenteeism or quality) may challenge existing beliefs or norms so creating a feeling of psychological discomfort known as cognitive dissonance. It is difficult to measure attitude change since attitudes may only be inferred and there might be significant divergence between those publicly declared and privately held. Self-efficacy is a perception of one's own human agency; in other words, it is the perception of our own ability to deal with a situation. It is an important variable in emotional appeal messages because it dictates a person's ability to deal with both the emotion and the situation. For example, if a person is not self-efficacious about their ability to impact the global environment, they are not likely to change their attitude or behaviour about global warming.\n\nAffective forecasting, otherwise known as intuition or the prediction of emotion, also impacts attitude change. Research suggests that predicting emotions is an important component of decision making, in addition to the cognitive processes. How we feel about an outcome may override purely cognitive rationales.\nIn terms of research methodology, the challenge for researchers is measuring emotion and subsequent impacts on attitude. Since we cannot see into the brain, various models and measurement tools have been constructed to obtain emotion and attitude information. Measures may include the use of physiological cues like facial expressions, vocal changes, and other body rate measures. For instance, fear is associated with raised eyebrows, increased heart rate and increased body tension. Other methods include concept or network mapping, and using primes or word cues.\n\nDual models: depth of processing\nMany dual process models are used to explain the affective (emotional) and cognitive processing and interpretations of messages, as well as the different depths of attitude change. These include the heuristic-systematic model of information processing and the elaboration likelihood model.\n\nHeuristic-systematic model of information processing\n\nThe heuristic-systematic model of information processing describes two depths in the processing of attitude change, systematic processing and heuristic processing. In this model information is either processed in a high-involvement and high-effort systematic way, or information is processed through shortcuts known as heuristics. For example, emotions are affect-based heuristics, in which feelings and gut-feeling reactions are often used as shortcuts.\n\nSystematic processing\nSystematic processing occurs when individuals are motivated and have high cognition to process a message. Individuals using systematic processing are motivated to pay attention and have the cognitive ability to think deeply about a message; they are persuaded by the content of the message, such as the strength or logic of the argument. Motivation can be determined by many factors, such as how personally relevant the topic is, and cognitive ability can be determined by how knowledgeable an individual is on the message topic, or whether or not there is a distraction in the room. Individuals who receive a message through systematic processing usually internalize the message, resulting in a longer and more stable attitude change.\n\nAccording to the heuristic-systematic model of information processing, people are motivated to use systematic processing when they want to achieve a \"desired level of confidence\" in their judgments. There are factors that have been found to increase the use of systematic processing; these factors are associated with either decreasing an individual's actual confidence or increasing an individual's perceived confidence. These factors may include framing persuasive messages in an unexpected manner; self-relevancy of the message.\n\nSystematic processing has been shown to be beneficial in social influence settings. Systematic reasoning has been shown to be successful in producing more valid solutions during group discussions and greater solution accuracy. Shestowsky's (1998) research in dyad discussions revealed that the individual in the dyad who had high motivation and high need in cognition had the greater impact on group decisions.\n\nHeuristic processing\nHeuristic processing occurs when individuals have low motivation and/or low cognitive ability to process a message. Instead of focusing on the argument of the message, recipients using heuristic processing focus on more readily accessible information and other unrelated cues, such as the authority or attractiveness of the speaker. Individuals who process a message through heuristic processing do not internalize the message, and thus any attitude change resulting from the persuasive message is temporary and unstable.\n\nFor example, people are more likely to grant favors if reasons are provided. A study shows that when people said, \"Excuse me, I have five pages to xerox. May I use the copier?\" they received a positive response of 60%. The statement, \"Excuse me, I have five pages to xerox. I am in a rush. May I use the copier?\" produced a 95% success rate.\n\nHeuristic processing examples include social proof, reciprocity, authority, and liking.\n\nSocial proof is the means by which we utilize other people's behaviors in order to form our own beliefs. Our attitudes toward following the majority change when a situation appears uncertain or ambiguous to us, when the source is an expert, or when the source is similar to us. In a study conducted by Sherif, he discovered the power of crowds when he worked with experimenters who looked up in the middle of New York City. As the number of the precipitating group increased, the percentage of passers-by who looked up increased as well.\nReciprocity is returning a favor. People are more likely to return a favor if they have a positive attitude towards the other party. Reciprocities also develop interdependence and societal bonds. \nAuthority plays a role in attitude change in situations where there are superior-inferior relationships. We are more likely to become obedient to authorities when the authority's expertise is perceived as high and when we anticipate receiving rewards. A famous study that constitutes the difference in attitude change is the Milgram experiment, where people changed their attitude to \"shocking their partner\" more when they followed authorities whereas the subjects themselves would have not done so otherwise.\nLiking has shown that if one likes another party, one is more inclined to carry out a favor. The attitude changes are based on whether an individual likes an idea or person, and if he or she does not like the other party, he/she may not carry out the favor or do so out of obligation. Liking can influence one's opinions through factors such as physical attractiveness, similarities, compliments, contact and cooperation.\n\nElaboration likelihood model\n\nThe elaboration likelihood model is similar in concept to and shares many ideas with other dual processing models, such as the heuristic-systematic model of information processing. In the elaboration likelihood model, cognitive processing is the central route and affective/emotion processing is often associated with the peripheral route. The central route pertains to an elaborate cognitive processing of information while the peripheral route relies on cues or feelings. The ELM suggests that true attitude change only happens through the central processing route that incorporates both cognitive and affective components as opposed to the more heuristics-based peripheral route. This suggests that motivation through emotion alone will not result in an attitude change.\n\nCognitive dissonance theory\n\nCognitive dissonance, a theory originally developed by Festinger (1957), is the idea that people experience a sense of guilt or uneasiness when two linked cognitions are inconsistent, such as when there are two conflicting attitudes about a topic, or inconsistencies between one's attitude and behavior on a certain topic. The basic idea of the Cognitive Dissonance Theory relating to attitude change, is that people are motivated to reduce dissonance which can be achieved through changing their attitudes and beliefs. Cooper & Fazio's (1984) have also added that cognitive dissonance does not arise from any simple cognitive inconsistency, but rather results from freely chosen behavior that may bring about negative consequences. These negative consequences may be threats to the consistency, stability, predictability, competence, moral goodness of the self-concept, or violation of general self-integrity.\n\nResearch has suggested multiple routes that cognitive dissonance can be reduced. Self-affirmation has been shown to reduce dissonance, however it is not always the mode of choice when trying to reduce dissonance. When multiple routes are available, it has been found that people prefer to reduce dissonance by directly altering their attitudes and behaviors rather than through self-affirmation. People who have high levels of self-esteem, who are postulated to possess abilities to reduce dissonance by focusing on positive aspects of the self, have also been found to prefer modifying cognitions, such as attitudes and beliefs, over self-affirmation. A simple example of cognitive dissonance resulting in attitude change would be when a heavy smoker learns that his sister died young from lung cancer due to heavy smoking as well, this individual experiences conflicting cognitions: the desire to smoke, and the knowledge that smoking could lead to death and a desire not to die. In order to reduce dissonance, this smoker could change his behavior (i.e. stop smoking), change his attitude about smoking (i.e. smoking is harmful), or retain his original attitude about smoking and modify his new cognition to be consistent with the first one--\"I also work out so smoking won't be harmful to me\". Thus, attitude change is achieved when individuals experience feelings of uneasiness or guilt due to cognitive dissonance, and actively reduce the dissonance through changing their attitude, beliefs, or behavior relating in order to achieve consistency with the inconsistent cognitions.\n\nSorts of studies\nCarl Hovland and his band of persuasion researchers learned a great deal during World War 2 and later at Yale about the process of attitude change.\nHigh-credibility sources lead to more attitude change immediately following the communication act, but a sleeper effect occurs in which the source is forgotten after a period of time.\nMild fear appeals lead to more attitude change than strong fear appeals. Propagandists had often used fear appeals. Hoveland's evidence about the effect of such appeals suggested that a source should be cautious in using fear appeals, because strong fear messages may interfere with the intended persuasion attempt.\n\nBelief rationalization\nThe process of how people change their own attitudes has been studied for years. Belief rationalization has been recognized as an important aspect to understand this process. The stability of people's past attitudes can be influenced if they hold beliefs that are inconsistent with their own behaviors. The influence of past behavior on current attitudes is stable when little information conflicts with the behavior. Alternatively, people's attitudes may lean more radically toward the prior behavior if the conflict makes it difficult to ignore, and forces them to rationalize their past behavior. \n\nAttitudes are often restructured at the time people are asked to report them. As a result, inconsistencies between the information that enters into the reconstruction and the original attitudes can produce changes in prior attitudes, whereas consistency between these elements often elicits stability in prior attitudes. Individuals need to resolve the conflict between their own behaviors and the subsequent beliefs. However, people usually align themselves with their attitudes and beliefs instead of their behaviors. More importantly, this process of resolving people's cognitive conflicts that emerges cuts across both self-perception and dissonance even when the associated effect may only be strong in changing prior attitudes\n\nComparative processing\nHuman judgment is comparative in nature. Departing from identifying people's need to justify their own beliefs in the context of their own behaviors, psychologists also believe that people have the need to carefully evaluate new messages on the basis of whether these messages support or contradict with prior messages, regardless of whether they can recall the prior messages after they reach a conclusion. This comparative processing mechanism is built on \"information-integration theory\" and \"social judgement theory\". Both of these theories have served to model people's attitude change in judging the new information while they haven't adequately explained the influential factors that motivate people to integrate the information.\n\nMore recent work in the area of persuasion has further explored this \"comparative processing\" from the perspective of focusing on comparing between different sets of information on one single issue or object instead of simply making comparisons among different issues or objects. As previous research demonstrated, analyzing information on one target product may trigger less impact of comparative information than comparing this product with the same product under competing brands.\n\nWhen people compare different sets of information on one single issue or object, the effect of people's effort to compare new information with prior information seemed to correlate with the perceived strength of the new, strong information when considered jointly with the initial information. Comparison processes can be enhanced when prior evaluations, associated information, or both are accessible. People will simply construct a current judgment based on the new information or adjust the prior judgment when they are not able to retrieve the information from prior messages. The impact this comparative process can have on people's attitude change is mediated by changes in the strength of new information perceived by receivers. The effects of comparison on judgment change were mediated by changes in the perceived strength of the information. These findings above have wide range of applications in social marketing, political communication, and health promotion. For example, designing an advertisement that is counteractive against an existing attitude towards a behavior or policy is perhaps most effective if the advertisement uses the same format, characters, or music of ads associated with the initial attitudes.\n\nSee also \n\n Attitudinal fix\n Fear appeals\n Reactance (psychology)\n Yale attitude change approach\n\nReferences\n\n \nHuman behavior\nPsychological attitude\nChildren's rights\nParenting",
"An attitude object is the concept around which an attitude is formed and can change over time. This attitude represents an evaluative integration of both cognition and affect in relation to the attitude object. An example of an attitude object is a product (e.g., a car). People can hold various beliefs about cars (cognitions, e.g., that a car is fast) as well as evaluations of those beliefs (affect, e.g., they might like or enjoy that the car is fast). Together these beliefs and affective evaluations of those beliefs represent an attitude toward the object.\n\nSee also \n Attitude (psychology)\n\nReferences \n\nAttitude change"
] |
[
"Son House",
"Blues performer",
"What were the names of some of the songs he sang?",
"My Black Mama\" and \"Preachin' the Blues\".",
"Were they his original songs or covers?",
"Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: \"",
"How did he become a blues singer?",
"He immediately changed his attitude about the blues,",
"How did his attitude change?",
"Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey,"
] | C_046ed8f9fead44f1aac80b6df180076c_0 | Who was Rube Lacey? | 5 | Who was Rube Lacey? | Son House | In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style. Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the cafe and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately. CANNOTANSWER | a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 | Edward James "Son" House Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) was an American delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.
After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also working as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. In a short career interrupted by a spell in Parchman Farm penitentiary, he developed his musicianship to the point that Charley Patton, the foremost blues artist of the Mississippi Delta region, invited him to share engagements and to accompany him to a 1930 recording session for Paramount Records.
Issued at the start of the Great Depression, the records did not sell and did not lead to national recognition. Locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton's associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County. There he was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax and John W. Work for the Library of Congress and Fisk University. The following year, he left the Delta for Rochester, New York, and gave up music.
In 1964, a group of young record collectors discovered House, whom they knew of from his records issued by Paramount and by the Library of Congress. With their encouragement, he relearned his repertoire and established a career as an entertainer, performing for young, mostly white audiences in coffeehouses, at folk festivals and on concert tours during the American folk music revival, billed as a "folk blues" singer. He recorded several albums, and some informally taped concerts have also been issued as albums. House died in 1988. In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Biography
Early life
House was born in the hamlet of Lyon, north of Clarksdale, Mississippi, the second of three brothers, and lived in the rural Mississippi Delta until his parents separated, when he was about seven or eight years old. His father, Eddie House, Sr., was a musician, playing the tuba in a band with his brothers and sometimes playing the guitar. He was a church member but also a drinker; he left the church for a time, on account of his drinking, but then gave up alcohol and became a Baptist deacon. Young Eddie House adopted the family commitment to religion and churchgoing. He also absorbed the family love of music but confined himself to singing, showing no interest in the family instrumental band, and hostile to the blues on religious grounds.
When House's parents separated, his mother took him to Tallulah, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi. When he was in his early teens, they moved to Algiers, New Orleans. Recalling these years, he would later speak of his hatred of blues and his passion for churchgoing (he described himself as "churchy" and "churchified"). At fifteen, probably while living in Algiers, he began preaching sermons.
At the age of nineteen, while living in the Delta, he married Carrie Martin, an older woman from New Orleans. This was a significant step for House; he married in church and against family opposition. The couple moved to her hometown of Centerville, Louisiana, to help run her father's farm. After a couple of years, feeling used and disillusioned, House recalled, "I left her hanging on the gatepost, with her father tellin' me to come back so we could plow some more." Around the same time, probably 1922, House's mother died. In later years, he was still angry about his marriage and said of Carrie, "She wasn't nothin' but one of them New Orleans whores".
House's resentment of farming extended to the many menial jobs he took as a young adult. He moved frequently, on one occasion taking off to East Saint Louis to work in a steel plant. The one job he enjoyed was on a Louisiana horse ranch, which later he celebrated by wearing a cowboy hat in his performances. He found an escape from manual labor when, following a conversion experience ("getting religion") in his early twenties, he was accepted as a paid pastor, first in the Baptist Church and then in the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. However, he fell into habits which conflicted with his calling—drinking like his father and probably also womanizing. This led him after several years of conflict to leave the church, ceasing his full-time commitment, although he continued to preach sermons from time to time.
Blues performer
In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style.
Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the café and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately.
Recording
In 1930, Art Laibly of Paramount Records traveled to Lula to persuade Patton to record several more sides in Grafton, Wisconsin. Along with Patton came House, Brown, and the pianist Louise Johnson, all of whom recorded sides for the label. House recorded nine songs during that session, eight of which were released, but they were commercial failures. He did not record again commercially for 35 years, but he continued to play with Patton and Brown, and with Brown after Patton's death in 1934. During this time, House worked as a tractor driver for various plantations in the Lake Cormorant area.
Alan Lomax recorded House for the Library of Congress in 1941. Willie Brown, the mandolin player Fiddlin' Joe Martin, and the harmonica player Leroy Williams played with House on these recordings. Lomax returned to the area in 1942, where he recorded House once more.
House then faded from the public view, moving to Rochester, New York, in 1943, and working as a railroad porter for the New York Central Railroad and as a chef.
Rediscovery
In 1964, after a long search of the Mississippi Delta region by Nick Perls, Dick Waterman and Phil Spiro, House was "rediscovered" in Rochester, New York working at a train station. He had been retired from the music business for many years and was unaware of the 1960s folk blues revival and international enthusiasm for his early recordings.
He subsequently toured extensively in the United States and Europe and recorded for CBS Records. Like Mississippi John Hurt, he was welcomed into the music scene of the 1960s and played at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, the New York Folk Festival in July 1965, and the October 1967 European tour of the American Folk Festival, along with Skip James and Bukka White.
The young guitarist Alan Wilson (later of Canned Heat) was a fan of House's. The producer John Hammond asked Wilson, who was just 22 years old, to teach "Son House how to play like Son House," because Wilson had such a good knowledge of blues styles. House subsequently recorded the album Father of Folk Blues, later reissued as a 2-CD set Father of Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions. House performed with Wilson live, as can be heard on "Levee Camp Moan" on the album John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions.
House appeared in Seattle on March 19, 1968, arranged by the Seattle Folklore Society. The concert was recorded by Bob West and issued on Acola Records as a CD in 2006. The Arcola CD also included an interview of House recorded on November 15, 1969 in Seattle.
In the summer of 1970, House toured Europe once again, including an appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival; a recording of his London concerts was released by Liberty Records. He also played at the two Days of Blues Festival in Toronto in 1974. On an appearance on the TV arts show Camera Three, he was accompanied by the blues guitarist Buddy Guy.
Ill health plagued House in his later years, and in 1974 he retired once again. He later moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he remained until his death from cancer of the larynx. He had been married five times. He was buried at the Mt. Hazel Cemetery. Members of the Detroit Blues Society raised money through benefit concerts to put a monument on his grave.
Honors
In 2007, House was honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Tunica, Mississippi.
In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Discography
78-RPM recordings
Recorded May 28, 1930, in Grafton, Wisconsin, for Paramount Records
"Walking Blues" (unissued and lost until 1985)
"My Black Mama – Part I"
"My Black Mama – Part II"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part I"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part II"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part I"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part II"
"Clarksdale Moan" (unissued and lost until 2006)
"Mississippi County Farm Blues" (unissued and lost until 2006)
Recordings for Library of Congress and Fisk University
Recorded August 1941, at Klack's Store, Lake Cormorant, Mississippi.
There are some railway noises in the background on some titles, as the store (which had electricity necessary for the recording) was close to a branch line between Lake Cormorant and Robinsonville.
"Levee Camp Blues", with Willie Brown, Fiddlin' Joe Martin, Leroy Williams
"Government Fleet Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Walking Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Shetland Pony Blues", with Brown
"Fo' Clock Blues", with Brown, Martin
"Camp Hollers", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Delta Blues", with Williams
Recorded July 17, 1942, Robinsonville, Mississippi
"Special Rider Blues" [test]
"Special Rider Blues"
"Low Down Dirty Dog Blues"
"Depot Blues"
"Key of Minor" (Interviews: Demonstration of concert guitar tuning)
"American Defense"
"Am I Right or Wrong"
"Walking Blues"
"County Farm Blues"
"The Pony Blues"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 1)"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 2)"
The music from both sessions and most of the recorded interviews have been reissued on LP and CD.
Singles
"The Pony Blues" / "The Jinx Blues", Part 1 (1967)
"Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" (Willie Brown) / "Shetland Pony Blues" (1967)
"Death Letter" (1985)
Other albums
This list is incomplete. For a complete list, see external links.
The Complete Library of Congress Sessions (1964), Travelin' Man CD 02
Blues from the Mississippi Delta, with J. D. Short (1964), Folkways Records
The Legendary Son House: Father of Folk Blues (1965), Columbia 2417
In Concert (Oberlin College, 1965), Stack-O-Hits 9004
Delta Blues (1941–1942), Smithsonian 31028
Son House & Blind Lemon Jefferson (1926–1941), Biograph 12040
The Real Delta Blues (1964–1965 recordings), Blue Goose Records 2016
Son House & the Great Delta Blues Singers, with Willie Brown and others, Document CD 5002
Son House at Home: Complete 1969, Document 5148
Son House (Library of Congress), Folk Lyric 9002
John the Revelator, Liberty 83391
American Folk Blues Festival '67 (1 cut), Optimism CD 2070
Son House (1965-1969), Private Record PR 1
Son House – Vol. 2 (1964–1974), Private Record PR 2 (1987)
Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions, Sony/Legacy CD 48867
Living Legends (1 cut, 1966), Verve/Folkways 3010
Real Blues (1 cut, University of Chicago, 1964), Takoma 7081
John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions, Sequel CD 207
Son House (1964–1970), Document (limited edition of 20 copies)
Great Bluesmen/Newport, (2 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77/78
Blues with a Feeling (3 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77005
Masters of the Country Blues, House and Bukka White, Yazoo Video 500
Delta Blues and Spirituals (1995)
In Concert (Live) (1996)
"Live" at Gaslight Cafe, N.Y.C., January 3, 1965 (2000)
New York Central Live (2003)
Delta Blues (1941–1942) (2003), Biograph CD 118
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40134
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways, vol. 2 (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40148
The Very Best of Son House: Heroes of the Blues (2003), Shout! Factory 30251
Proper Introduction to Son House (2004), Proper
References
External links
Memphis Beale Street Brass Note Submission Biography
Illustrated Son House discography
Inaugural (1980) inductee to Blues Hall of Fame (bio by Jim O'Neal)
, History of National Reso-Phonic Guitars, Part 3
House Discography at Smithsonian Folkways
(biography by Cub Koda)
Bob West interview of Son House March 16, 1968
Delta blues musicians
Country blues musicians
Blues revival musicians
Gospel blues musicians
Country blues singers
American blues guitarists
American male guitarists
Blues musicians from Mississippi
Resonator guitarists
Juke Joint blues musicians
Slide guitarists
Columbia Records artists
1902 births
1988 deaths
20th-century American criminals
People from Coahoma County, Mississippi
Deaths from cancer in Michigan
Paramount Records artists
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Mississippi
People from Lula, Mississippi
American male criminals
Mississippi Blues Trail
African-American guitarists
20th-century African-American male singers | true | [
"A rube is a country bumpkin or an inexperienced, unsophisticated person.\n\nRube is also sometimes used as a nickname, for Reuben, Ruben or Rubin.\n\nArts and entertainment\nRube Bloom (1902-1976), Jewish American songwriter, pianist, arranger, band leader, vocalist and writer\nRube Goldberg (1883-1970), American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor\nRubin Lacey (1902-1969), American country blues musician, singer and songwriter\n\nSports\n\nBaseball\nRube Benton (1890-1937), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Bressler (1894-1966), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Currie (1898-1966), American baseball pitcher and manager in the Negro leagues\nRube DeGroff (1879-1955), American Major League Baseball player\nGeorge \"Rube\" Deneau (c. 1879-1926), Canadian minor league baseball player, manager and promoter\nRube Dessau (1883-1952), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Ehrhardt (1894-1980), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Ellis (1885-1938), American Major League Baseball player\nRube Fischer (1916-1997), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Foster (1879–1930), American baseball player, manager, and pioneer executive in the Negro leagues, member of the Baseball Hall of Fame\nRube Foster (AL pitcher) (1888-1976), American Major League Baseball player\nRube Geyer (1884-1962), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Kisinger (1876-1941), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Kroh (1886-1944), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Lutzke (1897-1938), American Major League Baseball player\nRube Manning (1883-1930), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Marquard (1886-1980), American Major League Baseball pitcher, member of the Baseball Hall of Fame\nRube Marshall (1890-1980), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Melton (1917-1971), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Novotney (1924-1987), American Major League Baseball player in 1949\nRube Oldring (1884-1961), American Major League Baseball player\nRube Parnham (1894-1963), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Peters (1885-1965), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Schauer (1891-1957), Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Sellers (1881-1952), American Major League Baseball player in 1910\nRube Vickers (1878-1958), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Vinson (1879-1951), American Major League Baseball player\nRube Waddell (1876-1914), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Walberg (1896-1978), American Major League Baseball pitcher\nRube Walker (1926-1992), American Major League Baseball catcher and pitching coach\nRube Ward (1879-1945), American Major League Baseball player in 1902\nRube Yarrison (1896-1977), American Major League Baseball pitcher\n\nOther\nRube Barker (1889-1958), American college football player and track athlete in the 1910s\nRube Bjorkman (born 1929), former collegiate ice hockey head coach\nRube Brandow (1898–1932), Canadian professional ice hockey player and college coach\nRube Ferns (1873-1952), American boxer, world welterweight champion in 1900 and 1901\nRube Lautenschlager (1915–1992), American college and professional basketball player\nRube Ludwig (c. 1920-1991), Canadian football player\nRube McCray (1904-1972), head football, men's basketball, and baseball coach and athletic director at the College of William & Mary\nRube Ursella (1890-1980), American football player-coach who played during the early years of the National Football League\nReuben Charles Warnes (1875-1961), British boxer\n\nOutlaws\nRube Burrow (1854-1890), American Old West train robber and outlaw\n\nSee also\nHey Rube (disambiguation) \n\nLists of people by nickname\nPejorative terms for people",
"Up the Junction is an episode of the BBC anthology drama series The Wednesday Play directed by Ken Loach and produced by James MacTaggart. It was first broadcast on 3 November 1965 on BBC 1. The play was adapted by Nell Dunn and (uncredited) Ken Loach<ref>Although uncredited in this context, Loach contributed to the script and was paid a fee for his work. See Jacob Leigh The Cinema of Ken Loach: Art in the Service of the People, London: Wallflower Press, 2002, p.183, n.13. Dunn has acknowledged Loach's work on the script, see Stephen Lacey [https://books.google.com/books?id=QJv6E25XDHEC&pg=PA39 Tony Garnett], Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007, p.39</ref> from Dunn's short story collection of the same name. It tells the stories of three young women living in North Battersea and Clapham and, to a lesser degree, their boyfriends.\n\nPlot\nThree young female factory workers, Rube, Sylvie and Eileen, go out to a pub where they meet three young men, Terry, Ron and Dave. They flirt, go on a date to a lido and pair off, each couple developing a significant relationship.\n\nTerry and Rube soon have sex at Rube's flat while her mother is out. Rube becomes pregnant and must seek an illegal back-street abortion, which is botched, causing Rube to suffer a miscarriage. Although Terry and Rube continue their relationship after the abortion, they begin to grow apart, and finally have a row. Terry speeds off on his motorcycle, crashes it, and dies.\n\nSylvie marries Ron, but soon marital troubles develop, culminating in the couple having an ugly public row in the street outside a pub that Sylvie visited with Rube and Eileen.\n\nDave is already married when he meets Eileen, but he is unhappy with his wife, and he and Eileen have a romantic affair. In addition to his job, Dave also has a criminal history of theft. He is finally caught and imprisoned. Eileen remains loyal to him.\n\nCast\n Carol White - Sylvie\n Geraldine Sherman - Rube\n Vickery Turner - Eileen\n Tony Selby - Dave\n Michael Standing - Terry\n Ray Barron - Ron\n Rita Webb - Mrs. Hardy\n Hilda Barry - Old May\n Jessie Robins - Fat Lil\n George Sewell - Barny, the Tallyman\n Ann Lancaster - Winnie, the abortionist\n\nProduction\nThe filmed play has an episodic structure. As story editor Tony Garnett's biographer Stephen Lacey has written, the play \"is less concerned with its narrative high-points ... and is motivated more by the seemingly haphazard interplay of accident and incident\".\n\nThe play included documentary elements, such as an interview with a doctor advocating a change in the law to prevent 35 deaths each year from back-street abortions. The inclusion of documentary material caused confusion among some viewers who were unsure whether they were watching a fictional play or the continuation of a news broadcast that had aired just before The Wednesday Play.\n\nReception\nAudience research found that the programme was viewed by about 10 million people. The BBC received 400 complaints about the broadcast, mostly about its bad language and depiction of abortion. Christian morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse, responding to Up the Junction, wrote in her book Cleaning-up TV (1967):\"The sooner these terrible back-street abortionists are put out of business the better! True. But what about a play which would make it clear that any kind of abortion, legal or otherwise, has dangers to mental and bodily health far greater than natural childbirth. How about a programme which demonstrate that clean living could cut out a great deal of this problem at the root?\"\n\nSome commentators objected to the merging of documentary elements with drama at the time of the play's transmission, but Loach rejected the criticism, stating that \"we were very anxious for our plays not to be considered dramas but as continuations of the news.\" Loach went on to use the same technique of including documentary elements in the 1966 television play Cathy Come Home.\n\nThe antagonism to the play included the upper echelons of the BBC itself. A proposal to repeat the play was rejected by the governors in the summer of 1966 who noted the \"great offence\" the piece had caused at its first screening. Trade unionist Dame Anne Godwin, a BBC governor who had herself not seen the play, was minuted at a meeting in June 1966 as complaining of \"too great a tendency ... to concentrate on the 'sick' elements in society as sources from which to illustrate contemporary problems.\"\n\nThe play contributed to the debate leading up to the Abortion Act 1967, which legalised the termination of a pregnancy in the UK. Tony Garnett, whose work on the project was more extensive than his formal brief as story editor, commented in 2013 about the \"very, very personal\" nature of this play. When Garnett was a child, his mother had died following a back-street abortion, and his father committed suicide less than a month later.\n\nA film version based on Dunn's original short stories was released in 1968. In 2011, the television play was included in the 6 DVD box set, Ken Loach at the BBC''.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n \n\n1965 television plays\nBBC television dramas\nFilms directed by Ken Loach\nTelevision episodes about abortion\nSocial realism"
] |
[
"Son House",
"Blues performer",
"What were the names of some of the songs he sang?",
"My Black Mama\" and \"Preachin' the Blues\".",
"Were they his original songs or covers?",
"Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: \"",
"How did he become a blues singer?",
"He immediately changed his attitude about the blues,",
"How did his attitude change?",
"Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey,",
"Who was Rube Lacey?",
"a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927"
] | C_046ed8f9fead44f1aac80b6df180076c_0 | What kind of blues was he known for? | 6 | What kind of blues was Son House known for? | Son House | In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style. Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the cafe and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately. CANNOTANSWER | House developed to a professional standard a blues style | Edward James "Son" House Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) was an American delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.
After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also working as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. In a short career interrupted by a spell in Parchman Farm penitentiary, he developed his musicianship to the point that Charley Patton, the foremost blues artist of the Mississippi Delta region, invited him to share engagements and to accompany him to a 1930 recording session for Paramount Records.
Issued at the start of the Great Depression, the records did not sell and did not lead to national recognition. Locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton's associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County. There he was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax and John W. Work for the Library of Congress and Fisk University. The following year, he left the Delta for Rochester, New York, and gave up music.
In 1964, a group of young record collectors discovered House, whom they knew of from his records issued by Paramount and by the Library of Congress. With their encouragement, he relearned his repertoire and established a career as an entertainer, performing for young, mostly white audiences in coffeehouses, at folk festivals and on concert tours during the American folk music revival, billed as a "folk blues" singer. He recorded several albums, and some informally taped concerts have also been issued as albums. House died in 1988. In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Biography
Early life
House was born in the hamlet of Lyon, north of Clarksdale, Mississippi, the second of three brothers, and lived in the rural Mississippi Delta until his parents separated, when he was about seven or eight years old. His father, Eddie House, Sr., was a musician, playing the tuba in a band with his brothers and sometimes playing the guitar. He was a church member but also a drinker; he left the church for a time, on account of his drinking, but then gave up alcohol and became a Baptist deacon. Young Eddie House adopted the family commitment to religion and churchgoing. He also absorbed the family love of music but confined himself to singing, showing no interest in the family instrumental band, and hostile to the blues on religious grounds.
When House's parents separated, his mother took him to Tallulah, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi. When he was in his early teens, they moved to Algiers, New Orleans. Recalling these years, he would later speak of his hatred of blues and his passion for churchgoing (he described himself as "churchy" and "churchified"). At fifteen, probably while living in Algiers, he began preaching sermons.
At the age of nineteen, while living in the Delta, he married Carrie Martin, an older woman from New Orleans. This was a significant step for House; he married in church and against family opposition. The couple moved to her hometown of Centerville, Louisiana, to help run her father's farm. After a couple of years, feeling used and disillusioned, House recalled, "I left her hanging on the gatepost, with her father tellin' me to come back so we could plow some more." Around the same time, probably 1922, House's mother died. In later years, he was still angry about his marriage and said of Carrie, "She wasn't nothin' but one of them New Orleans whores".
House's resentment of farming extended to the many menial jobs he took as a young adult. He moved frequently, on one occasion taking off to East Saint Louis to work in a steel plant. The one job he enjoyed was on a Louisiana horse ranch, which later he celebrated by wearing a cowboy hat in his performances. He found an escape from manual labor when, following a conversion experience ("getting religion") in his early twenties, he was accepted as a paid pastor, first in the Baptist Church and then in the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. However, he fell into habits which conflicted with his calling—drinking like his father and probably also womanizing. This led him after several years of conflict to leave the church, ceasing his full-time commitment, although he continued to preach sermons from time to time.
