David Sanborn has been a frequent visitor to the Montreux Jazz Festival, either headlining in his own right, as a sideman or as part of nineties "supergroup" Legends. This DVD focuses on his second headlining appearance in 1984 when he was touring in support of his "Straight To The Heart" album, which would see him win the second of his six Grammy Awards to date. The set combines tracks from that album with others from across his career. It features a special guest appearance by Rickie Lee Jones on piano and vocals on the track "Autumn Leaves". In 2008 David Sanborn released his 23rd album and his diverse career continues to thrive both on stage and in the studio.
In November 1981, with Under Pressure topping the charts in the UK, Queen arrived in Montreal following dates in Japan and their record-breaking tour of Latin America. It was to be the only concert by Queen that was ever shot on film. Always a great live band, with arguably the greatest frontman of all time in Freddie Mercury, they excelled themselves with the cameras rolling. The picture has been digitally restored from the original film and the sound has been newly mixed and mastered for DTS Surround Sound and PCM Stereo from the original multitrack tapes.
Following their record-breaking South American tour, the Montreal shows on 24 and 25 November 1981 were to be the only concerts by Queen ever shot on film - indeed they were the first group to shoot an entire show in full cinema format 35mm. These releases offer the best ever sound and picture quality on a Queen concert release. Always a great live band, with two years non-stop touring behind them and Freddie Mercury in front of them, Queen excelled themselves with the cameras rolling. The footage has been digitally restored from the original film and the sound has been newly mixed and mastered for DTS Surround Sound and PCM Stereo from the original multi-track tapes.
"Hello Montreal...long time no see. You wanna get crazy?" asks Freddie as the band tear into their alternative 'fast' version of We Will Rock You, and from there on Queen show their hard rock roots, slowing down only for Love of My Life and the more mid-tempo Under Pressure, notably being performed live for the first time in this concert.
In November 2002 The Cure took to the stage at the Tempodrom in Berlin on two consecutive nights to play three of their most admired and influential albums in their entirety in front of a sell out crowd.
This epic event was captured by a huge 12 camera Hi-Definition shoot and in 5.1 surround sound to produce the Blu-Ray that all Cure fans have been waiting for.
Disc Two also includes an interview with Robert Smith filmed after the shows where he talks about the concert and the relationship between the three albums.
The line up is: Robert Smith Voice, Guitar, 6-String Bass Simon Gallup Bass, 6-String Bass Perry Bamonte Guitar, 6-String Bass, Keyboard Jason Cooper Drums, Percussion Roger ODonnell Keyboards, Percussion
In a career spanning more than 25 years, The Cure have established themselves as one of the most influential British acts of their generation. They have also achieved major commercial success with 18 Top 40 albums and 21 Top 40 singles in the UK alone.
Pornography was originally released in 1982 and contained the UK top 40 single The Hanging Garden.
Leslie Cheung Kwok-Wing (12 September 1956 – 1 April 2003), nicknamed elder brother (哥哥), was an actor and musician from Hong Kong. Cheung was considered as "One of the founding fathers of Cantopop," and "combining a hugely successful film and music career".
In 2000, Cheung was named Asian Biggest Superstar by China Central Television, and voted as The Most Favorite Actor in 100 Years of Chinese Cinema in 2005.
In 1977, Cheung won second prize by singing Don McLean's "American Pie" at the Asian Music Contest held by Rediffusion Television (RTV). He signed a contract with RTV, which subsequently became Asia Television Limited (ATV) and began his career in the entertainment industry. He also signed a music contract with Polydor Records, releasing Day Dreaming (1977) and Lover's Arrow (1979).
The early days of his career were not easy. He was once booed off the stage during a public performance, and his first two albums were not welcomed by the public. He left Polydor Records at the end of his contract. Cheung's first film, The Erotic Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓春上春) in 1978 was a soft porn film. Cheung later stated that he was unaware of the sexual nature of the film when he signed the contract.
During the 1970s and 1980s, he appeared in a number of TV dramas such as The Young Concubine (我家的女人), Agency 24 (甜甜廿四味), Pairing (對對糊), and The Spirit Of The Sword (浣花洗劍錄). These TV dramas helped turn him into a household name in South East Asia.
In 1982, Cheung joined Capital Artists upon the end of his contract with RTV. It was at Capital Artists that Florence Chan became his music agent and remained as such through his entire career. While at Capital Artists, he also met Anita Mui, another Hong Kong Cantopop idol, starting a long lasting friendship. In 1983, Cheung released his first hit song, "The Wind Blows On" (風繼續吹). In 1984, he released his first top ten hit song "Monica", which became the first so-called "fast" song that won the RTHK Top Ten Chinese Gold Songs Award. "Monica" became representative of a new genre of Hong Kong music in the mid 1980s. Fans began to demand fast and energetic Cantopop songs that would be suitable for both dancing and listening. Other Top Ten Gold Songs released by Cheung through Capital Artists included "Wild Wind" (不羈的風) (album, For Your Love Only, 1985); "Who Can Be With Me" (有誰共鳴) (album, Leslie Cheung: Allure Me, 1986) and "Love in Those Years" (當年情) (theme song for A Better Tomorrow, album Leslie Cheung: Allure Me, 1986). "Who Can Be With Me" became the Gold of the Gold Songs (Best Song) of the Year for 1986.
Cheung's movie career was a little slower to take off. He appeared in supporting roles in his second and third movies Encore (1980) and On Trial (1981). However, his acting talent was soon recognized with his nomination for the Hong Kong Film Awards' Best Supporting Actor for his role in On Trial. Subsequently after this nomination, he began to star as the leading man in Teenage Dreamers (1982) and has held the lead role in almost every movie he had been in since. From the early 1980s through 1986, most of the movies in which he had starred were teenage movies. Among them, Nomad (1982, directed by Patrick Tam Kar-ming) is widely considered by film critics as representative of Hong Kong "New Wave" films. Cheung's role as Louis in Nomad won him his first Best Actor nomination of the Hong Kong Film Awards. Later, Cheung stated that he considers Nomad as his first "real" movie. During this period, Cheung continued to act in a number of Television Broadcasts (TVB) dramas, such as Once Upon an Ordinary Girl (儂本多情) and The Fallen Family (武林世家).
Roman Tam, known by the stage name Lo man (羅文), nickname Law Kee (蘿記) was a renowned cantopop singer. He is regarded as the "Godfather of Cantopop".
In the far east, he is equivalent to the western world Elton John.
Tam was seen as a cultural icon to Chinese communities around the world (including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and, later Mainland China). He had a string of hits in a career spanning 30 years. He was well-respected for his singing skills, his positive outlooks, and his insistence on correct pronunciations. He was also groundbreaking for being the first major Hong Kong singer to pose in drag and to pose in nude.
Born in Guangxi, China, he later immigrated to Hong Kong in 1962 at the age of 12. After forming a short-lived band known as Roman and the Four Steps, he became a contract singer under studios term at Television Broadcasts Limited. He briefly switched to Asia Television Ltd in the early 1990s.
During the 1990s he accepted many budding singers as his students. Some of which who became famous included Joey Yung and Ekin Cheng. He had sang many well known songs for various TV series including Below the Lion Rock and the famous 1982 TVB adaption of The Legend of the Condor Heroes.
Tam was unmarried and was rumoured to be gay. He died in Hong Kong at the Queen Mary Hospital from liver cancer. The title of "Godfather of Cantopop" was confirmed in his obituary.
Anita Mui Yim-fong (10 October 1963 - 30 December 2003) was a popular Hong Kong singer, actress, and sex symbol. During her prime years she made major contributions to the cantopop music scene, while receiving numerous awards and honours. She remained an idol throughout most of her career, and was generally regarded as a cantopop diva. Once she held a sell-out concert at Hammersmith, London, England, where she was dubbed the title "Madonna of Asia". That title has stayed with her throughout her career, and has been used as a comparison for both Eastern and Western media.
