Rockin' all over the world - Debriefit
Rockin' all over the world - Kuvat
Takaisin Halzagurkin tapahtumasivulle
Takaisin pääsivulle
When Bruce Springsteen finally broke through to national recognition in the fall of 1975, after a decade of trying, critics hailed him as the savior of rock & roll, the single artist who brought together all the exuberance of '50s rock and the thoughtfulness of '60s rock, molded into a '70s style. He rocked as hard as Jerry Lee Lewis, his lyrics were as complicated as Bob Dylan's, and his concerts were near-religious celebrations of all that was best in the music. One critic became so enamored that be quit reviewing to become Springsteen's manager.
But the hosannas, when piped through the publicity machine of a major record company, were perceived as hype by a significant part of the public as well as the mainstream media -- Springsteen landed on the covers of Time and Newsweek, but both magazines were covering the phenomenon, not the music. Springsteen's album, Born to Run, became a hit, and he jumped to arena status as a live act, but as many people were turned off by the press campaign as turned on by the records and shows.
Two decades later, however, Springsteen remained an established star who could look back on a career that had produced one of the best-selling albums of all time, sold-out stadium shows, Grammy Awards and an Oscar, and a group of imitators who constituted their own subgenre of popular music. If he no longer seemed divine, he remained popular enough for his Greatest Hits album to enter the charts at number one, and he had won over many of those skeptics from 1975.
Growing up in southern New Jersey, Springsteen turned to rock & roll as a teenager and played in a series of bands from the mid-'60s on, varying in style from garage rock to power trio blues-rock. By the early '70s, he was trying his hand at being a folkie singer/songwriter in Greenwich Village. But when he was signed to Columbia Records in 1972, he brought into the studio many of the New Jersey-based musicians with whom he'd played over the years.
The result was Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ (January 1973), which went unnoticed upon initial release, though Manfred Mann's Earth Band would turn its lead-off track, "Blinded by the Light," into a number one hit four years later. The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle (September 1973) also failed to sell, despite some rave reviews. (Both albums have since gone platinum.)
The following year, Springsteen revised his backup group -- dubbed "The E Street Band" -- settling on a lineup that included saxophone player Clarence Clemons, second guitarist "Miami" Steve Van Zandt, organist Danny Federici, pianist Roy Bittan, bassist Gary Tallent, and drummer Max Weinberg. With this unit he barnstormed the country while working on his third and last chance with Columbia. By the time Born to Run (August 1975) was released, the critics and a significant cult audience were with him, and the title song became a Top 40 hit while the album reached the Top Ten.
What Springsteen needed to do in the wake of the hype, of course, was to play and record more to consolidate his position. He was prevented at least from the latter by a former manager, who kept him in court during the next couple of years. Meanwhile, the musical world changed. Part of the reason critics had welcomed Springsteen so enthusiastically in 1975 was that be seemed a return to basic rock & roll values in a world of soft rock, heavy metal, and art-rock.
By the time Springsteen returned with his fourth album, Darkness at the Edge of Town (June 1978), however, the punk/new wave movement had outflanked him, pushing him from the vanguard to the mainstream. Similar sounding heartland rockers such as Bob Seger had appeared, so that Springsteen sounded less like an innovator than a member of an established genre.
Nevertheless, he set about winning fans with an album that found the lost children of his early albums stuck in factory jobs, still longing for some escape. The album was a hit, though it did not match the success of Born to Run. Springsteen returned with the double album The River (October 1980), which topped the charts and featured his first Top Ten hit, "Hungry Heart."
Nobody was calling him a hype anymore, but Springsteen retreated from his expanding success, next recording the low-key album Nebraska (September 1982), a virtual demo tape-on-vinyl. (Springsteen did not tour to promote the album, and in the interim E Street Band guitarist Van Zandt amicably left the group for a solo career, to be replaced by Nils Lofgren.)
But then came Born in the U.S.A. (June 1984) and a two-year international tour. The album threw off seven hit singles and sold over ten million copies, putting Springsteen in the pop heavens with Michael Jackson and Prince. After touring for more than a year, he released a five-LP/three-CD concert album, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band/Live 1975-85 (November 1986), which topped the charts.
Characteristically, Springsteen returned with a more introverted effort, Tunnel of Love (October 1987), which presaged his divorce from his first wife. (He married a second time to singer Patti Scialfa, who had joined the E Street Band.)
After another marathon tour, Springsteen gave the E Street Band notice in November 1989, breaking up a celebrated unit that had stayed together 15 years. In March 1992, he simultaneously released Human Touch and Lucky Town, and though the albums premiered near the top of the charts, they were less successful with fans than previous albums. In the fall, Springsteen taped an MTV Unplugged segment (though he plugged in after one song), and the performance was released as an album in Europe in 1993.
Springsteen continued to tour until July 1993. In the fall, he wrote and recorded "Streets of Philadelphia" for the soundtrack to the film Philadelphia, which concerned a lawyer dying of AIDS. The song became a Top Ten hit in 1994, winning the Academy Award for Best Song and cleaning up in the Grammys the following year. At the same time, Springsteen had readied his Greatest Hits album (February 1995), reassembling the E Street Band to record a few new tracks. The album was an immediate best-seller. Springsteen followed it with The Ghost of Tom Joad (November 1995), another low-key, downcast, near-acoustic effort, and embarked upon a brief "solo" tour. At the start of 1996, he was said to be planning to record his first album with the E Street Band since Born in the U.S.A., to be followed by their first tour in a decade.
After goth pioneers the Birthday Party called it quits in 1983, singer/songwriter Nick Cave assembled the Bad Seeds, a post-punk supergroup featuring former Birthday Party guitarist Mick Harvey on drums, ex-Magazine bassist Barry Adamson, and Einsturzende Neubauten guitarist Blixa Bargeld. With the Bad Seeds, Cave continued to explore his obsessions with religion, death, love, America, and violence with a bizarre, sometimes self-consciously eclectic hybrid of blues, gospel, rock, and arty post-punk, although in a more subdued fashion than his work with the Birthday Party. Cave also allowed his literary aspirations to come to the forefront; the lyrics are narrative prose, heavy on literary allusions and myth-making and taking some inspiration from Leonard Cohen. Cave's gloomy lyrics, dark musical arrangements, and deep baritone voice recall the albums of Scott Walker, who also obsessed over death and love with a frightening passion. However, Cave brings a hefty amount of post-punk experimentalism to Walker's epic dark pop.
Cave released his first album with the Bad Seeds, From Her to Eternity, in 1984, which contained a noteworthy cover of Elvis Presley's "In the Ghetto," foreshadowing much of Cave's style and subject matter on the follow-up The Firstborn Is Dead. Kicking Against the Pricks, an all-covers album, broke the band in England with the help of "The Singer," which hit number one on the U.K. Independent charts. The album also strengthened Cave's reputation as an original interpreter and a vocal stylist of note.