Blues performer
In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style.
Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the café and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately.
Recording
In 1930, Art Laibly of Paramount Records traveled to Lula to persuade Patton to record several more sides in Grafton, Wisconsin. Along with Patton came House, Brown, and the pianist Louise Johnson, all of whom recorded sides for the label. House recorded nine songs during that session, eight of which were released, but they were commercial failures. He did not record again commercially for 35 years, but he continued to play with Patton and Brown, and with Brown after Patton's death in 1934. During this time, House worked as a tractor driver for various plantations in the Lake Cormorant area.
Alan Lomax recorded House for the Library of Congress in 1941. Willie Brown, the mandolin player Fiddlin' Joe Martin, and the harmonica player Leroy Williams played with House on these recordings. Lomax returned to the area in 1942, where he recorded House once more.
House then faded from the public view, moving to Rochester, New York, in 1943, and working as a railroad porter for the New York Central Railroad and as a chef.
Rediscovery
In 1964, after a long search of the Mississippi Delta region by Nick Perls, Dick Waterman and Phil Spiro, House was "rediscovered" in Rochester, New York working at a train station. He had been retired from the music business for many years and was unaware of the 1960s folk blues revival and international enthusiasm for his early recordings.
He subsequently toured extensively in the United States and Europe and recorded for CBS Records. Like Mississippi John Hurt, he was welcomed into the music scene of the 1960s and played at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, the New York Folk Festival in July 1965, and the October 1967 European tour of the American Folk Festival, along with Skip James and Bukka White.
The young guitarist Alan Wilson (later of Canned Heat) was a fan of House's. The producer John Hammond asked Wilson, who was just 22 years old, to teach "Son House how to play like Son House," because Wilson had such a good knowledge of blues styles. House subsequently recorded the album Father of Folk Blues, later reissued as a 2-CD set Father of Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions. House performed with Wilson live, as can be heard on "Levee Camp Moan" on the album John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions.
House appeared in Seattle on March 19, 1968, arranged by the Seattle Folklore Society. The concert was recorded by Bob West and issued on Acola Records as a CD in 2006. The Arcola CD also included an interview of House recorded on November 15, 1969 in Seattle.
In the summer of 1970, House toured Europe once again, including an appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival; a recording of his London concerts was released by Liberty Records. He also played at the two Days of Blues Festival in Toronto in 1974. On an appearance on the TV arts show Camera Three, he was accompanied by the blues guitarist Buddy Guy.
Ill health plagued House in his later years, and in 1974 he retired once again. He later moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he remained until his death from cancer of the larynx. He had been married five times. He was buried at the Mt. Hazel Cemetery. Members of the Detroit Blues Society raised money through benefit concerts to put a monument on his grave.
Honors
In 2007, House was honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Tunica, Mississippi.
In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Discography
78-RPM recordings
Recorded May 28, 1930, in Grafton, Wisconsin, for Paramount Records
"Walking Blues" (unissued and lost until 1985)
"My Black Mama – Part I"
"My Black Mama – Part II"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part I"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part II"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part I"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part II"
"Clarksdale Moan" (unissued and lost until 2006)
"Mississippi County Farm Blues" (unissued and lost until 2006)
Recordings for Library of Congress and Fisk University
Recorded August 1941, at Klack's Store, Lake Cormorant, Mississippi.
There are some railway noises in the background on some titles, as the store (which had electricity necessary for the recording) was close to a branch line between Lake Cormorant and Robinsonville.
"Levee Camp Blues", with Willie Brown, Fiddlin' Joe Martin, Leroy Williams
"Government Fleet Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Walking Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Shetland Pony Blues", with Brown
"Fo' Clock Blues", with Brown, Martin
"Camp Hollers", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Delta Blues", with Williams
Recorded July 17, 1942, Robinsonville, Mississippi
"Special Rider Blues" [test]
"Special Rider Blues"
"Low Down Dirty Dog Blues"
"Depot Blues"
"Key of Minor" (Interviews: Demonstration of concert guitar tuning)
"American Defense"
"Am I Right or Wrong"
"Walking Blues"
"County Farm Blues"
"The Pony Blues"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 1)"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 2)"
The music from both sessions and most of the recorded interviews have been reissued on LP and CD.
Singles
"The Pony Blues" / "The Jinx Blues", Part 1 (1967)
"Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" (Willie Brown) / "Shetland Pony Blues" (1967)
"Death Letter" (1985)
Other albums
This list is incomplete. For a complete list, see external links.
The Complete Library of Congress Sessions (1964), Travelin' Man CD 02
Blues from the Mississippi Delta, with J. D. Short (1964), Folkways Records
The Legendary Son House: Father of Folk Blues (1965), Columbia 2417
In Concert (Oberlin College, 1965), Stack-O-Hits 9004
Delta Blues (1941–1942), Smithsonian 31028
Son House & Blind Lemon Jefferson (1926–1941), Biograph 12040
The Real Delta Blues (1964–1965 recordings), Blue Goose Records 2016
Son House & the Great Delta Blues Singers, with Willie Brown and others, Document CD 5002
Son House at Home: Complete 1969, Document 5148
Son House (Library of Congress), Folk Lyric 9002
John the Revelator, Liberty 83391
American Folk Blues Festival '67 (1 cut), Optimism CD 2070
Son House (1965-1969), Private Record PR 1
Son House – Vol. 2 (1964–1974), Private Record PR 2 (1987)
Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions, Sony/Legacy CD 48867
Living Legends (1 cut, 1966), Verve/Folkways 3010
Real Blues (1 cut, University of Chicago, 1964), Takoma 7081
John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions, Sequel CD 207
Son House (1964–1970), Document (limited edition of 20 copies)
Great Bluesmen/Newport, (2 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77/78
Blues with a Feeling (3 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77005
Masters of the Country Blues, House and Bukka White, Yazoo Video 500
Delta Blues and Spirituals (1995)
In Concert (Live) (1996)
"Live" at Gaslight Cafe, N.Y.C., January 3, 1965 (2000)
New York Central Live (2003)
Delta Blues (1941–1942) (2003), Biograph CD 118
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40134
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways, vol. 2 (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40148
The Very Best of Son House: Heroes of the Blues (2003), Shout! Factory 30251
Proper Introduction to Son House (2004), Proper
References
External links
Memphis Beale Street Brass Note Submission Biography
Illustrated Son House discography
Inaugural (1980) inductee to Blues Hall of Fame (bio by Jim O'Neal)
, History of National Reso-Phonic Guitars, Part 3
House Discography at Smithsonian Folkways
(biography by Cub Koda)
Bob West interview of Son House March 16, 1968
Delta blues musicians
Country blues musicians
Blues revival musicians
Gospel blues musicians
Country blues singers
American blues guitarists
American male guitarists
Blues musicians from Mississippi
Resonator guitarists
Juke Joint blues musicians
Slide guitarists
Columbia Records artists
1902 births
1988 deaths
20th-century American criminals
People from Coahoma County, Mississippi
Deaths from cancer in Michigan
Paramount Records artists
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Mississippi
People from Lula, Mississippi
American male criminals
Mississippi Blues Trail
African-American guitarists
20th-century African-American male singers | true | [
"Live in Europe is the third album by Irish blues guitarist Rory Gallagher, released in 1972. It is a series of live recordings made during his European tour that year. Unusual for a live album, it contains just two songs previously recorded and released by Gallagher (\"Laundromat\" and \"In Your Town\"). All the other songs are either new Gallagher songs or Gallagher's interpretation of traditional blues songs.\n\nRecording\nLive in Europe was released at the end of the British \"blues boom\" that began in the 1960s. Sparked by bands such as the Rolling Stones, Yardbirds and Cream, fans and musicians were fascinated by authentic Chicago blues artists such as Muddy Waters. Gallagher had an extensive knowledge of this kind of music, although he tended to play down arguments about what was \"pure\" blues. In an interview at the time he said: \"If there was one fault with the boom in the 1960s, it was that it was very straight-faced and very pontificatory, or whatever the word is. It used to annoy me that there was an attitude of 'Thou shalt not play the blues unless you know who played second acoustic guitar behind Sonny Boy Williamson the first on the B-side of whatever.' That kind of thing gets music nowhere, it’s like collecting stamps. I mean, I buy books on the blues and I check out the B-sides and I know who plays on what records and that’s fine. But then you’ve got to open that up to the rest of the people. Because that kind of snobbery defeats the purpose; it kills the music.\"\n\nRather than live versions of his most popular songs, there are only two songs on the album that were previously recorded by Gallagher in the studio, \"Laundromat\" from his first album and \"In Your Town\" from his Deuce album. All the other songs are Gallagher's versions of classic blues songs. The album starts with what was to become a signature song for Gallagher, Junior Wells' \"Messin' With the Kid\". The song \"I Could've Had Religion\" was Gallagher's salute to what he called the \"redemption style blues\" of the Robert Wilkins and Gary Davis. After hearing the song on this album Bob Dylan expressed interest in recording it and assumed it was a traditional blues number rather than an original song by Gallagher. Blind Boy Fuller's \"Pistol Slapper Blues\" is next. Gallagher then shows his versatility, swapping his Stratocaster for a mandolin and performing the song \"Going to My Home Town\" with the audience stomping their feet and cheering in response as Gallagher sings \"do you want to go?\". The finale is the straight-ahead hard rocking \"Bullfrog Blues\" written by William Harris. Gallagher switches back to the electric guitar and the full band and gives bassist Gerry McAvoy and drummer Wilgar Campbell, a chance to solo. With the CD release, two additional blues songs were added: \"What in the World\" and \"Hoodoo Man\".\n\nReaction\nMost critics agree that Live in Europe is one of Gallagher's finest albums. Upon release, it entered the top ten album chart in the UK. It was Gallagher's highest charting album to date reaching 101 in the Billboard 200 for 1972. The album was his first major commercial success and his first solo top ten album. It won him his first Gold Disc. In the same year of 1972 he was Melody Maker's Guitarist/Musician of the Year, winning out over Eric Clapton.\n\nTrack listing\nSide one\n \"Messin' with the Kid\" (written by Mel London, originally recorded by Junior Wells) – 6:25\n \"Laundromat\" (Rory Gallagher) – 5:12\n \"I Could've Had Religion\" (Traditional; arranged by Gallagher) – 8:35\n \"Pistol Slapper Blues\" (Blind Boy Fuller) – 2:54\nSide two\n \"Going to My Hometown\" (Traditional; arranged by Gallagher) – 5:46\n \"In Your Town\" (Rory Gallagher) [from Deuce] – 10:03\n \"Bullfrog Blues\" (Traditional; arranged by Gallagher) – 6:47\nCD bonus track\n\"What in the World\" (Traditional; arranged by Gallagher) – 7:40 *\n\"Hoodoo Man\" (Traditional; arranged by Gallagher) – 6:02 *\n\nPersonnel\nRory Gallagher – guitars, harmonica, mandolin, vocals\nGerry McAvoy – bass guitar\nWilgar Campbell – drums\nTechnical\nMick Rock – liner notes, photography\nAlan Perkins - recording engineer\nTony Arnold – remastering\nDonal Gallagher – executive producer\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nRory Gallagher albums\n1972 live albums\nAlbums produced by Rory Gallagher\nAlbums with cover art by Mick Rock\nBuddah Records live albums",
"James \"Stump\" Johnson (January 17, 1902 – December 5, 1969) was an American blues pianist and singer from St. Louis.\n\nBiography\nJames \"Stump\" Johnson was the brother of Jesse Johnson, \"a prominent black business man,\" who around 1909 had moved the family from Clarksville, Tennessee, to St. Louis, where he ran a music store and was a promoter. James, a self-taught piano player, made a career playing the city's brothels. He had an instant hit with the \"whorehouse tune\" \"The Duck's Yas-Yas-Yas\", \"a popular St. Louis party song\". The song's title is from the lyric \"Shake your shoulders, shake 'em fast, if you can't shake your shoulders, shake your yas-yas-yas.\"\n\nHe made a number of other recordings (some mildly pornographic) under various pseudonyms. These included Shorty George and Snitcher Roberts. One of the more obscene songs was a version of \"Steady Grinding\", which he recorded with Dorothea Trowbridge on August 2, 1933; the song has the \"defiant, sexually aggressive lyrics\" early blueswomen were noted for, grinding being slang for sexual intercourse.\n\nJohnson died on December 5, 1969, from the effects of esophageal cancer at the Veteran's Hospital in St. Louis. He was 67 years old.\n\nDiscography\n\nJames \"Stump\" Johnson (1929–1964)\n\nComplete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, Document DOCD-5250, CD\n \"The Duck's Yas-Yas-Yas\"\n \"The Snitcher's Blues\"\n \"Bound to Be a Monkey\"\n \"My Babe Blues\"\n \"Jones Law Blues\"\n \"Transom Blues (Bury That Thing)\"\n \"Soaking Wet Blues\"\n \"Kind Babe Blues\"\n \"What You Do What I Asked You To\"\n \"Heart Is Right Blues\"\n \"Low Moanin' Blue\"\n \"Snitcher's Blues\"\n \"Baby B. Blues\"\n \"You Buzzard You\"\n \"Sail on Black Sue\"\n \"Barrel of Whiskey Blues\"\n \"Steady Grindin'\"\n \"Money Johnson\"\n \"Don't Give My Lard Away\"\n \"Snitcher's Blues No. 2\"\n \"Bound to Be a Monkey\"\n \"Duck Yas-Yas-Yas\"\n\nThe Duck's Yas-Yas-Yas\nCompilation/reissue, Agram Blues AB-2007, LP\n\nSide A\n \"The Duck's Yas-Yas-Yas\"\n \"The Snitchers Blues\"\n \"My Babe Blues\"\n \"My Babe Blues\"\n \"Transom Blues (Bury That Thing)\"\n \"Soaking Wet Blues\"\n \"Kind Babe Blues\"\n \"Would You Do What I Asked You To\"\n\nSide B\n \"The Duck's Yas-Yas-Yas\"\n \"Heart Is Right Blues\"\n \"Snitcher's Blues\"\n \"You Buzzard You\"\n \"Sail on Black Sue\"\n \"Money Johnson\"\n \"Snitchers Blues\"\n \"The Duck's Yas-Yas-Yas\"\n \"The Duck's Yas-Yas-Yas\"\n \"Snitchers Blues\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nJohnson bibliography, in \nBiddle Street Barrelhousin' review at Allmusic.com\n\n1902 births\n1969 deaths\nAmerican blues pianists\nAmerican male pianists\nAmerican blues singers\nSt. Louis blues musicians\nBluebird Records artists\nDelmark Records artists\n20th-century American singers\n20th-century American pianists\n20th-century American male singers"
] |
[
"Son House",
"Blues performer",
"What were the names of some of the songs he sang?",
"My Black Mama\" and \"Preachin' the Blues\".",
"Were they his original songs or covers?",
"Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: \"",
"How did he become a blues singer?",
"He immediately changed his attitude about the blues,",
"How did his attitude change?",
"Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey,",
"Who was Rube Lacey?",
"a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927",
"What kind of blues was he known for?",
"House developed to a professional standard a blues style"
] | C_046ed8f9fead44f1aac80b6df180076c_0 | Did he play an instrument? | 7 | Did Son House play an instrument? | Son House | In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style. Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the cafe and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Edward James "Son" House Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) was an American delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.
After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also working as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. In a short career interrupted by a spell in Parchman Farm penitentiary, he developed his musicianship to the point that Charley Patton, the foremost blues artist of the Mississippi Delta region, invited him to share engagements and to accompany him to a 1930 recording session for Paramount Records.
Issued at the start of the Great Depression, the records did not sell and did not lead to national recognition. Locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton's associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County. There he was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax and John W. Work for the Library of Congress and Fisk University. The following year, he left the Delta for Rochester, New York, and gave up music.
In 1964, a group of young record collectors discovered House, whom they knew of from his records issued by Paramount and by the Library of Congress. With their encouragement, he relearned his repertoire and established a career as an entertainer, performing for young, mostly white audiences in coffeehouses, at folk festivals and on concert tours during the American folk music revival, billed as a "folk blues" singer. He recorded several albums, and some informally taped concerts have also been issued as albums. House died in 1988. In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Biography
Early life
House was born in the hamlet of Lyon, north of Clarksdale, Mississippi, the second of three brothers, and lived in the rural Mississippi Delta until his parents separated, when he was about seven or eight years old. His father, Eddie House, Sr., was a musician, playing the tuba in a band with his brothers and sometimes playing the guitar. He was a church member but also a drinker; he left the church for a time, on account of his drinking, but then gave up alcohol and became a Baptist deacon. Young Eddie House adopted the family commitment to religion and churchgoing. He also absorbed the family love of music but confined himself to singing, showing no interest in the family instrumental band, and hostile to the blues on religious grounds.
When House's parents separated, his mother took him to Tallulah, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi. When he was in his early teens, they moved to Algiers, New Orleans. Recalling these years, he would later speak of his hatred of blues and his passion for churchgoing (he described himself as "churchy" and "churchified"). At fifteen, probably while living in Algiers, he began preaching sermons.
At the age of nineteen, while living in the Delta, he married Carrie Martin, an older woman from New Orleans. This was a significant step for House; he married in church and against family opposition. The couple moved to her hometown of Centerville, Louisiana, to help run her father's farm. After a couple of years, feeling used and disillusioned, House recalled, "I left her hanging on the gatepost, with her father tellin' me to come back so we could plow some more." Around the same time, probably 1922, House's mother died. In later years, he was still angry about his marriage and said of Carrie, "She wasn't nothin' but one of them New Orleans whores".
House's resentment of farming extended to the many menial jobs he took as a young adult. He moved frequently, on one occasion taking off to East Saint Louis to work in a steel plant. The one job he enjoyed was on a Louisiana horse ranch, which later he celebrated by wearing a cowboy hat in his performances. He found an escape from manual labor when, following a conversion experience ("getting religion") in his early twenties, he was accepted as a paid pastor, first in the Baptist Church and then in the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. However, he fell into habits which conflicted with his calling—drinking like his father and probably also womanizing. This led him after several years of conflict to leave the church, ceasing his full-time commitment, although he continued to preach sermons from time to time.
Blues performer
In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style.
Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the café and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately.
Recording
In 1930, Art Laibly of Paramount Records traveled to Lula to persuade Patton to record several more sides in Grafton, Wisconsin. Along with Patton came House, Brown, and the pianist Louise Johnson, all of whom recorded sides for the label. House recorded nine songs during that session, eight of which were released, but they were commercial failures. He did not record again commercially for 35 years, but he continued to play with Patton and Brown, and with Brown after Patton's death in 1934. During this time, House worked as a tractor driver for various plantations in the Lake Cormorant area.
Alan Lomax recorded House for the Library of Congress in 1941. Willie Brown, the mandolin player Fiddlin' Joe Martin, and the harmonica player Leroy Williams played with House on these recordings. Lomax returned to the area in 1942, where he recorded House once more.
House then faded from the public view, moving to Rochester, New York, in 1943, and working as a railroad porter for the New York Central Railroad and as a chef.
Rediscovery
In 1964, after a long search of the Mississippi Delta region by Nick Perls, Dick Waterman and Phil Spiro, House was "rediscovered" in Rochester, New York working at a train station. He had been retired from the music business for many years and was unaware of the 1960s folk blues revival and international enthusiasm for his early recordings.
He subsequently toured extensively in the United States and Europe and recorded for CBS Records. Like Mississippi John Hurt, he was welcomed into the music scene of the 1960s and played at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, the New York Folk Festival in July 1965, and the October 1967 European tour of the American Folk Festival, along with Skip James and Bukka White.
The young guitarist Alan Wilson (later of Canned Heat) was a fan of House's. The producer John Hammond asked Wilson, who was just 22 years old, to teach "Son House how to play like Son House," because Wilson had such a good knowledge of blues styles. House subsequently recorded the album Father of Folk Blues, later reissued as a 2-CD set Father of Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions. House performed with Wilson live, as can be heard on "Levee Camp Moan" on the album John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions.
House appeared in Seattle on March 19, 1968, arranged by the Seattle Folklore Society. The concert was recorded by Bob West and issued on Acola Records as a CD in 2006. The Arcola CD also included an interview of House recorded on November 15, 1969 in Seattle.
In the summer of 1970, House toured Europe once again, including an appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival; a recording of his London concerts was released by Liberty Records. He also played at the two Days of Blues Festival in Toronto in 1974. On an appearance on the TV arts show Camera Three, he was accompanied by the blues guitarist Buddy Guy.
Ill health plagued House in his later years, and in 1974 he retired once again. He later moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he remained until his death from cancer of the larynx. He had been married five times. He was buried at the Mt. Hazel Cemetery. Members of the Detroit Blues Society raised money through benefit concerts to put a monument on his grave.
Honors
In 2007, House was honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Tunica, Mississippi.
In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Discography
78-RPM recordings
Recorded May 28, 1930, in Grafton, Wisconsin, for Paramount Records
"Walking Blues" (unissued and lost until 1985)
"My Black Mama – Part I"
"My Black Mama – Part II"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part I"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part II"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part I"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part II"
"Clarksdale Moan" (unissued and lost until 2006)
"Mississippi County Farm Blues" (unissued and lost until 2006)
Recordings for Library of Congress and Fisk University
Recorded August 1941, at Klack's Store, Lake Cormorant, Mississippi.
There are some railway noises in the background on some titles, as the store (which had electricity necessary for the recording) was close to a branch line between Lake Cormorant and Robinsonville.
"Levee Camp Blues", with Willie Brown, Fiddlin' Joe Martin, Leroy Williams
"Government Fleet Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Walking Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Shetland Pony Blues", with Brown
"Fo' Clock Blues", with Brown, Martin
"Camp Hollers", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Delta Blues", with Williams
Recorded July 17, 1942, Robinsonville, Mississippi
"Special Rider Blues" [test]
"Special Rider Blues"
"Low Down Dirty Dog Blues"
"Depot Blues"
"Key of Minor" (Interviews: Demonstration of concert guitar tuning)
"American Defense"
"Am I Right or Wrong"
"Walking Blues"
"County Farm Blues"
"The Pony Blues"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 1)"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 2)"
The music from both sessions and most of the recorded interviews have been reissued on LP and CD.
Singles
"The Pony Blues" / "The Jinx Blues", Part 1 (1967)
"Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" (Willie Brown) / "Shetland Pony Blues" (1967)
"Death Letter" (1985)
Other albums
This list is incomplete. For a complete list, see external links.
The Complete Library of Congress Sessions (1964), Travelin' Man CD 02
Blues from the Mississippi Delta, with J. D. Short (1964), Folkways Records
The Legendary Son House: Father of Folk Blues (1965), Columbia 2417
In Concert (Oberlin College, 1965), Stack-O-Hits 9004
Delta Blues (1941–1942), Smithsonian 31028
Son House & Blind Lemon Jefferson (1926–1941), Biograph 12040
The Real Delta Blues (1964–1965 recordings), Blue Goose Records 2016
Son House & the Great Delta Blues Singers, with Willie Brown and others, Document CD 5002
Son House at Home: Complete 1969, Document 5148
Son House (Library of Congress), Folk Lyric 9002
John the Revelator, Liberty 83391
American Folk Blues Festival '67 (1 cut), Optimism CD 2070
Son House (1965-1969), Private Record PR 1
Son House – Vol. 2 (1964–1974), Private Record PR 2 (1987)
Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions, Sony/Legacy CD 48867
Living Legends (1 cut, 1966), Verve/Folkways 3010
Real Blues (1 cut, University of Chicago, 1964), Takoma 7081
John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions, Sequel CD 207
Son House (1964–1970), Document (limited edition of 20 copies)
Great Bluesmen/Newport, (2 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77/78
Blues with a Feeling (3 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77005
Masters of the Country Blues, House and Bukka White, Yazoo Video 500
Delta Blues and Spirituals (1995)
In Concert (Live) (1996)
"Live" at Gaslight Cafe, N.Y.C., January 3, 1965 (2000)
New York Central Live (2003)
Delta Blues (1941–1942) (2003), Biograph CD 118
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40134
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways, vol. 2 (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40148
The Very Best of Son House: Heroes of the Blues (2003), Shout! Factory 30251
Proper Introduction to Son House (2004), Proper
References
External links
Memphis Beale Street Brass Note Submission Biography
Illustrated Son House discography
Inaugural (1980) inductee to Blues Hall of Fame (bio by Jim O'Neal)
, History of National Reso-Phonic Guitars, Part 3
House Discography at Smithsonian Folkways
(biography by Cub Koda)
Bob West interview of Son House March 16, 1968
Delta blues musicians
Country blues musicians
Blues revival musicians
Gospel blues musicians
Country blues singers
American blues guitarists
American male guitarists
Blues musicians from Mississippi
Resonator guitarists
Juke Joint blues musicians
Slide guitarists
Columbia Records artists
1902 births
1988 deaths
20th-century American criminals
People from Coahoma County, Mississippi
Deaths from cancer in Michigan
Paramount Records artists
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Mississippi
People from Lula, Mississippi
American male criminals
Mississippi Blues Trail
African-American guitarists
20th-century African-American male singers | false | [
"An instrument driver, in the context of test and measurement (T&M) application development, is a set of software routines that simplifies remote instrument control. Instrument drivers are specified by the IVI Foundation and define an I/O abstraction layer using the virtual instrument software architecture (VISA). The VISA hardware abstraction layer provides an interface-independent communication channel to T&M instruments. Furthermore, the instrument drivers encapsulate the Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments (SCPI) commands, which are an ASCII-based set of commands for reading and writing instrument settings and measurement data. This standard allows an abstract way of using various programming languages to program remote-control applications instead of using SCPI commands. An instrument driver usually has a well-defined API.\n\nStandards\n\nVXIplug&play instrument driver\n\nThe VXIplug&play Systems Alliance was founded in 1993 with the aim of unifying VXI hardware and software to achieve 'plug and play' interoperability for VXI and GPIB instruments. As part of the unifying process, VXIplug&play instrument drivers were also defined.\n\nIVI instrument drivers\n\nWhen the IVI Foundation took over the Alliance in 2002, it defined a new generation of instrument drivers to replace the VXIplug&play standard. The IVI instrument driver specification intends to overcome the drawbacks of VXIplug&play. These IVI (Interchangeable Virtual Instrumentation) drivers are currently defined in three different architectures:\n\n The IVI-COM driver architecture is based on the Microsoft Component Object Model. \n The IVI-C drivers are based on C programming language shared components (shared libraries). \n The IVI.NET driver architecture was specified in 2010. The IVI.NET drivers are based on the .NET framework.\n\nRemote control of instrumentation\nInstrument drivers allow quicker development of remote-control applications for instrumentation. The drivers reduce the difficulty of string formatting when using SCPI commands by providing a well-defined API. The IVI and VXIplug&play Instrument Drivers use the VISA as the hardware abstraction layer so that hardware-independent applications can be developed.\n\nI/O hardware abstraction layer VISA\nThe VISA library allows test and measurement equipment to be connected through various hardware interfaces. The following interfaces are available:\n\n Serial Port\n GPIB/IEEE-488\n VXI-11 (over TCP/IP)\n USB488/USBTMC (USB Test & Measurement), USB Test & Measurement Class Specification\n HiSLIP (over TCP/IP).\n\nLXI\n\nThe LAN eXtensions for Instrumentation (LXI) standard defines the communications protocols for controlling test and measurement systems using Ethernet. The standard requires vendors to offer IVI compliant instrument drivers.\n\nSee also\n Instrument control\n Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments\n Automation\n IEEE-488\n VISA\n LabVIEW\n LabWindows\n Agilent VEE\n MATLAB\n LAN eXtensions for Instrumentation\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n IVI Foundation\n SCPI Consortium\n VXIplug&play Systems Alliance\n LXI Consortium\n Introduction to Attribute Based Instrument Drivers\n Development Hints and Best Practices for Using Instrument Drivers\n\nInput/output\nElectronic test equipment",
"A ludeme is \"an element of play\" within a card game or board game, as distinct from an \"instrument of play\" which forms part of the equipment with which a game is played. An example of a ludeme is the L-shaped movement of a knight in chess, whereas the knight itself is an instrument of play.\n\nOrigin \nThe term was originally coined by French game writer Pierre Berloquin. Borvo, one of the first to use the term, defines it as a 'type rule' such as the method of trick-taking in a card game or the leap capture in a board game.\n\nSee also \n Game mechanics\n\nReferences \n\nBoard games\nCard game terminology"
] |
[
"Son House",
"Blues performer",
"What were the names of some of the songs he sang?",
"My Black Mama\" and \"Preachin' the Blues\".",
"Were they his original songs or covers?",
"Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: \"",
"How did he become a blues singer?",
"He immediately changed his attitude about the blues,",
"How did his attitude change?",
"Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey,",
"Who was Rube Lacey?",
"a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927",
"What kind of blues was he known for?",
"House developed to a professional standard a blues style",
"Did he play an instrument?",
"I don't know."
] | C_046ed8f9fead44f1aac80b6df180076c_0 | Anything interesting happen to him? | 8 | Did anything interesting happen to Son House? | Son House | In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style. Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the cafe and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately. CANNOTANSWER | he allegedly shot the man dead. | Edward James "Son" House Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) was an American delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.
After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also working as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. In a short career interrupted by a spell in Parchman Farm penitentiary, he developed his musicianship to the point that Charley Patton, the foremost blues artist of the Mississippi Delta region, invited him to share engagements and to accompany him to a 1930 recording session for Paramount Records.
Issued at the start of the Great Depression, the records did not sell and did not lead to national recognition. Locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton's associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County. There he was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax and John W. Work for the Library of Congress and Fisk University. The following year, he left the Delta for Rochester, New York, and gave up music.
In 1964, a group of young record collectors discovered House, whom they knew of from his records issued by Paramount and by the Library of Congress. With their encouragement, he relearned his repertoire and established a career as an entertainer, performing for young, mostly white audiences in coffeehouses, at folk festivals and on concert tours during the American folk music revival, billed as a "folk blues" singer. He recorded several albums, and some informally taped concerts have also been issued as albums. House died in 1988. In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Biography
Early life
House was born in the hamlet of Lyon, north of Clarksdale, Mississippi, the second of three brothers, and lived in the rural Mississippi Delta until his parents separated, when he was about seven or eight years old. His father, Eddie House, Sr., was a musician, playing the tuba in a band with his brothers and sometimes playing the guitar. He was a church member but also a drinker; he left the church for a time, on account of his drinking, but then gave up alcohol and became a Baptist deacon. Young Eddie House adopted the family commitment to religion and churchgoing. He also absorbed the family love of music but confined himself to singing, showing no interest in the family instrumental band, and hostile to the blues on religious grounds.
When House's parents separated, his mother took him to Tallulah, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi. When he was in his early teens, they moved to Algiers, New Orleans. Recalling these years, he would later speak of his hatred of blues and his passion for churchgoing (he described himself as "churchy" and "churchified"). At fifteen, probably while living in Algiers, he began preaching sermons.
At the age of nineteen, while living in the Delta, he married Carrie Martin, an older woman from New Orleans. This was a significant step for House; he married in church and against family opposition. The couple moved to her hometown of Centerville, Louisiana, to help run her father's farm. After a couple of years, feeling used and disillusioned, House recalled, "I left her hanging on the gatepost, with her father tellin' me to come back so we could plow some more." Around the same time, probably 1922, House's mother died. In later years, he was still angry about his marriage and said of Carrie, "She wasn't nothin' but one of them New Orleans whores".
House's resentment of farming extended to the many menial jobs he took as a young adult. He moved frequently, on one occasion taking off to East Saint Louis to work in a steel plant. The one job he enjoyed was on a Louisiana horse ranch, which later he celebrated by wearing a cowboy hat in his performances. He found an escape from manual labor when, following a conversion experience ("getting religion") in his early twenties, he was accepted as a paid pastor, first in the Baptist Church and then in the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. However, he fell into habits which conflicted with his calling—drinking like his father and probably also womanizing. This led him after several years of conflict to leave the church, ceasing his full-time commitment, although he continued to preach sermons from time to time.
Blues performer
In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style.
Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the café and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately.
Recording
In 1930, Art Laibly of Paramount Records traveled to Lula to persuade Patton to record several more sides in Grafton, Wisconsin. Along with Patton came House, Brown, and the pianist Louise Johnson, all of whom recorded sides for the label. House recorded nine songs during that session, eight of which were released, but they were commercial failures. He did not record again commercially for 35 years, but he continued to play with Patton and Brown, and with Brown after Patton's death in 1934. During this time, House worked as a tractor driver for various plantations in the Lake Cormorant area.