In the 1980s the gangtai style of music was revolutionized by her wild dancing and femininity on stage. She was famous for having outrageous costumes and also high powered performances. Her fanbase reached far beyond Hong Kong, and into many parts of Asia including Taiwan, Mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia as well as the overseas market. In the Hong Kong entertainment industry where stars often come and go, Mui was able to remain a major star in the spotlight for 20 years. Her career only came to a stop in 2003 when she was suddenly diagnosed with cervical cancer, dying at the age of only 40.
Even so, her music and film legacy continues to live on. Her success reached well beyond that of the entertainment circle with humanitarian work, donations and charities that played a major role in helping society even well into the present day.
Janet Damita Jo Jackson (born May 16, 1966) is an American recording artist and actress. Born in Gary, Indiana and raised in Encino, Los Angeles, California, she is the youngest child of the Jackson family of musicians. She first performed on stage with her family beginning at the age of seven, and later started her career as an actress with the variety television series The Jacksons in 1976. She went on to star in other television shows throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, including Good Times and Diff'rent Strokes.
At age sixteen in 1982, Jackson signed a recording contract with A&M, releasing her self-titled debut album the same year. She faced criticism for her limited vocal range, and for being yet another member of the Jackson family to become a recording artist. Beginning with her third studio album Control (1986), Jackson began a long-term collaboration with record producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Her music with Jam and Lewis incorporated contemporary R&B with elements of rap music, sample loop, triple swing and industrial beats, which led to crossover appeal in popular music. In addition to receiving recognition for the innovation in her albums, music videos and choreography, Jackson was acknowledged as a role model for her socially conscious lyrics.
In 1991, she signed the first of two record-breaking, multi-million dollar recording contracts with Virgin Records, which established her as one of the highest paid artists in the recording industry. Her debut album under the Virgin label, janet. (1993), saw Jackson develop a public image as a sex symbol as she began to explore sexuality in her music. That same year she appeared in her first starring film role in Poetic Justice; since then she has continued to act in feature films. By the end of the decade Jackson was named the second most successful recording artist of the 1990s. All for You (2001), became her fifth consecutive studio album to debut at number one the Billboard 200 album charts. In 2007, she changed labels, signing with the Island Def Jam Music Group and released her tenth studio album Discipline the following year.
Jackson is ranked by Billboard magazine as one of the top ten best-selling music artists in the history of contemporary music, having sold over 100 million albums worldwide. The Recording Industry Association of America lists her as the eleventh best-selling female artist in the United States with 26 million certified albums. Jackson's longevity in the recording industry has rivaled that of several entertainers and her musical style and choreography have influenced a number of contemporary pop and R&B artists.
The Three Degrees are a female Philadelphia soul and disco vocal musical group, formed in 1963 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Although always fronted by a three person line-up, there have been a number of personnel changes, and a total of twelve women have represented the group so far.
The original members were Fayette Pinkney, Shirley Porter and Linda Turner.
The trio, tagged by the media as 'Prince Charles' favourites' were the first girl group to top the UK Singles Chart since The Supremes in 1964. They are best known for their million selling 1974 hit song, "When Will I See You Again".
Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer.
Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an innovative cornet and trumpet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence on jazz, shifting the music's focus from collective improvisation to solo performers. With his distinctive gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also greatly skilled at scat singing, or wordless vocalizing.
Renowned for his charismatic stage presence and deep, instantly recognizable voice almost as much as for his trumpet-playing, Armstrong's influence extended well beyond jazz, and by the end of his career in the '60s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general: critic Steve Leggett describes Armstrong as "perhaps the most important American musician of the 20th century."
Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is a Grammy Award-winning American singer-songwriter, author, actor and philanthropist, known for her prolific work in country music. In the 44 years since her national chart debut, she remains the most successful female artist in the history of country music, with 25 number-one singles (a record for a female artist), and a record 42 top-10 country albums. She has the distinction of having performed on a top-5 country hit in each of the last five decades. Teen sensation, Miley Cyrus, Is Dolly's Goddaughter.
She is known for her distinctive mountain soprano, sometimes bawdy humor, flamboyant dress sense and voluptuous figure.
Diane Ernestine "Diana" Ross (born March 26, 1944) is a recording artist, actress, and entertainer. During the 1960s, she helped shape the Motown Sound as lead singer of The Supremes before leaving for a solo career in the beginning of 1970. Since the beginning of her career with The Supremes and as a solo artist, Diana Ross has sold more than 100 million records.
During the 1970s and through the mid 1980s, Ross was one of the most successful female artists of the rock era, crossing over into film, television and Broadway. She received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her 1972 role as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues. She won a Golden Globe award for Lady Sings the Blues. She won American Music Awards, garnered twelve Grammy Award nominations, and won a Tony Award for her one-woman show, An Evening with Diana Ross in 1977.
In 1976, Billboard magazine named her the "Female Entertainer of the Century." The Guinness Book Of World Records declared Diana Ross as the most successful female music artist of the 20th century with a total of eighteen American number-one singles: twelve as lead singer of The Supremes and six as a soloist. Ross was the first female solo artist to score six number-ones. This feat puts her in a tie for fifth place among solo female artists with the most No. 1s on the Hot 100. She is also one of the few recording artists to have two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame--one as a solo artist and the other as a member of the trio "The Supremes." In December 2007, she received a John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Honors Award.
Including her work with the Supremes, Ross has recorded 61 studio albums.
Diane Ernestine Ross, the daughter of a former United States Army soldier from Bluefield, West Virginia and a schoolteacher from Bessemer, Alabama, was born at Hutzel Women's Hospital, in Detroit, Michigan. After living on Detroit's St. Antoine street, Ross' family eventually settled at the low-income Brewster-Douglass housing projects. Ross aspired to be a fashion designer and learned how to design and sew clothes while attending Cass Technical High School in Midtown Detroit.
In 1959 Ross was brought to the attention of Milton Jenkins, the manager of the local doo-wop group The Primes, by friend Mary Wilson. According to sources, Primes member Paul Williams convinced Jenkins to enlist Ross in the sister group The Primettes, which included Wilson, Florence Ballard and Betty McGlown. Ross, Wilson and Ballard each sang lead during live performances and in 1960, the group signed with Lupine Records where the label issued the Ross-led single "Tears of Sorrow" b/w the Wilson-led "Pretty Baby". The single, however, flopped.
Kenneth Ray "Kenny" Rogers (born August 21, 1938, in Houston, Texas) is an American country music singer-songwriter, photographer, record producer, actor and entrepreneur.
He has been very successful, charting more than 70 hit singles across various music genres and topping the country and pop album charts for more than 420 individual weeks in the United States alone.
Two of his albums, The Gambler and Kenny, are featured in the About.com poll of "The 200 Most Influential Country Albums Ever". He was voted the "Favorite Singer of All-Time" in a 1986 joint poll by readers of both USA Today and People. He has received hundreds of awards for both his music and charity work. These include AMAs, Grammys, ACMs and CMAs, as well as a lifetime achievement award for a career spanning six decades in 2003.
Success in recent years include the 2006 album release, Water & Bridges, an across the board hit, that peaked at #5 in the Billboard Country Albums sales charts, also charting high in the Billboard 200. The first single from the album, "I Can't Unlove You," was also a chart hit. Remaining a popular entertainer around the world, the following year he completed a tour of the United Kingdom and Ireland telling BBC Radio 2 DJ Steve Wright, his favorite hit of his was "The Gambler".
He also starred as John J. Macshayne in MacShayne: Winner Takes All and MacShayne: The Final Roll of the Dice.
Olive Marie Osmond (born October 13, 1959) is an American actress, singer, doll designer, and a member of the show business family, The Osmonds. Although she was never part of her family's singing group, she gained success as a solo country music artist in the 1970s and 1980s. Her best known song is a cover of the country pop ballad "Paper Roses." In 1976, she and her singer brother Donny Osmond began hosting the TV variety show Donny & Marie.