Following 1986's Your Funeral...My Trial, Cave took a two-year hiatus from recording, partially to appear in Wim Wenders' 1987 film Wings of Desire, and then returned with Tender Prey, which featured Cramps guitarist Kid Congo Powers and Cave's strongest vocal performance up to that point. Cave's productivity picked up immensely over the next two years after he kicked a heroin habit. He had two books (1988's King Ink, a collection of lyrics, plays, and prose, and 1989's And the Ass Saw the Angel, a novel) published, appeared in the 1989 Australian film Ghosts...of the Civil Dead as a prisoner, recorded a soundtrack to the film with Harvey and Bargeld, and released 1990's The Good Son, his most relaxed, quiet album. Cave received his due as one of the leading figures in alternative rock when he was invited to perform on the 1994 edition of the Lollapalooza tour to promote his Let Love In album. Early in 1996, he released Murder Ballads, a collection of songs about murder. Murder Ballads became Cave's most commercially successful album to date, and, with typical perversity, he followed it with the introspective and personal The Boatman's Call in early 1997. -- Stephen Thomas Erlewine & Steve Huey
Elvis Presley may be the single most important figure in American 20th-century popular music. Not necessarily the best, and certainly not the most consistent. But no one could argue that he was not the musician most responsible for popularizing rock & roll on an international level. Viewed in cold sales figures, his impact was phenomenal. Dozens upon dozens of international smashes from the mid-'50s to the mid-'70s, as well as the steady sales of his catalog and reissues since his death in 1977, may make him the single highest-selling performer in history.
More important from a music lover's perspective, however, are his remarkable artistic achievements. Presley was not the very first White man to sing rhythm and blues; Bill Haley predated him in that regard, and there may have been others as well. Elvis was certainly the first, however, to assertively fuse country and blues music into the style known as rockabilly. While rockabilly arrangements were the foundations of his first (and possibly best) recordings, Presley could not have become a mainstream superstar without a much more varied palette that also incorporated pop, gospel, and even some bits of bluegrass and operatic schmaltz here and there. His 1950s recordings established the basic language of rock and roll; his explosive and sexual stage presence set standards for the music's visual image; his vocals were incredibly powerful and versatile.
Unfortunately, to much of the public, Elvis is more icon than artist. Innumerable bad Hollywood movies, increasingly caricatured records and mannerisms, and a personal life that became steadily more sheltered from real-world concerns (and steadily more bizarre) gave his story a somewhat mythic status. By the time of his death, he'd become more a symbol of gross Americana than of cultural innovation. The continued speculation about his incredible career has sustained interest in his life, and supported a large tourist/entertainment industry, that may last indefinitely, even if the fascination is fueled more by his celebrity than his music.
Born to a poor Mississippi family in the heart of Depression, Elvis had moved to Memphis by his teens, where he absorbed the vibrant melting pot of Southern popular music in the form of blues, country, bluegrass, and gospel. After graduating from high school, he became a truck driver, rarely if ever singing in public. Some 1953 and 1954 demos, recorded at the emerging Sun label in Memphis primarily for Elvis' own pleasure, helped stir interest on the part of Sun owner Sam Phillips. In mid-1954, Phillips, looking for a White singer with a Black feel, teamed Presley with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black. Almost by accident, apparently, the trio hit upon a version of an Arthur Crudup blues tune, "That's All Right Mama," that became Elvis' first single.
Elvis' five Sun singles pioneered the blend of R&B and C&W that would characterize rockabilly music. For quite a few scholars, they remain not only Elvis' best singles, but the best rock and roll ever recorded. Claiming that Elvis made blues acceptable for the White market is not the whole picture; the singles usually teamed blues covers with country and pop ones, all made into rock and roll (at this point a term that barely existed) with the pulsing beat, slap-back echo, and Elvis' soaring, frenetic vocals. "That's All Right Mama," "Blue Moon of Kentucky," "Good Rockin' Tonight," "Baby Let's Play House," and "Mystery Train" remain core early rock classics.
The singles sold well in the Memphis area immediately, and by 1955 were starting to sell well to country audiences throughout the South. Presley, Moore, and Black hit the road with a stage show that grew ever wilder and more provocative, Elvis' swiveling hips causing enormous controversy. The move to all-out rock was hastened by the addition of drums. The last Sun single, "I Forgot to Remember Forget"/"Mystery Train," hit #1 on the national country charts in late 1955. Presley was obviously a performer with superstar potential, attracting the interest of bigger labels and Colonel Tom Parker, who became Elvis' manager. In need of capital to expand the Sun label, Sam Phillips sold Presley's contract to RCA in late 1955 for $35,000 -- a bargain, when viewed in hindsight, but an astronomical sum at the time.
This is the point where musical historians start to diverge in opinion. For many, the whole of his subsequent work for RCA -- encompassing over 20 years -- was a steady letdown, never recapturing the pure, primal energy that was harnessed so effectively on the handful of Sun singles. Elvis, however, was not a purist. What he wanted, more than anything, was to be successful. To do that, his material needed more of a pop feel; in any case, he'd never exactly been one to disparage the mainstream, naming Dean Martin as one of his chief heroes from the get-go. At RCA, his rockabilly was leavened with enough pop flavor to make all of the charts, not just the country ones.
At the beginning, at least, the results were hardly any tamer than the Sun sessions. "Heartbreak Hotel," his first single, rose to #1 and, aided by some national television appearances, helped make Elvis an instant superstar. "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You" was a #1 follow-up; the double-sided monster "Hound Dog"/"Don't Be Cruel" was one of the bigest-selling singles the industry had ever experienced up to that point. Albums and EPs were also chart-toppers, not just in the U.S., but throughout the world. The 1956 RCA recordings, while a bit more sophisticated in production and a bit less rootsy in orientation than his previous work, were still often magnificent, rating among the best and most influential recordings of early rock and roll.
Elvis' (and Colonel Parker's) aspirations were too big to be limited to records and live appearances. By late 1956, his first Hollywood movie, Love Me Tender, had been released; other screen vehicles would follow in the next few years, Jailhouse Rock being the best. The hits continued unabated, several of them ("Jailhouse Rock," "All Shook Up," "Too Much") excellent, and often benefiting from the efforts of top early rock songwriter Otis Blackwell, as well as the emerging team of Jerry Leiber-Mike Stoller. The Jordanaires added both pop and gospel elements with their smooth backup vocals.
Yet worrisome signs were creeping in. The Dean Martin influence began rearing his head in smoky, sentimental ballads such as "Loving You"; the vocal swoops became more exaggerated and stereotypical, although the overall quality of his output remained high. And although Moore and Black continued to back Elvis on his early RCA recordings, within a few years the musicians had gone their own ways.
Presley's recording and movie careers were interrupted by his induction into the Army in early 1958. There was enough material in the can to flood the charts throughout his two-year absence (during which he largely served in Germany). When he re-entered civilian life in 1960, his popularity, remarkably, was at just as high a level as when he left.
