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5 6 6 6 5 6 -6 6 5
I cross my heart and I hope to die
4 -4 5 5 5 5 6 -5 5 4 4
May God strike me down if I tell you lies
4 5 6 6 6 6 5 6 -6 6 5 5
I’d stay here forever looking in your eyes
6 -5 5 -4 4 -4 5 5 5 5, 5 6, -5 5 4 4
ohohohoho 24/7, baby, 3-6-5

5 6 6 6 5 6 -6 6 5 5
I’ll take your hand and I’ll hold real tight
4 4 -4 -4 5 5 5 6 -5 5 4 4
I’ll tell ye life’s just a blink so don’t think twice
5 6 6 6 6 5 6 -6 7 6 6
Let’s catch the moment in a flash of light
6 -5 5 -4 4 -4 5 5 5 5, 5 6, -5 5 4 4
ohohohoho 24/7, baby, 3-6-5

4 -4 5 4 5 4 -5, 4 -5 -5 5 -4 5
If we gonna feel alive, then let’s feel it now

(Chorus)
5 6 -6 6 6 5 6 4
We could all be blown to pieces
5 6 -6 6 6 5 5 -4
Because time’s a ticking bomb
5 6 -6 6 6 5 6 4
We could all be dead tomorrow
5 6 -6 6 6 5 5 -4
But our love will carry on
-4 7 -7 -6, 6 6 5 6 4
‘Cause when you know, your days are numbered
7 -7 -6 6 6 5 5 -4
And you’re looking in my eyes
4 4 -4 5, 4 4 5 -5 -5 -5 5 4
It’s not the end, ’cause the energy never dies

6, 5 6, -6, 6 5 5
Oh, oh oh, oh, oh
4 -4, 5 5 6, -5, 5 4 4
Oh, oh oh, oh, oh
6, 5 6, -6, 6 5 5
Oh, oh oh, oh, oh
4 -4, 5 5 6, -5, 5 4 4
Oh, oh oh, oh, oh

5 6 6 6 5 6 6 -6 6 5 5
I fell for you and i never got up
4 -4 5 5 5 5 5 6 -5 5 4 4
I stay here forever ’til I turn to dust
4 5 6 6 6 6 5 6 -6 7 6 6
Just take every minute make it last for life
6 -5 5 -4 4 -4 5 5 5 5, 5 6, -5 5 4 4 4 4
Ohohohoho 24/7, baby, 3-6-5-5-5

(Chorus)
6, 5 6, -6, 6 5 5
Oh, oh oh, oh, oh
4 4 5 -5 -5 -5 5 4
‘Cause the energy never dies
4 -4, 5 5 6, -5, 5 4 4
Oh, oh oh, oh, oh
6, 5 6, -6, 6 5 5
Oh, oh oh, oh, oh
4 4 5 -5 -5 -5 5 4
‘Cause the energy never dies
4 -4, 5 5 6, -5, 5 4 4
Oh, oh oh, oh, oh
4 6 5 5, 4 6 -5 -5
There’s no where, there’s no when
5 6 5 5, 5 6 -5 -5
There’s no start, there’s no end
4 6 5 5, 5 6 -5 -5
‘Cause this love, it transcends
4 -5 -5 -5 5 5 5 6 5 5 5 -4
I found you before and I’ll find you again

-4 6 5 5, 5 6 -5 -5
There’s no where, there’s no when
5 6 5 5, 5 6 -5 -5
There’s no start, there’s no end
4 4 -4 5 4 5 4 -5
So if we’re gonna feel alive
4 -5 -5 5 -4 5
Then let’s feel it now

(Chorus)

6, 5 6, -6, 6 5 5
Oh, oh oh, oh, oh
4 4 5 -5 -5 -5 5 4
‘Cause the energy never dies
4 -4, 5 5 6, -5, 5 4 4
Oh, oh oh, oh, oh
6, 5 6, -6, 6 5 5
Oh, oh oh, oh, oh
4 4 5 -5 -5 -5 5 4
‘Cause the energy never dies
4 -4, 5 5 6, -5, 5 4 4
Oh, oh oh, oh, oh
5 6 6 6 5 6 -6 6 5 5
I’ll take your hand and I’ll hold real tight
4 4 -4 -4 5 5 5 6 -5 5 4 4
I’ll tell ye life’s just a blink so don’t think twice

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Harmonica amplifiers – Are you thinking about buying a harmonica amplifier but you don’t know which to choose? Uncertain about the kind of sound you want to get or you feel you’ll want to understand more? Which amplifier is the best for the harmonica sound? If your brain will be brimming with such questions then this short article is just what the physician ordered.

Once you have read the article you must have got clear ideas about how to go on; non-etheless, I’ll introduce you to some amplifier models today and will discuss their salient features or benefits and drawbacks with you one at a time. Follow the instructions in next paragraphs carefully and I am sure that from now onwards, you can purchase your generic amplification system or your unique device with utter confidence you have made the best option according to your preferences.

Harmonica amplifiers – How to choose correctly for yourself?

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Let’s start by analyzing various categories of amplifiers that people find in market and which may be useful for the blues harp:

Guitar amplifiers or battery-operated generic amps.

Solid state guitar amplifiers and modeling devices.

Tube amplifiers for guitars.

Amplified speakers (also called active ones) for more pure sound.

On the basis of our needs we can choose among alternative categories and select the best for the harmonica. Let’s see these categories at length:

Guitar amplifiers or battery-powered generic amps

These amplifiers are small and have power ranging from 0.1 to 5 watts. They’re capable of operating with a power supply or even with common batteries; their capacity can reach up to 10 hours of work if powered by batteries. Sometimes they’re equipped with sound effects and rhythm reproduction. These amplifiers often possess computer connections and sometimes allow an additional microphone connection (e.g for voice).The unit are much appreciated by ones looking for something portable especially those who want to play on the street (busking) or for those who want to keep somewhat small yet powerful enough system internal to create wave in neighbourhood.

If you opt for a modeling amplifier, it will be possible to reproduce both pure harmonica sound and ‘Chicago’ which means we’ve everything we have to play independently. Given the choice of these types of equipments, one interesting fact shouldn’t be underestimated that they usually supply the option to connect to a mixer or other amplifiers, which gives us an opportunity to expand the sound power without compromising the kind of the audio we like. Now it might seem ,”Then I’ll have a little thing like this one, and something day I’ll link it to a bigger to obtain additional volume?” Yes, you have it right!

Now let’s look at two models of portable solid state modeling of an excellent quality: Vox Mini 5 and Roland Micro Cube. They are amplifiers with price ranging from $120 to $150 whereas the characteristics they exhibit are very similar.

The Vox provides an extra input for a vocal microphone, and is therefore more suitable if you would like someone to sing along when you play the harmonica (or guitar). This low impedance input enables you to have a clean instrument sound.

Both models have an input for external sound sources such as mp3 players or smart phones and the headphone output. This one can also be used to connect an additional amplification system or a computer.The two amplifiers provide effect such as for example delay and reverb whereas the modeling circuit allows us to choose emulation of various kinds of amplifiers. By changing the emulation configuration and adjusting the gain, the tone and volume controls, we are able to achieve the desired sound, including the ‘Chicago style’ one. The size of speaker included for VOX is 6.5″ and for Micro Cubecome it’s 5″.The energy of these devices is 5 watts max for the VOX and 2 watts for the Roland.

Solid-state guitar amplifiers and modeling

Larger devices with powers which range from 10 watts up to few hundred watts have to be connected to the electric supwardply. Because they are a composite of integrated circuits hence the title ‘solid condition type’.

In this specific article I’ll not dig into the merits of diatribe ‘valve against transistor’ because internet has already been full of that and you could find all forms of opinions online. From my perspective, you may get a good sound from tube amplifiers and also from incorporated circuit amplifiers, nevertheless, you must remember that valve amplifiers often usually do not provide digital modules with effects, auxiliary connections etc.

Let’s go back to the category of amplifiers we were talking about: alongside portable amplifiers, comes a circuitry that amplifies the sound of the bullet microphone so, for models that emulate different devices it is possible to choose the type of emulated amplifier and still manage to get effects. Even these amplifiers often allow us to connect inputs and auxiliary outputs, plus some also provide the option to attach output to an extra speaker.

Most advanced models in this category may also be connected to the computer via USB cable and managed in a variety of configurations through custom software. Now, we look at two solid state amplifier models being among the most popular ones on the market: The Fender Champion 100 and the Orange Crush 35 RT, both cost around $250.

The Fender Champion 100 has enough power to be used on small and medium-sized venues, and is equipped with an emulation module and different effects. It has two 12-inch speakers, different connections for external effects, an auxiliary input for sound sources like mp3 or smart phones, and the headphones output that may also be connected to another sound system like a mixer or a computer. This is really a perfect amplifier that provides many possibilities.

The Orange Crush 35 RT is one most important amplifier that doesn’t emulate other models, but still offers the reverb effect, an auxiliary input for external sound sources and a headphones output which can also be utilized as a line output to get attached to a computer, a mixer and so forth. The 35 RT has a chromatic tuner and connections for external effects. It includes 35 watts power which is sufficient even though you play in a mid-sized room. The supplied speaker size will be 10 inches.

You can also find a 20 watt model of this brightly colored amplifier here.

Valve Guitar Amplifiers

These are the favourite ones for vintage lovers, renowned for good old tubes and known as supporters of warm sound. In fact the valves are usually fragile and warm-up easily but without a shadow of doubt, all the musicians, at some time fall for the charm of such sort of electrical circuit.

The first thing I wish to explain is that, there are no portable tube amplifiers because they require a whole lot of electric supply. The energy delivered by such amplifiers ranges from 5 watts to many hundred watts and their prices start from $150.