Born Olive Marie Osmond in Ogden, Utah to Olive and George Osmond, Marie Osmond was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, along with her eight brothers Virl, u Tom, Alan, Wayne, Merrill, Jay, Donny, and Jimmy Osmond. Since an early age, her brothers maintained a career in show business, singing and performing on national television. Osmond debuted as part of her brothers' act The Osmond Brothers on the The Andy Williams Show when she was three, but generally did not perform with her brothers in the group's television performances through the 1960s.
Carpenters is the third studio album by The Carpenters. Released on May 14, 1971, the album was successful, reaching #2 on the Billboard 200 chart and #12 in the United Kingdom. With the hit songs "For All We Know," "Rainy Days and Mondays," and "Superstar," Carpenters solidified Karen Carpenter as one of her generation's most endearing pop vocalists. It has been said that the strength of these recordings is what caused Richard Carpenter to ask his sister to front the band instead of playing behind the drums on every live performance. Amongst many fans, the album has simply been referred to as The Tan Album, because the album itself is like a tan envelope, and is presumably a play on The Beatles' so-called White Album. In Cash Box's Top 100 Albums of 1971, Carpenters peaked at #8. This is the first album to feature the familiar Carpenters emblem.
This is not the first album featuring tracks with Richard Carpenter singing lead vocal, with Karen in the background, as opposed to the other tracks. "Druscilla Penny" and "Saturday" are both led by Richard Carpenter, though neither were released as singles nor charted as hits.
Samuel Hui Koon-kit, usually known as Sam Hui, is best known for being a star in the Cantopop and movie industry in Hong Kong's from the 1960s to 1990s. He was born on 6 September 1948. He graduated from the Arts Faculty of University of Hong Kong, Ying Wa College and St Francis Xavier's College in the late 1960s to early 1970s. He and his brothers Michael and Ricky made several comedy blockbusters in the 1970s. He is also acknowledged for popularising Cantopop, by incorporating the then unknown idiosyncrasies of Western popular music into the Cantopop genre.
He started his career as a host to a youth music TV show on TVB. At the time, he was the lead musician of his band named The Lotus. In the early years of his career, he sang Western songs from Britain and the U.S. However, he began singing Cantonese songs when he wrote the theme songs for the comedies produced by his brother Michael Hui.
His music appealed to the Hong Kong masses particularly the working class with its simple lyrics and light-hearted nature which was popular in Hong Kong music in the late 1970s. He penned most of the compositions and personally wrote most of the humorous lyrics that generally encompassed current issues in Hong Kong such as the song Could Not Care Less About 1997 (話知你 97), which literally encourages the Hong Kong public to throw caution to the wind and enjoy their life instead of worrying about the imminent Handover to China in 1997.
On a personal note, he was closer to his middle brother Ricky Hui than to their eldest brother Michael Hui, and he and Michael reportedly fell out with each other after their pre-1985 successes. However, in Michael's Chicken and Duck Talk (1988) Sam appeared in a short 3-minute cameo, playing himself as master of ceremonies at the grand opening of David's Chicken. Then in 1990, the three brothers reunited in 'Front Page', a lampoon on Hong Kong's sometimes over-zealous entertainment news industry.
Sam also collaborated with several popular singers such as Leslie Cheung both musically and on-screen culminating in the hit single co-written by both Hui and Chung entitled Silence is Golden (沉默是金) which Hui also sung as a solo track on his 1987 album Hot Summer, as well as the catchy tune "I've Never Been Afraid". Sam also starred in the Aces Go Places, a series of Hong Kong action–comedies in the 1980s, with Karl Maka.
He held a farewell concert in 1991-92, in which he invited many music celebrities and officially declared that he would not be active in the movie industry nor in Cantopop in the future. He was once seriously injured while filming The Legend of Wisely in Tibet due to lack of oxygen, thereafter falling very ill and many of his fans pointed out that this near fatal accident may have been pivotal on his decision to retire as they superstitiously believed that he was haunted by a spirit.
Despite reiterating his plans for retirement, Hui came back for a short stint in the movie Winner Takes All co-starring Nicholas Tse and Ruby Lin. This he maintained, was a result of being unable to ignore his heart's desire.
In 2007, Hui signed with EC Music and released his first album in 17 years, named "Life is Good" (人生多麼好).
The Wynners are a Hong Kong pop band formed in the 1970s. The five-piece is made up of Alan Tam (vocals), Kenny Bee (vocals), Bennett Pang (guitar), Danny Yip(bass guitar) and Anthony Chan (drums).
Began as an Hong Kong English pop band, The Wynners were assembled by manager Pato Leung in 1973 out of an earlier incarnation of the group, the Loosers. Bee, who was with the Sergeant Majors before joining the Wynners, was the only one not part of the original lineup.
The group soon became one of the most popular teen idol group in Hong Kong at the time. The group's first studio album, Listen to the Wynners, released in 1974, was a commercial success, as were its followups. Their success in music was also translated to other forms of the popular media, including a television show on TVB , the Wynners Specials (1975), and three feature films, Let's Rock (1975), Gonna Get You (1976) and Making It (1978).
In 1978, members of the group went separate ways to develop their solo careers. Alan Tam and Kenny Bee went on to become two of the most popular stars in Hong Kong in the 1980s.
Never formally disbanded, the Wynners have since reunited on stage every five years to sold-out crowds. Most recently, they held a benefit concert for Family Bridges at the Oracle Arena on October 25.
The group sang exclusively in English in their early days, mainly covers of popular songs from other parts of the world. In 1975, the group collaborated with songwriter/lyricist James Wong and released a number of original Cantonese songs for the soundtrack of the movie Let's Rock, which Wong also directed. With lyrics in a light-hearted, colloquial style along the line of those from Sam Hui, these songs defined a signature style of early Cantopop.
Glen Travis Campbell (born April 22, 1936, in Delight, Arkansas) is a Grammy Award, Dove Award winning, and two time nominated Golden Globe Award American country pop singer, guitarist and occasional actor. He is best known for a series of hits in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as for hosting a television variety show called The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour on CBS television.
Campbell's hits include John Hartford's "Gentle On My Mind", Jimmy Webb's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Wichita Lineman", Allen Toussaint's "Southern Nights" and Larry Weiss's "Rhinestone Cowboy". Campbell made history by winning a Grammy in both country and pop categories in 1967: "Gentle On My Mind" snatched the country honors, and "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" won in pop. He owns trophies for Male Vocalist of the Year from both the CMA and the ACM, and took the CMA's top honor as Entertainer of the Year.
During his 50 years in show business, Campbell has released more than 70 albums. He has sold 45 million records and racked up 12 RIAA Gold albums, 4 Platinum albums and 1 Double-Platinum album. Of his 75 trips up the charts, 27 landed in the Top 10. Campbell was hand-picked by actor John Wayne to play alongside him in the 1969 film True Grit, which gave Campbell a Golden Globe nomination for Most Promising Newcomer, and gave Wayne his only Academy Award. Campbell sang and had a hit with the title song (by the same name) which was nominated for an Academy Award. He performed it live at that year's Academy Awards Show.
In 2005, Campbell was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Neil Percival Young OM (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician and film director.
Young's work is characterized by deeply personal lyrics, distinctive guitar work, and signature falsetto tenor singing voice. Although he accompanies himself on several different instruments—including piano and harmonica—his claw-hammer acoustic guitar style and often idiosyncratic electric guitar soloing are the linchpins of a sometimes ragged, sometimes polished sound. Although Young has experimented widely with differing music styles, including swing, jazz, rockabilly, blues, and electronic music throughout a varied career, his best known work usually falls into either of two distinct styles: folk-esque acoustic rock ("Heart of Gold", "Harvest Moon" and "Old Man") and electric-charged hard rock (like "Cinnamon Girl", "Rockin' in the Free World" and "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)"). In recent years, Young has adopted elements from newer styles like industrial, alternative country and grunge. Young's profound influence on the latter caused some to dub him "the godfather of grunge".