One couldn't, unforunately, say the same for the quality of his music, which was not just becoming more sedate, but was starting to either repeat itself, or opt for operatic ballads that didn't have a whole lot to do with rock. Elvis' rebellious, wild image had been tamed to a large degree as well, as he and Parker began designing a career built around Hollywood films. Shortly after leaving the Army, in fact, Presley gave up live performing altogether for nearly a decade to concentrate on movie-making. The films, in turn, would serve as vehicles to both promote his records and to generate maximum revenue with minimal effort. For the rest of the '60s, Presley ground out two or three movies a year that, while mostly profitable, had little going for them in the way of story, acting, or social value.
While there were some quality efforts on Presley's early '60s albums, his discography was soon dominated by forgettable soundtracks, mostly featuring material that was dispensable or downright ridiculous. In time he became largely disinterested in devoting much time to his craft in the studio. The soundtrack LPs themselves were sometimes filled out with outtakes that had been in the can for years (and these, sadly, were often the highlights of the albums). There were some good singles in the early '60s, like "Return to Sender"; once in a while there was even a flash of superb, tough rock, like "Little Sister," or "(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame." But by 1963 or so there was little to get excited about, although he continued to sell in large quantities.
The era spanning, roughly, 1962-67 has generated a school of Elvis apologists, eager to wrestle any kernel of quality that emerged from his recordings during this period. They also point out that Presley was assigned poor material, and assert that Colonel Parker was largely responsible for Presley's emasculation. True to a point, but on the other hand it could be claimed, with some validity, that Presley himself was doing little to rouse himself from his artistic stupor, letting Parker destroy his artistic credibility without much apparent protest, and holing up in his large mansion with a retinue of yes-men that protected their benefactor from much day-to-day contact with a fast-changing world.
The Beatles, all big Elvis fans, displaced Presley as the biggest rock act in the world in 1964. What's more, they did so by writing their own material and playing their own instruments -- something Elvis had never been capable of, or particularly aspired to. They, and the British and American groups the Beatles influenced, were not shy about expressing their opinions, experimenting musically, and taking the reins of their artistic direction into their own hands. The net effect was to make Elvis Presley, still churning out movies in Hollywood as psychedelia and soul music became the rage, seem irrelevant, even as he managed to squeeze out an obscure Dylan cover ("Tomorrow is a Long Time") on a 1966 soundtrack album.
By 1967 and 1968, there were slight stirrings of an artistic reawakening by Elvis. Singles like "Guitar Man," "Big Boss Man," and "U.S. Male," though hardly classics, were at least genuine rock and roll that sounded better than much of what he'd been turning out for years. A 1968 television special gave Presley the opportunity he needed to reinvent himself as an all-out leather-coated rocker, still capable of magnetizing an audience, and eager to revisit his blues and country roots.
The 1968 album Elvis In Memphis was the first LP in nearly a decade in which Presley seemed cognizant of current trends, as he updated his sounds with contemporary compositions and touches of soul to create some reasonably gutsy late '60s pop-rock. This material, and 1969 hits like "Suspicious Minds" and "In the Ghetto," returned him to the top of the charts. Arguably, it's been overrated by critics, who were so glad to have him singing rock again that they weren't about to carp about the slickness of some of the production, or the mediocrity of some of the songwriting.
But Elvis' voice did sound good, and he returned to live performing in 1969, breaking in with weeks of shows in Las Vegas. This was followed by national tours that proved him to still be an excellent live entertainer, even if the exercises often reeked of show-biz extravaganza. (Elvis never did play outside of North America and Hawaii, possibly because Colonel Parker, it was later revealed, was an illegal alien who could have faced serious problems if he traveled abroad.) Hollywood was history, but studio and live albums were generated at a rapid pace, usually selling reasonably well, although Presley never had a Top Ten hit after 1972's "Burning Love."
Presley's 1970s recordings, like most of his '60s work, are the focus of divergent critical opinion. Some declare them to be, when Elvis was on, the equal of anything he did, especially in terms of artistic diversity. It's true that the material was pretty eclectic, running from country to blues to all-out rock to gospel (Presley periodically recorded gospel-only releases, going all the way back to 1957). At the same time, his vocal mannerisms were often stilted, and the material -- though not nearly as awful as that '60s soundtrack filler -- sometimes substandard. Those who are not serious Elvis fans will usually find this late-period material to hold only a fraction of the interest of his '50s classics.
Elvis' final years have been the subject of a cottage industry of celebrity bios, tell-alls, and gossip screeds from those who knew him well, or (more likely) purported to know him well. Those activities are really beyond the scope of a mini-bio such as this, but it's enough to note that his behavior was becoming increasingly instable. His weight fluctuated wildly; his marriage broke up; he became dependent upon a variety of prescription drugs. Worst of all, he became isolated from the outside world except for professional purposes (he continued to tour until the end), rarely venturing outside of his Graceland mansion in Memphis. Colonel Parker's financial decisions on behalf of his client have also come in for much criticism.
On August 16, 1977, Presley was found dead in Graceland. The cause of death remains a subject of widespread speculation, although it seems likely that drugs played a part. An immediate cult (if cult is the way to describe millions of people) sprang up around his legacy, kept alive by the hundreds of thousands of visitors that make the pilgrimage to Graceland annually. Elvis memorabilia, much of it kitsch, is another industry in his own right. Dozens if not hundreds make a comfortable living by impersonating the King in live performance. And then there are all those Elvis sightings, reported in tabloids on a seemingly weekly basis.
Although Presley had recorded a mammoth quantity of both released and unreleased material for RCA, the label didn't show much interest in repackaging it with the respect due such a pioneer. Haphazard collections of outtakes and live performances were far rarer than budget reissues and countless repackagings of the big hits. In the CD age, RCA finally began to treat the catalog with some of the reverence it deserved, at long last assembling a box set containing nearly all of the 1950s recordings. Similar, although less exciting, box sets were documenting the 1960s, the 1970s, and his soundtrack recordings. And exploitative reissues of Elvis material continue to appear constantly, often baited with one or two rare outtakes or alternates to entice the completists (of which there are many). In death, as in life, Presley continues to be one of RCA's most consistent earners. Fortunately, with a little discretion, a good Elvis library can be built with little duplication, sticking largely to the most highly recommended selections below. -- Richie Unterberger,
Few stars of the 1960s have reinvented themselves as successfully as Marianne Faithfull. Coaxed into a singing career by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham in 1964, she had a big hit in both Britain and the U.S. with her debut single, the Jagger/Richards composition "As Tears Go By" (which prefaced the Stones' own version by a full year). Considerably more successful in her native land than the States, she had a series of hits in the mid-'60s that set her high, fragile voice against delicate orchestral pop arrangements -- "Summer Night," "This Little Bird," Jackie De Shannon's "Come and Stay with Me." Not a songwriter at the outset of her career, she owes more of her fame as a '60s icon to her extraordinary beauty and her long-running romance with Mick Jagger, although she offered a taste of things to come with her compelling 1969 single "Sister Morphine," which she co-wrote (and which the Stones released themselves on Sticky Fingers later).