One point that should be taken into consideration is that the power output from the unit cannot be compared to that of solid state amplifiers; usually several watts on a tube amp would produce same volume as greater number of watts on a strong state device would do. Because of this you will discover in the market many tube amplifiers with a power ranging significantly less than 20 watts on average.

Often the unit have no auxiliary inputs or outputs, and so are designed to operate in a standalone configuration. Only in more costly models you could find connections for external effects, and output line connections to other audio systems.

Below I am going to introduce you to two models called VHT 6 Special Ultra and Fender Blues Junior IV. The first is no more available in the market nevertheless, you can still find an used instrument for $200, the next costs about $600.

VHT 6 Special Ultra is really a low-power unit that delivers 6 watts but has earned lots of appreciation from both guitarists and harmonica players. Built with 3 tubes, this amplifier, in addition to the standard controls has some inclusional controls to improve the sound at will. VHT includes a headphone output line which you can use for connecting it to external audio systems and also additional speaker results. The supplied speaker size is 12 inches.

The Fender Blues Junior IV is really a tube amplifier equipped with 3 valves and is with the capacity of delivering 15 watt power. It has a 12-inch speaker and reverberation effect. It does not have any connections for audio inputs or auxiliary outputs.

All the devices I’ve shown you are suitable to produce Chicago suond, and are used with high impedance microphones such as for example bullet type, like the famous shure 520DX. The VOX mini instead, has a low-impedance microphone input for voice or even more clean harmonica sound.

The last category of amplifiers I am going to present to you’re the generic amplified loudspeakers, also called active speakers (or amplified): this is actually the sort of amplification I use when I play around in not-so-big situations.

You can just make use of a voice microphone and connect it to an amplified active speaker which acts well being an amplifier without changing the harmonica sound. These speakers are available with power ratings ranging from a few watts up to several hundred watts, on the market we furthermore find models that focus on battery.

The speaker that I use includes a power of 40 watts and an autonomy that reaches 10 hours with rechargeable battery given it. There are active speaker models that have effects, equalizations, inputs for multiple microphones, usb connections and much more, only the most advanced models have bluetooth and wireless connections to also take advantage of wireless microphones. Lastly I wish to introuduce you to the Beheringer MPA40BT-PRO, a 40-watt unit built with an 8″ woofer and a 1″ tweeter.

The sound reproduction is good and the volume more than sufficient for small locations. Thwill be speaker has two inputs to which it is possible to connect microphones or instruments, auxiliary inputs for other external sources, bluetooth and usb socket for connecting wireless microphones (around 2). This amplifier can cost you $150.

If you are curious to know, let me tell you that the wireless microphone set for the active speaker Behringer MPA40BT-PRO consists of an USB adhere to be connected on the trunk side and two battery-powered microphones which have about l0 hours of autonomy.

This concludes our review of harmonica amps. As you can see, there are different types on the market, designed to meet not merely the usage requirements but budget also .See you within the next article.

James Vernon Taylor (born March 12, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A five-time Grammy Award winner, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 100 million records worldwide.

Taylor achieved his breakthrough in 1970 with the No. 3 single “Fire and Rain” and had his first No. 1 hit in 1971 with his recording of “You’ve Got a Friend”, written by Carole King in the same year. His 1976 Greatest Hits album was certified Diamond and has sold 12 million US copies. Following his 1977 album, JT he has retained a large audience over the decades. Every album that he released from 1977 to 2007 sold over 1 million copies. He enjoyed a resurgence in chart performance during the late 1990s and 2000s, when he recorded some of his most-awarded work (including Hourglass, October Road, and Covers). He achieved his first number-one album in the US in 2015 with his recording Before This World.

He is known for his covers, such as “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)” and “Handy Man”, as well as originals such as “Sweet Baby James”.

Early years

James Vernon Taylor was born at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where his father, Isaac M. Taylor, worked as a resident physician. His father came from a wealthy family from the South. Aside from having ancestry in Scotland, part of Taylor’s roots are deep in Massachusetts Bay Colony and include Edmund Rice, one of the founders of Sudbury, Massachusetts. His mother, the former Gertrude Woodard (1921–2015), studied singing with Marie Sundelius at the New England Conservatory of Music and was an aspiring opera singer before the couple’s marriage in 1946. James was the second of five children, the others being Alex (1947–1993), Kate (born 1949), Livingston (born 1950), and Hugh (born 1952).

In 1951, his family moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina[10] when Isaac took a job as an a*sistant professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. They built a house in the Morgan Creek area off the present Morgan Creek Road, which was sparsely populated. James would later say, “Chapel Hill, the Piedmont, the outlying hills, were tranquil, rural, beautiful, but quiet. Thinking of the red soil, the seasons, the way things smelled down there, I feel as though my experience of coming of age there was more a matter of landscape and climate than people.” James attended a public primary school in Chapel Hill. Isaac’s career prospered, but he was frequently away from home on military service at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, or as part of Operation Deep Freeze in Antarctica in 1955 and 1956. Isaac Taylor later rose to become dean of the UNC School of Medicine from 1964 to 1971. Beginning in 1953, the Taylors spent summers on Martha’s Vineyard.

James took cello lessons as a child in North Carolina, before learning the guitar in 1960. His guitar style evolved, influenced by hymns, carols, and the music of Woody Guthrie, and his technique derived from his bass clef-oriented cello training and from experimenting on his sister Kate’s keyboards: “My style was a finger-picking style that was meant to be like a piano, as if my thumb were my left hand, and my first, second, and third fingers were my right hand.” Spending summer holidays with his family on Martha’s Vineyard, he met Danny Kortchmar, an aspiring teenage guitarist from Larchmont, New York. The two began listening to and playing blues and folk music together, and Kortchmar felt that Taylor’s singing had a “natural sense of phrasing, every syllable beautifully in time. I knew James had that thing.”[19] Taylor wrote his first song on guitar at 14, and he continued to learn the instrument effortlessly. By the summer of 1963, he and Kortchmar were playing coffeehouses around the Vineyard, billed as “Jamie & Kootch”.

James went to Milton Academy, a preparatory boarding school in Massachusetts in 1961. He faltered during his junior year, feeling uneasy in the high-pressure college prep environment despite having a good scholastic performance. The Milton headmaster would later say, “James was more sensitive and less goal-oriented than most students of his day.” He returned home to North Carolina to finish out the semester at Chapel Hill High School.  There he joined a band formed by his brother Alex called The Corsayers (later The Fabulous Corsairs), playing electric guitar; in 1964, they cut a single in Raleigh that featured James’s song “Cha Cha Blues” on the B-side. Having lost touch with his former school friends in North Carolina, Taylor returned to Milton for his senior year, where he started applying to colleges to complete his education. But he felt part of a “life that [he was] unable to lead”, and he became depressed; he slept 20 hours each day, and his grades collapsed. n late 1965 he committed himself to McLean, a psychiatric hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, where he was treated with chlorpromazine, and where the organized days began to give him a sense of time and structure. As the Vietnam War escalated, Taylor received a psychological rejection from Selective Service System when he appeared before them with two white-suited McLean a*sistants and was uncommunicative. Taylor earned a high school diploma in 1966 from the hospital’s a*sociated Arlington School. He would later view his nine-month stay at McLean as “a lifesaver… like a pardon or like a reprieve,” and both his brother Livingston and sister Kate would later be patients and students there as well. As for his mental health struggles, Taylor would think of them as innate and say: “It’s an inseparable part of my personality that I have these feelings.”

Career

1966–1969: Early career

At Kortchmar’s urging, Taylor checked himself out of McLean and moved to New York City to form a band. They recruited Joel O’Brien, formerly of Kortchmar’s old band King Bees to play drums, and Taylor’s childhood friend Zachary Wiesner (son of noted academic Jerome Wiesner) to play bass. After Taylor rejected the notion of naming the group after him, they called themselves the Flying Machine. They played songs that Taylor had written at and about McLean, such as “Knocking ‘Round the Zoo”, “Don’t Talk Now”, and “The Blues Is Just a Bad Dream”. In some other songs, Taylor romanticized his life, but he was plagued by self-doubt. By summer 1966, they were performing regularly at the high-visibility Night Owl Cafe in Greenwich Village, alongside acts such as the Turtles and Lothar and the Hand People.

Taylor a*sociated with a motley group of people and began using heroin, to Kortchmar’s dismay, and wrote the “Paint It Black”–influenced “Rainy Day Man” to depict his drug experience. In a late 1966 hasty recording session, the group cut a single, Taylor’s “Night Owl”, backed with his “Brighten Your Night with My Day”. Released on Jay Gee Records, a subsidiary of Jubilee Records, it received some radio airplay in the Northeast, but only charted at No. 102 nationally. Other songs had been recorded during the same session, but Jubilee declined to go forward with an album. After a series of poorly-chosen appearances outside New York, culminating with a three-week stay at a failing nightspot in Freeport, Bahamas for which they were never paid, the Flying Machine broke up. (A UK band with the same name emerged in 1969 with the hit song “Smile a Little Smile for Me”. The New York band’s recordings were later released in 1971 as James Taylor and the Original Flying Machine.)

Taylor would later say of this New York period, “I learned a lot about music and too much about drugs.” Indeed, his drug use had developed into full-blown heroin addiction during the final Flying Machine period: “I just fell into it, since it was as easy to get high in the Village as get a drink.” He hung out in Washington Square Park, playing guitar to ward off depression and then passing out, letting runaways and criminals stay at his apartment. Finally out of money and abandoned by his manager, he made a desperate call one night to his father. Isaac Taylor flew to New York and staged a rescue, renting a car and driving all night back to North Carolina with James and his possessions. Taylor spent six months getting treatment and making a tentative recovery; he also required a throat operation to fix vocal cords damaged from singing too harshly.