Young has directed (or co-directed) a number of films using the pseudonym Bernard Shakey, including Journey Through the Past (1973), Rust Never Sleeps (1979), Human Highway (1982), Greendale (2003), and CSNY Déjà Vu (2008). He is currently working on a documentary about electric car technology, tentatively titled Linc/Volt. The project involves a 1959 Lincoln Continental converted to hybrid technology, which Young plans to drive to Washington, DC as an example to lawmakers there.
He is also an outspoken advocate for environmental issues and small farmers, having co-founded in 1985 the benefit concert Farm Aid, and in 1986 helped found The Bridge School, and its annual supporting Bridge School Benefit concerts, together with his wife Pegi (in this, Young's involvement stems at least partially from the fact that both of his sons have cerebral palsy and his daughter, like Young himself, has epilepsy).
Although Young sings as frequently about U.S. legends and myths (Pocahontas, space stations, and the settlement of the American West) as he does about his native country, he remains a Canadian citizen and has never wanted to relinquish his Canadian citizenship. He has lived in the U.S. for "so long" and has stated he has "got just as much right to vote in them (American elections) as anybody else."
Duran Duran are an English music group from Birmingham, United Kingdom. They were one of the most commercially successful of the 1980s bands and a leading band in the MTV-driven "Second British Invasion" of the United States. Since the 1980s they have placed 14 in the Top 10 of the UK Singles Chart and 21 in the Billboard Hot 100 and have sold more than 70 million records.
The band was created by Nick Rhodes, John Taylor and Stephen Duffy, with the later addition of Roger Taylor, Andy Taylor, and (replacing Duffy) Simon Le Bon. (None of the Taylors are related.) The group has never disbanded, but the line-up has changed to include guitarist Warren Cuccurullo from 1986 to 2001, and drummer Sterling Campbell from 1989 to 1991. The reunion of the original five members in the early 2000s created a stir among the band's fans and music media. Andy Taylor left the band in summer 2006, and London guitarist Dom Brown has been working with the band, as a session player and touring member since. There is no word on any permanent replacement for Andy Taylor.
Bon Jovi is an American hard rock band from Sayreville, New Jersey. Fronted by lead singer and namesake Jon Bon Jovi, the group originally achieved large-scale success in the 1980s. Over the past 25 years, Bon Jovi has sold over 120 million albums worldwide.
Bon Jovi formed in 1983 with lead singer Jon Bon Jovi (born John Francis Bongiovi, Jr.), guitarist Richie Sambora, keyboardist David Bryan, bassist Alec John Such, and drummer Tico Torres. Other than the departure of Alec John Such in 1994 (which pared the lineup down to a quartet), the lineup has remained the same for the past 25 years. After two moderately successful albums in 1984 and 1985, the band scored big with Slippery When Wet (1986) and New Jersey (1988), which sold a combined 19 million copies in the U.S. alone, charted eight Top Ten hits (including four number one hits), and launched the band into global super stardom. After non-stop touring, the band went on hiatus after the New Jersey Tour in 1990, during which time Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora both released successful solo albums. In 1992, the band returned with the double platinum Keep the Faith and has since created a string of platinum albums throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
In 2006, the band won a Grammy for best Country Collaboration for "Who Says You Can't Go Home" with Jennifer Nettles from Sugarland and also became the first rock band to reach #1 on the Hot Country Songs chart with the same song. The band has also received multiple Grammy nominations for music from the albums Crush, Bounce, and Lost Highway.
Throughout their career, the band has released ten studio albums, of which nine have gone platinum in US. They also have seven #1 albums in Australia, six #1 albums in Europe and Canada, five #1 albums in UK, four #1 albums in Japan, and three #1 albums on US Billboard charts. In addition, the band has charted 19 singles to the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100, five of which reached #1 - "You Give Love a Bad Name", "Livin' on a Prayer", "Bad Medicine", "I'll Be There for You" and Jon Bon Jovi's solo hit "Blaze of Glory". The band also holds the record for the most weeks for a hard rock album at #1 on the Billboard 200 with Slippery When Wet, as well as the most Top 10 singles from a hard rock album, with New Jersey, which charted five such singles.
Deep Purple are an English rock band formed in Hertford, Hertfordshire in 1968. Along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, they are considered to be among the pioneers of heavy metal and modern hard rock, although some band members have tried not to categorize themselves as any one genre. The band also incorporated blues-rock, pop and progressive rock elements. They were once listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's loudest band, and have sold over 100 million albums worldwide. Deep Purple was ranked #22 on VH1's Greatest Artists of Hard Rock program.
The band has gone through many line-up changes and an eight-year hiatus (1976-84). The 1968-76 line-ups are commonly labelled Mark I, II, III and IV. Their second and most commercially successful line-up featured Ian Gillan (vocals), Ritchie Blackmore (guitar), Jon Lord (keyboards), Roger Glover (bass guitar) and Ian Paice (drums). This line-up was active 1969-73 and was revived from 1984-89 and again in 1993 before the rift between Blackmore and other members became unbridgeable. The current line-up including guitarist Steve Morse has been much more stable, though Lord's retirement in 2002 has left Paice as the only original member.
Sir Elton Hercules John CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947) is an English singer-songwriter, composer and pianist.
In his four-decade career, John has been one of the dominant forces in rock and popular music, especially during the 1970s. He has sold over 200 million records, making him one of the most successful artists of all time. He has more than 50 Top 40 hits including seven consecutive No. 1 U.S. albums, 56 Top 40 singles, 16 Top 10, four No. 2 hits, and nine No. 1 hits. He has won five Grammy awards and one Academy Award. His success has had a profound impact on popular music and has contributed to the continued popularity of the piano in rock and roll. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him #49 on their list of the 100 greatest artists of all time.
Some of the characteristics of John's musical talent include an ability to quickly craft melodies for the lyrics of songwriting partner Bernie Taupin, his former rich tenor (now baritone) voice, his classical and gospel-influenced piano, the aggressive orchestral arrangements of Paul Buckmaster among others and the on-stage showmanship, especially evident during the 1970s.
John was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. He has been heavily involved in the fight against AIDS since the late 1980s, and was knighted in 1998. He entered into a civil partnership with David Furnish on 21 December 2005 and continues to be a champion for LGBT social movements. On 9 April 2008, John held a benefit concert for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, raising $2.5 million. In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list on which are present Hot 100's top 100 artists and Elton John reached #3, preceded by Madonna and The Beatles.
John was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on March 25, 1947, and was raised in Pinner, Middlesex in a council house of his maternal grandparents, with whom his newlywed parents (Sheila Eileen (Harris) and Stanley Dwight) were living. They then moved to a nearby semi-detached house. He was educated at Pinner County Grammar School until the age of 15, before pursuing a career in the music industry.
When John began to seriously consider a career in music, his father tried to steer him toward a more conventional career such as banking. He has stated that his wild stage costumes and performances were his way of letting go after such a restrictive childhood. Both of John's parents were musically inclined, his father having been a trumpet player with a semi-professional big band that played military dances. The Dwights were avid record buyers, exposing John to all the popular singers and musicians of the day. John remembers being immediately hooked on rock and roll when his mother brought home records by Elvis Presley and Bill Haley & His Comets in 1956.
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in 1962 in London when multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart were joined by vocalist Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards. Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early lineup. Stewart, deemed unsuitable as a teen idol, was removed from the official lineup in 1963 but continued to work with the band as road manager and keyboardist until his death in 1985.