In the 1970s, Faithfull split up with Jagger, developed a serious drug habit, and recorded rarely, with generally dismal results. Until late 1979, when she pulled off an astonishing comeback with Broken English. Displaying a croaking, cutting voice that had lowered a good octave since the mid-'60s, Faithfull had also begun to write much of her own material, and addressed sex and despair with wrenching realism. After allowing herself to be framed as a demure chanteuse by songwriters and arrangers throughout most of her career, Marianne had found her own voice, and suddenly sounded more relevant and contemporary than most of the stars she had rubbed shoulders with in the '60s. Faithfull's recordings in the 1980s and 1990s have been sporadic and erratic, but generally quite interesting; Strange Weather, a Hal Willner-produced 1987 collection of standards and contemporary compositions that spanned several decades for its sources, was her greatest triumph of the decade. In 1994, she published her self-titled autobiography; the recent biography As Tears Go By, by Mark Hodkinson, is a more objective and thorough account of her life and times. One continues to look forward to unexpected twists on forthcoming recordings -- a statement one can apply to few other performers who emerged during the 1960s. -- Richie Unterberger
In his brief four-year reign as a superstar, Jimi Hendrix expanded the vocabulary of the electric rock guitar more than anyone before or since. Hendrix was a master at coaxing all manner of unforeseen sonics from his instrument, often with innovative amplification experiments that produced astral-quality feedback and roaring distortion. His frequent hurricane blasts of noise, and dazzling showmanship -- he could and would play behind his back and with his teeth, and set his guitar on fire -- has sometimes obscured his considerable gifts as a songwriter, singer, and master of a gamut of blues, R&B, and rock styles.
When Hendrix became an international superstar in 1967, it seemed as if he'd dropped out of a Martian spaceship, but in fact he'd served his apprenticeship the long, mundane way in numerous R&B acts on the chitlin circuit. During the early and mid-'60s, he worked with such R&B/soul greats as Little Richard, the Isley Brothers, and King Curtis as a backup guitarist. Occasionally he recorded as a session man (the Isley Brothers' 1964 single "Testify" is the only one of these early tracks that offers even a glimpse of his future genius). But the stars didn't appreciate his show-stealing showmanship, and Hendrix was straightjacketed by sideman roles that didn't allow him to develop as a soloist. The logical step was for Hendrix to go out on his own, which he did in New York in the mid-'60s, playing with various musicians in local clubs, and joining White blues-rock singer John Hammond, Jr.'s band for a while.
It was in a New York club that Hendrix was spotted by Animals bassist Chas Chandler. The first lineup of the Animals was about to split, and Chandler, looking to move into management, convinced Hendrix to move to London and record as a solo act in England. There a group was built around Jimi, also featuring Mitch Mitchell on drums and Noel Redding on bass, that was dubbed the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The trio became stars with astonishing speed in the U.K., where "Hey Joe," "Purple Haze," and "The Wind Cries Mary" all made the Top 10 in the first half of 1967. These tracks were also featured on their debut album, Are You Experienced?, a psychedelic meisterwerk that became a huge hit in the U.S. after Hendrix created a sensation at the Monterey Pop Festival in June of 1967.
Are You Experienced? was an astonishing debut, particularly from a young R&B veteran who had rarely sung, and apparently never written his own material, before the Experience formed. What caught most people's attention at first was his virtuosic guitar playing, which employed an arsenal of devices, including wah-wah pedals, buzzing feedback solos, crunching distorted riffs, and lightning, liquid runs up and down the scales. But Hendrix was also a first-rate songwriter, melding cosmic imagery with some surprisingly pop-savvy hooks and tender sentiments. He was also an excellent blues interpreter and passionate, engaging singer (although his gruff, throaty vocal pipes were not nearly as great assets as his instrumental skills). Are You Experienced? was psychedelia at its most eclectic, synthesizing mod pop, soul, R&B, Dylan, and the electric guitar innovations of British pioneers like Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, and Eric Clapton.
Amazingly, Hendrix would only record three fully conceived studio albums in his lifetime. Axis: Bold as Love and the double-LP Electric Ladyland were more diffuse and experimental than Are You Experienced? On Electric Ladyland in particular, Hendrix pioneered the use of the studio itself as a recording instrument, manipulating electronics and devising overdub techniques (with the help of engineer Eddie Kramer in particular) to plot uncharted sonic territory. Not that these albums were perfect, as impressive as they were; the instrumental breaks could meander, and Hendrix's songwriting was occasionally half-baked, never matching the consistency of Are You Experienced? (although he exercised greater creative control over the later albums).
The final two years of Hendrix's life were turbulent ones musically, financially, and personally. He was embroiled in enough complicated management and record company disputes (some dating from ill-advised contracts he'd signed before the Experience formed) to keep the lawyers busy for years. He disbanded the Experience in 1969, forming the Band of Gypsies with drummer Buddy Miles and bassist Billy Cox to pursue funkier directions. He closed Woodstock with a sprawling, shaky set, redeemed by his famous machine-gun interpretation of "The Star-Spangled Banner." The rhythm section of Mitchell and Redding were underrated keys to Jimi's best work, and the Band of Gypsies ultimately couldn't measure up to the same standard, although Hendrix did record an erratic live album with them. In early 1970, the Experience re-formed again -- and disbanded again shortly afterwards. At the same time, Hendrix felt torn in many directions by various fellow musicians, record-company expectations, and management pressures, all of whom had their own ideas of what Hendrix should be doing. Coming up on two years after Electric Ladyland, a new studio album had yet to appear, although Hendrix was recording constantly during the period.
While outside parties did contribute to bogging down Hendrix's studio work, it also seems likely that Jimi himself was partly responsible for the stalemate, unable to form a permanent lineup of musicians, unable to decide what musical direction to pursue, unable to bring himself to complete another album despite jamming endlessly. A few months into 1970, Mitchell -- Hendrix's most valuable musical collaborator -- came back into the fold, replacing Miles in the drum chair, although Cox stayed in place. It was this trio that toured the world during Hendrix's final months.
It's extremely difficult to separate the facts of Hendrix's life from rumors and speculation. Everyone who knew him well, or claimed to know him well, has different versions of his state of mind in 1970. Critics have variously mused that he was going to go into jazz, that he was going to get deeper into the blues, that he was going to continue doing what he was doing, or that he was too confused to know what he was doing at all. The same confusion holds true for his death: contradictory versions of his final days have been given by his closest acquaintances of the time. He'd been working intermittently on a new album, tentatively titled First Ray of the New Rising Sun, when he died in London on September 18, 1970, from drug-related complications.