Taylor decided to try being a solo act with a change of scenery. In late 1967, funded by a small family inheritance, he moved to London, living in various areas: Notting Hill, Belgravia, and Chelsea. After recording some demos in Soho, his friend Kortchmar gave him his next big break. Kortchmar used his a*sociation with the King Bees (who once opened for Peter and Gordon), to connect Taylor to Peter Asher. Asher was A&R head for the Beatles’ newly formed label Apple Records. Taylor gave a demo tape of songs, including “Something in the Way She Moves”, to Asher, who then played the demo for Beatles Paul McCartney and George Harrison. McCartney remembers his first impression: “I just heard his voice and his guitar and I thought he was great … and he came and played live, so it was just like, ‘Wow, he’s great.’” Taylor became the first non-British act signed to Apple, and he credits Asher for “opening the door” to his singing career. Taylor said of Asher, who later became his manager, “I knew from the first time that we met that he was the right person to steer my career. He had this determination in his eye that I had never seen in anybody before.” Living chaotically in various places with various women, Taylor wrote additional material, including “Carolina in My Mind”, and rehearsed with a new backing band. Taylor recorded what would become his first album from July to October 1968, at Trident Studios, at the same time the Beatles were recording The White Album. McCartney and an uncredited George Harrison guested on “Carolina in My Mind”, whose lyric “holy host of others standing around me” referred to the Beatles, and the title phrase of Taylor’s “Something in the Way She Moves” provided the lyrical starting point for Harrison’s classic “Something”.[ McCartney and Asher brought in arranger Richard Anthony Hewson to add both orchestrations to several of the songs and unusual “link” passages between them; they would receive a mixed reception, at best.

During the recording sessions, Taylor fell back into his drug habit by using heroin and methedrine. He underwent physeptone treatment in a British program, returned to New York and was hospitalized there, and then finally committed himself to the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, which emphasized cultural and historical factors in trying to treat difficult psychiatric disorders. Meanwhile, Apple released his debut album, James Taylor, in December 1968 in the UK and February 1969 in the US. Critical reception was generally positive, including a complimentary review in Rolling Stone by Jon Landau, who said that “this album is the coolest breath of fresh air I’ve inhaled in a good long while. It knocks me out.” The record’s commercial potential suffered from Taylor’s inability to promote it because of his hospitalization, and it sold poorly; “Carolina in My Mind” was released as a single but failed to chart in the UK and only reached No. 118 on the U.S. charts.

In July 1969, Taylor headlined a six-night stand at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. On July 20, he performed at the Newport Folk Festival as the last act and was cheered by thousands of fans who stayed in the rain to hear him. Shortly thereafter, he broke both hands and both feet in a motorcycle accident on Martha’s Vineyard and was forced to stop playing for several months. However, while recovering, he continued to write songs and in October 1969 signed a new deal with Warner Bros. Records.

1970–1972: Fame and commercial succes

Once he had recovered, Taylor moved to California, keeping Asher as his manager and record producer. In December 1969, he held the recording sessions for his second album there. Titled Sweet Baby James, and featuring the participation of Carole King, the album was released in February 1970 and was Taylor’s critical and popular triumph, buoyed by the single “Fire and Rain”, a song about both Taylor’s experiences attempting to break his drug habit by undergoing treatment in psychiatric institutions and the suicide of his friend, Suzanne Schnerr. Both the album and the single reached No. 3 on the Billboard charts, with Sweet Baby James selling more than 1.5 million copies in its first year[22] and eventually more than 3 million in the United States alone. Sweet Baby James was received at its time as a folk-rock masterpiece, an album that effectively showcased Taylor’s talents to the mainstream public, marking a direction he would take in following years. It earned several Grammy Award nominations including one for Album of the Year. It went on to be listed at No. 103 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003, with “Fire and Rain” listed as No. 227 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004.

During the time that Sweet Baby James was released, Taylor appeared with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys in a Monte Hellman film, Two-Lane Blacktop. In October 1970, he performed with Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs, and the Canadian band Chilliwack at a Vancouver benefit concert that funded Greenpeace’s protests of 1971 nuclear weapons tests by the US Atomic Energy Commission at Amchitka, Alaska; this performance was released in album format in 2009 as Amchitka, The 1970 Concert That Launched Greenpeace. In January 1971, sessions for Taylor’s next album began.

He appeared on The Johnny Cash Show, singing “Sweet Baby James”, “Fire and Rain”, and “Country Road”, on February 17, 1971. His career success at this point and appeal to female fans of various ages piqued tremendous interest in him, prompting a March 1, 1971, Time magazine cover story of him as “the face of new rock”. It compared his strong-but-brooding persona to that of Wuthering Heights’ Heathcliff and to The Sorrows of Young Werther, and said, “Taylor’s use of elemental imagery—darkness and sunlight, references to roads traveled and untraveled, to fears spoken and left unsaid—reaches a level both of intimacy and controlled emotion rarely achieved in purely pop music.” One of the writers described his look as “a cowboy Jesus”, to which Taylor later replied, “I thought I was trying to look like George Harrison.” Released in April, Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon also gained critical acclaim and contained Taylor’s biggest hit single in the US, a version of Carole King’s new “You’ve Got a Friend” (featuring backing vocals by Joni Mitchell), which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in late July. The follow-up single, “Long Ago and Far Away”, also made the Top 40 and reached No. 4 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. The album itself reached No. 2 on the album charts, which would be Taylor’s highest position ever until the release of his 2015 album, Before This World, which went to No. 1 superseding Taylor Swift.

In early 1972, Taylor won his first Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, for “You’ve Got a Friend”; King also won Song of the Year for the same song in that ceremony. The album went on to sell 2.5 million copies in the United States.

November 1972 heralded the release of Taylor’s fourth album, One Man Dog. A concept album primarily recorded in his home recording studio, it featured a cameo by Linda Ronstadt along with Carole King, Carly Simon, and John McLaughlin. The album consisted of eighteen short pieces of music put together. Reception was generally lukewarm and, despite making the Top 10 of the Billboard Album Charts, its overall sales were disappointing. The lead single, “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight”, peaked at No. 14 on the Hot 100, and the follow-up, “One Man Parade”, barely reached the Top 75. Almost simultaneously, Taylor married fellow singer-songwriter Carly Simon on November 3, in a small ceremony at her Murray Hill, Manhattan apartment. A post-concert party following a Taylor performance at Radio City Music Hall turned into a large-scale wedding party, and the Simon-Taylor marriage would find much public attention over the following years. They had two children, Sarah Maria “Sally” Taylor, born January 7, 1974, and Benjamin Simon “Ben” Taylor, born January 22, 1977. During their marriage, the couple would guest on each other’s albums and have two hit singles as duet partners: a cover of Inez & Charlie Foxx’s “Mockingbird” and a cover of The Everly Brothers’ “Devoted to You”.

1973–1976: Career ups and downs

Taylor spent most of 1973 enjoying his new life as a married man and did not return to the recording studio until January 1974, when sessions for his fifth album began. Walking Man was released in June and featured appearances of Paul and Linda McCartney and guitarist David Spinozza. The album was a critical and commercial disaster and was his first album to miss the Top 5 since his contract with Warner. It received poor reviews and sold only 300,000 copies in the United States. The title track failed to appear on the Top 100.

However, James Taylor’s artistic fortunes spiked again in 1975 when the Gold album Gorilla reached No. 6 and provided one of his biggest hit singles, a cover version of Marvin Gaye’s “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)”, featuring wife Carly on backing vocals and reached No. 5 in America and No. 1 in Canada. On the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, the track also reached the top, and the follow-up single, the feelgood “Mexico”, featuring a guest appearance by Crosby & Nash, also reached the Top 5 of that list. A well-received album, Gorilla showcased Taylor’s electric, lighter side that was evident on Walking Man. However, it was arguably a more consistent and fresher-sounding Taylor, with classics such as “Mexico”, “Wandering” and “Angry Blues”. It also featured a song about his daughter Sally, “Sarah Maria”.

Gorilla was followed in 1976 by In the Pocket, Taylor’s last studio album to be released under Warner Bros. Records. The album found him with many colleagues and friends, including Art Garfunkel, David Crosby, Bonnie Raitt, and Stevie Wonder (who co-wrote a song with Taylor and contributed a harmonica solo). A melodic album, it was highlighted with the single “Shower the People”, an enduring classic that hit No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart and almost hit the Top 20 of the Pop Charts. However, the album was not well received, reaching No. 16 and being criticized, particularly by Rolling Stone. Still, In The Pocket went on to be certified gold.

With the close of Taylor’s contract with Warner, in November, the label released Greatest Hits, the album that comprised most of his best work between 1970 and 1976. With time, it became his best-selling album ever. It was certified 11× Platinum in the US, earned a Diamond certification by the RIAA, and eventually sold close to 20 million copies worldwide.

1977–1981: Move to Columbia and continued success

In 1977 Taylor signed with Columbia Records. Between March and April, he quickly recorded his first album for the label. JT, released that June, gave Taylor his best reviews since Sweet Baby James, earning a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year in 1978. Peter Herbst of Rolling Stone was particularly favorable to the album, of which he wrote in its August 11, 1977 issue, “JT is the least stiff and by far the most various album Taylor has done. That’s not meant to criticize Taylor’s earlier efforts. … But it’s nice to hear him sounding so healthy.” JT reached No. 4 on the Billboard charts and sold more than 3 million copies in the United States alone. The album’s Triple Platinum status ties it with Sweet Baby James as Taylor’s all-time biggest selling studio album. It was propelled by the successful cover of Jimmy Jones’s and Otis Blackwell’s “Handy Man”, which hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart and reached No. 4 on the Hot 100, earning Taylor another Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for his cover version. The song also topped the Canadian charts. The success of the album propelled the release of two further singles; the up-tempo pop “Your Smiling Face”, an enduring live favorite, reached the American Top 20; however, “Honey Don’t Leave L.A.”, which Danny Kortchmar wrote and composed for Taylor, did not enjoy much success, reaching only No. 61.