Jagger and Richards early on formed a songwriting partnership and gradually took over leadership of the band from the increasingly troubled and erratic Jones. At first recording mainly covers of American blues and R&B songs, since 1966's Aftermath, The Rolling Stones new studio releases have had almost exlusively Jagger/Richards songs. Shortly before his death in 1969, the band fired Jones and replaced him with Mick Taylor. Taylor recorded five studio albums with The Rolling Stones before quitting in 1974. Faces guitarist Ronnie Wood replaced Taylor and has since remained with the band. Wyman left the Rolling Stones in 1993; bassist Darryl Jones, who is not an official band member, has worked with the group since 1994.
First popular in the UK and Europe, The Rolling Stones came to the US during the the early 1960s "British Invasion". The Rolling Stones have released 22 studio albums in the UK (24 in the US), eight concert albums (nine in the US) and numerous compilations; and have sold more than 200 million albums worldwide. Their latest album, A Bigger Bang, was released in 2005. Sticky Fingers (1971) began a string of eight consecutive studio albums that charted at number one in the United States. In 1989 The Rolling Stones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2004 they were ranked number 4 in Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Their image of unkempt and surly youth is one that many musicians still emulate.
Simon & Garfunkel were an American singer-songwriter duo consisting of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. They formed the group "Tom and Jerry" in 1957, and had their first taste of success with the minor hit "Hey, Schoolgirl". As Simon and Garfunkel, the duo rose to fame in 1965, backed by the hit single "The Sounds of Silence". Their music was featured in the landmark film The Graduate, propelling them further into the public consciousness.
They are well known for their close vocal harmonies and sometimes unstable relationship. Their last album, Bridge over Troubled Water, was delayed several times due to artistic disagreements. They were among the most popular recording artists of the 1960s; among their biggest hits, in addition to "The Sounds of Silence", were "I Am a Rock", "Homeward Bound", "Mrs. Robinson", "Bridge over Troubled Water", and "The Boxer". They have received several Grammys and are inductees of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Long Island Music Hall of Fame (2007). In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Simon and Garfunkel #40 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
They have reunited on several occasions since their 1970 breakup, most famously for 1981's The Concert in Central Park, which attracted about 500,000 people.
Close friends through childhood, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel grew up in the same Forest Hills neighborhood in Queens, New York, just blocks away from one another. They met in elementary school in 1953, when they both appeared in the school play Alice in Wonderland (Simon as the White Rabbit, Garfunkel as the Cheshire Cat). They were classmates at Parsons Junior High School and Forest Hills High School, and began performing together in their junior year as Tom and Jerry, with Simon as Jerry Landis (whose last name he borrowed from a girl he had been dating) and Garfunkel as Tom Graph (so called because he was fond of tracking ("graphing") hits on the pop charts). They began writing their own songs in 1955, and made their first professional recording, "Hey, Schoolgirl", for Sid Prosen of Big Records in 1957. Released on 45 rpm and 78 rpm vinyl records, with the flip-side song "Dancin' Wild", the recording sold 100,000 copies, hitting #49 on the Billboard Magazine charts. Both Simon and Garfunkel have acknowledged the tremendous impact of The Everly Brothers on their style, and many of their early songs (including "Hey, Schoolgirl") bear the mark of this influence.
They later performed their hit on American Bandstand, right after Jerry Lee Lewis's "Great Balls of Fire".
Subsequent efforts in 1958 did not reach near their initial success, and after high school the duo went to separate colleges, with Simon enrolling at Queens College and Garfunkel at Columbia University. While enrolled in college, they both joined the same fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi.
In 1963, they found prominence as part of the Greenwich Village folk music scene. Simon, who had finished college but dropped out of Brooklyn Law School, had—like Garfunkel—developed an interest in the folk scene. Simon showed Garfunkel a few songs that he had written in the folk style: "Sparrow", "Bleecker Street", and "He Was My Brother"—which was later dedicated to Andrew Goodman, a friend of both Simon and Garfunkel and a classmate of Simon's at Queens College, who was one of three civil rights workers murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, on June 21, 1964.
These three efforts were among five original songs by Simon included on their first album for Columbia Records, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., which initially flopped upon its release on October 19, 1964.
ABBA is a Swedish pop music group. The band consisted of Benny Andersson (Sweden), Björn Ulvaeus (Sweden), Anni-Frid Lyngstad (Sweden, of Norwegian-German origin) and Agnetha Fältskog (Sweden). They topped the charts worldwide from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. The name "ABBA" is an acronym formed from the first letters of each of the group members' given names (Agnetha, Benny, Björn, Anni-Frid).
ABBA gained immense international popularity employing catchy song hooks, simple lyrics, and a Wall of Sound achieved by overdubbing the female singers' voices in multiple harmonies. As their popularity grew, they were sought after to tour Europe, Australia, and North America, drawing crowds of near-hysterical fans, notably in Australia. Touring became a contentious issue, being particularly unpopular with Agnetha, but they continued to release studio albums to great commercial success. At the height of their popularity, however, both marriages of the band members (Benny with Frida, and Björn with Agnetha) failed, and the relationship changes were reflected in their music, as they produced more thoughtful lyrics with different compositions.
They remain a fixture of radio playlists and are one of the world's best selling bands, having sold over 370 million records world wide; they still sell two to four million records a year. ABBA was also the first pop group from mainland Europe to enjoy consistent success in the charts of English-speaking countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Their enormous popularity subsequently opened the doors for other Continental European acts.
The music of ABBA has been re-arranged into the successful musical Mamma Mia! that has toured worldwide and had a movie version released in July 2008. All four of the former members of ABBA were present at the Stockholm premieres of both the musical (2005) and the film (2008). The film première took place at the Benny Andersson-owned Rival Theatre at Mariatorget, Stockholm on 4 July 2008.
A new museum devoted entirely to the pop supergroup was scheduled to open in Stockholm in 2009, but the project was postponed as of September 2008.
Olivia Newton-John AO, OBE (born 26 September 1948 in Cambridge, England) is an English-born, Australian singer and actress. She is an avid activist for both environmental issues and breast cancer awareness. Her business interests have included launching several product lines for Koala Blue and opening the Gaia Retreat and Spa in Australia. To date she has sold over 100 million records.
Olivia Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England, to a Welsh-born father, Brinley ("Bryn") Newton-John, and a German-born mother, Irene Born. Newton-John is the youngest of three children, following brother Hugh, a doctor, and sister Rona, an actress once married to Grease co-star Jeff Conaway. Newton-John's mother was the eldest child of Max Born, a German Nobel prize–winning physicist. Newton-John's father was an MI5 officer on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park and was the officer who took Rudolph Hess into custody during World War II. Newton-John's family emigrated in 1954 to Melbourne, Australia, where her father worked as a Professor of German and became the Master of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne.
At 14, Newton-John formed a short-lived all-girl band, Sol Four, with three classmates and often performed in a coffee shop owned by her brother-in-law. She soon became a regular on local Australian radio and television shows including HSV-7's The Happy Show, where she performed as Lovely Livvy. She also appeared on the Go Show, where she met her lifelong friends Pat Carroll and John Farrar. (Carroll and Farrar eventually married.) She entered a talent contest on the television program Sing, Sing, Sing, hosted by 1960s Australian icon Johnny O'Keefe, performing the songs "Anyone Who Had A Heart" and "Everything's Coming Up Roses." She won the contest and received a trip to England as the prize. Initially, she was reluctant to go, but her mother encouraged her to broaden her horizons.
Newton-John recorded her first single, "Till You Say You'll Be Mine" b/w "Forever," for England's Decca Records in 1966. Newton-John was homesick in England because she missed Australia and her then-boyfriend, Ian Turpie, with whom she co-starred in an independently produced Australian telefilm, Funny Things Happen Down Under. Her mother cancelled trips back to Australia that Newton-John would repeatedly book. Newton-John's outlook changed when Pat Carroll also moved to England. The two formed a duo and toured nightclubs in Europe until Carroll's visa expired, forcing her to return to Australia. Newton-John remained in England to pursue solo work.