Alan Lomax recorded House for the Library of Congress in 1941. Willie Brown, the mandolin player Fiddlin' Joe Martin, and the harmonica player Leroy Williams played with House on these recordings. Lomax returned to the area in 1942, where he recorded House once more.
House then faded from the public view, moving to Rochester, New York, in 1943, and working as a railroad porter for the New York Central Railroad and as a chef.
Rediscovery
In 1964, after a long search of the Mississippi Delta region by Nick Perls, Dick Waterman and Phil Spiro, House was "rediscovered" in Rochester, New York working at a train station. He had been retired from the music business for many years and was unaware of the 1960s folk blues revival and international enthusiasm for his early recordings.
He subsequently toured extensively in the United States and Europe and recorded for CBS Records. Like Mississippi John Hurt, he was welcomed into the music scene of the 1960s and played at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, the New York Folk Festival in July 1965, and the October 1967 European tour of the American Folk Festival, along with Skip James and Bukka White.
The young guitarist Alan Wilson (later of Canned Heat) was a fan of House's. The producer John Hammond asked Wilson, who was just 22 years old, to teach "Son House how to play like Son House," because Wilson had such a good knowledge of blues styles. House subsequently recorded the album Father of Folk Blues, later reissued as a 2-CD set Father of Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions. House performed with Wilson live, as can be heard on "Levee Camp Moan" on the album John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions.
House appeared in Seattle on March 19, 1968, arranged by the Seattle Folklore Society. The concert was recorded by Bob West and issued on Acola Records as a CD in 2006. The Arcola CD also included an interview of House recorded on November 15, 1969 in Seattle.
In the summer of 1970, House toured Europe once again, including an appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival; a recording of his London concerts was released by Liberty Records. He also played at the two Days of Blues Festival in Toronto in 1974. On an appearance on the TV arts show Camera Three, he was accompanied by the blues guitarist Buddy Guy.
Ill health plagued House in his later years, and in 1974 he retired once again. He later moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he remained until his death from cancer of the larynx. He had been married five times. He was buried at the Mt. Hazel Cemetery. Members of the Detroit Blues Society raised money through benefit concerts to put a monument on his grave.
Honors
In 2007, House was honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Tunica, Mississippi.
In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Discography
78-RPM recordings
Recorded May 28, 1930, in Grafton, Wisconsin, for Paramount Records
"Walking Blues" (unissued and lost until 1985)
"My Black Mama – Part I"
"My Black Mama – Part II"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part I"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part II"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part I"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part II"
"Clarksdale Moan" (unissued and lost until 2006)
"Mississippi County Farm Blues" (unissued and lost until 2006)
Recordings for Library of Congress and Fisk University
Recorded August 1941, at Klack's Store, Lake Cormorant, Mississippi.
There are some railway noises in the background on some titles, as the store (which had electricity necessary for the recording) was close to a branch line between Lake Cormorant and Robinsonville.
"Levee Camp Blues", with Willie Brown, Fiddlin' Joe Martin, Leroy Williams
"Government Fleet Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Walking Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Shetland Pony Blues", with Brown
"Fo' Clock Blues", with Brown, Martin
"Camp Hollers", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Delta Blues", with Williams
Recorded July 17, 1942, Robinsonville, Mississippi
"Special Rider Blues" [test]
"Special Rider Blues"
"Low Down Dirty Dog Blues"
"Depot Blues"
"Key of Minor" (Interviews: Demonstration of concert guitar tuning)
"American Defense"
"Am I Right or Wrong"
"Walking Blues"
"County Farm Blues"
"The Pony Blues"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 1)"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 2)"
The music from both sessions and most of the recorded interviews have been reissued on LP and CD.
Singles
"The Pony Blues" / "The Jinx Blues", Part 1 (1967)
"Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" (Willie Brown) / "Shetland Pony Blues" (1967)
"Death Letter" (1985)
Other albums
This list is incomplete. For a complete list, see external links.
The Complete Library of Congress Sessions (1964), Travelin' Man CD 02
Blues from the Mississippi Delta, with J. D. Short (1964), Folkways Records
The Legendary Son House: Father of Folk Blues (1965), Columbia 2417
In Concert (Oberlin College, 1965), Stack-O-Hits 9004
Delta Blues (1941–1942), Smithsonian 31028
Son House & Blind Lemon Jefferson (1926–1941), Biograph 12040
The Real Delta Blues (1964–1965 recordings), Blue Goose Records 2016
Son House & the Great Delta Blues Singers, with Willie Brown and others, Document CD 5002
Son House at Home: Complete 1969, Document 5148
Son House (Library of Congress), Folk Lyric 9002
John the Revelator, Liberty 83391
American Folk Blues Festival '67 (1 cut), Optimism CD 2070
Son House (1965-1969), Private Record PR 1
Son House – Vol. 2 (1964–1974), Private Record PR 2 (1987)
Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions, Sony/Legacy CD 48867
Living Legends (1 cut, 1966), Verve/Folkways 3010
Real Blues (1 cut, University of Chicago, 1964), Takoma 7081
John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions, Sequel CD 207
Son House (1964–1970), Document (limited edition of 20 copies)
Great Bluesmen/Newport, (2 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77/78
Blues with a Feeling (3 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77005
Masters of the Country Blues, House and Bukka White, Yazoo Video 500
Delta Blues and Spirituals (1995)
In Concert (Live) (1996)
"Live" at Gaslight Cafe, N.Y.C., January 3, 1965 (2000)
New York Central Live (2003)
Delta Blues (1941–1942) (2003), Biograph CD 118
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40134
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways, vol. 2 (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40148
The Very Best of Son House: Heroes of the Blues (2003), Shout! Factory 30251
Proper Introduction to Son House (2004), Proper
References
External links
Memphis Beale Street Brass Note Submission Biography
Illustrated Son House discography
Inaugural (1980) inductee to Blues Hall of Fame (bio by Jim O'Neal)
, History of National Reso-Phonic Guitars, Part 3
House Discography at Smithsonian Folkways
(biography by Cub Koda)
Bob West interview of Son House March 16, 1968
Delta blues musicians
Country blues musicians
Blues revival musicians
Gospel blues musicians
Country blues singers
American blues guitarists
American male guitarists
Blues musicians from Mississippi
Resonator guitarists
Juke Joint blues musicians
Slide guitarists
Columbia Records artists
1902 births
1988 deaths
20th-century American criminals
People from Coahoma County, Mississippi
Deaths from cancer in Michigan
Paramount Records artists
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Mississippi
People from Lula, Mississippi
American male criminals
Mississippi Blues Trail
African-American guitarists
20th-century African-American male singers | true | [
"Anything Can Happen is a 1952 comedy-drama film.\n\nAnything Can Happen may also refer to:\n\n Anything Can Happen (album), by Leon Russell, 1994\n \"Anything Can Happen\", a 2019 song by Saint Jhn \n Edhuvum Nadakkum ('Anything Can Happen'), a season of the Tamil TV series Marmadesam\n \"Anything Can Happen in the Next Half Hour\", or \"Anything Can Happen\", a 2007 song by Enter Shikari\n Anything Can Happen in the Next Half Hour (EP), 2004\n\nSee also\n \"Anything Could Happen\", a 2012 song by Ellie Goulding \n Anything Might Happen, 1934 British crime film\n Special Effects: Anything Can Happen, a 1996 American documentary film\n \"Anything Can Happen on Halloween\", a song from the 1986 film The Worst Witch \n Anything Can Happen in the Theatre, a musical revue of works by Maury Yeston\n \"The Anything Can Happen Recurrence\", an episode of The Big Bang Theory (season 7)\n The Anupam Kher Show - Kucch Bhi Ho Sakta Hai ('The Anupam Kher Show — Anything Can Happen') an Indian TV show",
"\"Anything Can Happen in the Next Half Hour...\" (often shortened to \"Anything Can Happen\") is the second physical single, and third overall, by Enter Shikari and the second single to be released from their debut album Take to the Skies. It was released on 18 February 2007 for digital download and on 5 March 2007 on both CD and 7\" vinyl. It is the band's highest charting single, charting at #27 in the UK single chart, and number 1 on the UK indie chart. There are two remixes of the song, Colon Open Bracket Remix and Grayedout Mix. Both are up for download on their official download store.\n\nTrack listing\n\n CD\n \"Anything Can Happen in the Next Half Hour...\" (Rou, Enter Shikari) - 4:40\n \"Kickin' Back on the Surface of Your Cheek\" (Rou, Enter Shikari) - 3:50\n \"Keep It on Ice\" (Rou) - 2:51\n\n 7\"\n\n \"Anything Can Happen in the Next Half Hour...\" (Rou, Enter Shikari) - 4:40\n \"Kickin' Back on the Surface of Your Cheek\" (Rou, Enter Shikari) - 3:50\n\nOriginal version\nIn the original version of the song, a sample is heard from the introduction of the popular 1960s TV series Stingray in which the character says \"Anything can happen in the next half hour\". This is, however, not heard in the re-recorded version.\n\nChart performance\n\nPersonnel\n\nEnter Shikari\nRoughton \"Rou\" Reynolds - vocals, electronics\nLiam \"Rory\" Clewlow - guitar\nChris Batten - bass, vocals\nRob Rolfe - drums\nProduction\nEnter Shikari - production\nJohn Mitchell - recording\nBen Humphreys - recording\nMartin Giles - mastering\nKeaton Henson - illustration, design\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Video - \"Anything Can Happen in the Next Half Hour...\" video.\n Original Video - Original video using the 2004 EP version of the song.\n Stingray Introduction - The phrase can be heard at 0:44\n\n2007 singles\nEnter Shikari songs\nSong articles missing an audio sample\n2007 songs"
] |
[
"Son House",
"Blues performer",
"What were the names of some of the songs he sang?",
"My Black Mama\" and \"Preachin' the Blues\".",
"Were they his original songs or covers?",
"Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: \"",
"How did he become a blues singer?",
"He immediately changed his attitude about the blues,",
"How did his attitude change?",
"Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey,",
"Who was Rube Lacey?",
"a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927",
"What kind of blues was he known for?",
"House developed to a professional standard a blues style",
"Did he play an instrument?",
"I don't know.",
"Anything interesting happen to him?",
"he allegedly shot the man dead."
] | C_046ed8f9fead44f1aac80b6df180076c_0 | Why did he shoot him? | 9 | Why did Son House shoot a man? | Son House | In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style. Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the cafe and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately. CANNOTANSWER | he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, | Edward James "Son" House Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) was an American delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.
After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also working as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. In a short career interrupted by a spell in Parchman Farm penitentiary, he developed his musicianship to the point that Charley Patton, the foremost blues artist of the Mississippi Delta region, invited him to share engagements and to accompany him to a 1930 recording session for Paramount Records.
Issued at the start of the Great Depression, the records did not sell and did not lead to national recognition. Locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton's associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County. There he was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax and John W. Work for the Library of Congress and Fisk University. The following year, he left the Delta for Rochester, New York, and gave up music.
In 1964, a group of young record collectors discovered House, whom they knew of from his records issued by Paramount and by the Library of Congress. With their encouragement, he relearned his repertoire and established a career as an entertainer, performing for young, mostly white audiences in coffeehouses, at folk festivals and on concert tours during the American folk music revival, billed as a "folk blues" singer. He recorded several albums, and some informally taped concerts have also been issued as albums. House died in 1988. In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Biography
Early life
House was born in the hamlet of Lyon, north of Clarksdale, Mississippi, the second of three brothers, and lived in the rural Mississippi Delta until his parents separated, when he was about seven or eight years old. His father, Eddie House, Sr., was a musician, playing the tuba in a band with his brothers and sometimes playing the guitar. He was a church member but also a drinker; he left the church for a time, on account of his drinking, but then gave up alcohol and became a Baptist deacon. Young Eddie House adopted the family commitment to religion and churchgoing. He also absorbed the family love of music but confined himself to singing, showing no interest in the family instrumental band, and hostile to the blues on religious grounds.
When House's parents separated, his mother took him to Tallulah, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi. When he was in his early teens, they moved to Algiers, New Orleans. Recalling these years, he would later speak of his hatred of blues and his passion for churchgoing (he described himself as "churchy" and "churchified"). At fifteen, probably while living in Algiers, he began preaching sermons.
At the age of nineteen, while living in the Delta, he married Carrie Martin, an older woman from New Orleans. This was a significant step for House; he married in church and against family opposition. The couple moved to her hometown of Centerville, Louisiana, to help run her father's farm. After a couple of years, feeling used and disillusioned, House recalled, "I left her hanging on the gatepost, with her father tellin' me to come back so we could plow some more." Around the same time, probably 1922, House's mother died. In later years, he was still angry about his marriage and said of Carrie, "She wasn't nothin' but one of them New Orleans whores".
House's resentment of farming extended to the many menial jobs he took as a young adult. He moved frequently, on one occasion taking off to East Saint Louis to work in a steel plant. The one job he enjoyed was on a Louisiana horse ranch, which later he celebrated by wearing a cowboy hat in his performances. He found an escape from manual labor when, following a conversion experience ("getting religion") in his early twenties, he was accepted as a paid pastor, first in the Baptist Church and then in the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. However, he fell into habits which conflicted with his calling—drinking like his father and probably also womanizing. This led him after several years of conflict to leave the church, ceasing his full-time commitment, although he continued to preach sermons from time to time.
Blues performer
In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion. In a hamlet south of Clarksdale, he heard one of his drinking companions, either James McCoy or Willie Wilson (his recollections differed), playing bottleneck guitar, a style he had never heard before. He immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins, and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson. Two songs he learned from McCoy would later be among his best known: "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues". Another source of inspiration was Rube Lacey, a much better known performer who had recorded for Columbia Records in 1927 (no titles were released) and for Paramount Records in 1928 (two titles were released). In an astonishingly short time, with only these four musicians as models, House developed to a professional standard a blues style based on his religious singing and simple bottleneck guitar style.
Around 1927 or 1928, he had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree, wounding House in the leg, and he allegedly shot the man dead. House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929. He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked. The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Upon his release in 1929 or early 1930, House was strongly advised to leave Clarksdale and stay away. He walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula, having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation. With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance. Patton watched House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him. He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the café and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight. Patton invited House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown. House formed a liaison with Knight, and both musicians profited from association with her bootlegging activities. The musical partnership is disputed by Patton's biographers Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow. They consider that House's musicianship was too limited to play with Patton and Brown, who were also rumoured to be estranged at the time. They also cite one statement by House that he did not play for dances in Lula. Beaumont concluded that House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately.
Recording
In 1930, Art Laibly of Paramount Records traveled to Lula to persuade Patton to record several more sides in Grafton, Wisconsin. Along with Patton came House, Brown, and the pianist Louise Johnson, all of whom recorded sides for the label. House recorded nine songs during that session, eight of which were released, but they were commercial failures. He did not record again commercially for 35 years, but he continued to play with Patton and Brown, and with Brown after Patton's death in 1934. During this time, House worked as a tractor driver for various plantations in the Lake Cormorant area.
Alan Lomax recorded House for the Library of Congress in 1941. Willie Brown, the mandolin player Fiddlin' Joe Martin, and the harmonica player Leroy Williams played with House on these recordings. Lomax returned to the area in 1942, where he recorded House once more.
House then faded from the public view, moving to Rochester, New York, in 1943, and working as a railroad porter for the New York Central Railroad and as a chef.
Rediscovery
In 1964, after a long search of the Mississippi Delta region by Nick Perls, Dick Waterman and Phil Spiro, House was "rediscovered" in Rochester, New York working at a train station. He had been retired from the music business for many years and was unaware of the 1960s folk blues revival and international enthusiasm for his early recordings.
He subsequently toured extensively in the United States and Europe and recorded for CBS Records. Like Mississippi John Hurt, he was welcomed into the music scene of the 1960s and played at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, the New York Folk Festival in July 1965, and the October 1967 European tour of the American Folk Festival, along with Skip James and Bukka White.
The young guitarist Alan Wilson (later of Canned Heat) was a fan of House's. The producer John Hammond asked Wilson, who was just 22 years old, to teach "Son House how to play like Son House," because Wilson had such a good knowledge of blues styles. House subsequently recorded the album Father of Folk Blues, later reissued as a 2-CD set Father of Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions. House performed with Wilson live, as can be heard on "Levee Camp Moan" on the album John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions.
House appeared in Seattle on March 19, 1968, arranged by the Seattle Folklore Society. The concert was recorded by Bob West and issued on Acola Records as a CD in 2006. The Arcola CD also included an interview of House recorded on November 15, 1969 in Seattle.
In the summer of 1970, House toured Europe once again, including an appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival; a recording of his London concerts was released by Liberty Records. He also played at the two Days of Blues Festival in Toronto in 1974. On an appearance on the TV arts show Camera Three, he was accompanied by the blues guitarist Buddy Guy.
Ill health plagued House in his later years, and in 1974 he retired once again. He later moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he remained until his death from cancer of the larynx. He had been married five times. He was buried at the Mt. Hazel Cemetery. Members of the Detroit Blues Society raised money through benefit concerts to put a monument on his grave.
Honors
In 2007, House was honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Tunica, Mississippi.
In 2017, his single "Preachin' the Blues" was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Discography
78-RPM recordings
Recorded May 28, 1930, in Grafton, Wisconsin, for Paramount Records
"Walking Blues" (unissued and lost until 1985)
"My Black Mama – Part I"
"My Black Mama – Part II"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part I"
"Preachin' the Blues – Part II"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part I"
"Dry Spell Blues – Part II"
"Clarksdale Moan" (unissued and lost until 2006)
"Mississippi County Farm Blues" (unissued and lost until 2006)
Recordings for Library of Congress and Fisk University
Recorded August 1941, at Klack's Store, Lake Cormorant, Mississippi.
There are some railway noises in the background on some titles, as the store (which had electricity necessary for the recording) was close to a branch line between Lake Cormorant and Robinsonville.
"Levee Camp Blues", with Willie Brown, Fiddlin' Joe Martin, Leroy Williams
"Government Fleet Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Walking Blues", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Shetland Pony Blues", with Brown
"Fo' Clock Blues", with Brown, Martin
"Camp Hollers", with Brown, Martin, Williams
"Delta Blues", with Williams
Recorded July 17, 1942, Robinsonville, Mississippi
"Special Rider Blues" [test]
"Special Rider Blues"
"Low Down Dirty Dog Blues"
"Depot Blues"
"Key of Minor" (Interviews: Demonstration of concert guitar tuning)
"American Defense"
"Am I Right or Wrong"
"Walking Blues"
"County Farm Blues"
"The Pony Blues"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 1)"
"The Jinx Blues (No. 2)"
The music from both sessions and most of the recorded interviews have been reissued on LP and CD.
Singles
"The Pony Blues" / "The Jinx Blues", Part 1 (1967)
"Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" (Willie Brown) / "Shetland Pony Blues" (1967)
"Death Letter" (1985)
Other albums
This list is incomplete. For a complete list, see external links.
The Complete Library of Congress Sessions (1964), Travelin' Man CD 02
Blues from the Mississippi Delta, with J. D. Short (1964), Folkways Records
The Legendary Son House: Father of Folk Blues (1965), Columbia 2417
In Concert (Oberlin College, 1965), Stack-O-Hits 9004
Delta Blues (1941–1942), Smithsonian 31028
Son House & Blind Lemon Jefferson (1926–1941), Biograph 12040
The Real Delta Blues (1964–1965 recordings), Blue Goose Records 2016
Son House & the Great Delta Blues Singers, with Willie Brown and others, Document CD 5002
Son House at Home: Complete 1969, Document 5148
Son House (Library of Congress), Folk Lyric 9002
John the Revelator, Liberty 83391
American Folk Blues Festival '67 (1 cut), Optimism CD 2070
Son House (1965-1969), Private Record PR 1
Son House – Vol. 2 (1964–1974), Private Record PR 2 (1987)
Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions, Sony/Legacy CD 48867
Living Legends (1 cut, 1966), Verve/Folkways 3010
Real Blues (1 cut, University of Chicago, 1964), Takoma 7081
John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions, Sequel CD 207
Son House (1964–1970), Document (limited edition of 20 copies)
Great Bluesmen/Newport, (2 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77/78
Blues with a Feeling (3 cuts, 1965), Vanguard CD 77005
Masters of the Country Blues, House and Bukka White, Yazoo Video 500
Delta Blues and Spirituals (1995)
In Concert (Live) (1996)
"Live" at Gaslight Cafe, N.Y.C., January 3, 1965 (2000)
New York Central Live (2003)
Delta Blues (1941–1942) (2003), Biograph CD 118
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40134
Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways, vol. 2 (2003), Smithsonian Folkways 40148
The Very Best of Son House: Heroes of the Blues (2003), Shout! Factory 30251
Proper Introduction to Son House (2004), Proper
References
External links
Memphis Beale Street Brass Note Submission Biography
Illustrated Son House discography
Inaugural (1980) inductee to Blues Hall of Fame (bio by Jim O'Neal)
, History of National Reso-Phonic Guitars, Part 3
House Discography at Smithsonian Folkways
(biography by Cub Koda)
Bob West interview of Son House March 16, 1968
Delta blues musicians
Country blues musicians
Blues revival musicians
Gospel blues musicians
Country blues singers
American blues guitarists
American male guitarists
Blues musicians from Mississippi
Resonator guitarists
Juke Joint blues musicians
Slide guitarists
Columbia Records artists
1902 births
1988 deaths
20th-century American criminals
People from Coahoma County, Mississippi
Deaths from cancer in Michigan
Paramount Records artists
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Mississippi
People from Lula, Mississippi
American male criminals
Mississippi Blues Trail
African-American guitarists
20th-century African-American male singers | true | [
"Why Shoot the Teacher? is a 1977 Canadian comedy-drama film directed by Silvio Narizzano and starring Bud Cort, Samantha Eggar, Kenneth Griffith, and Chris Wiggins. It is based on a book of the same name by Max Braithwaite.\n\nPlot\nThe plot is set in 1935, during the Depression. Max Brown (Bud Cort) is an urban east-province Canadian fresh from college who travels to Western Canada to accept a teaching position at a one-room rural schoolhouse in the fictional settlement of Willowgreen, Saskatchewan, because there are no other jobs available.\n\nHe decides to live in the school's basement, having to adapt to teaching in the Depression-era rural setting, especially given the bleakness of the settlement. His students at first are rebellious, but it eventually changes to a connection between student and teacher as Max gets into a love for Alice Field (played by Samantha Eggar), going to him for emotional support.\n\nMax barely gets paid and he suffers through the paltry winter of Willowgreen, especially suffering given his physical and emotional isolation in the town, only finding solace in Harris Montgomery (played by Gary Reineke) and Alice Field, who both try to use him to solve their problems of political socialism and her being a war bride of Britain.\n\nMax eventually begins to understand Willowgreen and the rural struggles, as the inspector (Kenneth Griffith) comes in to look at his work, which does not end too well. The school year ends as Max is getting on a train back east, but before the credits roll, he tells us he returned the following September to teach another year at Willowgreen.\n\nCast\n Bud Cort as Max Brown \n Samantha Eggar as Alice Field \n Chris Wiggins as Lyle Bishop \n Gary Reineke as Harris Montgomery \n John Friesen as Dave McDougall \n Michael J. Reynolds as Bert Field \n Kenneth Griffith as Inspector Woods \n Scott Swan as Dan Trowbridge\n\nProduction notes\nWhy Shoot the Teacher? was filmed on location at Hanna, Alberta. The film was produced with the assistance of the Canadian Film Development Corporation.\n\nReception\nJames DeFelice won a 1978 Canadian Film Award for the film's adapted screenplay. The film also won the Golden Reel Award for attaining higher box-office gross revenues of that year than any other Canadian film with a gross of $1.8 million.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nWhy Shoot the Teacher? at the Canadian Film Encyclopedia\nWhy Shoot the Teacher?, movie review at The New York Times\n \n\n1977 films\nCanadian films\nCanadian comedy-drama films\nCanadian Screen Award-winning films\nEnglish-language Canadian films\nFilms set in Saskatchewan\nFilms shot in Alberta\nFilms about educators\nFilms set in 1935\nFilms directed by Silvio Narizzano",
"Robin Hood Newly Revived is Child ballad 128, and an origin story for Will Scarlet.\n\nSynopsis\nRobin Hood and Little John are hunting when they see a finely dressed stranger shoot a deer. Robin says if he accepts it, he can be a yeoman in their band. The stranger threatens him, and forbids him to sound his horn. They aim arrows at each other, and Robin proposes that they fight with swords instead. They strike some blows. Robin asks him who he is, and he is Young Gamwell, and, because he killed his father's steward, he is seeking his uncle, who is called Robin Hood. That stops their fight, and they join the band. Little John asks why he is gone so long, and Robin says they were fighting, but Little John must not fight him. He names his nephew Scarlet.\n\nSee also\nAnother variation of this story was collected as Child ballad 132, The Bold Pedlar and Robin Hood.\n\nExternal links\nRobin Hood and the Newly Revived\n\nChild Ballads\nRobin Hood ballads"
] |
[
"Eddie Rabbitt",
"Crossover success"
] | C_fcb40ea6cb984513afd1f37ff6f823be_0 | what is crossover success | 1 | What is the crossover success for Eddie Rabbitt? | Eddie Rabbitt | While he was still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also opened for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour, but soon Rabbitt would himself break through on other charts. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. The album produced Rabbitt's first crossover single of his career, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in a 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at No. 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks at the debut of Brooks' 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the No. 17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point in his career Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley." Rabbitt's next album Horizon, which reached platinum status, contained the biggest crossover hits of his career including "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment that he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Driving" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" from Dylan's 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. His popularity was so strong at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he went on to respectfully decline stating "It's not worth the gamble." The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top 5 on Country, Adult Contemporary and the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's final album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, to record "You and I", which was included in his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and eventually became a large pop smash, peaking at No. 7 and No. 2 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary chart. The song's popularity reached the point where it was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second Greatest Hits compilation in 1983 was his final crossover hit, reaching No. 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart. CANNOTANSWER | biggest crossover hits of his career including "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." | Edward Thomas Rabbitt (November 27, 1941 – May 7, 1998) was an American country music singer and songwriter. His career began as a songwriter in the late 1960s, springboarding to a recording career after composing hits such as "Kentucky Rain" for Elvis Presley in 1970 and "Pure Love" for Ronnie Milsap in 1974. Later in the 1970s, Rabbitt helped to develop the crossover-influenced sound of country music prevalent in the 1980s with such hits as "Suspicions", "I Love a Rainy Night" (a number-one hit single on the Billboard Hot 100), and "Every Which Way but Loose" (the theme from the film of the same title). His duets "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)" with Juice Newton and "You and I" with Crystal Gayle later appeared on the soap operas Days of Our Lives and All My Children.
Early life
Rabbitt was born to Irish immigrants Thomas Michael and Mae (née Joyce) Rabbitt in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941, and was raised in the nearby community of East Orange, New Jersey. His father was an oil-refinery refrigeration worker, and a skilled fiddle and accordion player, who often entertained in local New York City dance halls. By age 12, Rabbitt was a proficient guitar player, having been taught by his scoutmaster, Bob Scwickrath. During his childhood Rabbitt became a self-proclaimed "walking encyclopedia of country music". After his parents divorced, he dropped out of school at age 16. His mother, Mae, explained that Eddie "was never one for school [because] his head was too full of music." He later obtained a high-school diploma at night school.
Career
Early career
Rabbitt worked as a mental hospital attendant in the late 1950s, but like his father, he fulfilled his love of music by performing at the Six Steps Down club in his hometown. He later won a talent contest and was given an hour of Saturday night radio show time to broadcast a live performance from a bar in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1964, he signed his first record deal with 20th Century Records and released the singles "Next to the Note" and "Six Nights and Seven Days". Four years later, with $1,000 to his name, Rabbitt moved to Nashville, where he began his career as a songwriter. During his first night in the town, Rabbitt wrote "Working My Way Up to the Bottom", which Roy Drusky recorded in 1968. To support himself, Rabbitt worked as a truck driver, soda jerk and fruit picker in Nashville. He was ultimately hired as a staff writer for the Hill & Range Publishing Company for $37.50 per week. As a young songwriter, Rabbitt socialized with other aspiring writers at Wally's Clubhouse, a Nashville bar; he said he and the other patrons had "no place else to go."
Rabbitt became successful as a songwriter in 1969, when Elvis Presley recorded his song "Kentucky Rain". The song went gold and cast Rabbitt as one of Nashville's leading young songwriters. Presley also recorded Rabbitt's song "Patch It Up", featured in the concert film "Elvis: That's the Way It Is". And a lesser known Presley song called "Inherit the Wind "on the Album Elvis Back in Memphis. While eating Cap'n Crunch, he penned "Pure Love", which Ronnie Milsap rode to number one in 1974. This song led to a contract offer from Elektra Records.
Rabbitt signed with Elektra Records in 1975. His first single under that label, "You Get to Me", made the top 40 that year, and two songs in 1975, "Forgive and Forget" and "I Should Have Married You", nearly made the top 10. These three songs, along with a recording of "Pure Love", were included on Rabbitt's 1975 self-named debut album. In 1976, his critically acclaimed album Rocky Mountain Music was released, which included Rabbitt's first number-one country hit, "Drinkin' My Baby (Off My Mind)". In 1977, his third album, Rabbitt, was released, and made the top five on Country Albums chart. Also in 1977, the Academy of Country Music named Rabbitt "Top New Male Vocalist of the Year". By that time, he had a good reputation in Nashville, and was being compared by critics to singer Kris Kristofferson. In 1977, at Knott's Berry Farm, Rabbitt appeared at the Country Music Awards and sang several of his songs from Rocky Mountain Music. He won the Top New Male Vocalist of the Year award.
Crossover success
While still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more number-one hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. It produced Rabbitt's first crossover single, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in the 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at number 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks's 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the number-17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B-flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number five on the Adult Contemporary charts. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point, Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley".
Rabbitt's next album, Horizon, reached platinum status and contained the biggest crossover hits of his career, "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Drivin'" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues". His popularity was so great at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he respectfully declined, saying "It's not worth the gamble."
The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top five on the Country, Adult Contemporary, and Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's last album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, on "You and I", which was included on his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached number one on the Billboard Country chart and became a pop smash, peaking at number seven and number two, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts. It was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second compilation, Greatest Hits - Volume II (1983), was his last crossover hit, reaching number 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
Late career
During the 1980s, Rabbitt moved further from crossover-styled music. His 1984 album The Best Year of My Life produced a number-one country hit and three more top-10 country hits, but none had crossover success. The illness and subsequent death of his son put his career on hold following the 1985 RCA Records release Rabbitt Trax, which included the number one "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)", a duet with country pop star Juice Newton. Like "You and I", the song was used as the theme for a soap opera, Days of Our Lives.
Rabbitt returned from his hiatus in 1988 with the release of I Wanna Dance With You, which despite somewhat negative reviews produced two number-one songs, a cover of Dion's "The Wanderer" and the album's title track. Additionally, "We Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right" entered the top 10, although the album's final single "That's Why I Fell in Love with You" stalled at number 66. Rabbitt's Capitol Records album Jersey Boy was reviewed positively, as was its single "On Second Thought", Rabbitt's last number-one hit. The album also included "American Boy", a patriotic tune popular during the Gulf War and used in Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was among the many country singers who suffered a dramatic decline in chart success beginning in 1991. That year, he released Ten Rounds, which produced the final charting single of his career, "Hang Up the Phone". Following that release, he left Capitol Records to tour with his band Hare Trigger.
In 1997, Rabbitt signed with Intersound Records, but was soon diagnosed with lung cancer. After a round of chemotherapy, he released the album Beatin' the Odds. In 1998, he released his last studio album, Songs from Rabbittland.
Musical styles
Rabbitt used innovative techniques to tie country music themes with light rhythm and blues-influenced tempos. His songs often used echo, as Rabbitt routinely sang his own background vocals. In a process called the "Eddie Rabbitt Chorale", Rabbitt compensated for what Billboard Magazine described as a "somewhat thin and reedy voice" by recording songs in three-part harmonies. His music was compared to rockabilly, particularly the album Horizon, which was noted as having an Elvis-like sound. Rabbitt remarked that he liked "a lot of the old Memphis sounds that came out of Sun Records" during the 1950s, and that he "wanted to catch the magic of a live band." He credited such wide-ranging artists as Bob Dylan, Elton John, Steely Dan, Elvis Presley, and Willie Nelson with influencing his works. When putting together an album, Rabbitt tried to make sure he put in "ten potential singles...no fillers, no junk." He remembered listening to albums as a child and hearing "two hits and a bunch of garbage."