Back in the forefront of popular music, Taylor guested with Paul Simon on Art Garfunkel’s recording of a cover of Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World”, which reached the Top 20 in the U.S. and topped the AC charts in early 1978. After briefly working on Broadway, he took a one-year break, reappearing in the summer of 1979, with the cover-studded Platinum album titled Flag, featuring a Top 30 version of Gerry Goffin’s and Carole King’s “Up on the Roof”. (Two selections from Flag, “Millworker” and “Brother Trucker” were featured on the PBS production of the Broadway musical based on Studs Terkel’s non-fiction book Working, which Terkel himself hosted. Taylor himself appeared in that production as a trucker; he performed “Brother Trucker” in character.) Taylor also appeared on the No Nukes concert in Madison Square Garden, where he made a memorable live performance of “Mockingbird” with his wife Carly. The concert appeared on both the No Nukes album and film.

On December 7, 1980, Taylor had an encounter with Mark David Chapman who would a*sassinate John Lennon just one day later. Taylor told the BBC in 2010: “The guy had sort of pinned me to the wall and was glistening with maniacal sweat and talking some freak speak about what he was going to do and his stuff with how John was interested, and he was going to get in touch with John Lennon. And it was surreal to actually have contact with the guy 24 hours before he shot John.” The next night, Taylor, who lived in a building next-door to Lennon heard the a*sassination occur. Taylor commented: “I heard him shoot—five, just as quick as you could pull the trigger, about five explosions.”

In March 1981, Taylor released the album Dad Loves His Work whose themes concerned his relationship with his father, the course his ancestors had taken, and the effect that he and Simon had on each other. The album was another Platinum success, reaching No. 10 and providing Taylor’s final real hit single in a duet with J. D. Souther, “Her Town Too”, which reached No. 5 on the Adult Contemporary chart and No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100.

1981–1996: Troubled times and new beginnings

Simon announced her separation from Taylor in September 1981 saying, “Our needs are different; it seem impossible to stay together” and their divorce finalized in 1983. Their breakup was highly publicized. At the time, Taylor was living on West End Avenue in Manhattan and on a methadone maintenance program to cure him of his drug addiction.  Over the course of four months starting in September 1983, spurred on in part by the deaths of his friends John Belushi and Dennis Wilson and in part by the desire to be a better father to his children Sally and Ben, he discontinued methadone and overcame his heroin habit.

Taylor had thoughts of retiring by the time he played the Rock in Rio festival in Rio de Janeiro in January 1985. He was encouraged by the nascent democracy in Brazil at the time, buoyed by the positive reception he got from the large crowd and other musicians, and musically energized by the sounds and nature of Brazilian music. “I had … sort of bottomed-out in a drug habit, my marriage with Carly had dissolved, and I had basically been depressed and lost for a while”, he recalled in 1995:

I sort of hit a low spot. I was asked to go down to Rio de Janeiro to play in this festival down there. We put the band together and went down and it was just an amazing response. I played to 300,000 people. They not only knew my music, they knew things about it and were interested in aspects of it that to that point had only interested me. To have that kind of validation right about then was really what I needed. It helped get me back on track.

The song “Only a Dream in Rio” was written in tribute to that night, with lines like I was there that very day and my heart came back alive. The October 1985 album, That’s Why I’m Here, from which that song came, started a series of studio recordings that, while spaced further apart than his previous records, showed a more consistent level of quality and fewer covers, most notably the Buddy Holly song “Everyday”, released as a single reached No. 61. On the album track “Only One”, the backing vocals were performed by an all star duo of Joni Mitchell and Don Henley.

Taylor’s next albums were partially successful; in 1988, he released Never Die Young, highlighted with the charting title track, and in 1991, the platinum New Moon Shine provided Taylor some popular songs with the melancholic “Copperline” and the upbeat “(I’ve Got to) Stop Thinkin’ About That”, both hit singles on Adult Contemporary radio. In the late 1980s, he began touring regularly, especially on the summer amphitheater circuit. His later concerts feature songs spanning his career and are marked by the musicianship of his band and backup singers. The 1993 two-disc Live album captures this, with a highlight being Arnold McCuller’s descants in the codas of “Shower the People” and “I Will Follow”. He provided a guest voice to The Simpsons episode “Deep Space Homer”, and also appeared later on in the series when the family put together a jigsaw puzzle with his face as the missing final piece. In 1995, Taylor performed the role of the Lord in Randy Newman’s Faust.

1997–present: Comeback

In 1997, after six years since his last studio album, Taylor released Hourglass, an introspective album that gave him the best critical reviews in almost twenty years. The album had much of its focus on Taylor’s troubled past and family. “Jump Up Behind Me” paid tribute to his father’s rescue of him after The Flying Machine days, and the long drive from New York City back to his home in Chapel Hill. “Enough To Be on Your Way” was inspired by the alcoholism-related death of his brother Alex earlier in the decade. The themes were also inspired by Taylor and Walker’s divorce, which took place in 1996. Rolling Stone Magazine found that “one of the themes of this record is disbelief”, while Taylor told the magazine that it was “spirituals for agnostics”. Critics embraced the dark themes on the album, and Hourglass was a commercial success, reaching No. 9 on the Billboard 200 (Taylor’s first Top 10 album in sixteen years) and also provided a big adult contemporary hit on “Little More Time With You”. The album also gave Taylor his first Grammy since JT, when he was honored with Best Pop Album in 1998.

Flanked by two greatest hit releases, Taylor’s Platinum-certified October Road appeared in 2002 to a receptive audience. It featured a number of quiet instrumental accompaniments and passages. Overall, it found Taylor in a more peaceful frame of mind; rather than facing a crisis now, Taylor said in an interview that “I thought I’d passed the midpoint of my life when I was 17.” The album appeared in two versions, a single-disc version and a “limited edition” two-disc version which contained three extra songs including a duet with Mark Knopfler, “Sailing to Philadelphia”, which also appeared on Knopfler’s album by the same name. Also in 2002, Taylor teamed with bluegrass musician Alison Krauss in singing “The Boxer” at the Kennedy Center Honors Tribute to Paul Simon. They later recorded the Louvin Brothers duet, “How’s the World Treating You?” In 2004, after he chose not to renew his record contract with Columbia/Sony, he released James Taylor: A Christmas Album with distribution through Hallmark Cards.

Always visibly active in environmental and liberal causes, in October 2004, Taylor joined the Vote for Change tour playing a series of concerts in American swing states. These concerts were organized by MoveOn.org with the goal of mobilizing people to vote for John Kerry and against George W. Bush in that year’s presidential campaign. Taylor’s appearances were joint performances with the Dixie Chicks.

Taylor performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Game 2 of the World Series in Boston on October 24, 2004, on October 25, 2007, both the anthem and “America” for the game on October 24, 2013, and Game 1 on October 23, 2018. He also performed at Game 1 of the 2008 NBA Finals in Boston on June 5, 2008, and at the NHL’s Winter Classic game between the Philadelphia Flyers and Boston Bruins.

In December 2004, he appeared as himself in an episode of The West Wing entitled “A Change Is Gonna Come”. He sang Sam Cooke’s classic “A Change Is Gonna Come” at an event honoring an artist played by Taylor’s wife Caroline. Later on, he appeared on CMT’s Crossroads alongside the Dixie Chicks. In early 2006, MusiCares honored Taylor with performances of his songs by an array of notable musicians. Before a performance by the Dixie Chicks, lead singer Natalie Maines acknowledged that he had always been one of their musical heroes and had, for them, lived up to their once-imagined reputation of him.[64] They performed his song, “Shower the People”, with a surprise appearance by Arnold McCuller, who has sung backing vocals on Taylor’s live tours and albums for many years.

In the fall of 2006, Taylor released a repackaged and slightly different version of his Hallmark Christmas album, now entitled James Taylor at Christmas, and distributed by Columbia/Sony. In 2006, Taylor performed Randy Newman’s song “Our Town” for the Disney animated film Cars. The song was nominated for the 2007 Academy Award for the Best Original Song. On January 1, 2007, Taylor headlined the inaugural concert at the Times Union Center in Albany, New York honoring newly sworn in Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer.

Taylor’s next album, One Man Band was released on CD and DVD in November 2007 on Starbucks’ Hear Music Label, where he joined with Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell. The introspective album grew out of a three-year tour of the United States and Europe called the One Man Band Tour, featuring some of Taylor’s most beloved songs and anecdotes about their creative origins—accompanied solely by the “one man band” of his longtime pianist/keyboardist, Larry Goldings. The digital discrete 5.1 surround sound mix of One Man Band won a TEC Award for best surround sound recording in 2008.

On November 28–30, 2007, Taylor accompanied by his original band and Carole King, headlined a series of six shows at the Troubadour. The appearances marked the 50th anniversary of the venue, where Taylor, King and many others, such as Tom Waits, Neil Diamond, and Elton John, performed early in their music careers. Proceeds from the concert went to benefit the Natural Resources Defense Council, MusiCares, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, and the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank, a member of America’s Second Harvest, the nation’s Food Bank Network. Parts of the performance shown on CBS Sunday Morning in the December 23, 2007, broadcast showed Taylor alluding to his early drug problems by saying, “I played here a number of times in the 70s, allegedly”. Taylor has used versions of this joke on other occasions, and it appears as part of his One Man Band DVD and tour performances.