Hendrix recorded a massive amount of unreleased studio material during his lifetime. Much of this (as well as entire live concerts) was issued posthumously; several of the live concerts were excellent, but the studio tapes have been the focus of enormous controversy for over 20 years. These initially came out in haphazard drabs and drubs (the first, The Cry of Love, was easily the most outstanding of the lot). In the mid-'70s, producer Alan Douglas took control of these projects, posthumously overdubbing many of Hendrix's tapes with additional parts by studio musicians. In the eyes of many Hendrix fans, this was sacrilege, destroying the integrity of the work of a musician known to exercise meticulous care over the final production of his studio recordings. Even as late as 1995, Douglas was having ex-Knack drummer Bruce Gary record new parts for the typically misbegotten compilation Voodoo Soup. After a lengthy legal dispute, the rights to Hendrix's estate, including all of his recordings, returned to Al Hendrix, the guitarist's father, in July of 1995. -- Richie Unterberger
After the disbandment of the proto-punk group the Stooges, vocalist Iggy Pop (born James Osterberg) embarked on a solo career that flirted with the mainstream while keeping his fiery punk spirit alive. Pop laid low for a couple of years following the breakup of the Stooges, resurfacing in 1977 with two David Bowie-produced albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life. These records expanded his trademark full-throttle rock & roll, incorporating a more pop-oriented approach that increased his audience; The Idiot remains his highest-charting album, peaking at number 72 in America.
However, Pop soon returned to straightforward, raging hard rock with the double-punch of TV Eye Live (1978) and 1979's New Values, which was recorded with former Stooges guitarist James Williamson. Although he kept changing his backing band, both 1980's Soldier and 1981's Party followed the same blueprint as New Values. Released in 1982, the Chris Stein-produced Zombie Birdhouse (which appeared on Stein's label, Animal) was the most varied collection Pop had created since Lust for Life.
After the release of Zombie Birdhouse, Pop took some time off, reappearing four years later with the Bowie-produced Blah-Blah-Blah; the record became his highest-charting album since The Idiot. He followed it in 1989 with Instinct, another return to basic hard rock. Released the following year on Virgin Records, the Don Was-produced Brick By Brick was his most accessible and commercially successful album, producing his first Top 40 hit, "Candy." Pop began an acting career during the next few years, appearing in John Waters' Cry Baby. Pop's first album since Brick By Brick was American Caesar (1993), which was yet another return to punky hard rock. American Caesar sold relatively well, but it wasn't a hit. Neither was Naughty Little Doggy, which disappeared upon its spring 1996 release.
The greatest White female rock singer of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was also a great blues singer, making her material her own with her wailing, raspy, supercharged emotional delivery. First rising to stardom as the frontwoman for San Francisco psychedelic band Big Brother & the Holding Company, she left the group in the late '60s for a brief and uneven (though commercially successful) career as a solo artist. Although she wasn't always supplied with the best material or most sympathetic musicians, her best recordings, with both Big Brother and on her own, are some of the most exciting performances of her era. She also did much to redefine the role of women in rock with her assertive, sexually forthright persona and raunchy, electrifying onstage presence.
Joplin was raised in the small town of Port Arthur, Texas, and much of her subsequent personal difficulties and unhappiness has been attributed to her inability to fit in with the expectations of the conservative community. She'd been singing blues and folk music since her teens, playing on occasion in the mid-'60s with future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen. There are a few live pre-Big Brother recordings (not issued until after her death), reflecting the inspiration of early blues singers like Bessie Smith, that demonstrate she was well on her way to developing a personal style before hooking up with the band. She had already been to California before moving there permanently in 1966, when she joined a struggling early San Francisco psychedelic group, Big Brother & the Holding Company.
Big Brother's story is told in more detail in their own entry. Although their loose, occasionally sloppy brand of bluesy psychedelia had some charm, there can be no doubt that Joplin -- who initially didn't even sing lead on all of the material -- was primarily responsible for lifting them out of the ranks of the ordinary. She made them a hit at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, where her stunning version of "Ball and Chain" (perhaps her very best performance) was captured on film. After a debut on the Mainstream label, Big Brother signed a management deal with Albert Grossman, and moved on to Columbia. Their second album, Cheap Thrills, topped the charts in 1968, but Joplin left the band shortly afterwards, enticed by the prospects of stardom as a solo act.
Joplin's first album, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, was recorded with the Kozmic Blues Band, a unit that included horns, and retained just one of the musicians that had played with her in Big Brother (guitarist Sam Andrew). Although it was a hit, it wasn't her best work; the new band, though more polished musically, were not nearly as sympathetic accompanists as Big Brother, purveying a soul-rock groove that could sound forced. That's not to say it was totally unsuccessful, boasting one of her signature tunes in "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)."
For years, Joplin's life had been a roller coaster of drug addiction, alcoholism, and volatile personal relationships, documented in several biographies. Musically, however, things were on the upswing shortly before her death, as she assembled a better, more versatile backing outfit, the Full Tilt Boogie Band, for her final album, Pearl (ably produced by Paul Rothschild). Joplin was sometimes criticized for screeching at the expense of subtlety, but Pearl was solid evidence of her growth as a mature, diverse stylist who could handle blues, soul, and folk-rock. "Mercedes Benz," "Get It While You Can," and Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee" are some of her very best tracks. Tragically, she died before the album's release, overdosing on heroin in a Hollywood hotel in October 1970. "Me and Bobby McGee" became a posthumous #1 single in 1971, and thus the song with which she is most frequently identified. -- Richie Unterberger
Born of a middle-age white father and a teenage Black mother, Robert Nesta Marley transcended the humility of his rural beginnings to become not only a million-selling artist and stadium-filling entertainer but -- more importantly -- a nearly religious figure whose pleas for brotherhood and justice achieved universal anthemic status.
He began singing professionally at 16 with his self-penned "Judge Not!" It and its follow-up were not successful, and he returned to his ghetto neighborhood of Trenchtown to be tutored by Joe Higgs, a recording artist who coached promising youngsters like Marley, Bunny Livingstone, and Peter Tosh (who would become The Wailers). Signed in 1963 to Coxsone Dodd's influential, pace-setting Studio One, The Wailers saw their first release, "Simmer Down," become an instant #1. During the next two-and-a-half years, the group recorded over a hundred songs, and at one point in 1965 held five of the top ten slots on the Jamaican charts.
Forming their own label, Wail 'n Soul 'm, in 1966, The Wailers continued a series of local hits, with little financial remuneration. Following an album with Leslie Kong (Best of the Wailers), they hooked up with the seminal oddball producer, Lee Perry, and produced an amazing series of singles that are collected under a variety of names and remain their finest hour.