Newton-John was recruited for the group "Tomorrow" — the brainchild of American producer Don Kirshner, creator of The Monkees. In 1970, the group recorded an eponymous album and starred in a "science fiction musical" film also named after the group. The project failed and the group was quickly disbanded.
Howard Andrew "Andy" Williams (born December 3, 1927, in Wall Lake, Iowa) is a legendary American pop singer. Andy Williams has recorded 18 gold and three platinum certified albums. When Ronald Reagan was president, he declared Andy's voice to be "a national treasure". He had his own popular TV variety show from 1962–71.
He also owns his own theater, the Moon River Theatre in Branson, Missouri.
Williams was the son of Jay Emerson and Florence (nee Finley) Williams. He first performed in a children's choir at the local Presbyterian church. Williams and his three older brothers Bob, Don and Dick formed a quartet, the Williams Brothers, in the late 1930s, and they performed on radio in the Midwest, first at WHO in Des Moines, Iowa, and later at WLS in Chicago and WLW in Cincinnati. Williams graduated from Western Hills High School in Cincinnati. The Williams Brothers appeared with Bing Crosby on the hit record "Swinging on a Star" (1944). This led to a nightclub act with entertainer Kay Thompson from 1947 to 1951.
Johnny Mathis (born John Royce Mathis, September 30, 1935) is an American singer of popular music.
One of the last in a long line of traditional male vocalists who emerged before the 1960s, Mathis concentrated on romantic jazz and pop standards for the adult contemporary audience through to the 1980s. Starting his career with a standard flurry of singles, Mathis was far more popular as an album artist, with several dozen of his albums receiving gold and platinum status and seventy-three making the Billboard charts to date. Mathis has sold more than 350 million records and albums.
Mathis was born on September 30th, 1935, fourth of seven children in Gilmer, Texas to Clem and Mildred Mathis. The family moved when he was young to San Francisco, California on Post Street, in the famous Fillmore district where he was raised. His father worked for a time in vaudeville, and when he saw the budding talent in his son, the elder Mathis bought an old upright piano for US$25 to encourage his efforts. Mathis began learning from his father songs and routines–his first song being, "My Blue Heaven." Mathis started out singing and dancing for visitors at home, and later publicly, at school and church events.
At thirteen, Mathis was taken to Connie Cox, a San Francisco Bay Area voice teacher, who accepted him as a student in exchange for work he would do around her house. He studied with Cox for six years, learning vocal scales and exercises, voice production, classical and operatic skills. He remains one of the few popular singers who has received years of professional voice training that included opera.
At George Washington High School, Mathis was well known not only for his singing abilities, but also as a star athlete. On the track and field team, he was a high jumper and hurdler, and on the basketball team, he earned four athletic letters. In 1954, Mathis enrolled at San Francisco State University on a scholarship with the intention of becoming an English and physical education teacher. Mathis remains an important part of San Francisco State University's sports history—in 1954 he broke future basketball great Bill Russell's high jump record by jumping 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m).
Don McLean (born to Elizabeth and Donald on October 2, 1945 in New Rochelle, New York) is an American singer-songwriter. He is most famous for his 1971 album American Pie, containing the renowned songs "American Pie" and "Vincent".
The McLean clan traces its roots to the Isle of Mull in the Scottish Hebrides. Both Don’s grandfather and father were named Donald McLean which sometimes led to confusion as Don was also christened Donald McLean. Don’s mother’s family, the Buccis, came from Abruzzi in southern Italy. They left Italy and settled in Port Chester, N.Y. at the end of the 19th century.
As a young teenager, McLean became interested in folk music particularly the Weavers' 1955 recording "At Carnegie Hall." Childhood asthma meant that Don missed long periods of school and while he slipped back in his studies, his love of music was allowed to flourish. He often performed shows for family and friends. By age 16 he had bought his first guitar (a Harmony acoustic archtop with a sunburst finish) and begun making contacts in the music business, becoming friends with folk singer Erik Darling, a member of the Weavers. McLean recorded his first studio sessions (with singer Lisa Kindred) while still in prep school.
McLean graduated from Iona Preparatory School in 1963, and briefly attended Villanova University, dropping out after four months. While at Villanova he became friends with singer/songwriter Jim Croce.
After leaving Villanova, McLean became associated with famed folk music agent Harold Leventhal, and for the next six years performed at venues and events including the Bitter End and the Gaslight Cafe in New York, the Newport Folk Festival, the Cellar Door in Washington, D.C., and the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Concurrently, McLean attended night school at Iona College and received a Bachelors degree in Business Administration in 1968. He turned down a scholarship to Columbia University Graduate School in favour of becoming resident singer at Café Lena in NY.
In 1968, with the help of a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, McLean began reaching a wider public, with visits to towns up and down the Hudson River. He learned the art of performing from his friend and mentor Pete Seeger. McLean accompanied Seeger on his Clearwater boat trip up the Hudson River in 1969 to protest environmental pollution in the river. During this time McLean wrote songs that would appear on his first album, Tapestry. McLean co-edited the book “Songs and Sketches of the First Clearwater Crew” with sketches by Thomas B. Allen for which Pete Seeger wrote the forward. Seeger and McLean sang "Shenandoah" on the 1974 Clearwater album.
John Denver (December 31, 1943 – October 12, 1997), born Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr., was an American Country Music/folk singer-songwriter and folk rock musician. He was one of the most popular acoustic artists of the 1970s in terms of record sales, recording and releasing around 300 songs, of which about half were composed by him. He was named Poet Laureate of Colorado in 1977. Songs such as "Leaving on a Jet Plane" (1967), "Take Me Home, Country Roads" (1971), "Rocky Mountain High" (1972), "Sunshine on My Shoulders" (1973), "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" (1974), "Annie's Song" (1974), and "Calypso" (1975) are popular worldwide. Denver has been referred to as "The Poet for the Planet", "Mother Nature's Son" (based on The Beatles song he covered) and "A Song's Best Friend".
Sir James Paul McCartney MBE (born 18 June 1942) is a multiple Grammy Award-winning English singer-songwriter, poet, composer, multi-instrumentalist, entrepreneur, record producer, film producer, painter, and animal rights activist. He gained worldwide fame as a member of The Beatles, with John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. McCartney and Lennon formed one of the most influential and successful songwriting partnerships and wrote some of the most popular music in rock and roll history. After leaving The Beatles, McCartney launched a successful solo career and formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda Eastman McCartney, and singer-songwriter Denny Laine. He has worked on film scores, classical music, and ambient/electronica music; released a large catalogue of songs as a solo artist; and taken part in projects to help international charities.
McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the most successful musician and composer in popular music history, with 60 gold discs and sales of 100 million singles. His song "Yesterday" is listed as the most covered song in history - by over 3,700 artists so far - and has been played more than 7,000,000 times on American television and radio. Wings' 1977 single "Mull of Kintyre" became the first single to sell more than two million copies in the UK, and remains the UK's top selling non-charity single. (Three charity singles have since surpassed it in sales; the first to do so—in 1984—was Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?", whose participants included McCartney.)
His company MPL Communications owns the copyrights to more than 3,000 songs, including all of the songs written by Buddy Holly, along with the publishing rights to such musicals as Guys and Dolls, A Chorus Line, and Grease. McCartney is also an advocate for animal rights, vegetarianism, and music education; he is active in campaigns against landmines, seal hunting, and Third World debt.
Boney M. is a West Germany-based pop and disco group created by West German record producer Frank Farian. The four original members of the group's official lineup were Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett (Jamaica), Maizie Williams (Montserrat), and Bobby Farrell (Aruba).