In December 2007, James Taylor at Christmas was nominated for a Grammy Award. In January 2008, Taylor recorded approximately 20 songs by others for a new album with a band including Luis Conte, Michael Landau, Lou Marini, Arnold McCuller, Jimmy Johnson, David Lasley, Walt Fowler, Andrea Zonn, Kate Markowitz, Steve Gadd and Larry Goldings. The resulting live-in-studio album, named Covers, was released in September 2008. The album forays into country and soul while being the latest proof that Taylor is a more versatile singer than his best known hits might suggest. The Covers sessions stretched to include “Oh What a Beautiful Morning”, from the musical Oklahoma!, a song that his grandmother had caught him singing over and over at the top of his lungs when he was seven years old. Meanwhile, in summer 2008, Taylor and this band toured 34 North American cities with a tour entitled James Taylor and His Band of Legends. An additional album, called Other Covers, came out in April 2009, containing songs that were recorded during the same sessions as the original Covers but had not been put out to the full public yet.

During October 19–21, 2008, Taylor performed a series of free concerts in five North Carolina cities in support of Barack Obama’s presidential bid.  On Sunday, January 18, 2009, he performed at the We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial, singing “Shower the People” with John Legend and Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland.  On May 29, 2009, Taylor performed on the final episode of the original 17-year run of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

On September 8, 2009, Taylor made an appearance at the 24th-season premiere block party of The Oprah Winfrey Show on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue.

Taylor appeared briefly in the 2009 movie Funny People, where he played “Carolina in My Mind” for a MySpace corporate event as the opening act for the main character.

On January 1, 2010, Taylor sang the American national anthem at the NHL Winter Classic at Fenway Park, while Daniel Powter sang the Canadian national anthem.

On March 7, 2010, Taylor sang the Beatles’ “In My Life” in tribute to deceased artists at the 82nd Academy Awards.

In March 2010, he commenced the Troubadour Reunion Tour with Carole King and members of his original band, including Russ Kunkel, Leland Sklar, and Danny Kortchmar. They played shows in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and North America with the final night being at the Honda Center, in Anaheim, California. The tour was a major commercial success and in some locations found Taylor playing arenas instead of his usual theaters or amphitheaters. Ticket sales amounted to over 700,000 and the tour grossed over $59 million. It was one of the most successful tours of the year.

He appeared in 2011 in the ABC comedy Mr. Sunshine as the ex-husband of the character played by Allison Janney, and he performs a duet of sorts on Leon Russell’s 1970 classic “A Song for You”.

On September 11, 2011, Taylor performed “You Can Close Your Eyes” in New York City at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

On November 22, 2011, Taylor performed “Fire and Rain” with Taylor Swift who was named after him,  at the last concert of her Speak Now World Tour in Madison Square Garden. They also sang Swift’s song, “Fifteen”. Then, on July 2, 2012 Swift appeared as Taylor’s special guest in a concert at Tanglewood.

He was active in support of Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and opened the 2012 Democratic National Convention singing three songs. He performed “America the Beautiful” at the President’s second inauguration.

He appeared on the final of Star Académie, the Quebec version of American Idol, on April 13, 2009.

On April 24, 2013, Taylor performed at the memorial service for slain MIT police officer Sean Collier who was killed by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the men responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing. Taylor was accompanied by the MIT Symphony Orchestra and three MIT a cappella groups while performing his songs “The Water is Wide” and “Shower the People”.

On September 6 and 7, 2013, he performed with the Utah Symphony and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the Thirtieth Anniversary O.C. Tanner Gift of Music Gala Concert at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. He called the choir “a national treasure” In addition to the symphony and choir he was backed by some of his touring band pianist Charles Floyd, bassist Jimmy Johnson and percussionist Nick Halley.

After a 45-year wait, James earned his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart with Before This World. The album which was released on June 16 through Concord Records, arrived on top the chart of July 4, 2015, more than 45 years after Taylor arrived on the list with Sweet Baby James (on the March 14, 1970 list). The album launched atop the Billboard 200 with 97,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending June 21, 2015 according to Nielsen Music. Of its start, pure album sales were 96,000 copies sold, Taylor’s best debut week for an album since 2002’s October Road.

Taylor cancelled his 2016 concert in Manila as a protest to the extrajudicial killings of suspects in the Philippine Drug War.

Taylor’s album American Standard was released on February 28, 2020. American Standard debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, making Taylor the first act to earn a top 10 album in each of the last six decades. In May 2020, James Taylor and Jackson Browne cancelled their 2020 tour dates due to the COVID-19 crisis, and rescheduled them to 2021. On November 24, 2020, the album was nominated for a Grammy in the category of “Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album”.

Family and personal life

Taylor’s four siblings (Alex, Livingston, Hugh, and Kate) have also been musicians with recorded albums. Livingston is still an active musician; Kate was active in the 1970s but did not record another album until 2003; Hugh operates a bed-and-breakfast with his wife, The Outermost Inn in Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard; and Alex died in 1993 on James’s birthday.

Taylor and Carly Simon were married in November 1972. His children with Simon, Sally and Ben, are also musicians. After Taylor and Simon divorced in 1983, he married actress Kathryn Walker on December 14, 1985, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. She had helped him get off heroin, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1996.

On February 18, 2001, at the Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Boston, Taylor wed for the third time marrying Caroline (“Kim”) Smedvig, the director of public relations and marketing for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. They had begun dating in 1995 when they met as he appeared with John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra. Part of their relationship was worked into the album October Road, on the songs “On The 4th Of July” and “Caroline I See You”.[90] Following the birth of their twin boys, Rufus and Henry in April 2001, Taylor moved with his family to Lenox, Massachusetts.

Awards and recognition

Grammy Awards

• 1972: Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, “You’ve Got a Friend“
• 1977: Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, “Handy Man”
• 1998: Best Pop Album, Hourglass
• 2001: Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight”
• 2003: Best Country Collaboration With Vocals, “How’s the World Treating You” with Alison Krauss
• 2006: Grammy Award-sponsored MusiCares Person of the Year. At a black tie ceremony held in Los Angeles, musicians from several eras paid tribute to Taylor by performing his songs, often prefacing them with remarks on his influence on their decisions to become musicians. Artists include Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Taj Mahal, Dr. John, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, David Crosby, Sheryl Crow, India.Arie, the Dixie Chicks, Jerry Douglas, Alison Krauss, and Keith Urban. Paul Simon performed as well, although he was not included in the televised program; Taylor’s brother Livingston appeared on stage as a “backup singer” for the finale, along with Taylor’s twin boys, Rufus and Henry.

Other recognition

• 1995: Honorary doctorate of music from the Berklee College of Music, Boston, 1995.
• 2000: Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2000.
• 2000: Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, 2000.
• 2003: The Chapel Hill Museum in Chapel Hill, North Carolina opened a permanent exhibit dedicated to Taylor. At the same occasion the US-15-501 highway bridge over Morgan Creek, near the site of the Taylor family home and mentioned in Taylor’s song “Copperline”, was named in honor of Taylor.
• 2004: George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement, UCLA Spring Sing.
• 2004: Ranked 84th in Rolling Stone’s list of “100 Greatest Artists of All Time”.
• 2009: Honorary Doctorate of Music from Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
• 2009: Inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.
• 2010: Inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame
• 2012: Received the Montréal Jazz Spirit Award
• 2012: Named “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the Ministry of Culture & Communication of France.
• 2014: Emmy Award for The Mormon Tabernacle Choir Presents an Evening with James Taylor
• 2015: Presidential Medal of Freedom
• 2016: Kennedy Center Honors

Willie Hugh Nelson (born April 29, 1933) is an American musician, actor, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie (1973), combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger (1975) and Stardust (1978), made Nelson one of the most recognized artists in country music. He was one of the main figures of outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that developed in the late 1960s as a reaction to the conservative restrictions of the Nashville sound. Nelson has acted in over 30 films, co-authored several books, and has been involved in activism for the use of biofuels and the legalization of marijuana.

Born during the Great Depression and raised by his grandparents, Nelson wrote his first song at age seven and joined his first band at ten. During high school, he toured locally with the Bohemian Polka as their lead singer and guitar player. After graduating from high school in 1950, he joined the U.S. Air Force but was later discharged due to back problems. After his return, Nelson attended Baylor University for two years but dropped out because he was succeeding in music. During this time, he worked as a disc jockey in Texas radio stations and a singer in honky-tonks. Nelson moved to Vancouver, Washington, where he wrote “Family Bible” and recorded the song “Lumberjack” in 1956. He also worked as a disc jockey at various radio stations in Vancouver and nearby Portland, Oregon. In 1958, he moved to Houston, Texas, after signing a contract with D Records. He sang at the Esquire Ballroom weekly and he worked as a disk jockey. During that time, he wrote songs that would become country standards, including “Funny How Time Slips Away”, “Hello Walls”, “Pretty Paper”, and “Crazy”. In 1960 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and later signed a publishing contract with Pamper Music which allowed him to join Ray Price’s band as a bassist. In 1962, he recorded his first album, …And Then I Wrote. Due to this success, Nelson signed in 1964 with RCA Victor and joined the Grand Ole Opry the following year. After mid-chart hits in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, Nelson retired in 1972 and moved to Austin, Texas. The ongoing music scene of Austin motivated Nelson to return from retirement, performing frequently at the Armadillo World Headquarters.

In 1973, after signing with Atlantic Records, Nelson turned to outlaw country, including albums such as Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages. In 1975, he switched to Columbia Records, where he recorded the critically acclaimed album Red Headed Stranger. The same year, he recorded another outlaw country album, Wanted! The Outlaws, along with Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser. During the mid-1980s, while creating hit albums like Honeysuckle Rose and recording hit songs like “On the Road Again”, “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before”, and “Pancho and Lefty”, he joined the country supergroup The Highwaymen, along with fellow singers Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson.