In 1972, Island Records prez Chris Blackwell signed The Wailers, but after two albums the group broke up, leaving Marley at the head of the band, to which he added a female backing trio, The I Threes. By 1975, Marley had gone clear as a revolutionary standard bearer, the inheritor of the 60s activist energy and hippie ganja enlightenment. Almost assassinated in 1976 in Kingston, Marley was given the UN Peace Medal on behalf of 500 million Africans in 1978 for his humanitarian achievements. He headlined a Peace Concert that same year in Jamaica, uniting the warring factions in the Kingston slums. But his greatest honor came when he was invited to headline the Zimbabwe Independence Celebrations in 1980. He outdrew the Pope in Milan, fathered eleven children by seven women, sold tens of millions of records worldwide, left a $30 million estate, wrote "the new Psalms," and died at 36 of melanoma. -- Roger Steffens
Bio:
Out of all the former Beatles, Paul McCartney by far had the most successful solo career,
maintaining a constant presence in the British and American charts during the '70s and '80s. In
America alone, he had nine number one singles and seven number one albums during the first 12
years of his solo career. Although he sold records, McCartney never attained much critical respect,
especially when compared to his former partner John Lennon. Then again, he pursued a different
path than Lennon, deciding early on that he wanted to be in a rock band. Within a year after the
Beatles' break-up, McCartney had formed Wings with his wife Linda, and the group remained active
for the next 10 years, racking up a string of hit albums, singles and tours in the meantime. By the late
'70s, many critics were taking pot-shots at McCartney's effortlessly melodic songcraft, but that didn't
stop the public from buying his records. His sales didn't slow considerably until the late '80s, and he
retalliated with his first full-scale tour since the '70s, which was a considerable success. During the
'90s, McCartney recorded less frequently, concentrating on projects like his first classical recording,
a techno album and the Beatles' Anthology.
Like Lennon and George Harrison, Paul McCartney began exploring creative avenues outisde the Beatles during the late '60s, but where his bandmates released their own experimental records, McCartney confined himself to writing and production for other artists, with the exception of his 1966 soundtrack to The Family Way. Following his marriage to Linda Eastman on March 12, 1969, McCartney began working at his home studio on his first solo album. He released the record, McCartney, in April 1970, two weeks before the Beatles' Let It Be was scheduled to hit the stores. Prior to the album's release, he announced that the Beatles were breaking-up, which was against the wishes of the other members. As a result, the tensions between him and the other three members, particularly Harrison and Lennon, increased and he earned the ill-will of many critics. Nevertheless, McCartney became a hit, spending three weeks at the top of the American charts. Early in 1971, he returned with "Another Day," which became his first hit single as a solo artist. It was followed several months later by Ram, another home-made collection, this time featuring the contributions of his wife Linda.
By the end of 1971, the McCartneys had formed Wings, which was intended to be a full-fledged recording and touring band. Former Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine and drummer Denny Seiwell became the group's other members, and Wings released their first album, Wild Life, in December 1971. Wild Life was greeted with poor reviews and was a relative flop. McCartney and Wings, which now featured former Grease Band guitarist Henry McCullough, spent 1972 as a working band, releasing three singles -- the protest "Give Ireland Back to the Irish," the reggae-fied "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and the rocking "Hi Hi Hi" -- in England. Red Rose Speedway followed in the spring of 1973, and while it received weak reviews, it became his second American number one album. Later in 1973, Wings embarked on their first British tour, at the conclusion of which McCullough and Seiwell left the band. Prior to their departure, the McCartney's theme to the James Bond movie Live and Let Die became a Top 10 hit in the US and UK. That summer, the remaining Wings proceeded to record a new album in Nigeria. Released late in 1973, Band on the Run, was simultaneously McCartney's best-reviewed album and his most successful, spending four weeks at the top of the US charts and eventually going triple platinum.
Following the success of Band on the Run, McCartney formed a new version of Wings with guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and drummer Geoff Britton. The new lineup was showcased on the 1974 British single "Junior's Farm" and the 1975 hit album Venus and Mars. At the Speed of Sound followed in 1976, and it was the first Wings record to feature songwriting contributions by the other band members. Nevertheless, the album became a monster success on the basis of two McCartney songs, "Silly Love Songs" and "Let 'Em In." Wings supported the album with their first international tour which broke many attendence records and was captured on the live triple-album Wings over America (1976). After the tour completed, Wings rested a bit during 1977, as McCartney released an instrumental version of Ram under the name Thrillington and produced Denny Laine's solo album, Holly Days. Later that year, Wings released "Mull of Kintyre," which became the biggest-selling British single of all time, selling over two million copies. Wings followed "Mull of Kintyre" with London Town in 1978, which became another platinum record. After its release, McCulloch left the band to join the re-formed Small Faces and Wings released Back to the Egg in 1979. Though the record went platinum, it failed to produce any big hits. Early in 1980, McCartney was arrested for marijuna possession at the beginning of a Japanese tour; he was imprisoned for 10 days and then released, without any charges being pressed.
Wings embarked on a British tour in the spring of 1980 before McCartney recorded McCartney II, which was a one-man band effort like his solo debut. The following year, Denny Laine left Wings because McCartney didn't want to tour in the wake of John Lennon's assassination; in doing so, he effectively broke up Wings. McCartney entered the studio later that year with Beatles producer George Martin to make Tug of War. Released in the spring of 1982, Tug of War received the best reviews of any McCartney record since Band on the Run and spawned the number one single "Ebony and Ivory," a duet with Stevie Wonder that became McCartney's biggest American hit. In 1983, McCartney sang on "The Girl is Mine," the first single from Michael Jackson's blockbuster album Thriller. In return, Jackson dueted with McCartney on "Say Say Say," the first single from Paul's 1983 album Pipes of Peace and the last number one single of his career. The relationship between Jackson and McCartney soured considerably when Jackson bought the publishing rights to the Beatles songs from underneath McCartney in 1985.
McCartney directed his first feature film in 1984 with Give My Regards to Broad Street. While the soundtrack, which featured new songs and re-recorded Beatles tunes, was a hit, generating the hit single "No More Lonely Nights," the film was a flop, earning terrible reviews. The following year he had his last American Top Ten with the theme to the Chevy Chase/Dan Aykroyd comedy Spies Like Us. Press to Play (1986) received some strong reviews but the album was a flop. In 1988, he recorded a collection of rock & roll oldies called Choba B CCCP for release in the USSR; it was given official release in the US and UK in 1991. For 1989's Flowers in the Dirt, McCartney co-wrote several songs with Elvis Costello; the pair also wrote songs for Costello's Spike, including the hit "Veronica." Flowers in the Dirt received the strongest reviews of any McCartney release since Tug of War and was supported by an extensive international tour, which was captured on the live double-album Tripping the Live Fantastic (1990). For the tour, McCartney hired guitarist Robbie McIntosh and bassist Hamish Stuart, who would form the core of his band through the remainder of the '90s.