Frank Farian (Franz Reuther), German schlager singer, wasn't happy with the choice of material his record company wanted him to sing. He went into the studio in December 1974 and recorded the song single "Baby Do You Wanna Bump?", a monotonous dance track, singing the repeated "Do you do you wanna bump?" in a deep voice (entirely studio created) as well as performing the high female chorus vocals in his falsetto voice. The record came out, credited to "Boney M." Frank Farian had been watching an Australian detective show, where the lead character was called Boney, and Farian decided that this would make a good name for a group, and added the M. After a slow start it became a hit in the Netherlands and Belgium. It was then that Farian decided to hire a team to 'front' the group for TV performances. A booking agency (Katja Wolfe) found model-turned-singer Maizie Williams (originally from Montserrat) and her Jamaican friend and singer Sheyla Bonnick for him, and a dancer called Mike for the first gigs. Also during 1975, a girl named Nathalie joined but was soon replaced by Claudja Barry. Then Bonnick and Mike left, and Maizie Williams brought in an exotic dancer from Aruba, Bobby Farrell. Singer Marcia Barrett (Jamaica) reluctantly joined the group, which went through another change in line-up when Claudja Barry – tired of merely lip-synching – left in February 1976 to pursue a solo career as a disco singer. Finally Liz Mitchell, an unemployed singer and former member of the Les Humphries Singers, stepped in – and the final line-up was found at last with Maizie Williams, Marcia Barrett, Liz Mitchell and Bobby Farrell.
Farian began recording Boney M.'s first LP, Take the Heat Off Me, for which Marcia Barrett had already recorded some songs with Farian: these were the title track and "Lovin' or Leavin'", both previously recorded in German by another Farian act, Gilla. While Maizie Williams' voice wasn't considered good enough for recording purposes by Farian, and a try-out with Bobby Farrell doing "No Woman No Cry" didn't work, Farian decided to use only Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett along with his own studio created deep male voice and high falsetto voice to create the Boney M. sound.
The commercial response to the album was initially lukewarm. However, the group rigorously toured discos, clubs and even country fairs, to earn a reputation for themselves. The group's big break came when, at the end of that summer, music-TV-producer Michael 'Mike' Leckebusch of Radio Bremen, requested the group for his show Musikladen. Boney M. appeared on the live music show on September 18, 1976, after 10 pm, in their now trademark daring costumes; by the end of the following week, "Daddy Cool" became Germany's #1 single in the charts. The album was to follow the success of the single.
Bread was a 1970s rock/pop band from Los Angeles, California. They were one of the most popular rock groups of the early 1970s, a primary example of what later was labeled "soft rock", releasing a string of well-crafted, melodic soft rock singles.
The band consisted of David Gates (Vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, violin, viola, percussion), Jimmy Griffin (vocals, guitar, keyboards, percussion), Robb Royer (bass, guitar, flute, keyboards, percussion, recorder, backing vocals), Mike Botts (drums; joined in 1970), and Larry Knechtel (bass, guitar, keyboards, harmonica; replaced Royer in 1971).
Beginnings and fame
Gates, Griffin, and Royer joined together in 1968 and signed with Elektra Records choosing the name Bread in 1969. Gates and Griffin had both worked with Royer's previous band, The Pleasure Fair. Bread's first single, "Dismal Day", was released in June 1969 but did not chart. Their debut album, Bread, was released in September 1969 and peaked at #127 on the Billboard 200. Songwriting on the album was split evenly between Gates and the team of Griffin-Royer. Jim Gordon, a top session player, accompanied the band on drums for the album.
Bread became a quartet with their second album, On the Waters (peaking at #12 on the Billboard 200), bringing in Botts as drummer. This time their efforts quickly established Bread as a major act, hitting the mainstream with the Billboard Hot 100 #1 hit "Make It with You" in 1970. "Make It With You" would be Bread's only number one hit on the Hot 100.
For their next single, they released a re-recorded version of "It Don't Matter to Me", a Gates song from their first album. This single was a hit as well, reaching #10. Bread began touring and recording the 1971 album titled Manna (#21), which included the Top 5 hit single, "If". As with the first album, songwriting credits were split evenly between Gates and Griffin-Royer.
Royer left the group after three albums; although, he would continue to write with Griffin—and was replaced by Knechtel, a leading session player from the Los Angeles scene. In January 1972, Bread released Baby I'm-a Want You, their most successful album, peaking at #3 on the Billboard 200. The title song was established as a hit in late 1971 before the album was released, also hitting #3. Follow-up singles "Everything I Own" and "Diary" also went top-20. The next album, Guitar Man, was released ten months later and went to #18. The album produced three top-15 singles, "The Guitar Man" (#11), "Sweet Surrender" (#15), and "Aubrey" (#15), with the first two going to #1 on Billboard's adult contemporary chart. The band would have a total of four #1 singles on this chart; "If" and "Baby I'm-a Want You" had also reached the top of the adult contemporary chart during their respective chart runs.
Split and reunion
Despite the band's success, tensions existed between Gates and Griffin. All eleven of Bread's charting singles between 1970 and 1973 had been written and sung by Gates. Elektra Records had invariably selected Gates' songs for the A-sides of the singles, while Griffin felt that the singles should have been split between the two of them.
Sir Cliff Richard OBE (born Harry Rodger Webb on 14 October 1940) is an English singer-songwriter, actor and entrepreneur.
With his backing group The Shadows, Richard dominated the British popular music scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s, before and during The Beatles' first year in the charts. A conversion to Christianity and subsequent softening of his music led to his having more of a pop than rock image. He never achieved the same impact in the United States despite several chart singles there, but he has remained a popular music, film, and television personality in the United Kingdom and he retains a following in other countries.
During six decades, Cliff Richard has charted many singles, and holds the record (with Elvis Presley) as the only act to make the UK singles charts in all of its decades (1950s–2000s). He alone is the only singer to have had a number one single in the UK in five consecutive decades between the 1950s and the 1990s. If he can chart a single at number one in 2009 he will continue this record to six decades. On the British charts, Richard has had more than 130 singles, albums and EPs make the top 20, more than any other artist. He has sold more than 260 million records.
The Shadows are a British instrumental and vocal group from the 1950s to the 2000s.
Formed as a backing band for Cliff Richard, under the name The Drifters. The members were founder Ken Pavey (born 1932), Terry Smart on drums (born 1942), Norman Mitham on guitar (born 1941), Ian Samwell on guitar and Harry Webb (before he became Cliff Richard) on guitar and vocals. The original Drifters had no bass player. Samwell wrote the group's first hit, "Move It" which is often mistakenly attributed to "Cliff Richard and The Shadows". None of the original Drifters were in the group when they became The Shadows.
Shortly after first manager Johnny Foster discovered them, the name was changed to Cliff Richard and The Shadows due to a name clash with the American group The Drifters. They signed for Jack Good's Oh Boy! television series. Producer Norrie Paramor of EMI signed Richard, and asked Johnny Foster to recruit a better guitarist. Foster went back to Soho's 2i's coffee bar (famed for musical talent performing there, particularly in skiffle) in search of guitarist Tony Sheridan. Sheridan was not there but Foster's attention was caught by another musician, who was tall, good looking, played guitar well and had Buddy Holly glasses.
Hank Marvin was playing in a skiffle band with Bruce Welch. The pair had travelled from Newcastle and were surviving on little money. Foster offered Marvin the job, and he accepted on condition that Welch would also join. New manager Franklin Boyd could see the pair worked well and they were employed as lead and rhythm guitarists. Ian Samwell was moved to bass until he was replaced by the Most Brothers' bass guitarist, Jet Harris. Drummer Terry Smart left shortly afterwards and was replaced at Harris's suggestion by Tony Meehan. The Drifters' professional lineup was now complete, and they became The Shadows in early 1959. Johnny Foster continued for a time as Richard's manager, and Samwell wrote additional songs for The Drifters and The Shadows before writing and producing for others. Meehan recalled that Richard, backed by Marvin, Welch, Harris and himself had played together a year beforehand at least once at the 2i's.