In 1990, Nelson’s a*sets were seized by the Internal Revenue Service, which claimed that he owed $32 million. The difficulty of paying his outstanding debt was aggravated by weak investments he had made during the 1980s. In 1992, Nelson released The IRS Tapes: Who’ll Buy My Memories?; the profits of the double album—destined to the IRS—and the auction of Nelson’s a*sets cleared his debt. During the 1990s and 2000s, Nelson continued touring extensively, and released albums every year. Reviews ranged from positive to mixed. He explored genres such as reggae, blues, jazz, and folk.

Nelson made his first movie appearance in the 1979 film The Electric Horseman, followed by other appearances in movies and on television. Nelson is a major liberal activist and the co-chair of the advisory board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), which is in favor of marijuana legalization. On the environmental front, Nelson owns the bio-diesel brand Willie Nelson Biodiesel, which is made from vegetable oil. Nelson is also the honorary chairman of the advisory board of the Texas Music Project, the official music charity of the state of Texas.

Early life

Nelson was born in Abbott, Texas, on April 29, 1933,[1] the son of Myrle Marie (née Greenhaw) and Ira Doyle Nelson. His birth was incorrectly recorded by Dr. F. D. Sims as April 30.  He was named Willie by his cousin Mildred, who also chose Hugh as his middle name, in honor of her recently deceased younger brother.[1] Nelson traces his genealogy to the American Revolutionary War, in which his ancestor John Nelson served as a major. His parents moved to Texas from Arkansas in 1929 to look for work. His grandfather, William, worked as a blacksmith, while his father worked as a mechanic. His mother left soon after he was born, and his father remarried and also moved away, leaving Nelson and his sister Bobbie to be raised by their grandparents, who taught singing back in Arkansas and started their grandchildren in music. Nelson’s grandfather bought him a guitar when he was six, and taught him a few chords, and Nelson sang gospel songs in the local church alongside Bobbie. He wrote his first song at age seven, and when he was nine, he played guitar for local band Bohemian Polka. During the summer, the family picked cotton alongside other Abbott residents. Nelson disliked picking cotton, so he earned money by singing in dance halls, taverns, and honky tonks from age 13, which he continued through high school. His musical influences were Hank Williams, Bob Wills, Lefty Frizzell, Ray Price, Ernest Tubb, Hank Snow, Django Reinhardt, Frank Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong.

Nelson attended Abbott High School, where he was a halfback on the football team, guard on the basketball team, and shortstop in baseball. He also raised pigs with the Future Farmers of America. While still at school, he sang and played guitar in The Texans, a band formed by his sister’s husband, Bud Fletcher. The band played in honky tonks, and also had a Sunday morning spot at KHBR in Hillsboro, Texas. Meanwhile, Nelson had a short stint as a relief phone operator in Abbott, followed by a job as a tree trimmer for the local electric company, as well as a pawn shop employee. After leaving school in 1950, he joined the U.S. Air Force for eight to nine months. Upon his return in 1952, he married Martha Matthews, and from 1954 to 1956 studied agriculture at Baylor University, where he joined the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, until dropping out to pursue a career in music. He worked as a nightclub bouncer, autohouse partsman, saddle maker, and tree trimmer again. He later joined Johnny Bush’s band.

Nelson moved with his family to Pleasanton, Texas, where he auditioned for a job as a DJ at KBOP. The owner of the station, Dr. Ben Parker, gave Nelson the job despite his lack of experience working on radio. With the equipment of the station, Nelson made his first two recordings in 1955: “The Storm Has Just Begun” and “When I’ve Sung My Last Hillbilly Song”. He recorded the tracks on used tapes, and sent the demos to the local label SARG Records, which rejected them.  He then had stints working for KDNT in Denton, KCUL, and KCNC in Fort Worth, where he hosted The Western Express, taught Sunday school, and played in nightclubs. He then decided to move to San Diego but, when he was unable to find a job there, he hitchhiked to Portland, Oregon, where his mother lived.[15] When nobody picked him up, he ended up sleeping in a ditch[19] before hopping a freight train bound for Eugene. A truck driver drove him to a bus station and loaned him $10 for a ticket to reach Portland.

Music career

Beginnings (1956–1971)

Nelson was hired by KVAN in Vancouver, Washington and appeared frequently on a television show. He made his first record in 1956, “No Place for Me”, that included Leon Payne’s “Lumberjack” on the B-side. The recording failed. Nelson continued working as a radio announcer and singing in Vancouver clubs. He made several appearances in a Colorado nightclub, later moving to Springfield, Missouri. After failing to land a spot on the Ozark Jubilee, he started to work as a dishwasher. Unhappy with his job, he moved back to Texas. After a short time in Waco, he settled in Fort Worth, and quit the music business for a year. He sold bibles and vacuum cleaners door-to-door,[ and eventually became a sales manager for the Encyclopedia Americana.

After his son Billy was born in 1958, the family moved to Houston, Texas. On the way, Nelson stopped by the Esquire Ballroom to sell his original songs to house band singer Larry Butler. Butler refused to purchase the song “Mr. Record Man” for $10, instead giving Nelson a $50 loan to rent an apartment and a six-night job singing in the club. Nelson rented the apartment near Houston in Pasadena, Texas, where he also worked at the radio station as the sign-on disc jockey. During this time, he recorded two singles for Pappy Daily on D Records “Man With the Blues”/”The Storm Has Just Begun” and “What a Way to Live”/”Misery Mansion”. Nelson then was hired by guitar instructor Paul Buskirk to work as an instructor in his school. He sold “Family Bible” to Buskirk for $50 and “Night Life” for $150. “Family Bible” turned into a hit for Claude Gray in 1960.

Nelson moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1960, but was unable to find a label to sign him. During this period he often spent time at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, a bar near the Grand Ole Opry frequented by the show’s stars and other singers and songwriters. There Nelson met Hank Cochran, a songwriter who worked for the publishing company Pamper Music, owned by Ray Price and Hal Smith. Cochran heard Nelson during a jam session with Buddy Emmons and Jimmy Day. Cochran had just earned a raise of $50 a week, but convinced Smith to pay Nelson the money instead to sign him to Pamper Music. On hearing Nelson sing “Hello Walls” at Tootsie’s, Faron Young decided to record it.  After Ray Price recorded Nelson’s “Night Life”, and his previous bassist Johnny Paycheck quit, Nelson joined Price’s touring band as a bass player. While playing with Price and the Cherokee Cowboys, his songs became hits for other artists, including “Funny How Time Slips Away” (Billy Walker), “Pretty Paper” (Roy Orbison), and, most famously, “Crazy” by Patsy Cline. Nelson and Cochran also met Cline’s husband, Charlie Dick at Tootsie’s. Dick liked a song of Nelson’s he heard on the bar’s jukebox. Nelson played him a demo tape of “Crazy.” Later that night Dick played the tape for Cline, who decided to record it. “Crazy” became the biggest jukebox hit of all time.

Nelson signed with Liberty Records and was recording by August 1961 at Quonset Hut Studio. His first two successful singles as an artist were released by the next year, including “Willingly” (a duet with his soon-to-be second wife, Shirley Collie, which became his first charting single and first Top Ten at No. 10) and “Touch Me” (his second Top Ten, stalling at No. 7).  Nelson’s tenure at Liberty yielded his first album entitled …And Then I Wrote, released in September 1962. In 1963 Collie and Nelson were married in Las Vegas. He then worked on the west coast offices of Pamper Records, in Pico Rivera, California. Since the job did not allow him the time to play music of his own, he left it and bought a ranch in Ridgetop, Tennessee, outside of Nashville. Fred Foster of Monument Records signed Nelson in early 1964, but only one single was released: “I Never Cared For You”.

By the fall of 1964, Nelson had moved to RCA Victor at the behest of Chet Atkins, signing a contract for $10,000 per year.[38] Country Willie – His Own Songs became Nelson’s first RCA Victor album, recorded in April 1965. That same year he joined the Grand Ole Opry,  and he met and became friends with Waylon Jennings after watching one of his shows in Phoenix, Arizona.  In 1967, he formed his backing band “The Record Men”, featuring Johnny Bush, Jimmy Day, Paul English and David Zettner. During his first few years on RCA Victor, Nelson had no significant hits, but from November 1966 through March 1969, his singles reached the Top 25 in a consistent manner. “One in a Row” (#19, 1966), “The Party’s Over” (#24 during a 16-week chart run in 1967), and his cover of Morecambe & Wise’s “Bring Me Sunshine” (#13, March 1969) were Nelson’s best-selling records during his time with RCA.[23]

By 1970, most of Nelson’s songwriting royalties were invested in tours that did not produce significant profits. In addition to the problems in his career, Nelson divorced Shirley Collie in 1970. In December, his ranch in Ridgetop, Tennessee, burned down. He interpreted the incident as a signal for a change. He moved to a ranch near Bandera, Texas, and married Connie Koepke. In early 1971 his single “I’m a Memory” reached the top 30. After he recorded his final RCA single, “Mountain Dew” (backed with “Phases, Stages, Circles, Cycles and Scenes”), in late April 1972, RCA requested that Nelson renew his contract ahead of schedule, with the implication that RCA would not release his latest recordings if he did not. Due to the failure of his albums, and particularly frustrated by the reception of Yesterday’s Wine, although his contract was not over, Nelson decided to retire from music.

Outlaw country and success (1972–1989)

Nelson moved to Austin, Texas, where the burgeoning hippie music scene (see Armadillo World Headquarters) rejuvenated the singer. His popularity in Austin soared as he played his own brand of country music marked by country, folk and jazz influences. In March, he performed on the final day of the Dripping Springs Reunion, a three-day country music festival aimed by its producers to be an annual event. Despite the failure to reach the expected attendance, the concept of the festival inspired Nelson to create the Fourth of July Picnic, his own annual event, starting the following year.