Rabbitt believed that country music was "Irish music" and that "the minor chords in [his] music gave it that mystical feel." Although he did not strive to produce pop music, his songs helped influence the direction of country music, leading to the Urban Cowboy era during the 1980s. Critic Harry Sumrall of the San Jose Mercury News said that Rabbitt was "like a hot corn dog: nothing fancy, nothing frilly. You know what you're getting and you like it...never a country purist, Rabbitt nonetheless makes music that is plain and simple, with all of the virtues that make good country good. [His songs] might be brisk, but they are also warm and familiar, like the breeze that wafts in over the fried artichokes."
During the early 1990s, Rabbitt voiced criticism of hip hop music, particularly rap, which he said was sending a negative message to youths. He stated that the music was "inciting a generation" and that it had helped to contribute to the high rates of teenaged pregnancy, high-school dropouts, and rapes during this period.
Personal life
When Rabbitt arrived in Nashville during the late 1960s, a friend gave him a pet chicken. Rabbitt said he had "an affinity for animals" and kept the bird for a while before giving it to a farmer. During his Nashville days in the early 1970s, Rabbitt had a pet monkey, Jojo. Before his Rocky Mountain Music tour, the monkey bit Rabbitt, leaving his right arm in bandages.
In 1976, Rabbitt married Janine Girardi, whom he called "a little thing about five feet tall, with long, black beautiful hair, and a real pretty face." He had previously written the songs "Pure Love" and "Sweet Janine" for her. They had three children, Demelza, Timmy, and Tommy. Timmy was diagnosed with biliary atresia upon birth. The condition required a liver transplant for survival and he underwent one in 1985, but the attempt failed and he died. Rabbitt temporarily put his career on hiatus, saying, "I didn't want to be out of the music business, but where I was more important." Tommy was born in 1986.
Rabbitt felt his responsibility as an entertainer was to be a good role model and he was an advocate for many charitable organizations, including the Special Olympics, Easter Seals, and the American Council on Transplantation, of which he served as honorary chairman. He also worked as a spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and United Cerebral Palsy.
Rabbitt was a registered Republican and let Bob Dole use his song "American Boy" during Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was also a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation and visited the set during the show's fifth season in 1991–92.
Death
Rabbitt, a longtime smoker, died on May 7, 1998, in Nashville from lung cancer at the age of 56. He had been diagnosed with the disease in March 1997 and had received radiation treatment and surgery to remove part of one lung. His body was interred at Calvary Cemetery in Nashville on May 8, 1998.
No media outlets reported the death until after the burial at the family's request. The news came as a surprise to many in Nashville, including the performer's agent, who "had no idea Eddie was terminal" and had talked to him often, remarking that Rabbitt "was always upbeat and cheerful" in the final months of his life. Although he was widely believed to have been born in 1944 (this year can still be found in older publications and texts), at the time of his death, he was revealed to have been born in 1941.
Awards
Discography
References
External links
Eddie Rabbitt at CMT.com
Family Ties - People.com Archives
Eddie Rabbitt Did the 'roadie' Theme for a Reason: He's the Groupies' New Fantasy Figure - People.com Archives
1941 births
1998 deaths
American country singer-songwriters
American people of Irish descent
American male singer-songwriters
Deaths from cancer in Tennessee
Deaths from lung cancer
Elektra Records artists
Musicians from Brooklyn
RCA Records Nashville artists
20th-century American singers
Singer-songwriters from New York (state)
Country musicians from New York (state)
20th-century American male singers
New York (state) Republicans | false | [
"\"Do You Love What You Feel\" is a 1989 single by Inner City. The single is not to be confused with the 1979 crossover song of the same name by Rufus and Chaka Khan. The single continued Inner City's success on both the American dance play and UK charts. The single made the top twenty on the UK singles chart and reached number one on the Dance Club Play chart for one week.\n\nReferences\n\n1989 singles\nInner City (band) songs\n1989 songs\nSongs written by Kevin Saunderson\nSongs written by Paris Grey",
"Class XD (crossover displacement) is a proprietary and patented amplifier technology developed in-house by Cambridge Audio.\nFirst appearing in 2006 in the Azur 840A integrated amplifier, the Crossover Displacement design sought to combine the performance of a traditional Class A design with the efficiency of Class B but without the linearity and distortion limitations of Class AB.\nIn Class A amplification the output transistors are modulated by the audio signal to turn more or less ‘on’ but never actually turn off, however in Class B the output transistors actually at some point turn off as the output is passed from one transistor to another.\n\nIt is at the point at which the output moving from one transistor to another (the crossover point) that a small amount of distortion is created. \"This crossover distortion is inevitable and although it can be minimized, Cambridge's Class XD alternative doesn't eliminate crossover distortion, it shifts it away from the zero-crossing point of the waveform.\"\n\nAmplifier technology\n\nClass A \nAvoids this crossover distortion (because the transistors are always on) but at the expense of a lot of heat generation. Managing this heat and power dissipation inevitably means that Class A designs are much more expensive to implement and often of lower power output so as to minimize the heat build-up as much as possible.\n\nClass B\nInherently generates crossover distortion, and inconveniently displays this non-linearity at the zero-crossing, where it is always in evidence no matter how low the signal amplitude. At one unique value of quiescent current the distortion produced is a minimum, and this is what characterizes optimal Class B; however at no value can it be made to disappear. It is in fact inherent in the classical Class B operation of a pair of output transistors.\n\nClass XD \nIt would be much more desirable to have an amplifier that would give Class A performance up to the transition level, with Class B after that, rather than AB. This would abolish the AB gain changes that cause extra distortion. \nThis is the basic Class XD principle, and it’s a very simple one, develop a topology that displaces the crossover point to one side of zero crossing - it can be either positive or negative. This is achieved by the injection of an extra current, into the output point of a conventional Class B amplifier. \nThe added ‘displacement’ current does not directly alter the voltage at the output - the output stage inherently has low output impedance, and this is further lowered by the use of global negative feedback. What it does do is alter the pattern of current flowing in the output devices. The displacement current can be sunk to V- from the output, or sourced from V+, so the crossover region is either displaced downward or is pulled upwards. This is arbitrary as the direction of displacement makes no difference; either could be used.\n\nAdvantages \nClass XD pushes crossover distortion away from the central point where the amplifier output spends most of its time\nBelow the transition point the amplifier actually runs in pure Class A with no crossover artifacts at all\nAbove the transition point the amplifier moves into an optimized Class B with still lower distortion than is possible with Class AB\nMuch lower heat than Class A, although more than conventional Class AB designs.\n\nReferences \n\n \nBramble, M; Self, D (2006). \"Cambridge Audio 840A Class XD integrated amplifier\"\n(Dec 2012) \"Cambridge Audio Azur 851A review\", WhatHifi.com\nAshley (Mar 2014). \"Cambridge Audio Azur 851A Review\", Audioappraisal.com\nGader, N (Apr 2009). \"Tested: Cambridge Azur 840E Preamplifier and 840W Power Amplifier\", The Absolute Sound\nMartens, C (Nov 2008). \"Cambridge Audio Azur 840A Class XD Integrated Amplifier\", HiFiPlus\n \n\nAudio amplifiers\nElectronic amplifiers"
] |
[
"Eddie Rabbitt",
"Crossover success",
"what is crossover success",
"biggest crossover hits of his career including \"I Love a Rainy Night\" and \"Drivin' My Life Away.\""
] | C_fcb40ea6cb984513afd1f37ff6f823be_0 | did his father love music too | 2 | Did Eddie Rabbitt's father love music too? | Eddie Rabbitt | While he was still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also opened for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour, but soon Rabbitt would himself break through on other charts. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. The album produced Rabbitt's first crossover single of his career, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in a 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at No. 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks at the debut of Brooks' 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the No. 17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point in his career Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley." Rabbitt's next album Horizon, which reached platinum status, contained the biggest crossover hits of his career including "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment that he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Driving" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" from Dylan's 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. His popularity was so strong at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he went on to respectfully decline stating "It's not worth the gamble." The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top 5 on Country, Adult Contemporary and the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's final album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, to record "You and I", which was included in his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and eventually became a large pop smash, peaking at No. 7 and No. 2 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary chart. The song's popularity reached the point where it was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second Greatest Hits compilation in 1983 was his final crossover hit, reaching No. 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Edward Thomas Rabbitt (November 27, 1941 – May 7, 1998) was an American country music singer and songwriter. His career began as a songwriter in the late 1960s, springboarding to a recording career after composing hits such as "Kentucky Rain" for Elvis Presley in 1970 and "Pure Love" for Ronnie Milsap in 1974. Later in the 1970s, Rabbitt helped to develop the crossover-influenced sound of country music prevalent in the 1980s with such hits as "Suspicions", "I Love a Rainy Night" (a number-one hit single on the Billboard Hot 100), and "Every Which Way but Loose" (the theme from the film of the same title). His duets "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)" with Juice Newton and "You and I" with Crystal Gayle later appeared on the soap operas Days of Our Lives and All My Children.
Early life
Rabbitt was born to Irish immigrants Thomas Michael and Mae (née Joyce) Rabbitt in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941, and was raised in the nearby community of East Orange, New Jersey. His father was an oil-refinery refrigeration worker, and a skilled fiddle and accordion player, who often entertained in local New York City dance halls. By age 12, Rabbitt was a proficient guitar player, having been taught by his scoutmaster, Bob Scwickrath. During his childhood Rabbitt became a self-proclaimed "walking encyclopedia of country music". After his parents divorced, he dropped out of school at age 16. His mother, Mae, explained that Eddie "was never one for school [because] his head was too full of music." He later obtained a high-school diploma at night school.
Career
Early career
Rabbitt worked as a mental hospital attendant in the late 1950s, but like his father, he fulfilled his love of music by performing at the Six Steps Down club in his hometown. He later won a talent contest and was given an hour of Saturday night radio show time to broadcast a live performance from a bar in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1964, he signed his first record deal with 20th Century Records and released the singles "Next to the Note" and "Six Nights and Seven Days". Four years later, with $1,000 to his name, Rabbitt moved to Nashville, where he began his career as a songwriter. During his first night in the town, Rabbitt wrote "Working My Way Up to the Bottom", which Roy Drusky recorded in 1968. To support himself, Rabbitt worked as a truck driver, soda jerk and fruit picker in Nashville. He was ultimately hired as a staff writer for the Hill & Range Publishing Company for $37.50 per week. As a young songwriter, Rabbitt socialized with other aspiring writers at Wally's Clubhouse, a Nashville bar; he said he and the other patrons had "no place else to go."
Rabbitt became successful as a songwriter in 1969, when Elvis Presley recorded his song "Kentucky Rain". The song went gold and cast Rabbitt as one of Nashville's leading young songwriters. Presley also recorded Rabbitt's song "Patch It Up", featured in the concert film "Elvis: That's the Way It Is". And a lesser known Presley song called "Inherit the Wind "on the Album Elvis Back in Memphis. While eating Cap'n Crunch, he penned "Pure Love", which Ronnie Milsap rode to number one in 1974. This song led to a contract offer from Elektra Records.
Rabbitt signed with Elektra Records in 1975. His first single under that label, "You Get to Me", made the top 40 that year, and two songs in 1975, "Forgive and Forget" and "I Should Have Married You", nearly made the top 10. These three songs, along with a recording of "Pure Love", were included on Rabbitt's 1975 self-named debut album. In 1976, his critically acclaimed album Rocky Mountain Music was released, which included Rabbitt's first number-one country hit, "Drinkin' My Baby (Off My Mind)". In 1977, his third album, Rabbitt, was released, and made the top five on Country Albums chart. Also in 1977, the Academy of Country Music named Rabbitt "Top New Male Vocalist of the Year". By that time, he had a good reputation in Nashville, and was being compared by critics to singer Kris Kristofferson. In 1977, at Knott's Berry Farm, Rabbitt appeared at the Country Music Awards and sang several of his songs from Rocky Mountain Music. He won the Top New Male Vocalist of the Year award.
Crossover success
While still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more number-one hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. It produced Rabbitt's first crossover single, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in the 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at number 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks's 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the number-17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B-flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number five on the Adult Contemporary charts. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point, Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley".
Rabbitt's next album, Horizon, reached platinum status and contained the biggest crossover hits of his career, "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Drivin'" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues". His popularity was so great at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he respectfully declined, saying "It's not worth the gamble."
The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top five on the Country, Adult Contemporary, and Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's last album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, on "You and I", which was included on his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached number one on the Billboard Country chart and became a pop smash, peaking at number seven and number two, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts. It was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second compilation, Greatest Hits - Volume II (1983), was his last crossover hit, reaching number 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
Late career
During the 1980s, Rabbitt moved further from crossover-styled music. His 1984 album The Best Year of My Life produced a number-one country hit and three more top-10 country hits, but none had crossover success. The illness and subsequent death of his son put his career on hold following the 1985 RCA Records release Rabbitt Trax, which included the number one "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)", a duet with country pop star Juice Newton. Like "You and I", the song was used as the theme for a soap opera, Days of Our Lives.
Rabbitt returned from his hiatus in 1988 with the release of I Wanna Dance With You, which despite somewhat negative reviews produced two number-one songs, a cover of Dion's "The Wanderer" and the album's title track. Additionally, "We Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right" entered the top 10, although the album's final single "That's Why I Fell in Love with You" stalled at number 66. Rabbitt's Capitol Records album Jersey Boy was reviewed positively, as was its single "On Second Thought", Rabbitt's last number-one hit. The album also included "American Boy", a patriotic tune popular during the Gulf War and used in Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was among the many country singers who suffered a dramatic decline in chart success beginning in 1991. That year, he released Ten Rounds, which produced the final charting single of his career, "Hang Up the Phone". Following that release, he left Capitol Records to tour with his band Hare Trigger.
In 1997, Rabbitt signed with Intersound Records, but was soon diagnosed with lung cancer. After a round of chemotherapy, he released the album Beatin' the Odds. In 1998, he released his last studio album, Songs from Rabbittland.
Musical styles
Rabbitt used innovative techniques to tie country music themes with light rhythm and blues-influenced tempos. His songs often used echo, as Rabbitt routinely sang his own background vocals. In a process called the "Eddie Rabbitt Chorale", Rabbitt compensated for what Billboard Magazine described as a "somewhat thin and reedy voice" by recording songs in three-part harmonies. His music was compared to rockabilly, particularly the album Horizon, which was noted as having an Elvis-like sound. Rabbitt remarked that he liked "a lot of the old Memphis sounds that came out of Sun Records" during the 1950s, and that he "wanted to catch the magic of a live band." He credited such wide-ranging artists as Bob Dylan, Elton John, Steely Dan, Elvis Presley, and Willie Nelson with influencing his works. When putting together an album, Rabbitt tried to make sure he put in "ten potential singles...no fillers, no junk." He remembered listening to albums as a child and hearing "two hits and a bunch of garbage."
Rabbitt believed that country music was "Irish music" and that "the minor chords in [his] music gave it that mystical feel." Although he did not strive to produce pop music, his songs helped influence the direction of country music, leading to the Urban Cowboy era during the 1980s. Critic Harry Sumrall of the San Jose Mercury News said that Rabbitt was "like a hot corn dog: nothing fancy, nothing frilly. You know what you're getting and you like it...never a country purist, Rabbitt nonetheless makes music that is plain and simple, with all of the virtues that make good country good. [His songs] might be brisk, but they are also warm and familiar, like the breeze that wafts in over the fried artichokes."
During the early 1990s, Rabbitt voiced criticism of hip hop music, particularly rap, which he said was sending a negative message to youths. He stated that the music was "inciting a generation" and that it had helped to contribute to the high rates of teenaged pregnancy, high-school dropouts, and rapes during this period.
Personal life
When Rabbitt arrived in Nashville during the late 1960s, a friend gave him a pet chicken. Rabbitt said he had "an affinity for animals" and kept the bird for a while before giving it to a farmer. During his Nashville days in the early 1970s, Rabbitt had a pet monkey, Jojo. Before his Rocky Mountain Music tour, the monkey bit Rabbitt, leaving his right arm in bandages.
In 1976, Rabbitt married Janine Girardi, whom he called "a little thing about five feet tall, with long, black beautiful hair, and a real pretty face." He had previously written the songs "Pure Love" and "Sweet Janine" for her. They had three children, Demelza, Timmy, and Tommy. Timmy was diagnosed with biliary atresia upon birth. The condition required a liver transplant for survival and he underwent one in 1985, but the attempt failed and he died. Rabbitt temporarily put his career on hiatus, saying, "I didn't want to be out of the music business, but where I was more important." Tommy was born in 1986.
Rabbitt felt his responsibility as an entertainer was to be a good role model and he was an advocate for many charitable organizations, including the Special Olympics, Easter Seals, and the American Council on Transplantation, of which he served as honorary chairman. He also worked as a spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and United Cerebral Palsy.
Rabbitt was a registered Republican and let Bob Dole use his song "American Boy" during Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was also a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation and visited the set during the show's fifth season in 1991–92.
Death
Rabbitt, a longtime smoker, died on May 7, 1998, in Nashville from lung cancer at the age of 56. He had been diagnosed with the disease in March 1997 and had received radiation treatment and surgery to remove part of one lung. His body was interred at Calvary Cemetery in Nashville on May 8, 1998.
No media outlets reported the death until after the burial at the family's request. The news came as a surprise to many in Nashville, including the performer's agent, who "had no idea Eddie was terminal" and had talked to him often, remarking that Rabbitt "was always upbeat and cheerful" in the final months of his life. Although he was widely believed to have been born in 1944 (this year can still be found in older publications and texts), at the time of his death, he was revealed to have been born in 1941.
Awards
Discography
References
External links
Eddie Rabbitt at CMT.com
Family Ties - People.com Archives
Eddie Rabbitt Did the 'roadie' Theme for a Reason: He's the Groupies' New Fantasy Figure - People.com Archives
1941 births
1998 deaths
American country singer-songwriters
American people of Irish descent
American male singer-songwriters
Deaths from cancer in Tennessee
Deaths from lung cancer
Elektra Records artists
Musicians from Brooklyn
RCA Records Nashville artists
20th-century American singers
Singer-songwriters from New York (state)
Country musicians from New York (state)
20th-century American male singers
New York (state) Republicans | false | [
"Seeta Ramula Kalyanam () is a 2010 Indian Telugu-language action drama film directed by Eeshwar and starring Nithiin and Hansika Motwani in the lead roles. It was dubbed into Hindi as Dushmano Ka Dushman and into Tamil as Rowdy Kottai. It was remade in Odia in 2014 as Mental, starring Anubhav Mohanty. The music was composed by Anoop Rubens with editing by Kotagiri Venkateswara Rao Upon its release on 22 January 2010, it was an average grosser at the box office.\n\nPlot\nChandra Shekhar aka Chandu (Nithiin) is a daredevil youth, a fearless boy. Once, he comes across a beautiful girl named Nandhini, aka Nandu (Hansika Motwani), the daughter of a dreaded factionalist named Peddi Reddy (Suman). So, he loses his heart. He starts teasing her and wants to prove that he sincerely loves Nandu. He tells Nandu that he could do anything for her. Then, the latter tells him that he should not follow her until she calls him. In order to grab her attention, he sends his father (Chandramohan) and mother (Pragathi) to express his love and let her know that they too encourage him instead of trying to divert his attention from love. Later, Nandu realises that she too truly loves him. At this juncture, Jaya Prakash Reddy goes to Peddi Reddy for an alliance for his brother's son Veera Pratap Reddy (Salim Baig). Peddi Reddy refuses to marry Nandu with Veera Pratap Reddy. This flares up the factionalism between the two. At a time when Nandu wants to express her love to Chandu, she is taken away by her father to their village. The climax deals as to how the two meet and how the success of their love turns up.\n\nCast\n\nNithiin as Chandra Shekhar / Chandu / Shekhar\nHansika Motwani as Nandhini \"Nandhu\"\nSuman as Peddi Reddy (Nandhini's father)\nSalim Baig as Veera Pratap\nChandra Mohan as Chandu's father\nPragathi as Chandu's mother\nJaya Prakash Reddy as Veera Pratap's father\nBrahmanandam as Appalaraju / Pappalaraju\nAli\nSubbaraju\nDuvvasi Mohan\nVenu Madhav\nM. S. Narayana\nHema\nSatyam Rajesh as Chandu's friend\nFish Venkat\nNarsing Yadav\n\nSoundtrack\nThe music was composed by Anup Rubens and released by Aditya Music.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n2010s Telugu-language films\n2010 films\nIndian films\nTelugu films remade in other languages",
"Everyone Deserves Music is the fourth studio release by Michael Franti & Spearhead.\n\nTrack listing\nAll songs written by Michael Franti, Dave Shul and Carl Young except where indicated.\n\n \"What I Be\" (4:45)\n \"We Don't Stop\" (Franti, Shul, Young, Wood Farguheson, Jr., Tim Parker) (4:36)\n \"Everyone Deserves Music\" (4:36)\n \"Never Too Late\" (4:50)\n \"Bomb the World\" (4:28)\n \"Pray for Grace\" (4:52)\n \"Love, Why Did You Go Away\" (4:29)\n \"Yes I Will\" (4:01)\n \"Feelin' Free\" (3:54)\n \"Love Invincible\" (3:50)\n \"Bomb the World (Armageddon Version)\" (Franti, Shul, Young, Farguheson) (4:44)\n \"Crazy, Crazy, Crazy\" (3:30)\n\nCharts\n\nCertifications\n\nReferences\n\nMichael Franti albums\n2001 albums"
] |
[
"Eddie Rabbitt",
"Crossover success",
"what is crossover success",
"biggest crossover hits of his career including \"I Love a Rainy Night\" and \"Drivin' My Life Away.\"",
"did his father love music too",
"I don't know."
] | C_fcb40ea6cb984513afd1f37ff6f823be_0 | what was one of his hits | 3 | What was one of Eddie Rabbitt's hits? | Eddie Rabbitt | While he was still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also opened for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour, but soon Rabbitt would himself break through on other charts. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. The album produced Rabbitt's first crossover single of his career, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in a 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at No. 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks at the debut of Brooks' 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the No. 17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point in his career Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley." Rabbitt's next album Horizon, which reached platinum status, contained the biggest crossover hits of his career including "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment that he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Driving" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" from Dylan's 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. His popularity was so strong at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he went on to respectfully decline stating "It's not worth the gamble." The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top 5 on Country, Adult Contemporary and the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's final album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, to record "You and I", which was included in his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and eventually became a large pop smash, peaking at No. 7 and No. 2 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary chart. The song's popularity reached the point where it was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second Greatest Hits compilation in 1983 was his final crossover hit, reaching No. 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart. CANNOTANSWER | "Every Which Way But Loose", | Edward Thomas Rabbitt (November 27, 1941 – May 7, 1998) was an American country music singer and songwriter. His career began as a songwriter in the late 1960s, springboarding to a recording career after composing hits such as "Kentucky Rain" for Elvis Presley in 1970 and "Pure Love" for Ronnie Milsap in 1974. Later in the 1970s, Rabbitt helped to develop the crossover-influenced sound of country music prevalent in the 1980s with such hits as "Suspicions", "I Love a Rainy Night" (a number-one hit single on the Billboard Hot 100), and "Every Which Way but Loose" (the theme from the film of the same title). His duets "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)" with Juice Newton and "You and I" with Crystal Gayle later appeared on the soap operas Days of Our Lives and All My Children.
Early life
Rabbitt was born to Irish immigrants Thomas Michael and Mae (née Joyce) Rabbitt in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941, and was raised in the nearby community of East Orange, New Jersey. His father was an oil-refinery refrigeration worker, and a skilled fiddle and accordion player, who often entertained in local New York City dance halls. By age 12, Rabbitt was a proficient guitar player, having been taught by his scoutmaster, Bob Scwickrath. During his childhood Rabbitt became a self-proclaimed "walking encyclopedia of country music". After his parents divorced, he dropped out of school at age 16. His mother, Mae, explained that Eddie "was never one for school [because] his head was too full of music." He later obtained a high-school diploma at night school.
Career
Early career
Rabbitt worked as a mental hospital attendant in the late 1950s, but like his father, he fulfilled his love of music by performing at the Six Steps Down club in his hometown. He later won a talent contest and was given an hour of Saturday night radio show time to broadcast a live performance from a bar in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1964, he signed his first record deal with 20th Century Records and released the singles "Next to the Note" and "Six Nights and Seven Days". Four years later, with $1,000 to his name, Rabbitt moved to Nashville, where he began his career as a songwriter. During his first night in the town, Rabbitt wrote "Working My Way Up to the Bottom", which Roy Drusky recorded in 1968. To support himself, Rabbitt worked as a truck driver, soda jerk and fruit picker in Nashville. He was ultimately hired as a staff writer for the Hill & Range Publishing Company for $37.50 per week. As a young songwriter, Rabbitt socialized with other aspiring writers at Wally's Clubhouse, a Nashville bar; he said he and the other patrons had "no place else to go."
Rabbitt became successful as a songwriter in 1969, when Elvis Presley recorded his song "Kentucky Rain". The song went gold and cast Rabbitt as one of Nashville's leading young songwriters. Presley also recorded Rabbitt's song "Patch It Up", featured in the concert film "Elvis: That's the Way It Is". And a lesser known Presley song called "Inherit the Wind "on the Album Elvis Back in Memphis. While eating Cap'n Crunch, he penned "Pure Love", which Ronnie Milsap rode to number one in 1974. This song led to a contract offer from Elektra Records.
Rabbitt signed with Elektra Records in 1975. His first single under that label, "You Get to Me", made the top 40 that year, and two songs in 1975, "Forgive and Forget" and "I Should Have Married You", nearly made the top 10. These three songs, along with a recording of "Pure Love", were included on Rabbitt's 1975 self-named debut album. In 1976, his critically acclaimed album Rocky Mountain Music was released, which included Rabbitt's first number-one country hit, "Drinkin' My Baby (Off My Mind)". In 1977, his third album, Rabbitt, was released, and made the top five on Country Albums chart. Also in 1977, the Academy of Country Music named Rabbitt "Top New Male Vocalist of the Year". By that time, he had a good reputation in Nashville, and was being compared by critics to singer Kris Kristofferson. In 1977, at Knott's Berry Farm, Rabbitt appeared at the Country Music Awards and sang several of his songs from Rocky Mountain Music. He won the Top New Male Vocalist of the Year award.
Crossover success
While still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more number-one hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. It produced Rabbitt's first crossover single, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in the 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at number 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks's 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the number-17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B-flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number five on the Adult Contemporary charts. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point, Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley".
Rabbitt's next album, Horizon, reached platinum status and contained the biggest crossover hits of his career, "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Drivin'" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues". His popularity was so great at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he respectfully declined, saying "It's not worth the gamble."
The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top five on the Country, Adult Contemporary, and Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's last album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, on "You and I", which was included on his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached number one on the Billboard Country chart and became a pop smash, peaking at number seven and number two, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts. It was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second compilation, Greatest Hits - Volume II (1983), was his last crossover hit, reaching number 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
Late career
During the 1980s, Rabbitt moved further from crossover-styled music. His 1984 album The Best Year of My Life produced a number-one country hit and three more top-10 country hits, but none had crossover success. The illness and subsequent death of his son put his career on hold following the 1985 RCA Records release Rabbitt Trax, which included the number one "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)", a duet with country pop star Juice Newton. Like "You and I", the song was used as the theme for a soap opera, Days of Our Lives.
Rabbitt returned from his hiatus in 1988 with the release of I Wanna Dance With You, which despite somewhat negative reviews produced two number-one songs, a cover of Dion's "The Wanderer" and the album's title track. Additionally, "We Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right" entered the top 10, although the album's final single "That's Why I Fell in Love with You" stalled at number 66. Rabbitt's Capitol Records album Jersey Boy was reviewed positively, as was its single "On Second Thought", Rabbitt's last number-one hit. The album also included "American Boy", a patriotic tune popular during the Gulf War and used in Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was among the many country singers who suffered a dramatic decline in chart success beginning in 1991. That year, he released Ten Rounds, which produced the final charting single of his career, "Hang Up the Phone". Following that release, he left Capitol Records to tour with his band Hare Trigger.
In 1997, Rabbitt signed with Intersound Records, but was soon diagnosed with lung cancer. After a round of chemotherapy, he released the album Beatin' the Odds. In 1998, he released his last studio album, Songs from Rabbittland.
Musical styles
Rabbitt used innovative techniques to tie country music themes with light rhythm and blues-influenced tempos. His songs often used echo, as Rabbitt routinely sang his own background vocals. In a process called the "Eddie Rabbitt Chorale", Rabbitt compensated for what Billboard Magazine described as a "somewhat thin and reedy voice" by recording songs in three-part harmonies. His music was compared to rockabilly, particularly the album Horizon, which was noted as having an Elvis-like sound. Rabbitt remarked that he liked "a lot of the old Memphis sounds that came out of Sun Records" during the 1950s, and that he "wanted to catch the magic of a live band." He credited such wide-ranging artists as Bob Dylan, Elton John, Steely Dan, Elvis Presley, and Willie Nelson with influencing his works. When putting together an album, Rabbitt tried to make sure he put in "ten potential singles...no fillers, no junk." He remembered listening to albums as a child and hearing "two hits and a bunch of garbage."
Rabbitt believed that country music was "Irish music" and that "the minor chords in [his] music gave it that mystical feel." Although he did not strive to produce pop music, his songs helped influence the direction of country music, leading to the Urban Cowboy era during the 1980s. Critic Harry Sumrall of the San Jose Mercury News said that Rabbitt was "like a hot corn dog: nothing fancy, nothing frilly. You know what you're getting and you like it...never a country purist, Rabbitt nonetheless makes music that is plain and simple, with all of the virtues that make good country good. [His songs] might be brisk, but they are also warm and familiar, like the breeze that wafts in over the fried artichokes."
During the early 1990s, Rabbitt voiced criticism of hip hop music, particularly rap, which he said was sending a negative message to youths. He stated that the music was "inciting a generation" and that it had helped to contribute to the high rates of teenaged pregnancy, high-school dropouts, and rapes during this period.
Personal life
When Rabbitt arrived in Nashville during the late 1960s, a friend gave him a pet chicken. Rabbitt said he had "an affinity for animals" and kept the bird for a while before giving it to a farmer. During his Nashville days in the early 1970s, Rabbitt had a pet monkey, Jojo. Before his Rocky Mountain Music tour, the monkey bit Rabbitt, leaving his right arm in bandages.
In 1976, Rabbitt married Janine Girardi, whom he called "a little thing about five feet tall, with long, black beautiful hair, and a real pretty face." He had previously written the songs "Pure Love" and "Sweet Janine" for her. They had three children, Demelza, Timmy, and Tommy. Timmy was diagnosed with biliary atresia upon birth. The condition required a liver transplant for survival and he underwent one in 1985, but the attempt failed and he died. Rabbitt temporarily put his career on hiatus, saying, "I didn't want to be out of the music business, but where I was more important." Tommy was born in 1986.
Rabbitt felt his responsibility as an entertainer was to be a good role model and he was an advocate for many charitable organizations, including the Special Olympics, Easter Seals, and the American Council on Transplantation, of which he served as honorary chairman. He also worked as a spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and United Cerebral Palsy.
Rabbitt was a registered Republican and let Bob Dole use his song "American Boy" during Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was also a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation and visited the set during the show's fifth season in 1991–92.
Death
Rabbitt, a longtime smoker, died on May 7, 1998, in Nashville from lung cancer at the age of 56. He had been diagnosed with the disease in March 1997 and had received radiation treatment and surgery to remove part of one lung. His body was interred at Calvary Cemetery in Nashville on May 8, 1998.
No media outlets reported the death until after the burial at the family's request. The news came as a surprise to many in Nashville, including the performer's agent, who "had no idea Eddie was terminal" and had talked to him often, remarking that Rabbitt "was always upbeat and cheerful" in the final months of his life. Although he was widely believed to have been born in 1944 (this year can still be found in older publications and texts), at the time of his death, he was revealed to have been born in 1941.