Early in 1991, McCartney released another live album in the form of Unplugged, which was taken from his appearence on MTV's acoustic concert program of the same name; it was the first Unplugged album to be released. Later that year, he unveiled Liverpool Oratorio, his first classical work. Another pop album, Off the Ground, followed in 1993, but the album failed to generate any big hits, despite McCartney's successful supporting tour. Following the completion of the "New World" tour, he released another live album, Paul is Live, in December of 1993. In 1994, he released an ambient techno album under the pseudonym the Fireman. McCartney premiered his second classical piece, "The Leaf," early in 1995, and then began hosting a Westwood One radio series called Oobu Joobu. But his primary activity in 1995, as well as 1996, was the Beatles' Anthology, which encompassed a lengthy video documentary of the band and the multi-volume release of Beatles outtakes and rarities. After Anthology was completed, he released Flaming Pie in the summer of 1997. A low-key, largely acoustic affair that had the some of the same charm of his debut, Flaming Pie was given the strongest reviews McCartney had received in years and was a modest commercial success, debuting at number two on the US and UK charts; it was his highest American chart placing since he left the Beatles. Flaming Pie certainly benefitted from the success of Anthology, as did McCartney himself -- only a few months before the release of the album in 1997, he received a knightship.
On April 17 1998, Linda McCartney died after a three-year struggle with breast cancer.
Beastie Boys -tietoa:
s the first White rap group of any importance, the Beastie Boys received the scorn of critics and
strident hip-hop musicians, who accused them of cultural pirating, especially since they began as a
hardcore punk group in 1981. But the Beasties weren't pirating -- they treated rap as part of a
post-punk musical underground, where the do-it-yourself aesthetics of hip-hop and punk weren't
that far apart. Of course, the exaggerated B-Boy and frat boy parodies of their unexpected hit debut
album Licensed to Ill didn't help their cause. For much of the mid-'80s, the Beastie Boys were
considered as macho clowns, and while their ambitious, Dust Brothers-produced second album
Paul's Boutique dismissed that theory, it was ignored by both the public and the press at the time. In
retrospect, it was one of the first albums to predict the genre-bending, self-referential pop
kaleidoscope of '90s pop. The Beasties refined their eclectic approach with 1992's Check Your
Head, where they played their own instruments. Check Your Head brought the Beasties back to the
top of the charts, and within a few years, they were considered one of the most influential and
ambitious groups of the '90s, cultivating a musical community not only through their music, but with
their record label Grand Royal and their magazine of the same name.
It was remarkable turn of events for a group that demonstrated no significant musical talent on their
first records. All three members of the Beastie Boys -- Mike D (b. Mike Diamond, November 20,
1966), MCA (b. Adam Yauch, August 5, 1965), and Ad-Rock (b. Adam Horovitz, October 31,
1967) -- came from wealthy middle-class Jewish families in New York and had become involved in
the city's punk underground when they were teenagers in the early '80s. Diamond and Yauch formed
the Beastie Boys with drummer Kate Schellenbach and guitarist John Berry in 1981, and the group
began playing underground clubs around New York. The following year, the Beasties released the
seven-inch EP Polly Wog Stew on the indie Rat Cage to little attention. That year, the band met
Horovitz, who had formed the hardcore group the Young and the Useless. By early 1983,
Schellenbach and Berry had left the group -- they would later join Luscious Jackson and Thwig,
respectively -- and Horovitz had joined the Beasties. The revamped group released the rap record
"Cookie Puss" as twelve-inch single later in 1983. Based on a prank phone call the group made to
Carvel Ice Cream, the single became an underground hit in New York, and by early 1984, they had
abandoned punk and turned their attention to rap.
In 1984, the Beasties joined forces with producer Rick Rubin, a heavy metal and hip-hop fan who had recently founded Def Jam Records with his fellow New York University student, Russell Simmons. Def Jam officially signed the Beastie Boys in 1985, and that year they had a hit single from the soundtrack to Krush Groove with "She's On It," a rap track that sampled AC/DC's "Back In Black" and suggested the approach of the group's forthcoming debut album. The Beasties received their firs significant national exposure later in 1985, when they opened for Madonna on her Virgin Tour. The trio taunted the audience with profanity and were generally poorly received. One other major tour, as the openers for Run-D.M.C.'s ill-fated Raisin' Hell trek, followed before License to Ill was released late in 1986. An amalgam of street beats, metal riffs, B-boy jokes and satire, License to Ill was interpreted as a mindless, obnoxious party record by many critics and conservative action groups, but that didn't stop the album from becoming the fastest-selling debut in Columbia Records' history, moving over 750,000 copies in its first six weeks. Much of that success was due to the single "Fight for Your Right (To Party)," which became a massive crossover success. In fact, License To Ill became the biggest-selling rap album of the '80s, which generated much criticism for certain hip-hop fans who believed that the Beasties were merely cultural pirates. On the other side of the coin, the group was being attacked from the right, who claimed their lyrics were violent and sexist and that their concerts -- which featured female audience members dancing in go-go cages and a giant inflatable penis, similar to what the Stones used in their mid-'70s concerts -- caused even more outrage. Throughout their 1987 tour, they were plagued with arrests and lawsuits, and were accused of inciting crime.
While much of the Beasties' exaggeratedly obnoxious behavior started out as a joke, it became a self-parody by the end of 1987, so it wasn't a surprise that the group decided to revamp their sound and image during the next two years. During 1988, they became involved in a bitter lawsuit with Def Jam and Rick Rubin, who claimed he was responsible for the group's success and threatened to release outtakes as their second album. The group finally broke away by the end of the year and they relocated to California, where they signed with Capitol Records. While in California, they met the production team the Dust Brothers, and they convinced the duo to use their prospective debut album as the basis for the Beasties' second album, Paul's Boutique. Densely layered with interweaving samples and pop culture references, the retro-funk-psychedelia of Paul's Boutique was entirely different than License to Ill, and many observers weren't quite sure what to make of it. Several publications gave it rave reviews, but when it failed to produce a single bigger than the number 36 "Hey Ladies," it was quickly forgotten about.