Nelson decided to return to the recording business, he signed Neil Reshen as his manager to negotiate with RCA, who got the label to agree to end his contract upon repayment of $14,000. Reshen eventually signed Nelson to Atlantic Records for $25,000 per year, where he became the label’s first country artist. He formed his backing band, The Family, and by February 1973, he was recording his acclaimed Shotgun Willie at Atlantic Studios in New York City.

Shotgun Willie, released in May 1973, earned excellent reviews but did not sell well. The album led Nelson to a new style, later stating that Shotgun Willie had “cleared his throat”. His next release, Phases and Stages, released in 1974, was a concept album about a couple’s divorce, inspired by his own experience. Side one of the record is from the viewpoint of the woman, and side two is from the viewpoint of the man. The album included the hit single “Bloody Mary Morning.” The same year, he produced and starred in the pilot episode of PBS’ Austin City Limits.

Nelson then moved to Columbia Records, where he signed a contract that gave him complete creative control, made possible by the critical and commercial success of his previous albums. The result was the critically acclaimed and massively popular 1975 concept album Red Headed Stranger. Although Columbia was reluctant to release an album with primarily a guitar and piano for accompaniment, Nelson and Waylon Jennings insisted. The album included a cover of Fred Rose’s 1945 song “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”, that had been released as a single previous to the album, and became Nelson’s first number one hit as a singer. Throughout his 1975 tour, Nelson raised funds for PBS-affiliated stations across the south promoting Austin City Limits. The pilot was aired first on those stations, later being released nationwide. The positive reception of the show prompted PBS to order ten episodes for 1976, formally launching the show.

As Jennings was also achieving success in country music in the early 1970s, the pair were combined into a genre called outlaw country, since it did not conform to Nashville standards. The album Wanted! The Outlaws in 1976 with Jessi Colter and Tompall Glaser cemented the pair’s outlaw image and became country music’s first platinum album. Later that year Nelson released The Sound in Your Mind (certified gold in 1978 and platinum in 2001) and his first gospel album Troublemaker (certified gold in 1986).

In the summer of 1977, Nelson discovered that Reshen had been filing tax extensions and not paying the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) since he took over as his manager. In June, a package containing cocaine was sent from Reshen’s office in New York to Jennings in Nashville.  The package was followed by the DEA, and Jennings was arrested. The charges were later dropped, since Reshen’s a*sistant, Mark Rothbaum stepped in and took the charges. Rothbaum was sentenced to serve time in jail. Impressed by his attitude, Nelson fired Reshen and hired Rothbaum as his manager. In 1978, Nelson released two more platinum albums. One, Waylon & Willie, was a collaboration with Jennings that included “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys”, a hit single written and performed by Ed Bruce. Though observers predicted that Stardust would ruin his career, it went platinum the same year. Nelson continued to top the charts with hit songs during the late 1970s, including “Good Hearted Woman”, “Remember Me”, “If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time”, and “Uncloudy Day”.

During the 1980s, Nelson recorded a series of hit singles including “Midnight Rider”, a 1980 cover of the Allman Brothers song which Nelson recorded for The Electric Horseman,[68] the soundtrack “On the Road Again” from the movie Honeysuckle Rose, and a duet with Julio Iglesias titled “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before”.[69]

In 1982, Pancho & Lefty, a duet album with Merle Haggard produced by Chips Moman was released.[70] During the recording sessions of Pancho and Lefty, session guitarist Johnny Christopher and co-writer of “Always on My Mind”, tried to pitch the song to an uninterested Haggard. Nelson, who was unaware of Elvis Presley’s version of the song asked him to record it. Produced by Moman, the single of the song was released, as well as the album of the same name. The single topped Billboard’s Hot Country Singles, while it reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100. The release won three awards during the 25th Annual Grammy Awards: Song of the Year, Best Country Song and Best Male Country Vocal Performance. The single was certified platinum; while the album was certified quadruple-platinum, and later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008.

Meanwhile, two collaborations with Waylon Jennings were released;WWII in 1982, and Take it to the Limit, another collaboration with Waylon Jennings was released in 1983. In the mid-1980s, Nelson, Jennings, Kristofferson, and Johnny Cash formed The Highwaymen, who achieved platinum record sales and toured the world. Meanwhile, he became more involved with charity work, such as singing on We are the World in 1984. In 1985, Nelson had another success with Half Nelson, a compilation album of duets with a range of artists such as Ray Charles and Neil Young. In 1980, Nelson performed on the south lawn of the White House. The concert of September 13 featured First Lady Rosalynn Carter and Nelson in a duet of Ray Wylie Hubbard’s “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother”. Nelson frequently visited the White House, where according to the biography by Joe Nick Patoski, Willie Nelson: An Epic Life, he smoked marijuana on the White House roof.

Later career (1990–present)

In 1996, Nelson re-recorded the tracks “Hello Walls” with the band The Reverend Horton Heat, and “Bloody Mary Morning” with the Supersuckers for Twisted Willie, a tribute album featuring rock versions of Nelson’s songs performed by artists such as Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Cantrell, Mark Lanegan, L7, The Presidents of the United States of America, and Jello Biafra, among others. Proceeds from the sale of the record benefit Nelson’s Farm Aid.

During the 1990s and 2000s, Nelson toured continuously, recording several albums including 1998’s critically acclaimed Teatro,  and performed and recorded with other acts including Phish, Johnny Cash, and Toby Keith. His duet with Keith, “Beer for My Horses”, was released as a single and topped the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts for six consecutive weeks in 2003, while the accompanying video won an award for “Best Video” at the 2004 Academy of Country Music Awards. A USA Network television special celebrated Nelson’s 70th birthday, and Nelson released The Essential Willie Nelson as part of the celebration. Nelson also appeared on Ringo Starr’s 2003 album, Ringo Rama, as a guest vocal on “Write One for Me”.

Nelson was featured on the album True Love by Toots and the Maytals, which won the Grammy Award in 2004 for Best Reggae Album, and showcased many notable musicians including Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Trey Anastasio, Gwen Stefani, and Keith Richards. In the following year of 2005, Nelson released a reggae album entitled Countryman which featured Toots Hibbert of Toots and the Maytals on the song “I’m a Worried Man”.

Nelson headlined the 2005 Tsunami Relief Austin to Asia concert to benefit the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which raised an estimated $75 thousand for UNICEF. Also in 2005, a live performance of the Johnny Cash song “Busted” with Ray Charles was released on Charles’ duets album Genius & Friends. Nelson’s 2007 performance with jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis at the Lincoln Center, was released as the live album Two Men with the Blues in 2008; reaching number one in Billboard’s Top Jazz Albums and number twenty on the Billboard 200. The same year, Nelson recorded his first album with Buddy Cannon as the producer, Moment of Forever. Cannon acquainted Nelson earlier, during the production of his collaboration with Kenny Chesney on the duet “That Lucky Old Sun”, for Chesney’s album of the same name. In 2009 Nelson and Marsalis joined with Norah Jones in a tribute concert to Ray Charles, which resulted in the Here We Go Again: Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles album, released in 2011.

In 2010, Nelson released Country Music, a compilation of standards produced by T-Bone Burnett. The album peaked number four in Billboard’s Top Country Albums, and twenty on the Billboard 200. It was nominated for Best Americana Album at the 2011 Grammy Awards. In 2011 Nelson participated in the concert Kokua For Japan, a fund raising event for the victims of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan which raised $1.6 million.

In February 2012, Legacy Recordings signed a deal with Nelson that included the release of new material, as well as past releases that would be selected and complemented with outtakes and other material selected by him. With the new deal, Buddy Cannon returned to produce the recordings of Nelson. After selecting the material and the sound of the tunes with the singer, Cannon’s work method consisted in the recording of the tracks with studio musicians, with the takes later completed on a separate session by Nelson with his guitar. Cannon’s a*sociation to Nelson also extended to songwriting, with singer and producer composing the lyrics by exchanging text messages.

Nelson’s first release for the Legacy Recordings was Heroes, that included guest appearances by his sons Lukas and Micah of the band Insects vs Robots, Ray Price, Merle Haggard, Snoop Dogg, Kris Kristofferson, Jamey Johnson, Billy Joe Shaver and Sheryl Crow. The album reached number four on Billboard’s Top Country Albums.  His 2013 release To All the Girls…, a collection of duets with all female partners, featured among others Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Rosanne Cash, Sheryl Crow, Mavis Staples, Norah Jones, Emmylou Harris, Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert. The album entered Billboard’s Top Country Albums at number two, marking his highest position on the chart since the release of his 1989 A Horse Called Music, and extending his record to a total of forty-six top ten albums on the country charts. Nelson scored as well his second top ten album on the Billboard 200, with the release entering at number nine.

His following release was Band of Brothers, in 2014, the first Nelson album to feature the most newly self-penned songs since 1996’s Spirit. Upon its release, it topped Billboard’s Top Country albums chart, the first time since 1986’s The Promiseland, the last Nelson album to top it. The release reached number five on the Billboard 200, Nelson’s highest position on the chart since 1982’s Always on My Mind. In December 2014, a duet with Rhonda Vincent, “Only Me”, topped Bluegrass Unlimited’s National Airplay chart. In June 2015, his collaboration with Haggard Django and Jimmie topped Billboard’s Top Country albums chart and reached number seven on the Billboard 200.

In 2017, Nelson released God’s Problem Child. The release, consisting mostly of Nelson originals co-written with Cannon, entered the Top country albums at number one, while it reached number ten on the Billboard 200.

In 2018, Nelson sang a song written by Daniel Lanois called “Cruel World” for the soundtrack of Rockstar Games’s action-adventure video game Red Dead Redemption 2. Lanois wrote the song especially for Nelson. When a hurricane prevented Nelson from recording the song, the production team sent the track to Josh Homme in the hopes that he could record it in time for the game’s release. Nelson was ultimately able to record the song in time in Los Angeles; the team considered combining the two versions into a duet, but ultimately included both versions in the game. Also in 2018, Nelson was one of several artists on Restoration, a cover album containing various country renditions of songs originally by Elton John, on which he performed “Border Song”.