Awards
Discography
References
External links
Eddie Rabbitt at CMT.com
Family Ties - People.com Archives
Eddie Rabbitt Did the 'roadie' Theme for a Reason: He's the Groupies' New Fantasy Figure - People.com Archives
1941 births
1998 deaths
American country singer-songwriters
American people of Irish descent
American male singer-songwriters
Deaths from cancer in Tennessee
Deaths from lung cancer
Elektra Records artists
Musicians from Brooklyn
RCA Records Nashville artists
20th-century American singers
Singer-songwriters from New York (state)
Country musicians from New York (state)
20th-century American male singers
New York (state) Republicans | true | [
"Now That's What I Call Classic Rock Hits is one of many genre-themed compilation albums from the Now! series in the United States, this one focusing on popular classic rock songs from the 1970s. It was released on May 1, 2012.\n\nTrack listing\n\nReception\n\nIn his review for Allmusic, Gregory Heaney says \"the Now series delivers a dose of good ol' classic rock with Now That's What I Call Classic Rock Hits,\" which \"gathers some of rock's most enduring crossover hits.\" Now That's What I Call Classic Rock Hits is \"an album that achieves its primary goal of being able to please most of the people most of the time with a wide-ranging selection of hits that should fit into most anyone's definition of classic rock.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Official U.S. Now That's What I Call Music website\n\n2012 compilation albums\nClassic Rock Hits\nEMI Records compilation albums",
"The Bill Anderson Story: His Greatest Hits is a compilation album by American country singer-songwriter Bill Anderson. It was released in March 1969 and was produced by Owen Bradley. The Bill Anderson Story was a double compilation album that contained his singles released on the Decca label up to that point. It featured many recordings Anderson had issued over the last decade, including several number one hits and top ten hits.\n\nBackground and content\nThe Bill Anderson Story: His Greatest Hits was a double album of Anderson's singles previously released (and recorded) between 1958 and 1968. The sessions for these songs were all produced by Owen Bradley. Bradley was Anderson's longtime producer at the Decca label and was responsible for producing his biggest hits. Between both records, the album contained a total of 24 tracks. Most of these tracks were composed by Anderson as well. It featured songs ranging from his earliest recordings, such as \"That's What It's Like to Be Lonesome.\"\n\nAlso included were his number one hits up to that point: \"Mama Sang a Song,\" \"Still\" and \"I Get the Fever.\" In addition, The Bill Anderson Story featured songs Anderson had composed for other artists, but also recorded himself. Examples of this included his version of \"Once a Day,\" which was a hit for Connie Smith. Another example is \"City Lights,\" a song recorded by Ray Price that helped establish Anderson with his own recording contract. His number one duet single with Jan Howard is also featured on the album, \"For Loving You.\"\n\nRelease and reception\n\nThe Bill Anderson Story: His Greatest Hits was released first in March 1969 on Decca Records. It was the fifth compilation release of his career and first double-length album. It was originally issued as a vinyl LP, containing six songs on both sides of each record. This totaled to 24 songs. It was reissued twice more in the United States, twice by MCA Records. The album peaked at number 43 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart in 1969, becoming his third compilation to reach the chart. In later years, it was reviewed positively by Thom Owens of Allmusic, who rated it 4.5 out of 5 stars. \"Several hits are missing, yet The Bill Anderson Story offers an effective introduction to the popular vocalist's easy-going, muted style,\" Owens commented.\n\nTrack listing\nAll songs composed by Bill Anderson, except where noted.\n\nRecord one\n\nRecord two\n\nPersonnel\nAll credits are adapted from the liner notes of The Bill Anderson Story.\n\n Bill Anderson – lead vocals\n Owen Bradley – record producer\n\nChart performance\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\n1969 albums\nAlbums produced by Owen Bradley\nBill Anderson (singer) compilation albums\nDecca Records albums"
] |
[
"Eddie Rabbitt",
"Crossover success",
"what is crossover success",
"biggest crossover hits of his career including \"I Love a Rainy Night\" and \"Drivin' My Life Away.\"",
"did his father love music too",
"I don't know.",
"what was one of his hits",
"\"Every Which Way But Loose\","
] | C_fcb40ea6cb984513afd1f37ff6f823be_0 | did he receive any awards | 4 | Did Eddie receive any awards from his Hits? | Eddie Rabbitt | While he was still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also opened for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour, but soon Rabbitt would himself break through on other charts. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. The album produced Rabbitt's first crossover single of his career, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in a 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at No. 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks at the debut of Brooks' 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the No. 17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point in his career Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley." Rabbitt's next album Horizon, which reached platinum status, contained the biggest crossover hits of his career including "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment that he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Driving" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" from Dylan's 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. His popularity was so strong at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he went on to respectfully decline stating "It's not worth the gamble." The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top 5 on Country, Adult Contemporary and the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's final album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, to record "You and I", which was included in his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and eventually became a large pop smash, peaking at No. 7 and No. 2 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary chart. The song's popularity reached the point where it was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second Greatest Hits compilation in 1983 was his final crossover hit, reaching No. 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart. CANNOTANSWER | Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits, | Edward Thomas Rabbitt (November 27, 1941 – May 7, 1998) was an American country music singer and songwriter. His career began as a songwriter in the late 1960s, springboarding to a recording career after composing hits such as "Kentucky Rain" for Elvis Presley in 1970 and "Pure Love" for Ronnie Milsap in 1974. Later in the 1970s, Rabbitt helped to develop the crossover-influenced sound of country music prevalent in the 1980s with such hits as "Suspicions", "I Love a Rainy Night" (a number-one hit single on the Billboard Hot 100), and "Every Which Way but Loose" (the theme from the film of the same title). His duets "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)" with Juice Newton and "You and I" with Crystal Gayle later appeared on the soap operas Days of Our Lives and All My Children.
Early life
Rabbitt was born to Irish immigrants Thomas Michael and Mae (née Joyce) Rabbitt in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941, and was raised in the nearby community of East Orange, New Jersey. His father was an oil-refinery refrigeration worker, and a skilled fiddle and accordion player, who often entertained in local New York City dance halls. By age 12, Rabbitt was a proficient guitar player, having been taught by his scoutmaster, Bob Scwickrath. During his childhood Rabbitt became a self-proclaimed "walking encyclopedia of country music". After his parents divorced, he dropped out of school at age 16. His mother, Mae, explained that Eddie "was never one for school [because] his head was too full of music." He later obtained a high-school diploma at night school.
Career
Early career
Rabbitt worked as a mental hospital attendant in the late 1950s, but like his father, he fulfilled his love of music by performing at the Six Steps Down club in his hometown. He later won a talent contest and was given an hour of Saturday night radio show time to broadcast a live performance from a bar in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1964, he signed his first record deal with 20th Century Records and released the singles "Next to the Note" and "Six Nights and Seven Days". Four years later, with $1,000 to his name, Rabbitt moved to Nashville, where he began his career as a songwriter. During his first night in the town, Rabbitt wrote "Working My Way Up to the Bottom", which Roy Drusky recorded in 1968. To support himself, Rabbitt worked as a truck driver, soda jerk and fruit picker in Nashville. He was ultimately hired as a staff writer for the Hill & Range Publishing Company for $37.50 per week. As a young songwriter, Rabbitt socialized with other aspiring writers at Wally's Clubhouse, a Nashville bar; he said he and the other patrons had "no place else to go."
Rabbitt became successful as a songwriter in 1969, when Elvis Presley recorded his song "Kentucky Rain". The song went gold and cast Rabbitt as one of Nashville's leading young songwriters. Presley also recorded Rabbitt's song "Patch It Up", featured in the concert film "Elvis: That's the Way It Is". And a lesser known Presley song called "Inherit the Wind "on the Album Elvis Back in Memphis. While eating Cap'n Crunch, he penned "Pure Love", which Ronnie Milsap rode to number one in 1974. This song led to a contract offer from Elektra Records.
Rabbitt signed with Elektra Records in 1975. His first single under that label, "You Get to Me", made the top 40 that year, and two songs in 1975, "Forgive and Forget" and "I Should Have Married You", nearly made the top 10. These three songs, along with a recording of "Pure Love", were included on Rabbitt's 1975 self-named debut album. In 1976, his critically acclaimed album Rocky Mountain Music was released, which included Rabbitt's first number-one country hit, "Drinkin' My Baby (Off My Mind)". In 1977, his third album, Rabbitt, was released, and made the top five on Country Albums chart. Also in 1977, the Academy of Country Music named Rabbitt "Top New Male Vocalist of the Year". By that time, he had a good reputation in Nashville, and was being compared by critics to singer Kris Kristofferson. In 1977, at Knott's Berry Farm, Rabbitt appeared at the Country Music Awards and sang several of his songs from Rocky Mountain Music. He won the Top New Male Vocalist of the Year award.
Crossover success
While still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more number-one hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. It produced Rabbitt's first crossover single, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in the 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at number 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks's 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the number-17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B-flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number five on the Adult Contemporary charts. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point, Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley".
Rabbitt's next album, Horizon, reached platinum status and contained the biggest crossover hits of his career, "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Drivin'" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues". His popularity was so great at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he respectfully declined, saying "It's not worth the gamble."
The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top five on the Country, Adult Contemporary, and Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's last album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, on "You and I", which was included on his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached number one on the Billboard Country chart and became a pop smash, peaking at number seven and number two, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts. It was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second compilation, Greatest Hits - Volume II (1983), was his last crossover hit, reaching number 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
Late career
During the 1980s, Rabbitt moved further from crossover-styled music. His 1984 album The Best Year of My Life produced a number-one country hit and three more top-10 country hits, but none had crossover success. The illness and subsequent death of his son put his career on hold following the 1985 RCA Records release Rabbitt Trax, which included the number one "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)", a duet with country pop star Juice Newton. Like "You and I", the song was used as the theme for a soap opera, Days of Our Lives.
Rabbitt returned from his hiatus in 1988 with the release of I Wanna Dance With You, which despite somewhat negative reviews produced two number-one songs, a cover of Dion's "The Wanderer" and the album's title track. Additionally, "We Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right" entered the top 10, although the album's final single "That's Why I Fell in Love with You" stalled at number 66. Rabbitt's Capitol Records album Jersey Boy was reviewed positively, as was its single "On Second Thought", Rabbitt's last number-one hit. The album also included "American Boy", a patriotic tune popular during the Gulf War and used in Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was among the many country singers who suffered a dramatic decline in chart success beginning in 1991. That year, he released Ten Rounds, which produced the final charting single of his career, "Hang Up the Phone". Following that release, he left Capitol Records to tour with his band Hare Trigger.
In 1997, Rabbitt signed with Intersound Records, but was soon diagnosed with lung cancer. After a round of chemotherapy, he released the album Beatin' the Odds. In 1998, he released his last studio album, Songs from Rabbittland.
Musical styles
Rabbitt used innovative techniques to tie country music themes with light rhythm and blues-influenced tempos. His songs often used echo, as Rabbitt routinely sang his own background vocals. In a process called the "Eddie Rabbitt Chorale", Rabbitt compensated for what Billboard Magazine described as a "somewhat thin and reedy voice" by recording songs in three-part harmonies. His music was compared to rockabilly, particularly the album Horizon, which was noted as having an Elvis-like sound. Rabbitt remarked that he liked "a lot of the old Memphis sounds that came out of Sun Records" during the 1950s, and that he "wanted to catch the magic of a live band." He credited such wide-ranging artists as Bob Dylan, Elton John, Steely Dan, Elvis Presley, and Willie Nelson with influencing his works. When putting together an album, Rabbitt tried to make sure he put in "ten potential singles...no fillers, no junk." He remembered listening to albums as a child and hearing "two hits and a bunch of garbage."
Rabbitt believed that country music was "Irish music" and that "the minor chords in [his] music gave it that mystical feel." Although he did not strive to produce pop music, his songs helped influence the direction of country music, leading to the Urban Cowboy era during the 1980s. Critic Harry Sumrall of the San Jose Mercury News said that Rabbitt was "like a hot corn dog: nothing fancy, nothing frilly. You know what you're getting and you like it...never a country purist, Rabbitt nonetheless makes music that is plain and simple, with all of the virtues that make good country good. [His songs] might be brisk, but they are also warm and familiar, like the breeze that wafts in over the fried artichokes."
During the early 1990s, Rabbitt voiced criticism of hip hop music, particularly rap, which he said was sending a negative message to youths. He stated that the music was "inciting a generation" and that it had helped to contribute to the high rates of teenaged pregnancy, high-school dropouts, and rapes during this period.
Personal life
When Rabbitt arrived in Nashville during the late 1960s, a friend gave him a pet chicken. Rabbitt said he had "an affinity for animals" and kept the bird for a while before giving it to a farmer. During his Nashville days in the early 1970s, Rabbitt had a pet monkey, Jojo. Before his Rocky Mountain Music tour, the monkey bit Rabbitt, leaving his right arm in bandages.
In 1976, Rabbitt married Janine Girardi, whom he called "a little thing about five feet tall, with long, black beautiful hair, and a real pretty face." He had previously written the songs "Pure Love" and "Sweet Janine" for her. They had three children, Demelza, Timmy, and Tommy. Timmy was diagnosed with biliary atresia upon birth. The condition required a liver transplant for survival and he underwent one in 1985, but the attempt failed and he died. Rabbitt temporarily put his career on hiatus, saying, "I didn't want to be out of the music business, but where I was more important." Tommy was born in 1986.
Rabbitt felt his responsibility as an entertainer was to be a good role model and he was an advocate for many charitable organizations, including the Special Olympics, Easter Seals, and the American Council on Transplantation, of which he served as honorary chairman. He also worked as a spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and United Cerebral Palsy.
Rabbitt was a registered Republican and let Bob Dole use his song "American Boy" during Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was also a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation and visited the set during the show's fifth season in 1991–92.
Death
Rabbitt, a longtime smoker, died on May 7, 1998, in Nashville from lung cancer at the age of 56. He had been diagnosed with the disease in March 1997 and had received radiation treatment and surgery to remove part of one lung. His body was interred at Calvary Cemetery in Nashville on May 8, 1998.
No media outlets reported the death until after the burial at the family's request. The news came as a surprise to many in Nashville, including the performer's agent, who "had no idea Eddie was terminal" and had talked to him often, remarking that Rabbitt "was always upbeat and cheerful" in the final months of his life. Although he was widely believed to have been born in 1944 (this year can still be found in older publications and texts), at the time of his death, he was revealed to have been born in 1941.
Awards
Discography
References
External links
Eddie Rabbitt at CMT.com
Family Ties - People.com Archives
Eddie Rabbitt Did the 'roadie' Theme for a Reason: He's the Groupies' New Fantasy Figure - People.com Archives
1941 births
1998 deaths
American country singer-songwriters
American people of Irish descent
American male singer-songwriters
Deaths from cancer in Tennessee
Deaths from lung cancer
Elektra Records artists
Musicians from Brooklyn
RCA Records Nashville artists
20th-century American singers
Singer-songwriters from New York (state)
Country musicians from New York (state)
20th-century American male singers
New York (state) Republicans | false | [
"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",
"The Drama-Logue Award was an American theater award established in 1977, given by the publishers of Drama-Logue newspaper, a weekly west-coast theater trade publication. Winners were selected by the publication's theater critics, and would receive a certificate at an annual awards ceremony hosted by Drama-Logue founder Bill Bordy. The awards did not require any voting or agreement among critics; each critic could select as many award winners as they wished. As a result, many awards were issued each year. In some years, the number of winners was larger than the seating capacity of the venue where the ceremony was conducted.\n\nThe award categories included Production, Direction, Musical Direction, Choreography, Writing, Performance, Ensemble Performance, Scenic Design, Sound Design, Lighting Design, Costume Design and Hair & Makeup Design.\n\nAcquisition \nIn May 1998, Backstage West bought the Drama-Logue publication, and the two publications merged. The Drama-Logue Awards were subsequently retired and replaced by the Back Stage West Garland Awards.\n\nReferences\n\nAmerican theater awards\nAwards established in 1977\nAwards disestablished in 1998"
] |
[
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"Crossover success",
"what is crossover success",
"biggest crossover hits of his career including \"I Love a Rainy Night\" and \"Drivin' My Life Away.\"",
"did his father love music too",
"I don't know.",
"what was one of his hits",
"\"Every Which Way But Loose\",",
"did he receive any awards",
"Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits,"
] | C_fcb40ea6cb984513afd1f37ff6f823be_0 | any other awards | 5 | Other than 'Every Which Way but Loose' did Eddie recieve any other awards? | Eddie Rabbitt | While he was still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also opened for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour, but soon Rabbitt would himself break through on other charts. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. The album produced Rabbitt's first crossover single of his career, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in a 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at No. 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks at the debut of Brooks' 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the No. 17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point in his career Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley." Rabbitt's next album Horizon, which reached platinum status, contained the biggest crossover hits of his career including "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment that he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Driving" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" from Dylan's 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. His popularity was so strong at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he went on to respectfully decline stating "It's not worth the gamble." The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top 5 on Country, Adult Contemporary and the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's final album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, to record "You and I", which was included in his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and eventually became a large pop smash, peaking at No. 7 and No. 2 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary chart. The song's popularity reached the point where it was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second Greatest Hits compilation in 1983 was his final crossover hit, reaching No. 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart. CANNOTANSWER | Which Way But Loose", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, | Edward Thomas Rabbitt (November 27, 1941 – May 7, 1998) was an American country music singer and songwriter. His career began as a songwriter in the late 1960s, springboarding to a recording career after composing hits such as "Kentucky Rain" for Elvis Presley in 1970 and "Pure Love" for Ronnie Milsap in 1974. Later in the 1970s, Rabbitt helped to develop the crossover-influenced sound of country music prevalent in the 1980s with such hits as "Suspicions", "I Love a Rainy Night" (a number-one hit single on the Billboard Hot 100), and "Every Which Way but Loose" (the theme from the film of the same title). His duets "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)" with Juice Newton and "You and I" with Crystal Gayle later appeared on the soap operas Days of Our Lives and All My Children.
Early life
Rabbitt was born to Irish immigrants Thomas Michael and Mae (née Joyce) Rabbitt in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941, and was raised in the nearby community of East Orange, New Jersey. His father was an oil-refinery refrigeration worker, and a skilled fiddle and accordion player, who often entertained in local New York City dance halls. By age 12, Rabbitt was a proficient guitar player, having been taught by his scoutmaster, Bob Scwickrath. During his childhood Rabbitt became a self-proclaimed "walking encyclopedia of country music". After his parents divorced, he dropped out of school at age 16. His mother, Mae, explained that Eddie "was never one for school [because] his head was too full of music." He later obtained a high-school diploma at night school.
Career
Early career
Rabbitt worked as a mental hospital attendant in the late 1950s, but like his father, he fulfilled his love of music by performing at the Six Steps Down club in his hometown. He later won a talent contest and was given an hour of Saturday night radio show time to broadcast a live performance from a bar in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1964, he signed his first record deal with 20th Century Records and released the singles "Next to the Note" and "Six Nights and Seven Days". Four years later, with $1,000 to his name, Rabbitt moved to Nashville, where he began his career as a songwriter. During his first night in the town, Rabbitt wrote "Working My Way Up to the Bottom", which Roy Drusky recorded in 1968. To support himself, Rabbitt worked as a truck driver, soda jerk and fruit picker in Nashville. He was ultimately hired as a staff writer for the Hill & Range Publishing Company for $37.50 per week. As a young songwriter, Rabbitt socialized with other aspiring writers at Wally's Clubhouse, a Nashville bar; he said he and the other patrons had "no place else to go."
Rabbitt became successful as a songwriter in 1969, when Elvis Presley recorded his song "Kentucky Rain". The song went gold and cast Rabbitt as one of Nashville's leading young songwriters. Presley also recorded Rabbitt's song "Patch It Up", featured in the concert film "Elvis: That's the Way It Is". And a lesser known Presley song called "Inherit the Wind "on the Album Elvis Back in Memphis. While eating Cap'n Crunch, he penned "Pure Love", which Ronnie Milsap rode to number one in 1974. This song led to a contract offer from Elektra Records.
Rabbitt signed with Elektra Records in 1975. His first single under that label, "You Get to Me", made the top 40 that year, and two songs in 1975, "Forgive and Forget" and "I Should Have Married You", nearly made the top 10. These three songs, along with a recording of "Pure Love", were included on Rabbitt's 1975 self-named debut album. In 1976, his critically acclaimed album Rocky Mountain Music was released, which included Rabbitt's first number-one country hit, "Drinkin' My Baby (Off My Mind)". In 1977, his third album, Rabbitt, was released, and made the top five on Country Albums chart. Also in 1977, the Academy of Country Music named Rabbitt "Top New Male Vocalist of the Year". By that time, he had a good reputation in Nashville, and was being compared by critics to singer Kris Kristofferson. In 1977, at Knott's Berry Farm, Rabbitt appeared at the Country Music Awards and sang several of his songs from Rocky Mountain Music. He won the Top New Male Vocalist of the Year award.
Crossover success
While still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more number-one hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. It produced Rabbitt's first crossover single, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in the 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at number 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks's 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the number-17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B-flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number five on the Adult Contemporary charts. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point, Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley".
Rabbitt's next album, Horizon, reached platinum status and contained the biggest crossover hits of his career, "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Drivin'" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues". His popularity was so great at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he respectfully declined, saying "It's not worth the gamble."
The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top five on the Country, Adult Contemporary, and Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's last album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, on "You and I", which was included on his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached number one on the Billboard Country chart and became a pop smash, peaking at number seven and number two, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts. It was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second compilation, Greatest Hits - Volume II (1983), was his last crossover hit, reaching number 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
Late career
During the 1980s, Rabbitt moved further from crossover-styled music. His 1984 album The Best Year of My Life produced a number-one country hit and three more top-10 country hits, but none had crossover success. The illness and subsequent death of his son put his career on hold following the 1985 RCA Records release Rabbitt Trax, which included the number one "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)", a duet with country pop star Juice Newton. Like "You and I", the song was used as the theme for a soap opera, Days of Our Lives.
Rabbitt returned from his hiatus in 1988 with the release of I Wanna Dance With You, which despite somewhat negative reviews produced two number-one songs, a cover of Dion's "The Wanderer" and the album's title track. Additionally, "We Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right" entered the top 10, although the album's final single "That's Why I Fell in Love with You" stalled at number 66. Rabbitt's Capitol Records album Jersey Boy was reviewed positively, as was its single "On Second Thought", Rabbitt's last number-one hit. The album also included "American Boy", a patriotic tune popular during the Gulf War and used in Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was among the many country singers who suffered a dramatic decline in chart success beginning in 1991. That year, he released Ten Rounds, which produced the final charting single of his career, "Hang Up the Phone". Following that release, he left Capitol Records to tour with his band Hare Trigger.
In 1997, Rabbitt signed with Intersound Records, but was soon diagnosed with lung cancer. After a round of chemotherapy, he released the album Beatin' the Odds. In 1998, he released his last studio album, Songs from Rabbittland.
Musical styles
Rabbitt used innovative techniques to tie country music themes with light rhythm and blues-influenced tempos. His songs often used echo, as Rabbitt routinely sang his own background vocals. In a process called the "Eddie Rabbitt Chorale", Rabbitt compensated for what Billboard Magazine described as a "somewhat thin and reedy voice" by recording songs in three-part harmonies. His music was compared to rockabilly, particularly the album Horizon, which was noted as having an Elvis-like sound. Rabbitt remarked that he liked "a lot of the old Memphis sounds that came out of Sun Records" during the 1950s, and that he "wanted to catch the magic of a live band." He credited such wide-ranging artists as Bob Dylan, Elton John, Steely Dan, Elvis Presley, and Willie Nelson with influencing his works. When putting together an album, Rabbitt tried to make sure he put in "ten potential singles...no fillers, no junk." He remembered listening to albums as a child and hearing "two hits and a bunch of garbage."
Rabbitt believed that country music was "Irish music" and that "the minor chords in [his] music gave it that mystical feel." Although he did not strive to produce pop music, his songs helped influence the direction of country music, leading to the Urban Cowboy era during the 1980s. Critic Harry Sumrall of the San Jose Mercury News said that Rabbitt was "like a hot corn dog: nothing fancy, nothing frilly. You know what you're getting and you like it...never a country purist, Rabbitt nonetheless makes music that is plain and simple, with all of the virtues that make good country good. [His songs] might be brisk, but they are also warm and familiar, like the breeze that wafts in over the fried artichokes."
During the early 1990s, Rabbitt voiced criticism of hip hop music, particularly rap, which he said was sending a negative message to youths. He stated that the music was "inciting a generation" and that it had helped to contribute to the high rates of teenaged pregnancy, high-school dropouts, and rapes during this period.
Personal life
When Rabbitt arrived in Nashville during the late 1960s, a friend gave him a pet chicken. Rabbitt said he had "an affinity for animals" and kept the bird for a while before giving it to a farmer. During his Nashville days in the early 1970s, Rabbitt had a pet monkey, Jojo. Before his Rocky Mountain Music tour, the monkey bit Rabbitt, leaving his right arm in bandages.
In 1976, Rabbitt married Janine Girardi, whom he called "a little thing about five feet tall, with long, black beautiful hair, and a real pretty face." He had previously written the songs "Pure Love" and "Sweet Janine" for her. They had three children, Demelza, Timmy, and Tommy. Timmy was diagnosed with biliary atresia upon birth. The condition required a liver transplant for survival and he underwent one in 1985, but the attempt failed and he died. Rabbitt temporarily put his career on hiatus, saying, "I didn't want to be out of the music business, but where I was more important." Tommy was born in 1986.
Rabbitt felt his responsibility as an entertainer was to be a good role model and he was an advocate for many charitable organizations, including the Special Olympics, Easter Seals, and the American Council on Transplantation, of which he served as honorary chairman. He also worked as a spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and United Cerebral Palsy.
Rabbitt was a registered Republican and let Bob Dole use his song "American Boy" during Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was also a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation and visited the set during the show's fifth season in 1991–92.
Death
Rabbitt, a longtime smoker, died on May 7, 1998, in Nashville from lung cancer at the age of 56. He had been diagnosed with the disease in March 1997 and had received radiation treatment and surgery to remove part of one lung. His body was interred at Calvary Cemetery in Nashville on May 8, 1998.
No media outlets reported the death until after the burial at the family's request. The news came as a surprise to many in Nashville, including the performer's agent, who "had no idea Eddie was terminal" and had talked to him often, remarking that Rabbitt "was always upbeat and cheerful" in the final months of his life. Although he was widely believed to have been born in 1944 (this year can still be found in older publications and texts), at the time of his death, he was revealed to have been born in 1941.
Awards
Discography
References
External links
Eddie Rabbitt at CMT.com
Family Ties - People.com Archives
Eddie Rabbitt Did the 'roadie' Theme for a Reason: He's the Groupies' New Fantasy Figure - People.com Archives
1941 births
1998 deaths
American country singer-songwriters
American people of Irish descent
American male singer-songwriters
Deaths from cancer in Tennessee
Deaths from lung cancer
Elektra Records artists
Musicians from Brooklyn
RCA Records Nashville artists
20th-century American singers
Singer-songwriters from New York (state)
Country musicians from New York (state)
20th-century American male singers
New York (state) Republicans | true | [
"Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize is an annual literary prize for any book-length translation into English from any other living European language. The first prize was awarded in 1999. The prize is funded by and named in honour of Lord Weidenfeld and by New College, The Queen's College and St Anne's College, Oxford.\n\nWinners\nSource:\n\nNotes\n\nExternal links\nOxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize\n\nTranslation awards\nAwards established in 1999\n1999 establishments in the United Kingdom\nEnglish literary awards\nAwards and prizes of the University of Oxford",
"The 9th annual Genie Awards were held March 22, 1988, and honoured Canadian films released in 1987. The ceremony was held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and was co-hosted by Megan Follows and Gordon Pinsent.\n\nThe awards were dominated by Night Zoo (Un zoo la nuit), which won a still unmatched thirteen awards. The film garnered 14 nominations overall; the film's only nomination that failed to translate into a win was Gilles Maheu's nod for Best Actor, as he lost to the film's other Best Actor nominee, Roger Lebel. The female acting awards were won by Sheila McCarthy and Paule Baillargeon for the film I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, the only other narrative feature film to win any Genie awards that year; only the Documentary and Short Film awards, in which neither Night Zoo nor I've Heard the Mermaids Singing were even eligible for consideration, were won by any other film.\n\nWinners and nominees\n\nReferences\n\n09\nGenie\nGenie\nGenie"
] |
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"Eddie Rabbitt",
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"what is crossover success",
"biggest crossover hits of his career including \"I Love a Rainy Night\" and \"Drivin' My Life Away.\"",
"did his father love music too",
"I don't know.",
"what was one of his hits",
"\"Every Which Way But Loose\",",
"did he receive any awards",
"Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits,",
"any other awards",
"Which Way But Loose\", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary,"
] | C_fcb40ea6cb984513afd1f37ff6f823be_0 | any other awards | 6 | Aside from 'Every Which Way but Loose' did Eddie recieve any other awards? | Eddie Rabbitt | While he was still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also opened for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour, but soon Rabbitt would himself break through on other charts. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. The album produced Rabbitt's first crossover single of his career, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in a 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at No. 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks at the debut of Brooks' 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the No. 17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point in his career Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley." Rabbitt's next album Horizon, which reached platinum status, contained the biggest crossover hits of his career including "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment that he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Driving" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" from Dylan's 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. His popularity was so strong at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he went on to respectfully decline stating "It's not worth the gamble." The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top 5 on Country, Adult Contemporary and the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's final album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, to record "You and I", which was included in his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and eventually became a large pop smash, peaking at No. 7 and No. 2 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary chart. The song's popularity reached the point where it was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second Greatest Hits compilation in 1983 was his final crossover hit, reaching No. 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart. CANNOTANSWER | Which Way But Loose", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, | Edward Thomas Rabbitt (November 27, 1941 – May 7, 1998) was an American country music singer and songwriter. His career began as a songwriter in the late 1960s, springboarding to a recording career after composing hits such as "Kentucky Rain" for Elvis Presley in 1970 and "Pure Love" for Ronnie Milsap in 1974. Later in the 1970s, Rabbitt helped to develop the crossover-influenced sound of country music prevalent in the 1980s with such hits as "Suspicions", "I Love a Rainy Night" (a number-one hit single on the Billboard Hot 100), and "Every Which Way but Loose" (the theme from the film of the same title). His duets "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)" with Juice Newton and "You and I" with Crystal Gayle later appeared on the soap operas Days of Our Lives and All My Children.
Early life
Rabbitt was born to Irish immigrants Thomas Michael and Mae (née Joyce) Rabbitt in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941, and was raised in the nearby community of East Orange, New Jersey. His father was an oil-refinery refrigeration worker, and a skilled fiddle and accordion player, who often entertained in local New York City dance halls. By age 12, Rabbitt was a proficient guitar player, having been taught by his scoutmaster, Bob Scwickrath. During his childhood Rabbitt became a self-proclaimed "walking encyclopedia of country music". After his parents divorced, he dropped out of school at age 16. His mother, Mae, explained that Eddie "was never one for school [because] his head was too full of music." He later obtained a high-school diploma at night school.
Career
Early career
Rabbitt worked as a mental hospital attendant in the late 1950s, but like his father, he fulfilled his love of music by performing at the Six Steps Down club in his hometown. He later won a talent contest and was given an hour of Saturday night radio show time to broadcast a live performance from a bar in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1964, he signed his first record deal with 20th Century Records and released the singles "Next to the Note" and "Six Nights and Seven Days". Four years later, with $1,000 to his name, Rabbitt moved to Nashville, where he began his career as a songwriter. During his first night in the town, Rabbitt wrote "Working My Way Up to the Bottom", which Roy Drusky recorded in 1968. To support himself, Rabbitt worked as a truck driver, soda jerk and fruit picker in Nashville. He was ultimately hired as a staff writer for the Hill & Range Publishing Company for $37.50 per week. As a young songwriter, Rabbitt socialized with other aspiring writers at Wally's Clubhouse, a Nashville bar; he said he and the other patrons had "no place else to go."
Rabbitt became successful as a songwriter in 1969, when Elvis Presley recorded his song "Kentucky Rain". The song went gold and cast Rabbitt as one of Nashville's leading young songwriters. Presley also recorded Rabbitt's song "Patch It Up", featured in the concert film "Elvis: That's the Way It Is". And a lesser known Presley song called "Inherit the Wind "on the Album Elvis Back in Memphis. While eating Cap'n Crunch, he penned "Pure Love", which Ronnie Milsap rode to number one in 1974. This song led to a contract offer from Elektra Records.