The group started recording and performing with Richard and released two singles in their own right in 1959. ("Feelin' Fine"/"Don't Be A Fool With Love") and ("Jet Black"/"Driftin'"), The first two tracks were vocals and the second pair instrumental. Neither charted. A further (vocal) ("Saturday Dance"/"Lonesome Fella") also failed. The instrumental "Chinchilla" was included on a four-track soundtrack EP by Cliff Richard and the Drifters called Serious Charge released in early 1959 with the film of the same name.
Sir Thomas John Woodward OBE (born 7 June 1940), known by his stage name Tom Jones, is a Welsh singer-songwriter, particularly noted for his powerful voice and wide vocal range. He was born in Trefforest, Pontypridd, near Cardiff in Wales.
Since 1965, Jones has sold over 100 million records.
Jones rose to fame in the 1960s, with an exuberant live act that included wearing tight pants or trousers and billowing shirts, in an Edwardian style popular among his peers at the time. He was known for his overt sexuality before it became a common theme among pop artists.
In 1963 Jones became the frontman for Tommy Scott and The Senators, a local beat group. Clad in black leather, he soon gained a reputation in the South Wales area of the United Kingdom, although the Senators were still unknown in London.
In 1964 they laid down seven tracks with maverick "Telstar" producer Joe Meek, and took them to various labels in an attempt to get a record deal, with no success. The plan was to release a single, "Lonely Joe / I Was A Fool", but the ever-flighty Meek refused to release the tapes. Only after "It's Not Unusual" became a massive hit was Meek able to sell the tapes to Tower (USA) and Columbia (UK). The group returned to South Wales and continued to play gigs at dance halls and working men's clubs. One night, at the Top Hat in Cwmtillery, Jones was spotted by Gordon Mills, a London-based manager originally from South Wales. Mills became Jones's manager, and took the young singer to London. He also renamed him "Tom Jones," an ingenious moniker that not only linked the singer to the image of the title character - a good-looking, low-born stud, portrayed in Tony Richardson's film of Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, which was a huge contemporary hit - but also subtly emphasized his nationality. Gordon Mills gave many rock stars their stage names, among them Engelbert Humperdinck (born Arnold George Dorsey). The Senators became the Playboys, and later still the Squires. It was the beginning of the second phase in Jones's career.
Record companies were finding his style and delivery to be too abrasive and raw. Jones's vocals were considered to be too raucous, and he moved like Elvis (whom he later cited as one of his influences). But eventually, Decca rekindled their early interest, and Jones recorded his first single, "Chills And Fever" in late 1964.
Helen Reddy (born October 25, 1941) is an Australian/American singer-songwriter. She has won a Grammy Award, been a theatrical stage performer appearing on Broadway, an actress in feature films and credited with writing and singing one of the most iconic and culturally significant songs of the 1970s, "I Am Woman".
Reddy became one of the world's most successful female singers of the early 1970s music scene. Reddy scored many certified gold hit records including three #1 singles and fifteen Top 40 pop singles on Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. She has sold more than 15 million albums and 10 million singles worldwide. Selling a total of 25 million records worldwide. She also became the first Australian to have a #1 single in the United States, win a Grammy Award, and have her own variety shows on United States television. Born and raised in Australia, Reddy became a naturalized United States citizen in 1974.
In 2002, she retired from performing concerts and recording and now resides in Sydney, Australia.
She was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame in 2006.
Beyond was a famous rock band in Hong Kong that was founded in 1983. They have always identified with the people of Hong Kong, as reflected in their songs about social issues, pursuit of dreams, politics, and peace. Wong Ka Kui's " 海闊天空 (Boundless Oceans Vast Skies) & 光輝歲月(Glorious Years) are two of their best known works.
Beyond is also well known for Wong Ka Kui's distinctive vocal, remarkable melodies, meaningful lyrical themes, and their musicianship on their instruments.
Formed in 1983, the original members were Wong Ka Kui (vocals, guitar), Yip Sai Wing (vocals, drums), Lee Wing Chiu (Bass) and William Tang (Guitar). Ka Kui's younger brother Wong Ka Keung (vocals, bass) joined in 1984 followed by Paul Wong Koon Chung (vocals, lead guitar) in 1985. Other members for brief periods have included Owen Kwan,Chan See On and Lau Chi Yuen. Lau Chi Yuen left the band in 1988 to pursue studies in the US (though he made a return later playing instruments and helping to produce 1998's Surprise).
Some of Beyond's very early works are in English, such as "Longway without a Friend" and "Myth". Beyond were initially part of the "band boom" which occurred in Hong Kong in the 1980s, alongside other groups such as Tai Chi, Tat Ming Pair, Blue Jeans, Fundamental, and Raidas.
After couple of flops, Beyond started to gain popularity following the release of the song Dai Dei. Fellow underground musicians started to accuse Beyond of abandoning the rock and roll genre of music, gravitating towards pop. Beyond was unfazed and the few next albums saw several of the most important songs in the history of Hong Kong music.
One of the songs, Glorious Age (Chinese: 光輝歲月), is about racism and the struggle of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. The song, at the time, was a fresh breath of air in the midst of saccharin sweet love songs that were dominating the Hong Kong music scene. Wong Ka Kui won the best lyrics award in the Hong Kong Grammy-equivalent award ceremony. The guitar solo opening for the song paints the loneliness of Mandela's struggle. The guitar solo went on to be one of the most recognizable electric guitar rift in Hong Kong rock music.
In 1991, Beyond released the song Amani in the album Delibrate. The song Amani was written by Wong Ka Kui during Beyond's trip to Tanzania. The lyrics of the song are in Chinese interspersed with words from the Swahili language. The title of the song, Amani means peace in Swahili. As suggested by the title, the song sings about world peace in the plight of the war-ravaged countries in Africa. The song outro of morphing Kakui's to a kid's voice reflects the plea for peace, especially from the next generations. Unlike most of other Beyond's songs, this song is mostly written with open chords in the key of C Major. The simplicity of the structure and the common key instill the feeling of innocence into the song.
In June 1993, Wong Ka Kui sustained massive head injuries after falling from a broken stage on a Fuji Television game show in Japan. Wong Ka Kui fell into a coma and died one week later. He was 31 years old. His funeral procession caused traffic in various major city streets of Hong Kong to grind to a standstill, and almost every famous Hong Kong Cantopop singer was in attendance.
The Japanese will never understand, for us and for Hong Kong, that the incident was not merely about the loss of an artist. It was about losing a music revolutionary, and an age of time. - Paul Wong on the death of Ka Kui
At the time of his death, they were signed to Japanese record label Amuse, having already released several Japanese language singles and an album. The following album, This Is Love I, initially intended to be the first of two parts, was released the day after Wong Ka Kui's death.
There was debate as to whether the remaining three members would continue the band without him, but speculation ended when they reappeared on the 30th of November 1993 in Hong Kong at the Composer's Tribute Night concert. After Ka Kui's death, Beyond's first album produced was 2nd Floor Back Suite (二樓後座). Within this album was a stirring solo tribute to Ka Kui that was written, composed and sung by his younger brother, Ka Keung.
The post-Ka Kui albums have a more 'alternative' feel to the progressive rock sound that preceded them. 1997's Please Let Go of Your Hands (請將手放開)(Hong Kong post-97 sentiment abounding) and 1995's grunge-inspired Sound are examples of this.
They played their last concert in Hong Kong under the Beyond name on 1 February 2005, before embarking on a world tour, including stops in Toronto, Canada and various cities in mainland China, after which the band officially disbanded in their last stop in Singapore.
At present, the band has parted ways, with each member pursuing his own solo career.
Two members of the band (Yip Sai Wing & Paul Wong) held a concert, Beyond Next Stage Live 2008, on 11 Oct 2008 in Genting Highlands, Malaysia and later on 8 Nov 2008 at the Singapore Indoor Stadium in Singapore.
David Sanborn - Hideaway
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David Sanborn - Hideaway
David Sanborn has been a frequent visitor to the Montreux Jazz Festival,
either headlining in his own right, as a sideman or as p...