Despite its poor commercial performance, Paul's Boutique gained a cult following, and its cut-and-paste sample techniques would later be hailed as visionary, especially after the Dust Brothers altered the approach for Beck's acclaimed 1996 album, Odelay. Still, the record was declared a disaster in the early '90s, but that didn't prevent the Beasties from building their own studio and founding their own record label, Grand Royal, for their next record, Check Your Head. Alternating between old school hip-hop, raw amateurish funk and hardcore punk, Check Your Head was a less accomplished than Paul's Boutique, yet it was just as diverse. Furthermore, the burgeoning cult around the Beasties made the album a surprise Top 10 hit upon its spring 1992 release. "Jimmy James," "Pass the Mic" and "So Whatcha Want" were bigger hits on college and alternative rock radio than they were on rap radio, and the group suddenly became hip again. Early in 1994, they collected their early punk recordings on the compilation Some Old Bullshit, which was followed in June by their fourth album, Ill Communication. Essentially an extension of Check Your Head, the record debuted at number one upon its release, and the singles "Sabotage" and "Sure Shot" helped send it to double-platinum status. During the summer of 1994, they co-headlined the fourth Lollapalooza festival with Smashing Pumpkins. That same year, Grand Royal became a full-fledged record label as it released Luscious Jackson's acclaimed debut album, Natural Ingredients. The Beasties' Grand Royal magazine was also launched that year. Over the next few years, the Beasties remained quiet as they concentrated on political causes and their record label. In 1996, they released the hardcore EP Aglio E Olio and the instrumental soul-jazz and funk collection, The In Sound from Way Out. Also that year, Adam Yauch organized a two-day festival to raise awareness and money about Tibet's plight against the Chinese government; the festival went on to become an annual event. The Beastie Boys' long-awaited fifth LP, Hello Nasty, finally appeared during the summer of 1998. -- Stephen Thomas Erlrewine,
Former Australian soap star Kylie Minogue began a pop music career in 1988, just before she turned 20 years old. Following the dance-pop blueprint of Madonna, Minogue's early singles were produced by the hit-making team of Stock, Aitken & Waterman. Her first single, "I Should Be So Lucky," reached number one in the U.K., beginning a long streak of hit singles in Britain. In America, she was never able to improve on her second single, a cover of Little Eva's "The Loco-Motion," which peaked at number three. Nevertheless, the hits continued in both Britain and Australia, even when she ditched her wholesome image in 1991 to become a sexier dance diva.
After disbanding the Police at the peak of their popularity in 1984, Sting quickly established himself as a viable solo artist, one obsessed with expanding the boundaries of pop music. Sting incorporated heavy elements of jazz, classical and worldbeat into his music, writing lyrics that were literate and self-consciously meaningful, and he was never afraid to emphasize this fact in the press. For such unabashed ambition, he was equally loved and reviled, with supporters believing that he was at the forefront of literate, intelligent rock and his critics finding his entire body of work pompous. Either way, Sting remained one of pop's biggest superstars for the first ten years of his solo career, before his record sales began to slip.
Before the Police were officially disbanded, Sting began work on his first solo album late in 1984, rounding up a group of jazz musicians as a supporting band. Moving from bass to guitar, he recorded his solo debut, 1985's The Dream of the Blue Turtles, with Branford Marsalis, Kenny Kirkland and Omar Hakim. The move wasn't entirely unexpected, since Sting had played with jazz and progressive rock bands in his youth, but the result was considerably more mature and diverse than any Police record. The album became a hit, with "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free," "Love Is the Seventh Wave" and "Fortress Around Your Heart" reaching the American Top Ten. Sting brought the band out on an extensive tour, which was captured on a documentary called Bring on the Night, which appeared in 1986, along with a live double album of the same name. That year, Sting participated in a halfhearted Police reunion which resulted in only one new song, a re-recorded version of "Don't Stand So Close To Me."
Following the aborted Police reunion, Sting began working on the ambitious Nothing Like the Sun, which was dedicated to his recently deceased mother. Working from a jazz foundation, and again collaborating with Marsalis, Sting worked with a number of different musicians on the album, including Gil Evans and former Police guitarist Andy Summers. The album received generally positive reviews upon its release in late 1987, and it generated hit singles with "We'll Be Together" and "They Dance Alone." Following its release, Sting began actively campaigning for Amnesty International and environmentalism, establishing the Rainforest Foundation, which was designed to raise awareness about preserving the Brazilian rainforest. An abridged Spanish version of Nothing like the Sun, Nada Como el Sol, was released in 1988.
Sting took several years to deliver the follow-up to Nothing Like The Sun, during which time he appeared in a failed Broadway revival of The Threepenny Opera in 1989. His father also died, which inspired 1991's The Soul Cages, a dense, dark and complex album. Although the album peaked at number two and spawned the Top Ten hit "All This Time," the record was less successful than its predecessor. Two years later, he delivered Ten Summoner's Tales, a light, pop-oriented record that became a hit on the strength of two Top 20 singles, "If I Ever Lose My Faith In You" and "Fields of Gold." At the end of 1993, "All for Love," a song he recorded with Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams for The Three Musketeers, became a number one hit. The single confirmed that Sting's audience had shifted from new wave/college rock fans to adult contemporary, and the 1994 compilation Fields of Gold: The Best of Sting played to that audience.
Three years after Ten Summoner's Tales, Sting released Mercury Falling in the spring of 1996. Although the album debuted high, it quickly fell down the charts, stalling at platinum sales and failing to generate a hit single. While the album failed, Sting remained a popular concert attraction, confirming his immense popularity. -- Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Alanis Morissette (b. June 1, 1974, Ottawa, Canada) was one of the most unlikely stars of the mid-'90s. A former child actress turned dance-pop diva, Morissette transformed herself into a confessional alternative singer/songwriter, in the vein of Liz Phair and Tori Amos. However, she added enough pop sensibility, slight hip-hop flourishes and marketing savvy to that formula to become a superstar with her third album, Jagged Little Pill.
Morissette was born and raised in Ottawa, Canada. In her childhood, she began playing piano and writing songs. At the age of ten, she joined the cast of You Can't Do That on Television, a children's television program.
Using money that she earned on the show, Morissette recorded an independent single, "Fate Stay with Me," which was released when she was ten. After leaving the show, she concentrated on a musical career, signing a music publishing contract when she was 14. The publishing contract led to a record deal with MCA/Canada. In 1991, she moved to Toronto and released her debut album, Alanis.
Alanis was a collection of pop-oriented dance numbers and ballads that was successful in Canada, selling over 100,000 copies, and leadinging to a Juno Award for Most Promising Female Artist. However, no other country paid any attention to the record. In 1992, she released Now Is the Time, an album that closely resembled her debut. Like its predecessor, it was a success in Canada, even if it sold half of what Alanis did. Following the release Now Is the Time, Morissette relocated to Los Angeles, where she met Glen Ballard in early 1994. Ballard had previously written Michael Jackson's hit "Man in the Mirror," produced Wilson Phillips' hit debut album, and worked with David Hasselhoff. Despite the duo's mainstream pop pedigree, they decided to pursue an edgier, alternative rock-oriented direction. The result was Jagged Little Pill, which was released on Maverick Records, Madonna's label.
On the strength of the single "You Oughta Know," Jagged Little Pill gained attention upon its release in the summer of 1995. Soon, the single received heavy airplay from both alternative radio and MTV, sending the album into the Top Ten and multi-platinum status. The second and third singles from Jagged Little Pill, "Hand in My Pocket" and "All I Really Want," kept the album in the Top Ten. In early 1996, she was nominated for six Grammys. Shortly after the nominations, Morissette released her fourth single, "Ironic," which proved to be her biggest crossover success. Morissette won several Grammy awards in 1996, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year. -- Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All-Music Guide
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Rockin' all over the world - Debriefit Rockin' all over the world - Kuvat Takaisin Halzagurkin tapahtumasivulle Takaisin pääsivulle |
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