Rabbitt signed with Elektra Records in 1975. His first single under that label, "You Get to Me", made the top 40 that year, and two songs in 1975, "Forgive and Forget" and "I Should Have Married You", nearly made the top 10. These three songs, along with a recording of "Pure Love", were included on Rabbitt's 1975 self-named debut album. In 1976, his critically acclaimed album Rocky Mountain Music was released, which included Rabbitt's first number-one country hit, "Drinkin' My Baby (Off My Mind)". In 1977, his third album, Rabbitt, was released, and made the top five on Country Albums chart. Also in 1977, the Academy of Country Music named Rabbitt "Top New Male Vocalist of the Year". By that time, he had a good reputation in Nashville, and was being compared by critics to singer Kris Kristofferson. In 1977, at Knott's Berry Farm, Rabbitt appeared at the Country Music Awards and sang several of his songs from Rocky Mountain Music. He won the Top New Male Vocalist of the Year award.
Crossover success
While still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more number-one hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. It produced Rabbitt's first crossover single, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in the 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at number 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks's 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the number-17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B-flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number five on the Adult Contemporary charts. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point, Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley".
Rabbitt's next album, Horizon, reached platinum status and contained the biggest crossover hits of his career, "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Drivin'" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues". His popularity was so great at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he respectfully declined, saying "It's not worth the gamble."
The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top five on the Country, Adult Contemporary, and Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's last album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, on "You and I", which was included on his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached number one on the Billboard Country chart and became a pop smash, peaking at number seven and number two, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts. It was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second compilation, Greatest Hits - Volume II (1983), was his last crossover hit, reaching number 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
Late career
During the 1980s, Rabbitt moved further from crossover-styled music. His 1984 album The Best Year of My Life produced a number-one country hit and three more top-10 country hits, but none had crossover success. The illness and subsequent death of his son put his career on hold following the 1985 RCA Records release Rabbitt Trax, which included the number one "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)", a duet with country pop star Juice Newton. Like "You and I", the song was used as the theme for a soap opera, Days of Our Lives.
Rabbitt returned from his hiatus in 1988 with the release of I Wanna Dance With You, which despite somewhat negative reviews produced two number-one songs, a cover of Dion's "The Wanderer" and the album's title track. Additionally, "We Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right" entered the top 10, although the album's final single "That's Why I Fell in Love with You" stalled at number 66. Rabbitt's Capitol Records album Jersey Boy was reviewed positively, as was its single "On Second Thought", Rabbitt's last number-one hit. The album also included "American Boy", a patriotic tune popular during the Gulf War and used in Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was among the many country singers who suffered a dramatic decline in chart success beginning in 1991. That year, he released Ten Rounds, which produced the final charting single of his career, "Hang Up the Phone". Following that release, he left Capitol Records to tour with his band Hare Trigger.
In 1997, Rabbitt signed with Intersound Records, but was soon diagnosed with lung cancer. After a round of chemotherapy, he released the album Beatin' the Odds. In 1998, he released his last studio album, Songs from Rabbittland.
Musical styles
Rabbitt used innovative techniques to tie country music themes with light rhythm and blues-influenced tempos. His songs often used echo, as Rabbitt routinely sang his own background vocals. In a process called the "Eddie Rabbitt Chorale", Rabbitt compensated for what Billboard Magazine described as a "somewhat thin and reedy voice" by recording songs in three-part harmonies. His music was compared to rockabilly, particularly the album Horizon, which was noted as having an Elvis-like sound. Rabbitt remarked that he liked "a lot of the old Memphis sounds that came out of Sun Records" during the 1950s, and that he "wanted to catch the magic of a live band." He credited such wide-ranging artists as Bob Dylan, Elton John, Steely Dan, Elvis Presley, and Willie Nelson with influencing his works. When putting together an album, Rabbitt tried to make sure he put in "ten potential singles...no fillers, no junk." He remembered listening to albums as a child and hearing "two hits and a bunch of garbage."
Rabbitt believed that country music was "Irish music" and that "the minor chords in [his] music gave it that mystical feel." Although he did not strive to produce pop music, his songs helped influence the direction of country music, leading to the Urban Cowboy era during the 1980s. Critic Harry Sumrall of the San Jose Mercury News said that Rabbitt was "like a hot corn dog: nothing fancy, nothing frilly. You know what you're getting and you like it...never a country purist, Rabbitt nonetheless makes music that is plain and simple, with all of the virtues that make good country good. [His songs] might be brisk, but they are also warm and familiar, like the breeze that wafts in over the fried artichokes."
During the early 1990s, Rabbitt voiced criticism of hip hop music, particularly rap, which he said was sending a negative message to youths. He stated that the music was "inciting a generation" and that it had helped to contribute to the high rates of teenaged pregnancy, high-school dropouts, and rapes during this period.
Personal life
When Rabbitt arrived in Nashville during the late 1960s, a friend gave him a pet chicken. Rabbitt said he had "an affinity for animals" and kept the bird for a while before giving it to a farmer. During his Nashville days in the early 1970s, Rabbitt had a pet monkey, Jojo. Before his Rocky Mountain Music tour, the monkey bit Rabbitt, leaving his right arm in bandages.
In 1976, Rabbitt married Janine Girardi, whom he called "a little thing about five feet tall, with long, black beautiful hair, and a real pretty face." He had previously written the songs "Pure Love" and "Sweet Janine" for her. They had three children, Demelza, Timmy, and Tommy. Timmy was diagnosed with biliary atresia upon birth. The condition required a liver transplant for survival and he underwent one in 1985, but the attempt failed and he died. Rabbitt temporarily put his career on hiatus, saying, "I didn't want to be out of the music business, but where I was more important." Tommy was born in 1986.
Rabbitt felt his responsibility as an entertainer was to be a good role model and he was an advocate for many charitable organizations, including the Special Olympics, Easter Seals, and the American Council on Transplantation, of which he served as honorary chairman. He also worked as a spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and United Cerebral Palsy.
Rabbitt was a registered Republican and let Bob Dole use his song "American Boy" during Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was also a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation and visited the set during the show's fifth season in 1991–92.
Death
Rabbitt, a longtime smoker, died on May 7, 1998, in Nashville from lung cancer at the age of 56. He had been diagnosed with the disease in March 1997 and had received radiation treatment and surgery to remove part of one lung. His body was interred at Calvary Cemetery in Nashville on May 8, 1998.
No media outlets reported the death until after the burial at the family's request. The news came as a surprise to many in Nashville, including the performer's agent, who "had no idea Eddie was terminal" and had talked to him often, remarking that Rabbitt "was always upbeat and cheerful" in the final months of his life. Although he was widely believed to have been born in 1944 (this year can still be found in older publications and texts), at the time of his death, he was revealed to have been born in 1941.
Awards
Discography
References
External links
Eddie Rabbitt at CMT.com
Family Ties - People.com Archives
Eddie Rabbitt Did the 'roadie' Theme for a Reason: He's the Groupies' New Fantasy Figure - People.com Archives
1941 births
1998 deaths
American country singer-songwriters
American people of Irish descent
American male singer-songwriters
Deaths from cancer in Tennessee
Deaths from lung cancer
Elektra Records artists
Musicians from Brooklyn
RCA Records Nashville artists
20th-century American singers
Singer-songwriters from New York (state)
Country musicians from New York (state)
20th-century American male singers
New York (state) Republicans | true | [
"Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize is an annual literary prize for any book-length translation into English from any other living European language. The first prize was awarded in 1999. The prize is funded by and named in honour of Lord Weidenfeld and by New College, The Queen's College and St Anne's College, Oxford.\n\nWinners\nSource:\n\nNotes\n\nExternal links\nOxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize\n\nTranslation awards\nAwards established in 1999\n1999 establishments in the United Kingdom\nEnglish literary awards\nAwards and prizes of the University of Oxford",
"The 9th annual Genie Awards were held March 22, 1988, and honoured Canadian films released in 1987. The ceremony was held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and was co-hosted by Megan Follows and Gordon Pinsent.\n\nThe awards were dominated by Night Zoo (Un zoo la nuit), which won a still unmatched thirteen awards. The film garnered 14 nominations overall; the film's only nomination that failed to translate into a win was Gilles Maheu's nod for Best Actor, as he lost to the film's other Best Actor nominee, Roger Lebel. The female acting awards were won by Sheila McCarthy and Paule Baillargeon for the film I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, the only other narrative feature film to win any Genie awards that year; only the Documentary and Short Film awards, in which neither Night Zoo nor I've Heard the Mermaids Singing were even eligible for consideration, were won by any other film.\n\nWinners and nominees\n\nReferences\n\n09\nGenie\nGenie\nGenie"
] |
[
"Eddie Rabbitt",
"Crossover success",
"what is crossover success",
"biggest crossover hits of his career including \"I Love a Rainy Night\" and \"Drivin' My Life Away.\"",
"did his father love music too",
"I don't know.",
"what was one of his hits",
"\"Every Which Way But Loose\",",
"did he receive any awards",
"Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits,",
"any other awards",
"Which Way But Loose\", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary,",
"any other awards",
"Rabbitt's next album Horizon, which reached platinum status, contained the biggest crossover hits of his career including \"I Love a Rainy Night\""
] | C_fcb40ea6cb984513afd1f37ff6f823be_0 | what was one of his hits | 7 | In Eddie's Album I Love a Rainy Night, What was one of hits? | Eddie Rabbitt | While he was still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also opened for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour, but soon Rabbitt would himself break through on other charts. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. The album produced Rabbitt's first crossover single of his career, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in a 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at No. 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks at the debut of Brooks' 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the No. 17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point in his career Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley." Rabbitt's next album Horizon, which reached platinum status, contained the biggest crossover hits of his career including "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment that he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Driving" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" from Dylan's 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. His popularity was so strong at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he went on to respectfully decline stating "It's not worth the gamble." The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top 5 on Country, Adult Contemporary and the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's final album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, to record "You and I", which was included in his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and eventually became a large pop smash, peaking at No. 7 and No. 2 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary chart. The song's popularity reached the point where it was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second Greatest Hits compilation in 1983 was his final crossover hit, reaching No. 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart. CANNOTANSWER | "Every Which Way But Loose", | Edward Thomas Rabbitt (November 27, 1941 – May 7, 1998) was an American country music singer and songwriter. His career began as a songwriter in the late 1960s, springboarding to a recording career after composing hits such as "Kentucky Rain" for Elvis Presley in 1970 and "Pure Love" for Ronnie Milsap in 1974. Later in the 1970s, Rabbitt helped to develop the crossover-influenced sound of country music prevalent in the 1980s with such hits as "Suspicions", "I Love a Rainy Night" (a number-one hit single on the Billboard Hot 100), and "Every Which Way but Loose" (the theme from the film of the same title). His duets "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)" with Juice Newton and "You and I" with Crystal Gayle later appeared on the soap operas Days of Our Lives and All My Children.
Early life
Rabbitt was born to Irish immigrants Thomas Michael and Mae (née Joyce) Rabbitt in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941, and was raised in the nearby community of East Orange, New Jersey. His father was an oil-refinery refrigeration worker, and a skilled fiddle and accordion player, who often entertained in local New York City dance halls. By age 12, Rabbitt was a proficient guitar player, having been taught by his scoutmaster, Bob Scwickrath. During his childhood Rabbitt became a self-proclaimed "walking encyclopedia of country music". After his parents divorced, he dropped out of school at age 16. His mother, Mae, explained that Eddie "was never one for school [because] his head was too full of music." He later obtained a high-school diploma at night school.
Career
Early career
Rabbitt worked as a mental hospital attendant in the late 1950s, but like his father, he fulfilled his love of music by performing at the Six Steps Down club in his hometown. He later won a talent contest and was given an hour of Saturday night radio show time to broadcast a live performance from a bar in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1964, he signed his first record deal with 20th Century Records and released the singles "Next to the Note" and "Six Nights and Seven Days". Four years later, with $1,000 to his name, Rabbitt moved to Nashville, where he began his career as a songwriter. During his first night in the town, Rabbitt wrote "Working My Way Up to the Bottom", which Roy Drusky recorded in 1968. To support himself, Rabbitt worked as a truck driver, soda jerk and fruit picker in Nashville. He was ultimately hired as a staff writer for the Hill & Range Publishing Company for $37.50 per week. As a young songwriter, Rabbitt socialized with other aspiring writers at Wally's Clubhouse, a Nashville bar; he said he and the other patrons had "no place else to go."
Rabbitt became successful as a songwriter in 1969, when Elvis Presley recorded his song "Kentucky Rain". The song went gold and cast Rabbitt as one of Nashville's leading young songwriters. Presley also recorded Rabbitt's song "Patch It Up", featured in the concert film "Elvis: That's the Way It Is". And a lesser known Presley song called "Inherit the Wind "on the Album Elvis Back in Memphis. While eating Cap'n Crunch, he penned "Pure Love", which Ronnie Milsap rode to number one in 1974. This song led to a contract offer from Elektra Records.
Rabbitt signed with Elektra Records in 1975. His first single under that label, "You Get to Me", made the top 40 that year, and two songs in 1975, "Forgive and Forget" and "I Should Have Married You", nearly made the top 10. These three songs, along with a recording of "Pure Love", were included on Rabbitt's 1975 self-named debut album. In 1976, his critically acclaimed album Rocky Mountain Music was released, which included Rabbitt's first number-one country hit, "Drinkin' My Baby (Off My Mind)". In 1977, his third album, Rabbitt, was released, and made the top five on Country Albums chart. Also in 1977, the Academy of Country Music named Rabbitt "Top New Male Vocalist of the Year". By that time, he had a good reputation in Nashville, and was being compared by critics to singer Kris Kristofferson. In 1977, at Knott's Berry Farm, Rabbitt appeared at the Country Music Awards and sang several of his songs from Rocky Mountain Music. He won the Top New Male Vocalist of the Year award.
Crossover success
While still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more number-one hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. It produced Rabbitt's first crossover single, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in the 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at number 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks's 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the number-17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B-flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number five on the Adult Contemporary charts. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point, Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley".
Rabbitt's next album, Horizon, reached platinum status and contained the biggest crossover hits of his career, "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Drivin'" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues". His popularity was so great at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he respectfully declined, saying "It's not worth the gamble."
The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top five on the Country, Adult Contemporary, and Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's last album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, on "You and I", which was included on his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached number one on the Billboard Country chart and became a pop smash, peaking at number seven and number two, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts. It was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second compilation, Greatest Hits - Volume II (1983), was his last crossover hit, reaching number 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
Late career
During the 1980s, Rabbitt moved further from crossover-styled music. His 1984 album The Best Year of My Life produced a number-one country hit and three more top-10 country hits, but none had crossover success. The illness and subsequent death of his son put his career on hold following the 1985 RCA Records release Rabbitt Trax, which included the number one "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)", a duet with country pop star Juice Newton. Like "You and I", the song was used as the theme for a soap opera, Days of Our Lives.
Rabbitt returned from his hiatus in 1988 with the release of I Wanna Dance With You, which despite somewhat negative reviews produced two number-one songs, a cover of Dion's "The Wanderer" and the album's title track. Additionally, "We Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right" entered the top 10, although the album's final single "That's Why I Fell in Love with You" stalled at number 66. Rabbitt's Capitol Records album Jersey Boy was reviewed positively, as was its single "On Second Thought", Rabbitt's last number-one hit. The album also included "American Boy", a patriotic tune popular during the Gulf War and used in Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was among the many country singers who suffered a dramatic decline in chart success beginning in 1991. That year, he released Ten Rounds, which produced the final charting single of his career, "Hang Up the Phone". Following that release, he left Capitol Records to tour with his band Hare Trigger.
In 1997, Rabbitt signed with Intersound Records, but was soon diagnosed with lung cancer. After a round of chemotherapy, he released the album Beatin' the Odds. In 1998, he released his last studio album, Songs from Rabbittland.
Musical styles
Rabbitt used innovative techniques to tie country music themes with light rhythm and blues-influenced tempos. His songs often used echo, as Rabbitt routinely sang his own background vocals. In a process called the "Eddie Rabbitt Chorale", Rabbitt compensated for what Billboard Magazine described as a "somewhat thin and reedy voice" by recording songs in three-part harmonies. His music was compared to rockabilly, particularly the album Horizon, which was noted as having an Elvis-like sound. Rabbitt remarked that he liked "a lot of the old Memphis sounds that came out of Sun Records" during the 1950s, and that he "wanted to catch the magic of a live band." He credited such wide-ranging artists as Bob Dylan, Elton John, Steely Dan, Elvis Presley, and Willie Nelson with influencing his works. When putting together an album, Rabbitt tried to make sure he put in "ten potential singles...no fillers, no junk." He remembered listening to albums as a child and hearing "two hits and a bunch of garbage."
Rabbitt believed that country music was "Irish music" and that "the minor chords in [his] music gave it that mystical feel." Although he did not strive to produce pop music, his songs helped influence the direction of country music, leading to the Urban Cowboy era during the 1980s. Critic Harry Sumrall of the San Jose Mercury News said that Rabbitt was "like a hot corn dog: nothing fancy, nothing frilly. You know what you're getting and you like it...never a country purist, Rabbitt nonetheless makes music that is plain and simple, with all of the virtues that make good country good. [His songs] might be brisk, but they are also warm and familiar, like the breeze that wafts in over the fried artichokes."
During the early 1990s, Rabbitt voiced criticism of hip hop music, particularly rap, which he said was sending a negative message to youths. He stated that the music was "inciting a generation" and that it had helped to contribute to the high rates of teenaged pregnancy, high-school dropouts, and rapes during this period.
Personal life
When Rabbitt arrived in Nashville during the late 1960s, a friend gave him a pet chicken. Rabbitt said he had "an affinity for animals" and kept the bird for a while before giving it to a farmer. During his Nashville days in the early 1970s, Rabbitt had a pet monkey, Jojo. Before his Rocky Mountain Music tour, the monkey bit Rabbitt, leaving his right arm in bandages.
In 1976, Rabbitt married Janine Girardi, whom he called "a little thing about five feet tall, with long, black beautiful hair, and a real pretty face." He had previously written the songs "Pure Love" and "Sweet Janine" for her. They had three children, Demelza, Timmy, and Tommy. Timmy was diagnosed with biliary atresia upon birth. The condition required a liver transplant for survival and he underwent one in 1985, but the attempt failed and he died. Rabbitt temporarily put his career on hiatus, saying, "I didn't want to be out of the music business, but where I was more important." Tommy was born in 1986.
Rabbitt felt his responsibility as an entertainer was to be a good role model and he was an advocate for many charitable organizations, including the Special Olympics, Easter Seals, and the American Council on Transplantation, of which he served as honorary chairman. He also worked as a spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and United Cerebral Palsy.
Rabbitt was a registered Republican and let Bob Dole use his song "American Boy" during Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was also a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation and visited the set during the show's fifth season in 1991–92.
Death
Rabbitt, a longtime smoker, died on May 7, 1998, in Nashville from lung cancer at the age of 56. He had been diagnosed with the disease in March 1997 and had received radiation treatment and surgery to remove part of one lung. His body was interred at Calvary Cemetery in Nashville on May 8, 1998.
No media outlets reported the death until after the burial at the family's request. The news came as a surprise to many in Nashville, including the performer's agent, who "had no idea Eddie was terminal" and had talked to him often, remarking that Rabbitt "was always upbeat and cheerful" in the final months of his life. Although he was widely believed to have been born in 1944 (this year can still be found in older publications and texts), at the time of his death, he was revealed to have been born in 1941.
Awards
Discography
References
External links
Eddie Rabbitt at CMT.com
Family Ties - People.com Archives
Eddie Rabbitt Did the 'roadie' Theme for a Reason: He's the Groupies' New Fantasy Figure - People.com Archives
1941 births
1998 deaths
American country singer-songwriters
American people of Irish descent
American male singer-songwriters
Deaths from cancer in Tennessee
Deaths from lung cancer
Elektra Records artists
Musicians from Brooklyn
RCA Records Nashville artists
20th-century American singers
Singer-songwriters from New York (state)
Country musicians from New York (state)
20th-century American male singers
New York (state) Republicans | true | [
"Now That's What I Call Classic Rock Hits is one of many genre-themed compilation albums from the Now! series in the United States, this one focusing on popular classic rock songs from the 1970s. It was released on May 1, 2012.\n\nTrack listing\n\nReception\n\nIn his review for Allmusic, Gregory Heaney says \"the Now series delivers a dose of good ol' classic rock with Now That's What I Call Classic Rock Hits,\" which \"gathers some of rock's most enduring crossover hits.\" Now That's What I Call Classic Rock Hits is \"an album that achieves its primary goal of being able to please most of the people most of the time with a wide-ranging selection of hits that should fit into most anyone's definition of classic rock.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Official U.S. Now That's What I Call Music website\n\n2012 compilation albums\nClassic Rock Hits\nEMI Records compilation albums",
"The Bill Anderson Story: His Greatest Hits is a compilation album by American country singer-songwriter Bill Anderson. It was released in March 1969 and was produced by Owen Bradley. The Bill Anderson Story was a double compilation album that contained his singles released on the Decca label up to that point. It featured many recordings Anderson had issued over the last decade, including several number one hits and top ten hits.\n\nBackground and content\nThe Bill Anderson Story: His Greatest Hits was a double album of Anderson's singles previously released (and recorded) between 1958 and 1968. The sessions for these songs were all produced by Owen Bradley. Bradley was Anderson's longtime producer at the Decca label and was responsible for producing his biggest hits. Between both records, the album contained a total of 24 tracks. Most of these tracks were composed by Anderson as well. It featured songs ranging from his earliest recordings, such as \"That's What It's Like to Be Lonesome.\"\n\nAlso included were his number one hits up to that point: \"Mama Sang a Song,\" \"Still\" and \"I Get the Fever.\" In addition, The Bill Anderson Story featured songs Anderson had composed for other artists, but also recorded himself. Examples of this included his version of \"Once a Day,\" which was a hit for Connie Smith. Another example is \"City Lights,\" a song recorded by Ray Price that helped establish Anderson with his own recording contract. His number one duet single with Jan Howard is also featured on the album, \"For Loving You.\"\n\nRelease and reception\n\nThe Bill Anderson Story: His Greatest Hits was released first in March 1969 on Decca Records. It was the fifth compilation release of his career and first double-length album. It was originally issued as a vinyl LP, containing six songs on both sides of each record. This totaled to 24 songs. It was reissued twice more in the United States, twice by MCA Records. The album peaked at number 43 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart in 1969, becoming his third compilation to reach the chart. In later years, it was reviewed positively by Thom Owens of Allmusic, who rated it 4.5 out of 5 stars. \"Several hits are missing, yet The Bill Anderson Story offers an effective introduction to the popular vocalist's easy-going, muted style,\" Owens commented.\n\nTrack listing\nAll songs composed by Bill Anderson, except where noted.\n\nRecord one\n\nRecord two\n\nPersonnel\nAll credits are adapted from the liner notes of The Bill Anderson Story.\n\n Bill Anderson – lead vocals\n Owen Bradley – record producer\n\nChart performance\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\n1969 albums\nAlbums produced by Owen Bradley\nBill Anderson (singer) compilation albums\nDecca Records albums"
] |
[
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"what is crossover success",
"biggest crossover hits of his career including \"I Love a Rainy Night\" and \"Drivin' My Life Away.\"",
"did his father love music too",
"I don't know.",
"what was one of his hits",
"\"Every Which Way But Loose\",",
"did he receive any awards",
"Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits,",
"any other awards",
"Which Way But Loose\", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary,",
"any other awards",
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"what was one of his hits",
"\"You Put the Beat in My Heart\""
] | C_fcb40ea6cb984513afd1f37ff6f823be_0 | any #1 hits | 8 | Aside from 1978 release of Variations, any #1 hits of Eddies'? | Eddie Rabbitt | While he was still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also opened for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour, but soon Rabbitt would himself break through on other charts. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. The album produced Rabbitt's first crossover single of his career, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in a 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at No. 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks at the debut of Brooks' 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the No. 17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point in his career Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley." Rabbitt's next album Horizon, which reached platinum status, contained the biggest crossover hits of his career including "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment that he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Driving" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" from Dylan's 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. His popularity was so strong at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he went on to respectfully decline stating "It's not worth the gamble." The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top 5 on Country, Adult Contemporary and the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's final album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, to record "You and I", which was included in his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and eventually became a large pop smash, peaking at No. 7 and No. 2 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary chart. The song's popularity reached the point where it was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second Greatest Hits compilation in 1983 was his final crossover hit, reaching No. 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart. CANNOTANSWER | The duet reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart | Edward Thomas Rabbitt (November 27, 1941 – May 7, 1998) was an American country music singer and songwriter. His career began as a songwriter in the late 1960s, springboarding to a recording career after composing hits such as "Kentucky Rain" for Elvis Presley in 1970 and "Pure Love" for Ronnie Milsap in 1974. Later in the 1970s, Rabbitt helped to develop the crossover-influenced sound of country music prevalent in the 1980s with such hits as "Suspicions", "I Love a Rainy Night" (a number-one hit single on the Billboard Hot 100), and "Every Which Way but Loose" (the theme from the film of the same title). His duets "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)" with Juice Newton and "You and I" with Crystal Gayle later appeared on the soap operas Days of Our Lives and All My Children.
Early life
Rabbitt was born to Irish immigrants Thomas Michael and Mae (née Joyce) Rabbitt in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941, and was raised in the nearby community of East Orange, New Jersey. His father was an oil-refinery refrigeration worker, and a skilled fiddle and accordion player, who often entertained in local New York City dance halls. By age 12, Rabbitt was a proficient guitar player, having been taught by his scoutmaster, Bob Scwickrath. During his childhood Rabbitt became a self-proclaimed "walking encyclopedia of country music". After his parents divorced, he dropped out of school at age 16. His mother, Mae, explained that Eddie "was never one for school [because] his head was too full of music." He later obtained a high-school diploma at night school.
Career
Early career
Rabbitt worked as a mental hospital attendant in the late 1950s, but like his father, he fulfilled his love of music by performing at the Six Steps Down club in his hometown. He later won a talent contest and was given an hour of Saturday night radio show time to broadcast a live performance from a bar in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1964, he signed his first record deal with 20th Century Records and released the singles "Next to the Note" and "Six Nights and Seven Days". Four years later, with $1,000 to his name, Rabbitt moved to Nashville, where he began his career as a songwriter. During his first night in the town, Rabbitt wrote "Working My Way Up to the Bottom", which Roy Drusky recorded in 1968. To support himself, Rabbitt worked as a truck driver, soda jerk and fruit picker in Nashville. He was ultimately hired as a staff writer for the Hill & Range Publishing Company for $37.50 per week. As a young songwriter, Rabbitt socialized with other aspiring writers at Wally's Clubhouse, a Nashville bar; he said he and the other patrons had "no place else to go."
Rabbitt became successful as a songwriter in 1969, when Elvis Presley recorded his song "Kentucky Rain". The song went gold and cast Rabbitt as one of Nashville's leading young songwriters. Presley also recorded Rabbitt's song "Patch It Up", featured in the concert film "Elvis: That's the Way It Is". And a lesser known Presley song called "Inherit the Wind "on the Album Elvis Back in Memphis. While eating Cap'n Crunch, he penned "Pure Love", which Ronnie Milsap rode to number one in 1974. This song led to a contract offer from Elektra Records.
Rabbitt signed with Elektra Records in 1975. His first single under that label, "You Get to Me", made the top 40 that year, and two songs in 1975, "Forgive and Forget" and "I Should Have Married You", nearly made the top 10. These three songs, along with a recording of "Pure Love", were included on Rabbitt's 1975 self-named debut album. In 1976, his critically acclaimed album Rocky Mountain Music was released, which included Rabbitt's first number-one country hit, "Drinkin' My Baby (Off My Mind)". In 1977, his third album, Rabbitt, was released, and made the top five on Country Albums chart. Also in 1977, the Academy of Country Music named Rabbitt "Top New Male Vocalist of the Year". By that time, he had a good reputation in Nashville, and was being compared by critics to singer Kris Kristofferson. In 1977, at Knott's Berry Farm, Rabbitt appeared at the Country Music Awards and sang several of his songs from Rocky Mountain Music. He won the Top New Male Vocalist of the Year award.
Crossover success
While still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more number-one hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. It produced Rabbitt's first crossover single, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in the 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at number 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks's 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the number-17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B-flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number five on the Adult Contemporary charts. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point, Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley".
Rabbitt's next album, Horizon, reached platinum status and contained the biggest crossover hits of his career, "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Drivin'" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues". His popularity was so great at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he respectfully declined, saying "It's not worth the gamble."
The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top five on the Country, Adult Contemporary, and Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's last album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, on "You and I", which was included on his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached number one on the Billboard Country chart and became a pop smash, peaking at number seven and number two, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts. It was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second compilation, Greatest Hits - Volume II (1983), was his last crossover hit, reaching number 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
Late career
During the 1980s, Rabbitt moved further from crossover-styled music. His 1984 album The Best Year of My Life produced a number-one country hit and three more top-10 country hits, but none had crossover success. The illness and subsequent death of his son put his career on hold following the 1985 RCA Records release Rabbitt Trax, which included the number one "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)", a duet with country pop star Juice Newton. Like "You and I", the song was used as the theme for a soap opera, Days of Our Lives.
Rabbitt returned from his hiatus in 1988 with the release of I Wanna Dance With You, which despite somewhat negative reviews produced two number-one songs, a cover of Dion's "The Wanderer" and the album's title track. Additionally, "We Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right" entered the top 10, although the album's final single "That's Why I Fell in Love with You" stalled at number 66. Rabbitt's Capitol Records album Jersey Boy was reviewed positively, as was its single "On Second Thought", Rabbitt's last number-one hit. The album also included "American Boy", a patriotic tune popular during the Gulf War and used in Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was among the many country singers who suffered a dramatic decline in chart success beginning in 1991. That year, he released Ten Rounds, which produced the final charting single of his career, "Hang Up the Phone". Following that release, he left Capitol Records to tour with his band Hare Trigger.
In 1997, Rabbitt signed with Intersound Records, but was soon diagnosed with lung cancer. After a round of chemotherapy, he released the album Beatin' the Odds. In 1998, he released his last studio album, Songs from Rabbittland.
Musical styles
Rabbitt used innovative techniques to tie country music themes with light rhythm and blues-influenced tempos. His songs often used echo, as Rabbitt routinely sang his own background vocals. In a process called the "Eddie Rabbitt Chorale", Rabbitt compensated for what Billboard Magazine described as a "somewhat thin and reedy voice" by recording songs in three-part harmonies. His music was compared to rockabilly, particularly the album Horizon, which was noted as having an Elvis-like sound. Rabbitt remarked that he liked "a lot of the old Memphis sounds that came out of Sun Records" during the 1950s, and that he "wanted to catch the magic of a live band." He credited such wide-ranging artists as Bob Dylan, Elton John, Steely Dan, Elvis Presley, and Willie Nelson with influencing his works. When putting together an album, Rabbitt tried to make sure he put in "ten potential singles...no fillers, no junk." He remembered listening to albums as a child and hearing "two hits and a bunch of garbage."
Rabbitt believed that country music was "Irish music" and that "the minor chords in [his] music gave it that mystical feel." Although he did not strive to produce pop music, his songs helped influence the direction of country music, leading to the Urban Cowboy era during the 1980s. Critic Harry Sumrall of the San Jose Mercury News said that Rabbitt was "like a hot corn dog: nothing fancy, nothing frilly. You know what you're getting and you like it...never a country purist, Rabbitt nonetheless makes music that is plain and simple, with all of the virtues that make good country good. [His songs] might be brisk, but they are also warm and familiar, like the breeze that wafts in over the fried artichokes."
During the early 1990s, Rabbitt voiced criticism of hip hop music, particularly rap, which he said was sending a negative message to youths. He stated that the music was "inciting a generation" and that it had helped to contribute to the high rates of teenaged pregnancy, high-school dropouts, and rapes during this period.
Personal life
When Rabbitt arrived in Nashville during the late 1960s, a friend gave him a pet chicken. Rabbitt said he had "an affinity for animals" and kept the bird for a while before giving it to a farmer. During his Nashville days in the early 1970s, Rabbitt had a pet monkey, Jojo. Before his Rocky Mountain Music tour, the monkey bit Rabbitt, leaving his right arm in bandages.
In 1976, Rabbitt married Janine Girardi, whom he called "a little thing about five feet tall, with long, black beautiful hair, and a real pretty face." He had previously written the songs "Pure Love" and "Sweet Janine" for her. They had three children, Demelza, Timmy, and Tommy. Timmy was diagnosed with biliary atresia upon birth. The condition required a liver transplant for survival and he underwent one in 1985, but the attempt failed and he died. Rabbitt temporarily put his career on hiatus, saying, "I didn't want to be out of the music business, but where I was more important." Tommy was born in 1986.
Rabbitt felt his responsibility as an entertainer was to be a good role model and he was an advocate for many charitable organizations, including the Special Olympics, Easter Seals, and the American Council on Transplantation, of which he served as honorary chairman. He also worked as a spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and United Cerebral Palsy.
Rabbitt was a registered Republican and let Bob Dole use his song "American Boy" during Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was also a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation and visited the set during the show's fifth season in 1991–92.
Death
Rabbitt, a longtime smoker, died on May 7, 1998, in Nashville from lung cancer at the age of 56. He had been diagnosed with the disease in March 1997 and had received radiation treatment and surgery to remove part of one lung. His body was interred at Calvary Cemetery in Nashville on May 8, 1998.
No media outlets reported the death until after the burial at the family's request. The news came as a surprise to many in Nashville, including the performer's agent, who "had no idea Eddie was terminal" and had talked to him often, remarking that Rabbitt "was always upbeat and cheerful" in the final months of his life. Although he was widely believed to have been born in 1944 (this year can still be found in older publications and texts), at the time of his death, he was revealed to have been born in 1941.
Awards
Discography
References
External links
Eddie Rabbitt at CMT.com
Family Ties - People.com Archives
Eddie Rabbitt Did the 'roadie' Theme for a Reason: He's the Groupies' New Fantasy Figure - People.com Archives
1941 births
1998 deaths
American country singer-songwriters
American people of Irish descent
American male singer-songwriters
Deaths from cancer in Tennessee
Deaths from lung cancer
Elektra Records artists
Musicians from Brooklyn
RCA Records Nashville artists
20th-century American singers
Singer-songwriters from New York (state)
Country musicians from New York (state)
20th-century American male singers
New York (state) Republicans | false | [
"Hit FM or Hits FM may refer to any of the following radio stations:\n\nHit FM\n HIT FM Denmark\n Hit FM (Russia)\n Hit FM (Taiwan)\n 99.5 Hit FM, now DWRT-FM, in the Philippines\n\nHits FM\n Hits FM (Madrid), in Spain\n Hits FM (Nepal)",
"In probability theory, The Poisson scatter theorem describes a probability model of random scattering. It implies that the number of points in a fixed region will follow a Poisson distribution.\n\nStatement \n\nLet there exist a chance process realized by a set of points (called hits) over a bounded region such that:\n\n1) There are only a finite number of hits over the entire region K.\n2) There are no multiple hits at a single point.\n3) There is homogeneity and independence among the hits. i.e. For any non-overlapping subregions , , the numbers of hits in these regions are independent. \n\nIn any region B, let NB be the number of hits in B. Then there exists a positive constant such that for each subregion , NB has a Poisson distribution with parameter , where is the area of B (remember that this is , in other measure spaces, could mean different things, i.e. length in ). In addition, for any non-overlapping regions , the random variables are independent from one another.\n\nThe positive constant is called the intensity parameter, and is equivalent to the number of hits in a unit area of K. \n \nProof: \n\nAlso, \n\nWhile the statement of the theorem here is limited to , the theorem can be generalized to any-dimensional space. Some calculations change depending on the space that the points are scattered in (as is mentioned above), but the general assumptions and outcomes still hold.\n\nExample \n\nConsider raindrops falling on a rooftop. The rooftop is the region , while the raindrops can be considered the hits of our system. It is reasonable to assume that the number of raindrops that fall in any particular region of the rooftop follows a poisson distribution. The Poisson Scatter Theorem, states that if one was to subdivide the rooftops into k disjoint sub-regions, then the number of raindrops that hits a particular region with intensity of the rooftop is independent from the number of raindrops that hit any other subregion. Suppose that 2000 raindrops fall in 1000 subregions of the rooftop, randomly. The expected number of raindrops per subregion would be 2. So the distribution of the number of raindrops on the whole rooftop is Poisson with intensity parameter 2. The distribution of the number of raindrops falling on 1/5 of the rooftop is Poisson with intensity parameter 2/5. \n\nDue to the reproductive property of the Poisson distribution, k independent random scatters on the same region can superimpose to produce a random scatter that follows a poisson distribution with parameter .\n\nNotes \n^ Pitman 2003, p. 230.\n\nReferences \n\nPitman, Jim (2003). Probability. Springer.\n\nProbability theorems"
] |
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] | C_fcb40ea6cb984513afd1f37ff6f823be_0 | who was the duet with | 9 | Who was the duet with Eddie? | Eddie Rabbitt | While he was still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also opened for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour, but soon Rabbitt would himself break through on other charts. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. The album produced Rabbitt's first crossover single of his career, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in a 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at No. 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks at the debut of Brooks' 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the No. 17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point in his career Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley." Rabbitt's next album Horizon, which reached platinum status, contained the biggest crossover hits of his career including "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment that he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Driving" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" from Dylan's 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. His popularity was so strong at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he went on to respectfully decline stating "It's not worth the gamble." The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top 5 on Country, Adult Contemporary and the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's final album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, to record "You and I", which was included in his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and eventually became a large pop smash, peaking at No. 7 and No. 2 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary chart. The song's popularity reached the point where it was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second Greatest Hits compilation in 1983 was his final crossover hit, reaching No. 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart. CANNOTANSWER | Crystal Gayle, | Edward Thomas Rabbitt (November 27, 1941 – May 7, 1998) was an American country music singer and songwriter. His career began as a songwriter in the late 1960s, springboarding to a recording career after composing hits such as "Kentucky Rain" for Elvis Presley in 1970 and "Pure Love" for Ronnie Milsap in 1974. Later in the 1970s, Rabbitt helped to develop the crossover-influenced sound of country music prevalent in the 1980s with such hits as "Suspicions", "I Love a Rainy Night" (a number-one hit single on the Billboard Hot 100), and "Every Which Way but Loose" (the theme from the film of the same title). His duets "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)" with Juice Newton and "You and I" with Crystal Gayle later appeared on the soap operas Days of Our Lives and All My Children.
Early life
Rabbitt was born to Irish immigrants Thomas Michael and Mae (née Joyce) Rabbitt in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941, and was raised in the nearby community of East Orange, New Jersey. His father was an oil-refinery refrigeration worker, and a skilled fiddle and accordion player, who often entertained in local New York City dance halls. By age 12, Rabbitt was a proficient guitar player, having been taught by his scoutmaster, Bob Scwickrath. During his childhood Rabbitt became a self-proclaimed "walking encyclopedia of country music". After his parents divorced, he dropped out of school at age 16. His mother, Mae, explained that Eddie "was never one for school [because] his head was too full of music." He later obtained a high-school diploma at night school.
Career
Early career
Rabbitt worked as a mental hospital attendant in the late 1950s, but like his father, he fulfilled his love of music by performing at the Six Steps Down club in his hometown. He later won a talent contest and was given an hour of Saturday night radio show time to broadcast a live performance from a bar in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1964, he signed his first record deal with 20th Century Records and released the singles "Next to the Note" and "Six Nights and Seven Days". Four years later, with $1,000 to his name, Rabbitt moved to Nashville, where he began his career as a songwriter. During his first night in the town, Rabbitt wrote "Working My Way Up to the Bottom", which Roy Drusky recorded in 1968. To support himself, Rabbitt worked as a truck driver, soda jerk and fruit picker in Nashville. He was ultimately hired as a staff writer for the Hill & Range Publishing Company for $37.50 per week. As a young songwriter, Rabbitt socialized with other aspiring writers at Wally's Clubhouse, a Nashville bar; he said he and the other patrons had "no place else to go."
Rabbitt became successful as a songwriter in 1969, when Elvis Presley recorded his song "Kentucky Rain". The song went gold and cast Rabbitt as one of Nashville's leading young songwriters. Presley also recorded Rabbitt's song "Patch It Up", featured in the concert film "Elvis: That's the Way It Is". And a lesser known Presley song called "Inherit the Wind "on the Album Elvis Back in Memphis. While eating Cap'n Crunch, he penned "Pure Love", which Ronnie Milsap rode to number one in 1974. This song led to a contract offer from Elektra Records.
Rabbitt signed with Elektra Records in 1975. His first single under that label, "You Get to Me", made the top 40 that year, and two songs in 1975, "Forgive and Forget" and "I Should Have Married You", nearly made the top 10. These three songs, along with a recording of "Pure Love", were included on Rabbitt's 1975 self-named debut album. In 1976, his critically acclaimed album Rocky Mountain Music was released, which included Rabbitt's first number-one country hit, "Drinkin' My Baby (Off My Mind)". In 1977, his third album, Rabbitt, was released, and made the top five on Country Albums chart. Also in 1977, the Academy of Country Music named Rabbitt "Top New Male Vocalist of the Year". By that time, he had a good reputation in Nashville, and was being compared by critics to singer Kris Kristofferson. In 1977, at Knott's Berry Farm, Rabbitt appeared at the Country Music Awards and sang several of his songs from Rocky Mountain Music. He won the Top New Male Vocalist of the Year award.
Crossover success
While still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more number-one hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. It produced Rabbitt's first crossover single, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in the 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at number 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks's 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the number-17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B-flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number five on the Adult Contemporary charts. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point, Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley".
Rabbitt's next album, Horizon, reached platinum status and contained the biggest crossover hits of his career, "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Drivin'" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues". His popularity was so great at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he respectfully declined, saying "It's not worth the gamble."
The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top five on the Country, Adult Contemporary, and Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's last album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, on "You and I", which was included on his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached number one on the Billboard Country chart and became a pop smash, peaking at number seven and number two, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts. It was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second compilation, Greatest Hits - Volume II (1983), was his last crossover hit, reaching number 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
Late career
During the 1980s, Rabbitt moved further from crossover-styled music. His 1984 album The Best Year of My Life produced a number-one country hit and three more top-10 country hits, but none had crossover success. The illness and subsequent death of his son put his career on hold following the 1985 RCA Records release Rabbitt Trax, which included the number one "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)", a duet with country pop star Juice Newton. Like "You and I", the song was used as the theme for a soap opera, Days of Our Lives.
Rabbitt returned from his hiatus in 1988 with the release of I Wanna Dance With You, which despite somewhat negative reviews produced two number-one songs, a cover of Dion's "The Wanderer" and the album's title track. Additionally, "We Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right" entered the top 10, although the album's final single "That's Why I Fell in Love with You" stalled at number 66. Rabbitt's Capitol Records album Jersey Boy was reviewed positively, as was its single "On Second Thought", Rabbitt's last number-one hit. The album also included "American Boy", a patriotic tune popular during the Gulf War and used in Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was among the many country singers who suffered a dramatic decline in chart success beginning in 1991. That year, he released Ten Rounds, which produced the final charting single of his career, "Hang Up the Phone". Following that release, he left Capitol Records to tour with his band Hare Trigger.
In 1997, Rabbitt signed with Intersound Records, but was soon diagnosed with lung cancer. After a round of chemotherapy, he released the album Beatin' the Odds. In 1998, he released his last studio album, Songs from Rabbittland.
Musical styles
Rabbitt used innovative techniques to tie country music themes with light rhythm and blues-influenced tempos. His songs often used echo, as Rabbitt routinely sang his own background vocals. In a process called the "Eddie Rabbitt Chorale", Rabbitt compensated for what Billboard Magazine described as a "somewhat thin and reedy voice" by recording songs in three-part harmonies. His music was compared to rockabilly, particularly the album Horizon, which was noted as having an Elvis-like sound. Rabbitt remarked that he liked "a lot of the old Memphis sounds that came out of Sun Records" during the 1950s, and that he "wanted to catch the magic of a live band." He credited such wide-ranging artists as Bob Dylan, Elton John, Steely Dan, Elvis Presley, and Willie Nelson with influencing his works. When putting together an album, Rabbitt tried to make sure he put in "ten potential singles...no fillers, no junk." He remembered listening to albums as a child and hearing "two hits and a bunch of garbage."
Rabbitt believed that country music was "Irish music" and that "the minor chords in [his] music gave it that mystical feel." Although he did not strive to produce pop music, his songs helped influence the direction of country music, leading to the Urban Cowboy era during the 1980s. Critic Harry Sumrall of the San Jose Mercury News said that Rabbitt was "like a hot corn dog: nothing fancy, nothing frilly. You know what you're getting and you like it...never a country purist, Rabbitt nonetheless makes music that is plain and simple, with all of the virtues that make good country good. [His songs] might be brisk, but they are also warm and familiar, like the breeze that wafts in over the fried artichokes."
During the early 1990s, Rabbitt voiced criticism of hip hop music, particularly rap, which he said was sending a negative message to youths. He stated that the music was "inciting a generation" and that it had helped to contribute to the high rates of teenaged pregnancy, high-school dropouts, and rapes during this period.
Personal life
When Rabbitt arrived in Nashville during the late 1960s, a friend gave him a pet chicken. Rabbitt said he had "an affinity for animals" and kept the bird for a while before giving it to a farmer. During his Nashville days in the early 1970s, Rabbitt had a pet monkey, Jojo. Before his Rocky Mountain Music tour, the monkey bit Rabbitt, leaving his right arm in bandages.
In 1976, Rabbitt married Janine Girardi, whom he called "a little thing about five feet tall, with long, black beautiful hair, and a real pretty face." He had previously written the songs "Pure Love" and "Sweet Janine" for her. They had three children, Demelza, Timmy, and Tommy. Timmy was diagnosed with biliary atresia upon birth. The condition required a liver transplant for survival and he underwent one in 1985, but the attempt failed and he died. Rabbitt temporarily put his career on hiatus, saying, "I didn't want to be out of the music business, but where I was more important." Tommy was born in 1986.
Rabbitt felt his responsibility as an entertainer was to be a good role model and he was an advocate for many charitable organizations, including the Special Olympics, Easter Seals, and the American Council on Transplantation, of which he served as honorary chairman. He also worked as a spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and United Cerebral Palsy.
Rabbitt was a registered Republican and let Bob Dole use his song "American Boy" during Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was also a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation and visited the set during the show's fifth season in 1991–92.
Death
Rabbitt, a longtime smoker, died on May 7, 1998, in Nashville from lung cancer at the age of 56. He had been diagnosed with the disease in March 1997 and had received radiation treatment and surgery to remove part of one lung. His body was interred at Calvary Cemetery in Nashville on May 8, 1998.
No media outlets reported the death until after the burial at the family's request. The news came as a surprise to many in Nashville, including the performer's agent, who "had no idea Eddie was terminal" and had talked to him often, remarking that Rabbitt "was always upbeat and cheerful" in the final months of his life. Although he was widely believed to have been born in 1944 (this year can still be found in older publications and texts), at the time of his death, he was revealed to have been born in 1941.
Awards
Discography
References
External links
Eddie Rabbitt at CMT.com
Family Ties - People.com Archives
Eddie Rabbitt Did the 'roadie' Theme for a Reason: He's the Groupies' New Fantasy Figure - People.com Archives
1941 births
1998 deaths
American country singer-songwriters
American people of Irish descent
American male singer-songwriters
Deaths from cancer in Tennessee
Deaths from lung cancer
Elektra Records artists
Musicians from Brooklyn
RCA Records Nashville artists
20th-century American singers
Singer-songwriters from New York (state)
Country musicians from New York (state)
20th-century American male singers
New York (state) Republicans | true | [
"\"The Longer We Make Love\" is a song recorded by American singer Barry White for his 1999 album, Staying Power. It was written by White, Aaron Schroeder and Marlon Saunders, and produced by White and Jack Perry. The song was recorded in two versions: as a duet with Lisa Stansfield and as another duet with Chaka Khan. Both versions are written and performed in the key of G minor and received positive reviews from music critics. The CD single was released in selected European countries on July 19, 1999. \"The Longer We Make Love\" was also issued as a promotional single in the United States. The song reached #17 on the US Adult R&B charts in early 2000.\n\nTrack listings\nEuropean CD single\n\"The Longer We Make Love\" (Duet with Lisa Stansfield) (Radio Edit) – 3:57 \n\"The Longer We Make Love\" (Duet with Lisa Stansfield) (Album Version) – 6:26\n\"The Longer We Make Love\" (Duet with Chaka Khan) (Radio Edit) – 3:59\n\nUS promotional CD single\n\"The Longer We Make Love\" (Duet with Lisa Stansfield) (Radio Edit) – 3:55 \n\"The Longer We Make Love\" (Duet with Chaka Khan) (Radio Edit) – 3:48\n\"The Longer We Make Love\" (Duet with Lisa Stansfield) (Album Version) – 6:24\n\"The Longer We Make Love\" (Duet with Chaka Khan) (Album Version) – 5:46\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\nBarry White songs\nLisa Stansfield songs\nChaka Khan songs\n1999 singles\nSongs written by Barry White\nSongs written by Aaron Schroeder\n1999 songs\nContemporary R&B ballads\nSoul ballads\nVocal duets",
"Simone Stelzer alias Simone is an Austrian pop singer. She was born in Vienna, Austria on 1 October 1969.\n\nIn 1990 she participated in \"Ein Lied für Zagreb\", the Austrian qualifying heat for the Eurovision Song Contest. Her song \"Keine Mauern mehr\" was initially placed second. However, several days after the final it was discovered that winning song \"Das Beste\" performed by Duett had participated in a German qualifying heat in 1988. It was therefore disqualified and Simone was announced as the Austrian Eurovision entrant. \"Keine Mauern mehr\" was placed tenth in Zagreb. Simone participated in the 1994 qualifying heat, \"Ein Lied für Dublin\", with the song \"Radio\", which was placed fourth.\n\nDiscography\n\nStudio albums \n [1990] Feuer Im Vulkan\n [1994] Gute Reise (bon voyage)\n [1996] Ich liebe Dich\n [1998] Aus Liebe\n [1999] Träume\n [2001] Solang wir lieben\n [2003] Ganz nah\n [2005] Schwerelos\n [2006] Das Beste und mehr\n [2009] Morgenrot\n [2010] Mondblind\n [2012] Pur\n [2013] Das kleine große Leben (Duet with Charly Brunner)\n [2015] Alles geht! (Duet with Charly Brunner)\n [2015] 25 Jahre Simone – Die ultimative Best of\n\nSingles \n [1994] Wahre Liebe\n [1994] Josie\n [1996] Heute Nacht\n [1996] Wahre Liebe wartet\n [1998] Nimm mich einfach in den Arm ...\n [1998] Ich lieb dich oder nicht\n [1998] Denn es war ihr Lachen (Sayonara)\n [2000] Verlier mein Herz nicht, wenn du gehst\n [2000] Ich muss dich wiedersehn\n [2000] Solang wir lieben\n [2007] Alles durch die Liebe (Duet with Bernhard Brink)\n [2008] 1000 mal geträumt\n [2009] Ich hätt ja gesagt\n [2009] Die Nacht als sie fortlief\n [2009] Morgenrot\n [2010] Halt mich ein letztes mal\n [2010] Sehnsucht kommt nicht von ungefähr\n [2011] Ich möcht niemals Deine Tränen sehn\n [2012] Wenn Du gehst\n [2012] Ich denk noch an Dich (Duet with Charly Brunner)\n [2012] Heisskalter Engel\n [2013] Das kleine große Leben (Duet with Charly Brunner)\n [2015] Buongiorno Amore (Duet with Charly Brunner)\n [2015] Arche Noah (Duet with Charly Brunner)\n [2016] Woher weiß ich das es Liebe ist (Duet with Charly Brunner)\n [2016] Das kann uns keiner nehmen (Duet with Charly Brunner)\n [2016] Nur für den Moment (Duet with Charly Brunner)\n [2017] Wahre Liebe (Duet with Charly Brunner)\n [2018] Nachtschwärmer (Duet with Charly Brunner)\n [2018] Die Tage enden nicht am Horizont (Duet with Charly Brunner)\n [2018] Traumtänzer (Duet with Charly Brunner)\n [2018] Kompass für mein Herz (Duet with Charly Brunner)\n [2019] Leichtes Spiel\n\nReferences \n\n Discography\n\nExternal links \n\n (in German)\n \n\n1969 births\nLiving people\nEurovision Song Contest entrants for Austria\n21st-century Austrian women singers\nSchlager musicians\nEurovision Song Contest entrants of 1990\n20th-century Austrian women singers"
] |
[
"Eddie Rabbitt",
"Crossover success",
"what is crossover success",
"biggest crossover hits of his career including \"I Love a Rainy Night\" and \"Drivin' My Life Away.\"",
"did his father love music too",
"I don't know.",
"what was one of his hits",
"\"Every Which Way But Loose\",",
"did he receive any awards",
"Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits,",
"any other awards",
"Which Way But Loose\", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary,",
"any other awards",
"Rabbitt's next album Horizon, which reached platinum status, contained the biggest crossover hits of his career including \"I Love a Rainy Night\"",
"what was one of his hits",
"\"You Put the Beat in My Heart\"",
"any #1 hits",
"The duet reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart",
"who was the duet with",
"Crystal Gayle,"
] | C_fcb40ea6cb984513afd1f37ff6f823be_0 | any other duets | 10 | Aside from duet with Crystal Gayle any other duets? | Eddie Rabbitt | While he was still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also opened for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour, but soon Rabbitt would himself break through on other charts. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more No. 1 hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. The album produced Rabbitt's first crossover single of his career, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped Country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in a 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at No. 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks at the debut of Brooks' 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the No. 17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point in his career Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley." Rabbitt's next album Horizon, which reached platinum status, contained the biggest crossover hits of his career including "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment that he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Driving" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" from Dylan's 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. His popularity was so strong at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he went on to respectfully decline stating "It's not worth the gamble." The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top 5 on Country, Adult Contemporary and the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's final album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, to record "You and I", which was included in his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and eventually became a large pop smash, peaking at No. 7 and No. 2 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary chart. The song's popularity reached the point where it was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second Greatest Hits compilation in 1983 was his final crossover hit, reaching No. 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Edward Thomas Rabbitt (November 27, 1941 – May 7, 1998) was an American country music singer and songwriter. His career began as a songwriter in the late 1960s, springboarding to a recording career after composing hits such as "Kentucky Rain" for Elvis Presley in 1970 and "Pure Love" for Ronnie Milsap in 1974. Later in the 1970s, Rabbitt helped to develop the crossover-influenced sound of country music prevalent in the 1980s with such hits as "Suspicions", "I Love a Rainy Night" (a number-one hit single on the Billboard Hot 100), and "Every Which Way but Loose" (the theme from the film of the same title). His duets "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)" with Juice Newton and "You and I" with Crystal Gayle later appeared on the soap operas Days of Our Lives and All My Children.
Early life
Rabbitt was born to Irish immigrants Thomas Michael and Mae (née Joyce) Rabbitt in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941, and was raised in the nearby community of East Orange, New Jersey. His father was an oil-refinery refrigeration worker, and a skilled fiddle and accordion player, who often entertained in local New York City dance halls. By age 12, Rabbitt was a proficient guitar player, having been taught by his scoutmaster, Bob Scwickrath. During his childhood Rabbitt became a self-proclaimed "walking encyclopedia of country music". After his parents divorced, he dropped out of school at age 16. His mother, Mae, explained that Eddie "was never one for school [because] his head was too full of music." He later obtained a high-school diploma at night school.
Career
Early career
Rabbitt worked as a mental hospital attendant in the late 1950s, but like his father, he fulfilled his love of music by performing at the Six Steps Down club in his hometown. He later won a talent contest and was given an hour of Saturday night radio show time to broadcast a live performance from a bar in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1964, he signed his first record deal with 20th Century Records and released the singles "Next to the Note" and "Six Nights and Seven Days". Four years later, with $1,000 to his name, Rabbitt moved to Nashville, where he began his career as a songwriter. During his first night in the town, Rabbitt wrote "Working My Way Up to the Bottom", which Roy Drusky recorded in 1968. To support himself, Rabbitt worked as a truck driver, soda jerk and fruit picker in Nashville. He was ultimately hired as a staff writer for the Hill & Range Publishing Company for $37.50 per week. As a young songwriter, Rabbitt socialized with other aspiring writers at Wally's Clubhouse, a Nashville bar; he said he and the other patrons had "no place else to go."
Rabbitt became successful as a songwriter in 1969, when Elvis Presley recorded his song "Kentucky Rain". The song went gold and cast Rabbitt as one of Nashville's leading young songwriters. Presley also recorded Rabbitt's song "Patch It Up", featured in the concert film "Elvis: That's the Way It Is". And a lesser known Presley song called "Inherit the Wind "on the Album Elvis Back in Memphis. While eating Cap'n Crunch, he penned "Pure Love", which Ronnie Milsap rode to number one in 1974. This song led to a contract offer from Elektra Records.
Rabbitt signed with Elektra Records in 1975. His first single under that label, "You Get to Me", made the top 40 that year, and two songs in 1975, "Forgive and Forget" and "I Should Have Married You", nearly made the top 10. These three songs, along with a recording of "Pure Love", were included on Rabbitt's 1975 self-named debut album. In 1976, his critically acclaimed album Rocky Mountain Music was released, which included Rabbitt's first number-one country hit, "Drinkin' My Baby (Off My Mind)". In 1977, his third album, Rabbitt, was released, and made the top five on Country Albums chart. Also in 1977, the Academy of Country Music named Rabbitt "Top New Male Vocalist of the Year". By that time, he had a good reputation in Nashville, and was being compared by critics to singer Kris Kristofferson. In 1977, at Knott's Berry Farm, Rabbitt appeared at the Country Music Awards and sang several of his songs from Rocky Mountain Music. He won the Top New Male Vocalist of the Year award.
Crossover success
While still relatively unknown, Rabbitt toured with and opened for crossover star Kenny Rogers, and also for Dolly Parton on a number of dates during her 1978 tour. Following the 1978 release of Variations, which included two more number-one hits, Rabbitt released his first compilation album, The Best of Eddie Rabbitt. It produced Rabbitt's first crossover single, "Every Which Way But Loose", which topped country charts and reached the top 30 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary, and was featured in the 1978 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. The song also broke the record for highest chart debut, entering at number 18. Rabbitt held this record until it was shared with Garth Brooks's 2005 single "Good Ride Cowboy." The record was broken in 2006 upon the number-17 chart entrance of Keith Urban's "Once in a Lifetime." Rabbitt's next single, the R&B-flavored "Suspicions" from his 1979 album Loveline, was an even greater crossover success, again reaching number one on Country charts and the top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number five on the Adult Contemporary charts. He was given his own television special on NBC, first airing on July 10, 1980, which included appearances by such performers as Emmylou Harris and Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point, Rabbitt had been compared to a "young Elvis Presley".
Rabbitt's next album, Horizon, reached platinum status and contained the biggest crossover hits of his career, "I Love a Rainy Night" and "Drivin' My Life Away." Rabbitt developed "Rainy Night" from a song fragment he penned during a 1960s thunderstorm. "Drivin'" recalled Rabbitt's tenure as a truck driver, and was inspired by Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues". His popularity was so great at this point that he was offered his own variety television show, which he respectfully declined, saying "It's not worth the gamble."
The release of his 1981 Step by Step album continued Rabbitt's crossover success as all three singles reached the top 10 on both Country and Adult Contemporary charts. The title track became Rabbitt's third straight single to reach the top five on the Country, Adult Contemporary, and Billboard Hot 100 charts. The album ultimately reached gold status, Rabbitt's last album to do so. He teamed up with another country pop crossover star, Crystal Gayle, on "You and I", which was included on his 1982 album Radio Romance. The duet reached number one on the Billboard Country chart and became a pop smash, peaking at number seven and number two, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts. It was used as a love theme for a couple on the soap opera All My Children. The song "You Put the Beat in My Heart" from Rabbitt's second compilation, Greatest Hits - Volume II (1983), was his last crossover hit, reaching number 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
Late career
During the 1980s, Rabbitt moved further from crossover-styled music. His 1984 album The Best Year of My Life produced a number-one country hit and three more top-10 country hits, but none had crossover success. The illness and subsequent death of his son put his career on hold following the 1985 RCA Records release Rabbitt Trax, which included the number one "Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)", a duet with country pop star Juice Newton. Like "You and I", the song was used as the theme for a soap opera, Days of Our Lives.
Rabbitt returned from his hiatus in 1988 with the release of I Wanna Dance With You, which despite somewhat negative reviews produced two number-one songs, a cover of Dion's "The Wanderer" and the album's title track. Additionally, "We Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right" entered the top 10, although the album's final single "That's Why I Fell in Love with You" stalled at number 66. Rabbitt's Capitol Records album Jersey Boy was reviewed positively, as was its single "On Second Thought", Rabbitt's last number-one hit. The album also included "American Boy", a patriotic tune popular during the Gulf War and used in Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was among the many country singers who suffered a dramatic decline in chart success beginning in 1991. That year, he released Ten Rounds, which produced the final charting single of his career, "Hang Up the Phone". Following that release, he left Capitol Records to tour with his band Hare Trigger.
In 1997, Rabbitt signed with Intersound Records, but was soon diagnosed with lung cancer. After a round of chemotherapy, he released the album Beatin' the Odds. In 1998, he released his last studio album, Songs from Rabbittland.
Musical styles
Rabbitt used innovative techniques to tie country music themes with light rhythm and blues-influenced tempos. His songs often used echo, as Rabbitt routinely sang his own background vocals. In a process called the "Eddie Rabbitt Chorale", Rabbitt compensated for what Billboard Magazine described as a "somewhat thin and reedy voice" by recording songs in three-part harmonies. His music was compared to rockabilly, particularly the album Horizon, which was noted as having an Elvis-like sound. Rabbitt remarked that he liked "a lot of the old Memphis sounds that came out of Sun Records" during the 1950s, and that he "wanted to catch the magic of a live band." He credited such wide-ranging artists as Bob Dylan, Elton John, Steely Dan, Elvis Presley, and Willie Nelson with influencing his works. When putting together an album, Rabbitt tried to make sure he put in "ten potential singles...no fillers, no junk." He remembered listening to albums as a child and hearing "two hits and a bunch of garbage."
Rabbitt believed that country music was "Irish music" and that "the minor chords in [his] music gave it that mystical feel." Although he did not strive to produce pop music, his songs helped influence the direction of country music, leading to the Urban Cowboy era during the 1980s. Critic Harry Sumrall of the San Jose Mercury News said that Rabbitt was "like a hot corn dog: nothing fancy, nothing frilly. You know what you're getting and you like it...never a country purist, Rabbitt nonetheless makes music that is plain and simple, with all of the virtues that make good country good. [His songs] might be brisk, but they are also warm and familiar, like the breeze that wafts in over the fried artichokes."
During the early 1990s, Rabbitt voiced criticism of hip hop music, particularly rap, which he said was sending a negative message to youths. He stated that the music was "inciting a generation" and that it had helped to contribute to the high rates of teenaged pregnancy, high-school dropouts, and rapes during this period.
Personal life
When Rabbitt arrived in Nashville during the late 1960s, a friend gave him a pet chicken. Rabbitt said he had "an affinity for animals" and kept the bird for a while before giving it to a farmer. During his Nashville days in the early 1970s, Rabbitt had a pet monkey, Jojo. Before his Rocky Mountain Music tour, the monkey bit Rabbitt, leaving his right arm in bandages.
In 1976, Rabbitt married Janine Girardi, whom he called "a little thing about five feet tall, with long, black beautiful hair, and a real pretty face." He had previously written the songs "Pure Love" and "Sweet Janine" for her. They had three children, Demelza, Timmy, and Tommy. Timmy was diagnosed with biliary atresia upon birth. The condition required a liver transplant for survival and he underwent one in 1985, but the attempt failed and he died. Rabbitt temporarily put his career on hiatus, saying, "I didn't want to be out of the music business, but where I was more important." Tommy was born in 1986.
Rabbitt felt his responsibility as an entertainer was to be a good role model and he was an advocate for many charitable organizations, including the Special Olympics, Easter Seals, and the American Council on Transplantation, of which he served as honorary chairman. He also worked as a spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and United Cerebral Palsy.
Rabbitt was a registered Republican and let Bob Dole use his song "American Boy" during Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Rabbitt was also a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation and visited the set during the show's fifth season in 1991–92.
Death
Rabbitt, a longtime smoker, died on May 7, 1998, in Nashville from lung cancer at the age of 56. He had been diagnosed with the disease in March 1997 and had received radiation treatment and surgery to remove part of one lung. His body was interred at Calvary Cemetery in Nashville on May 8, 1998.
No media outlets reported the death until after the burial at the family's request. The news came as a surprise to many in Nashville, including the performer's agent, who "had no idea Eddie was terminal" and had talked to him often, remarking that Rabbitt "was always upbeat and cheerful" in the final months of his life. Although he was widely believed to have been born in 1944 (this year can still be found in older publications and texts), at the time of his death, he was revealed to have been born in 1941.
Awards
Discography
References
External links
Eddie Rabbitt at CMT.com
Family Ties - People.com Archives
Eddie Rabbitt Did the 'roadie' Theme for a Reason: He's the Groupies' New Fantasy Figure - People.com Archives
1941 births
1998 deaths
American country singer-songwriters
American people of Irish descent
American male singer-songwriters
Deaths from cancer in Tennessee
Deaths from lung cancer
Elektra Records artists
Musicians from Brooklyn
RCA Records Nashville artists
20th-century American singers
Singer-songwriters from New York (state)
Country musicians from New York (state)
20th-century American male singers
New York (state) Republicans | false | [
"A duet is a musical composition or piece for two performers.\n\nDuets or The Duets may also refer to:\n\nFilms and television\n Duets (film), a 2000 film, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Giamatti and Huey Lewis\n \"Duets\" (Glee), a 2010 episode in the second season of Glee\n Duets (TV series), a music-based reality competition show on ABC\n\nMusic\n Duets (Bach), works for organ by Johann Sebastian Bach\n\nAlbums \n Duets (Ane Brun album), 2005\n Duets (Barbra Streisand album), 2002\n Duets (Carla Bley & Steve Swallow album), 1988\n Duets (Dizzy Gillespie album), 1957\n Duets (Elton John album), 1993\n Duets (Emmylou Harris album)\n Duets (Frank Sinatra album), 1993\n Duets II (Frank Sinatra album), a 1994 album by Frank Sinatra\n Duets (Helen Merrill and Ron Carter album), a 1989 album by Helen Merrill and Ron Carter\n Duets (Jimmy Raney and Doug Raney album), 1979\n Duets (Linda Ronstadt album), 2014\n Duets II (Tony Bennett album), 2011\n Duets (Joe Pass and John Pisano album), 1991\n Duets (Kenny Rogers album), 1984\n Duets (Roscoe Mitchell and Anthony Braxton album), 1976\nReba: Duets, a 2007 album by Reba McEntire\nDuets: The Final Chapter, a 2005 album by The Notorious B.I.G.\nDuets: An American Classic, a 2006 album by Tony Bennett\nDuets, a 2017 album by The Wiggles\nDuets 1976, Anthony Braxton and Muhal Richard Abrams\nDuets: Hamburg 1991, Anthony Braxton and Peter Niklas Wilson\nDuets (1993), Anthony Braxton and Mario Pavane\nDuets: Re-working the Catalogue, a 2015 album by Van Morrison and others\nThe Duets (Jo Stafford and Frankie Laine album), 1994\nThe Duets (Mulgrew Miller album), 1999\n\nSee also \n Duetos (disambiguation)\n Duet (disambiguation)",
"Duets II may refer to:\n\n Duets II (Frank Sinatra album)\n Duets II (Tony Bennett album)"
] |
[
"Roberto Orci",
"Becoming a producer"
] | C_28d6b4df2df24baa984a1ea2e224f44f_0 | When did Orci become a producer | 1 | When did Roberto Orci become a producer? | Roberto Orci | Orci's first credit solely as a producer came with the film Eagle Eye, where he worked once again alongside Kurtzman. He said in an interview with the magazine Extra that he had previously been involved in productions where the producers had writing backgrounds and had looked to them for help, and he was happy to provide that same support to the writers on Eagle Eye. The director of the film, D. J. Caruso, praised the duo saying that "What's unusually cool about them is that they have maintained the producer-writer power that they earned in television and carried that over into the feature film area, and that is extremely rare." Following their work on Eagle Eye, they were executive producers on the Sandra Bullock film, The Proposal. Despite their film careers, Orci and Kurtzman continued to create television series. These included Sleepy Hollow, which they developed alongside Phillip Iscove. They pitched the series to a number of networks, and it was picked up by Fox. Orci took five years to bring the series Matador to television, with it originating from a conversation with his cousin Andrew. It was created for Robert Rodriguez's El Rey Network, and Rodriguez's one demand of the show was that he could direct the pilot episode. Orci later explained in an interview that it was an easy decision, and he needed to pretend to consider it. Orci and Kurtzman also worked together as executive producers on the animated television series, Transformers: Prime, due to their involvement with the live action movies. Following the end of the series they were hopeful to be involved in a future animated series based on the premise, which Orci saw less like a reboot of the show and more of a continuation in a different guise. He felt that while Prime was sophisticated, there were concerns that it was leaving younger viewers behind because of its complexity and intensity. CANNOTANSWER | Orci's first credit solely as a producer came with the film Eagle Eye, where he worked once again alongside Kurtzman. | Roberto Gaston Orcí (born July 20, 1973) is a Mexican-American film and television screenwriter and producer. He began his longtime collaboration with Alex Kurtzman while at school in California. Together they have been employed on television series such as Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. In 2008, together with J. J. Abrams, they created Fringe. In 2013, they created Sleepy Hollow alongside Phillip Iscove. Orci and Kurtzman's first film project was Michael Bay's The Island, and due to that partnership they went on to write the scripts for the first two films of the Transformers film series. Orci first became a film producer with 2008's Eagle Eye and again with 2009's The Proposal.
He and Kurtzman since returned to working with Abrams on Mission: Impossible III and both Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness. Between 2005 and 2011, Kurtzman and Orci's film projects took revenues of more than $3 billion. In April 2014, Orci and Kurtzman announced that they would only collaborate in television projects, and Orci worked on the third Star Trek film, Star Trek Beyond, until being replaced the following December. Orci created the television series Matador for the El Rey Network, but after this was initially renewed, it was cancelled at the end of the first season. Both Kurtzman and Orci continue to work as producers on the television series Limitless and Scorpion. Orci was awarded the Norman Lear Writer's Award and the Raul Julia Award for Excellence, in addition to shared awards and nominations including The George Pal Memorial Award.
Early life
Orci was born in Mexico City on July 20, 1973, to a Mexican father and a Cuban mother. Orci grew up in Mexico, and moved with his family to the United States at the age of 10. He was raised in Texas, Los Angeles and Canada.
He met his longtime friend and collaborator Alex Kurtzman when both were 17-year-old students at Crossroads, a privately funded school in Santa Monica, California. The first time they came across each other was in a film class, where they discovered each other's love for films and in particular the Steven Soderbergh film Sex, Lies, and Videotape. The duo found that they had a number of things in common, as Kurtzman had previously lived in Mexico City and the two could relate. Orci later called him an "honorary Hispanic". Orci went on to attend the University of Texas at Austin. The duo got together once again, and began to write scripts. These included one called Misfortune Cookies which Orci described as "loosely autobiographical", and Last Kiss, which Kurtzman said was their version of The Breakfast Club but was set in a lunatic asylum.
Career
Television and film screenwriting
Orci and Kurtzman began their writing collaboration on the television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, after being hired by Sam Raimi. After actor Kevin Sorbo suffered a stroke, the duo were required to come up with inventive ideas to minimize his appearances on screen. Due to this work, they became show runners at the age of 24. They were also involved in the sister-series to Hercules, Xena: Warrior Princess. They sought to move to writing for a network-based television series, but found this difficult. After receiving a series of negative responses, they met with J. J. Abrams who was starting work on Alias at the time. The meeting went well, and resulted in them working on the series. They would go on to work together again on the Fox science fiction series Fringe where all three were listed as co-creators.
Orci and Kurtzman received their break in writing for films in 2004, with the Michael Bay film The Island, for which they developed the spec script by Caspian Tredwell-Owen. When Kurtzman and Orci first met Bay, he asked the pair "Why should I trust you?", to which Orci replied "You shouldn't yet. Let's see what happens." While the film was not an overwhelming success, they were brought back for Bay's following film, Transformers, after producer Steven Spielberg asked them to come in for a meeting. The movie took in $710 million at the box office.
Following their work on that film, the duo were brought in to revise the script for Zack Snyder's Watchmen, in an uncredited capacity. They worked once more with Abrams, on Mission: Impossible III. When they collaborated once more with Bay for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, they were under significant time pressures due to the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike. Kurtzman and Orci had two weeks to outline the film, and after the strike Bay had them moved into the Hotel Casa del Mar. The hotel was six blocks away from his office, enabling Bay to conduct surprise inspections.
In the period between 2005 and 2011, the films written by Kurtzman and Orci grossed more than $3 billion, leading to Forbes describing them as "Hollywood's secret weapons". The busyness of their screenwriting careers required them to collaborate with other writers due to the number of projects they were involved in. For example, on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, they teamed up with Ehren Kruger, who took over from them on the writing duties for the Transfomers franchise from Transformers: Dark of the Moon onwards.
Becoming a producer
Orci's first credit solely as a producer came with the film Eagle Eye, where he worked once again alongside Kurtzman. He said in an interview with the magazine Extra that he had previously been involved in productions where the producers had writing backgrounds and had looked to them for help, and he was happy to provide that same support to the writers on Eagle Eye. The director of the film, D. J. Caruso, praised the duo saying that "What's unusually cool about them is that they have maintained the producer-writer power that they earned in television and carried that over into the feature film area, and that is extremely rare." Following their work on Eagle Eye, they were executive producers on the Sandra Bullock film, The Proposal.
Despite their film careers, Orci and Kurtzman continued to create television series. These included Sleepy Hollow, which they developed alongside Phillip Iscove. They pitched the series to a number of networks, and it was picked up by Fox. Orci took five years to bring the series Matador to television, with it originating from a conversation with his cousin Andrew. It was created for Robert Rodriguez's El Rey Network, and Rodriguez's one demand of the show was that he could direct the pilot episode. Orci later explained in an interview that it was an easy decision, and he needed to pretend to consider it.
Orci and Kurtzman also worked together as executive producers on the animated television series, Transformers: Prime, due to their involvement with the live action movies. Following the end of the series they were hopeful to be involved in a future animated series based on the premise, which Orci saw less like a reboot of the show and more of a continuation in a different guise. He felt that while Prime was sophisticated, there were concerns that it was leaving younger viewers behind because of its complexity and intensity.
Star Trek reboot
Orci and Kurtzman were asked to write the script for a new Star Trek film, but initially turned it down despite Orci being a fan of the series. Orci suggested rebooting the timeline as seen previously in the films and television series, and adding the return of Leonard Nimoy as Spock from Star Trek: The Original Series. He considered the first two films in the reboot series to be the origin story for the crew, and that the third film would start where the crew was at the beginning of Star Trek: The Original Series. Orci felt that the relationship between the James T. Kirk and the younger Spock was reflective of the partnership of himself and Kurtzman, he said that "We didn't even realize we were writing about ourselves until we were halfway through the script, that was a little embarrassing.
Star Trek was profitable at the domestic box-office, resulting in a sequel being greenlit by the studio and Kurtzman and Orci being asked to write it. The studio set aside a larger budget for the sequel, which was revealed by Orci in an interview with TrekMovie.com. Orci ruled out the "hero quitting" staple of a second movie, which had featured in the Transformers sequel, saying that the crew of the Enterprise were committed and that type of story does not have to apply to all sequels. During the buildup to the film, called Star Trek Into Darkness, Orci was one of the production team who did not give much away about the villain in the film and denied that Benedict Cumberbatch was to play Khan Noonian Singh.
The criticism of the sequel resulted in Orci posting controversial comments on a Star Trek fan site. In response to a fan upset over Into Darkness, Orci called him a "shitty fan". He later apologized and deactivated his Twitter account.
Breakup of the partnership
In April 2014, Orci and Kurtzman confirmed to Variety that they are no longer going to work together on film projects but will still collaborate on television. Kurtzman wanted to work on the Spider-Man film franchise, while Orci was linked to the directorial role for Star Trek 3. Orci confirmed later that year in July that he was not involved in the production of The Amazing Spider-Man 3 alongside Kurtzman. Orci and Kurtzman's K/O Paper Products continues to operate as a production company within CBS Television Studios, and has created the series Scorpion inspired by the life of Walter O'Brien for the 2014-15 season and Limitless was created for the 2015-16 season from the 2011 film.
Prior to the split of Kurtzman and Orci, the duo were lined up to write the third film in the new Star Trek series. In May 2014, Skydance and Paramount Pictures announced that Orci was to direct the third installment of the Star Trek reboot franchise, after Abrams moved on to direct Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This would have marked Orci's directorial debut, and he was to write the script alongside co-writers JD Payne and Patrick McKay. Due to his commitment to Star Trek 3, he dropped out of a new Power Rangers film, for which he would have been executive producer. But on December 5, it was announced he would no longer be directing the Star Trek film. He remains credited as a producer on the film, and was replaced by Doug Jung and cast member Simon Pegg as the script writers after Orci's initial script was dropped. Orci was replaced as director by Justin Lin, who had previously directed films in The Fast and the Furious franchise.
Orci created Matador with the idea that the main character would be a "soccer player by day who is a spy by night", and called him a "Latin James Bond". The series was broadcast on the El Rey Network created by Robert Rodriguez. It was renewed for a second season shortly before the pilot was broadcast, which had been directed by Rodriguez. But following the production of the first season, the series was cancelled despite the earlier renewal. This decision was blamed on poor international sales.
In March 2020, it was reported that Roberto Orci was hired by Sony to write a script for a untitled Marvel film that would set in Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters
Personal life
Orci married actress and screenwriter Adele Heather Taylor on June 6, 2020 in a private ceremony. They work together as screenwriters and producers.
Awards and accolades
The Hollywood Reporter listed Orci as one of the 50 most powerful Latinos in Hollywood of 2007. His first solo accolade was the Norman Lear Writer's Award at the Imagen Awards in 2009. He described the experience of receiving an award without Kurtzman as "bizarre". Orci has also been awarded the Raul Julia Award for Excellence by the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts. Together with Kurtzman, Orci won The George Pal Memorial Award at the 2010 Saturn Awards.
Orci and Kurtzman were both honored by the nonprofit organization Chrysalis at the Butterfly Ball on June 8, 2013. The organization raises money for homeless people and low-income families, Orci said that "When you hear the life stories from people right here in our own community, who are clients at Chrysalis, and when you come to learn of their lowest moments and how Chrysalis has led to their proudest triumphs, it's easy to see why this local organization is so impactful."
In 2017, Orci was the recipient of the "Visionary Impact Award" by the National Hispanic Media Coalition. This award is given out by the organization for "Latinos making outstanding contributions to the positive portrayals of Latinos in film and TV".
Filmography
Films
Television credits
References
External links
1973 births
Living people
Mexican emigrants to the United States
American people of Cuban descent
Television producers from California
American television writers
American male television writers
Mexican people of Cuban descent
Mexican screenwriters
Writers from Mexico City
University of Texas at Austin alumni
Showrunners
Crossroads School alumni
Screenwriters from California
20th-century American screenwriters
American conspiracy theorists
20th-century American male writers | true | [
"Orci is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:\n\nJ. R. Orci (born 1975), Mexican television writer and producer\nLelio Orci (1937–2019), Italian scientist\nRoberto Orci (born 1973), Mexican-American film and television screenwriter and producer",
"Jorge Richard \"J.R.\" Orci (born 1975) is a Mexican television writer and producer.\n\nLife and career\nOrci was born in Mexico City to a Mexican father and a Cuban mother. His mother fled Cuba after Fidel Castro came to power. He was raised in Mexico City, Canada, Texas, and Los Angeles. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. Orci is the younger brother of screenwriter Roberto Orci, with whom he worked on the ABC TV series Alias as well as on the FOX science-fiction drama Fringe. He is currently working on the NBC drama The Blacklist.\n\nFringe\nOrci joined the FOX science-fiction/horror series Fringe, in its first season as writer and supervising producer. He was brought on to the show by his brother Roberto Orci, who is the co-creator (along with J. J. Abrams and Alex Kurtzman). Orci also served as consulting producer and writer during the show's fourth season. Episodes he has contributed to include:\n\"The Ghost Network\" 01.03 (co-written by co-executive producer David H. Goodman)\n\"The Equation\" 01.08 (co-written by Goodman)\n\"The Transformation\" 01.13 (co-written by Zack Whedon)\n\"Unleashed\" 01.16 (co-written by Whedon)\n\"The Road Not Taken\" 01.19 (Orci and executive producer Jeff Pinkner co-wrote a teleplay based on a story by consulting producer Akiva Goldsman)\n\"Novation\" 04.05 (co-written with co-producer Graham Roland)\n\"Welcome to Westfield\" 04.12 (co-written by Roland)\n\"Everything in Its Right Place\" 04.17 (Orci and co-executive producer David Fury co-wrote a teleplay based on a story by Orci and story editor Matthew Pitts)\n\nFilmography\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nMexican television writers\n1975 births\nLiving people\nPeople from Mexico City\nMexican television producers"
] |
[
"Roberto Orci",
"Becoming a producer",
"When did Orci become a producer",
"Orci's first credit solely as a producer came with the film Eagle Eye, where he worked once again alongside Kurtzman."
] | C_28d6b4df2df24baa984a1ea2e224f44f_0 | Was it a success | 2 | Was Roberto Orci's first film credit, Eagle Eye ,a success? | Roberto Orci | Orci's first credit solely as a producer came with the film Eagle Eye, where he worked once again alongside Kurtzman. He said in an interview with the magazine Extra that he had previously been involved in productions where the producers had writing backgrounds and had looked to them for help, and he was happy to provide that same support to the writers on Eagle Eye. The director of the film, D. J. Caruso, praised the duo saying that "What's unusually cool about them is that they have maintained the producer-writer power that they earned in television and carried that over into the feature film area, and that is extremely rare." Following their work on Eagle Eye, they were executive producers on the Sandra Bullock film, The Proposal. Despite their film careers, Orci and Kurtzman continued to create television series. These included Sleepy Hollow, which they developed alongside Phillip Iscove. They pitched the series to a number of networks, and it was picked up by Fox. Orci took five years to bring the series Matador to television, with it originating from a conversation with his cousin Andrew. It was created for Robert Rodriguez's El Rey Network, and Rodriguez's one demand of the show was that he could direct the pilot episode. Orci later explained in an interview that it was an easy decision, and he needed to pretend to consider it. Orci and Kurtzman also worked together as executive producers on the animated television series, Transformers: Prime, due to their involvement with the live action movies. Following the end of the series they were hopeful to be involved in a future animated series based on the premise, which Orci saw less like a reboot of the show and more of a continuation in a different guise. He felt that while Prime was sophisticated, there were concerns that it was leaving younger viewers behind because of its complexity and intensity. CANNOTANSWER | The director of the film, D. J. Caruso, praised the duo saying that "What's unusually cool about them is that they have maintained the producer-writer power that | Roberto Gaston Orcí (born July 20, 1973) is a Mexican-American film and television screenwriter and producer. He began his longtime collaboration with Alex Kurtzman while at school in California. Together they have been employed on television series such as Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. In 2008, together with J. J. Abrams, they created Fringe. In 2013, they created Sleepy Hollow alongside Phillip Iscove. Orci and Kurtzman's first film project was Michael Bay's The Island, and due to that partnership they went on to write the scripts for the first two films of the Transformers film series. Orci first became a film producer with 2008's Eagle Eye and again with 2009's The Proposal.
He and Kurtzman since returned to working with Abrams on Mission: Impossible III and both Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness. Between 2005 and 2011, Kurtzman and Orci's film projects took revenues of more than $3 billion. In April 2014, Orci and Kurtzman announced that they would only collaborate in television projects, and Orci worked on the third Star Trek film, Star Trek Beyond, until being replaced the following December. Orci created the television series Matador for the El Rey Network, but after this was initially renewed, it was cancelled at the end of the first season. Both Kurtzman and Orci continue to work as producers on the television series Limitless and Scorpion. Orci was awarded the Norman Lear Writer's Award and the Raul Julia Award for Excellence, in addition to shared awards and nominations including The George Pal Memorial Award.
Early life
Orci was born in Mexico City on July 20, 1973, to a Mexican father and a Cuban mother. Orci grew up in Mexico, and moved with his family to the United States at the age of 10. He was raised in Texas, Los Angeles and Canada.
He met his longtime friend and collaborator Alex Kurtzman when both were 17-year-old students at Crossroads, a privately funded school in Santa Monica, California. The first time they came across each other was in a film class, where they discovered each other's love for films and in particular the Steven Soderbergh film Sex, Lies, and Videotape. The duo found that they had a number of things in common, as Kurtzman had previously lived in Mexico City and the two could relate. Orci later called him an "honorary Hispanic". Orci went on to attend the University of Texas at Austin. The duo got together once again, and began to write scripts. These included one called Misfortune Cookies which Orci described as "loosely autobiographical", and Last Kiss, which Kurtzman said was their version of The Breakfast Club but was set in a lunatic asylum.
Career
Television and film screenwriting
Orci and Kurtzman began their writing collaboration on the television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, after being hired by Sam Raimi. After actor Kevin Sorbo suffered a stroke, the duo were required to come up with inventive ideas to minimize his appearances on screen. Due to this work, they became show runners at the age of 24. They were also involved in the sister-series to Hercules, Xena: Warrior Princess. They sought to move to writing for a network-based television series, but found this difficult. After receiving a series of negative responses, they met with J. J. Abrams who was starting work on Alias at the time. The meeting went well, and resulted in them working on the series. They would go on to work together again on the Fox science fiction series Fringe where all three were listed as co-creators.
Orci and Kurtzman received their break in writing for films in 2004, with the Michael Bay film The Island, for which they developed the spec script by Caspian Tredwell-Owen. When Kurtzman and Orci first met Bay, he asked the pair "Why should I trust you?", to which Orci replied "You shouldn't yet. Let's see what happens." While the film was not an overwhelming success, they were brought back for Bay's following film, Transformers, after producer Steven Spielberg asked them to come in for a meeting. The movie took in $710 million at the box office.
Following their work on that film, the duo were brought in to revise the script for Zack Snyder's Watchmen, in an uncredited capacity. They worked once more with Abrams, on Mission: Impossible III. When they collaborated once more with Bay for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, they were under significant time pressures due to the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike. Kurtzman and Orci had two weeks to outline the film, and after the strike Bay had them moved into the Hotel Casa del Mar. The hotel was six blocks away from his office, enabling Bay to conduct surprise inspections.
In the period between 2005 and 2011, the films written by Kurtzman and Orci grossed more than $3 billion, leading to Forbes describing them as "Hollywood's secret weapons". The busyness of their screenwriting careers required them to collaborate with other writers due to the number of projects they were involved in. For example, on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, they teamed up with Ehren Kruger, who took over from them on the writing duties for the Transfomers franchise from Transformers: Dark of the Moon onwards.
Becoming a producer
Orci's first credit solely as a producer came with the film Eagle Eye, where he worked once again alongside Kurtzman. He said in an interview with the magazine Extra that he had previously been involved in productions where the producers had writing backgrounds and had looked to them for help, and he was happy to provide that same support to the writers on Eagle Eye. The director of the film, D. J. Caruso, praised the duo saying that "What's unusually cool about them is that they have maintained the producer-writer power that they earned in television and carried that over into the feature film area, and that is extremely rare." Following their work on Eagle Eye, they were executive producers on the Sandra Bullock film, The Proposal.
Despite their film careers, Orci and Kurtzman continued to create television series. These included Sleepy Hollow, which they developed alongside Phillip Iscove. They pitched the series to a number of networks, and it was picked up by Fox. Orci took five years to bring the series Matador to television, with it originating from a conversation with his cousin Andrew. It was created for Robert Rodriguez's El Rey Network, and Rodriguez's one demand of the show was that he could direct the pilot episode. Orci later explained in an interview that it was an easy decision, and he needed to pretend to consider it.
Orci and Kurtzman also worked together as executive producers on the animated television series, Transformers: Prime, due to their involvement with the live action movies. Following the end of the series they were hopeful to be involved in a future animated series based on the premise, which Orci saw less like a reboot of the show and more of a continuation in a different guise. He felt that while Prime was sophisticated, there were concerns that it was leaving younger viewers behind because of its complexity and intensity.
Star Trek reboot
Orci and Kurtzman were asked to write the script for a new Star Trek film, but initially turned it down despite Orci being a fan of the series. Orci suggested rebooting the timeline as seen previously in the films and television series, and adding the return of Leonard Nimoy as Spock from Star Trek: The Original Series. He considered the first two films in the reboot series to be the origin story for the crew, and that the third film would start where the crew was at the beginning of Star Trek: The Original Series. Orci felt that the relationship between the James T. Kirk and the younger Spock was reflective of the partnership of himself and Kurtzman, he said that "We didn't even realize we were writing about ourselves until we were halfway through the script, that was a little embarrassing.
Star Trek was profitable at the domestic box-office, resulting in a sequel being greenlit by the studio and Kurtzman and Orci being asked to write it. The studio set aside a larger budget for the sequel, which was revealed by Orci in an interview with TrekMovie.com. Orci ruled out the "hero quitting" staple of a second movie, which had featured in the Transformers sequel, saying that the crew of the Enterprise were committed and that type of story does not have to apply to all sequels. During the buildup to the film, called Star Trek Into Darkness, Orci was one of the production team who did not give much away about the villain in the film and denied that Benedict Cumberbatch was to play Khan Noonian Singh.
The criticism of the sequel resulted in Orci posting controversial comments on a Star Trek fan site. In response to a fan upset over Into Darkness, Orci called him a "shitty fan". He later apologized and deactivated his Twitter account.
Breakup of the partnership
In April 2014, Orci and Kurtzman confirmed to Variety that they are no longer going to work together on film projects but will still collaborate on television. Kurtzman wanted to work on the Spider-Man film franchise, while Orci was linked to the directorial role for Star Trek 3. Orci confirmed later that year in July that he was not involved in the production of The Amazing Spider-Man 3 alongside Kurtzman. Orci and Kurtzman's K/O Paper Products continues to operate as a production company within CBS Television Studios, and has created the series Scorpion inspired by the life of Walter O'Brien for the 2014-15 season and Limitless was created for the 2015-16 season from the 2011 film.
Prior to the split of Kurtzman and Orci, the duo were lined up to write the third film in the new Star Trek series. In May 2014, Skydance and Paramount Pictures announced that Orci was to direct the third installment of the Star Trek reboot franchise, after Abrams moved on to direct Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This would have marked Orci's directorial debut, and he was to write the script alongside co-writers JD Payne and Patrick McKay. Due to his commitment to Star Trek 3, he dropped out of a new Power Rangers film, for which he would have been executive producer. But on December 5, it was announced he would no longer be directing the Star Trek film. He remains credited as a producer on the film, and was replaced by Doug Jung and cast member Simon Pegg as the script writers after Orci's initial script was dropped. Orci was replaced as director by Justin Lin, who had previously directed films in The Fast and the Furious franchise.
Orci created Matador with the idea that the main character would be a "soccer player by day who is a spy by night", and called him a "Latin James Bond". The series was broadcast on the El Rey Network created by Robert Rodriguez. It was renewed for a second season shortly before the pilot was broadcast, which had been directed by Rodriguez. But following the production of the first season, the series was cancelled despite the earlier renewal. This decision was blamed on poor international sales.
In March 2020, it was reported that Roberto Orci was hired by Sony to write a script for a untitled Marvel film that would set in Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters
Personal life
Orci married actress and screenwriter Adele Heather Taylor on June 6, 2020 in a private ceremony. They work together as screenwriters and producers.
Awards and accolades
The Hollywood Reporter listed Orci as one of the 50 most powerful Latinos in Hollywood of 2007. His first solo accolade was the Norman Lear Writer's Award at the Imagen Awards in 2009. He described the experience of receiving an award without Kurtzman as "bizarre". Orci has also been awarded the Raul Julia Award for Excellence by the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts. Together with Kurtzman, Orci won The George Pal Memorial Award at the 2010 Saturn Awards.
Orci and Kurtzman were both honored by the nonprofit organization Chrysalis at the Butterfly Ball on June 8, 2013. The organization raises money for homeless people and low-income families, Orci said that "When you hear the life stories from people right here in our own community, who are clients at Chrysalis, and when you come to learn of their lowest moments and how Chrysalis has led to their proudest triumphs, it's easy to see why this local organization is so impactful."
In 2017, Orci was the recipient of the "Visionary Impact Award" by the National Hispanic Media Coalition. This award is given out by the organization for "Latinos making outstanding contributions to the positive portrayals of Latinos in film and TV".
Filmography
Films
Television credits
References
External links
1973 births
Living people
Mexican emigrants to the United States
American people of Cuban descent
Television producers from California
American television writers
American male television writers
Mexican people of Cuban descent
Mexican screenwriters
Writers from Mexico City
University of Texas at Austin alumni
Showrunners
Crossroads School alumni
Screenwriters from California
20th-century American screenwriters
American conspiracy theorists
20th-century American male writers | true | [
"Sixteen ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Success, whilst another was planned:\n\n was a 34-gun ship, previously the French ship Jules. She was captured in 1650, renamed HMS Old Success in 1660 and sold in 1662.\n HMS Success was a 24-gun ship launched in 1655 as . She was renamed HMS Success in 1660 and was wrecked in 1680.\n was a 6-gun fireship purchased in 1672 that foundered in 1673.\n was a store hulk purchased in 1692 and sunk as a breakwater in 1707.\n was a 10-gun sloop purchased in 1709 that the French captured in 1710 off Lisbon.\n was a 24-gun storeship launched in 1709, hulked in 1730, and sold in 1748. \n was a 20-gun sixth rate launched in 1712, converted to a fireship in 1739, and sold in 1743.\n was a 14-gun sloop launched in 1736; her fate is unknown.\n was a 24-gun sixth rate launched in 1740 and broken up in 1779.\n was a 14-gun ketch launched in 1754. Her fate is unknown.\n was a 32-gun fifth rate launched in 1781 that the French captured in 1801 but that the British recaptured the same year. She became a convict ship in 1814 and was broken up in 1820.\n was a 3-gun gunvessel, previously in use as a barge. She was purchased in 1797 and sold in 1802.\n was a 28 gun sixth rate launched in 1825, and captained by James Stirling in his journey to Western Australia. She was used for harbour service from 1832 and was broken up 1849.\n HMS Success was to have been a wood screw sloop. She was ordered but not laid down and was cancelled in 1863.\n was a launched in 1901 and wrecked in 1914.\n HMS Success was an launched in 1918. She was transferred to the Royal Australian Navy in 1919 and was sold in 1937.\n was an S-class destroyer launched in 1943. She was transferred to the Royal Norwegian Navy later that year and renamed . She was broken up in 1959.\n\nSee also\n , two ships of the Royal Australian Navy.\n\nCitations and references\nCitations\n\nReferences\n \n\nRoyal Navy ship names",
"HMAS Success was an Admiralty destroyer of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Built for the Royal Navy during World War I, the ship was not completed until 1919, and spent less than eight months in British service before being transferred to the RAN at the start of 1920. The destroyer's career was uneventful, with almost all of it spent in Australian waters. Success was decommissioned in 1930, and was sold for ship breaking in 1937.\n\nDesign and construction\n\nSuccess was built to the Admiralty design of the S-class destroyer, which was designed and built as part of the British emergency war programme. The destroyer had a displacement of 1,075 tons, a length of overall and between perpendiculars, and a beam of . The propulsion machinery consisted of three Yarrow boilers feeding Brown-Curtis turbines, which supplied to the ship's two propeller shafts. Success had a maximum speed of , and a range of at . The ship's company was made up of 6 officers and 93 sailors.\n\nThe destroyer's primary armament consisted of three QF 4-inch Mark IV guns. These were supplemented by a 2-pounder pom-pom, two 9.5-inch howitzer bomb throwers, five .303 inch machine guns (a mix of Lewis and Maxim guns), two twin 21-inch torpedo tube sets, two depth charge throwers, and two depth charge chutes.\n\nSuccess was laid down by William Doxford and Sons Limited at their Sunderland shipyard in 1917. The destroyer was launched on 29 June 1918, and completed on 15 April 1919. The ship was briefly commissioned into the Royal Navy in April 1919, but was quickly marked for transfer to the RAN, along with four sister ships. Success was commissioned into the RAN on 27 January 1920.\n\nOperational history\n\nSuccess and three of her sister ships sailed for Australia on 20 February, visiting ports in the Mediterranean, India, Singapore, and the Netherlands East Indies before reaching Sydney on 29 April. Success operated in Australian waters until 6 October 1921, when she was placed in reserve. The destroyer was reactivated on 1 December 1925. In late May 1926, Success visited Port Moresby.\n\nDecommissioning and fate\nSuccess paid off on 21 May 1930. She was sold to Penguins Limited for ship breaking in 1937.\n\nCitations\n\nReferences\n\nS-class destroyers (1917) of the Royal Australian Navy\nShips built on the River Wear\n1918 ships"
] |
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