Following the U.S. coronavirus pandemic lockdowns that began in March 2020, Nelson livestreamed a series of benefit concerts. The first two raised $700,000 for people who had suffered financial loss due to effects on the U.S. economy.  The third, which was held on April 20, 2020, was a variety show titled Come and Toke It.  Some of the content was cannabis-themed, and some of the proceeds will be used to support The Last Prisoner Project, a restorative justice program relating to persons convicted of cannabis related crimes.

In 2020, Nelson was approached by Karen O of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs to collaborate. They chose to do a cover of David Bowie and Queen’s Under Pressure.

IRS troubles

In 1990, the IRS seized most of Nelson’s a*sets, claiming that he owed $32 million. In addition to the unpaid taxes, Nelson’s situation was worsened by the weak investments he had made during the early 1980s.  In 1978, after he fired Reshen, Nelson was introduced by Dallas lawyer Terry Bray to the accounting firm Price Waterhouse. To repay the debt Reshen had created with the IRS, Nelson was recommended to invest in tax shelters that ultimately flopped.  While the IRS disallowed his deductions for 1980, 1981 and 1982 (at a time that Nelson’s income multiplied), due to penalties and interests, the debt increased by the end of the decade.

His lawyer, Jay Goldberg, negotiated the sum to be lowered to $16 million. Later, Nelson’s attorney renegotiated a settlement with the IRS in which he paid $6 million, although Nelson did not comply with the agreement. Nelson released The IRS Tapes: Who’ll Buy My Memories? as a double album, with all profits destined for the IRS. Many of his a*sets were auctioned and purchased by friends, who donated or rented his possessions to him for a nominal fee. He sued Price Waterhouse, contending that they put his money in illegal tax shelters. The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount and Nelson cleared his debts by 1993.

Other ventures

Nelson’s acting debut was in the 1979 film The Electric Horseman, followed by appearances in Honeysuckle Rose, Thief, and Barbarosa. He played the role of Red Loon in Coming Out of the Ice in 1982 and starred in Songwriter two years later. He portrayed the lead role in the 1986 film version of his album Red Headed Stranger. Other movies that Nelson acted in include Wag the Dog, Gone Fishin’ (as Billy ‘Catch’ Pooler), the 1986 television movie Stagecoach (with Johnny Cash), Half Baked, Beerfest, The Dukes of Hazzard, Surfer, Dude and Swing Vote. He has also made guest appearances on Miami Vice (1986’s “El Viejo” episode); Delta; Nash Bridges; The Simpsons; Monk; Adventures in Wonderland; Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman; King of the Hill; The Colbert Report; Swing Vote; and Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

In 1988 his first book, Willie: An Autobiography, was published. The Facts of Life: And Other Dirty Jokes, a personal recollection of tour and musical stories from his career, combined with song lyrics, followed in 2002. In 2005 he co-authored Farm Aid: A Song for America, a commemorative book about the twentieth anniversary of the foundation of Farm Aid. His third book, co-authored with long-time friend Turk Pipkin, The Tao of Willie: A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart, was published in 2006. In 2007 a book advocating the use of bio-diesel and the reduction of gas emissions, On The Clean Road Again: Biodiesel and The Future of the Family Farm, was published. His next book, A Tale Out of Luck, published in 2008 and co-authored by Mike Blakely, was Nelson’s first fictional book. In 2012, it was announced the release of a new autobiography by Nelson, Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die: Musings from the Road. Released on November 13, it was named after the song from his album Heroes. The book contained further biographical details, as well as family pictures and stories about Nelson’s political views, as well as his advocation for marijuana. The artwork of the book was designed by Nelson’s son, Micah, and the foreword written by Kinky Friedman. In 2015, the publication of a second Nelson autobiography entitled It’s a Long Story: My Life co-authored with David Ritz, the book was published on May 5, 2015. Pretty Paper, another collaboration with Ritz was published the following year.

In 2002, Nelson became the official spokesman of the Texas Roadhouse, a chain of steakhouses. Nelson heavily promoted the chain and appeared on a special on Food Network. The chain installed Willie’s Corner, a section dedicated to him and decked out with Willie memorabilia, at several locations.

In 2008, Nelson reopened Willie’s Place, a truck stop in Carl’s Corner, Texas. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court allowed Nelson to invest in it. The establishment had about 80 employees and was used as a concert hall with a bar and a 1,000 square feet (93 m2) dance floor. It closed in 2011 after defaulting on a loan, leading to foreclosure and bankruptcy. In 2010, Nelson founded with the collaboration of producers and filmmakers Luck Films, a company dedicated to produce feature films, documentaries and concerts. The next year, he created the Willie’s Roadhouse show which aired on channel 56 of SiriusXM radio. The channel was a result of the merger of his two other channels The Roadhouse and Willie’s Place.

In November 2014, it was announced that Nelson would be the host of the television series Inside Arlyn, shot at Arlyn Studio in Austin, Texas. The thirteen-episode first season would feature artists being interviewed by Nelson and Dan Rather, followed by a performance. The series concept received attention from cable channels that requested to see the pilot episode. Following the legalization of marijuana in different states, Nelson announced in 2015 through spokesman Michael Bowman the establishment of his own marijuana brand, Willie’s Reserve. Plans to open chain stores in the states where marijuana was legalized were announced, to be expanded state-to-state if marijuana legalization is further expanded. Bowman called the brand “a culmination of (Nelson’s) vision, and his whole life”.

In 2017, Nelson appeared as himself in Woody Harrelson’s live film, Lost in London. In June 2017, he appeared alongside Merle Haggard in the documentary The American Epic Sessions directed by Bernard MacMahon. They performed a song Haggard had composed for the film, “The Only Man Wilder Than Me”, and Bob Wills’s classic “Old Fashioned Love”,  which they recorded live direct to disc on the first electrical sound recording system from the 1920s. It was the last filmed performance of the pair. Rolling Stone commented that “in the final performance of Sessions, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard perform the duet ‘The Only Man Wilder Than Me.’ Haggard has a look of complete joy on his face throughout the session in the old-timey recording set-up once used by his musical heroes.”

Music style

Nelson uses a variety of music styles to create his own distinctive blend of country music, a hybrid of jazz, pop, blues, rock and folk. His “unique sound”, which uses a “relaxed, behind-the-beat singing style and gut-string guitar” and his “nasal voice and jazzy, off-center phrasing”, has been responsible for his wide appeal, and has made him a “vital icon in country music”, influencing the “new country, new traditionalist, and alternative country movements of the 1980s and 1990s”.

Guitars

In 1969, the Baldwin company gave Nelson an amplifier and guitar with their “Prismatone” pickup. During a show in Helotes, Texas, Nelson left the guitar on the floor of the stage, and it was later stepped on by a drunk man. He sent it to be repaired in Nashville by Shot Jackson, who told Nelson that the damage was too great. Jackson offered him a Martin N-20 Classical guitar, and, at Nelson’s request, moved the pickup to the Martin. Nelson purchased the guitar unseen for $750 and named it after Roy Rogers’ horse “Trigger”. The next year Nelson rescued the guitar from his burning ranch.

Constant strumming with a guitar pick over the decades has worn a large sweeping hole into the guitar’s body near the sound hole—the N-20 has no pick-guard since classical guitars are meant to be played fingerstyle instead of with picks. Its soundboard has been signed by over a hundred of Nelson’s friends and a*sociates, ranging from fellow musicians to lawyers and football coaches. The first signature on the guitar was Leon Russell’s, who asked Nelson initially to sign his guitar. When Nelson was about to sign it with a marker, Russell requested him to scratch it instead, explaining that the guitar would be more valuable in the future. Interested in the concept, Nelson requested Russell to also sign his guitar. In 1991, during his process with the IRS, Nelson was worried that Trigger could be auctioned off, stating: “When Trigger goes, I’ll quit”. He asked his daughter, Lana, to take the guitar from the studio before any IRS agent arrived there, and then deliver it to him in Maui. Nelson then concealed the guitar in his manager’s house until his debt was paid off in 1993.

Activism

Nelson is active in a number of issues. Along with Neil Young and John Mellencamp, he set up Farm Aid in 1985 to a*sist and increase awareness of the importance of family farms, after Bob Dylan’s comments during the Live Aid concert that he hoped some of the money would help American farmers in danger of losing their farms through mortgage debt. The first concert included Dylan, Billy Joel, B.B. King, Roy Orbison, and Neil Young among many others, and raised over $9 million for America’s family farmers. Besides organizing and performing in the annual concerts, Nelson is the president of the board of Farm Aid.

Nelson is a co-chair of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) advisory board. He has worked with NORML for years, promoting marijuana legalization. In 2005 Nelson and his family hosted the first annual “Willie Nelson & NORML Benefit Golf Tournament”, leading to a cover appearance and inside interview in the January 2008 issue of High Times magazine. After his arrest for possession of marijuana in 2010, Nelson created the TeaPot party under the motto “Tax it, regulate it and legalize it!”

In 2001, following the September 11 attacks, he participated in the benefit telethon America: A Tribute to Heroes, leading the rest of the celebrities singing the song “America the Beautiful”. In 2010, during an interview with Larry King, Nelson expressed his doubts with regards to the attacks and the official story. Nelson explained that he could not believe that the buildings could collapse due to the planes, attributing instead the result to an implosion.

Nelson supported Dennis Kucinich’s campaign in the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries. He raised money, appeared at events, and composed the song “Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?”, criticizing the war in Iraq. He recorded a radio advertisement asking for support to put musician/author Kinky Friedman on the ballot as an independent candidate for the 2006 Texas gubernatorial election.  Friedman promised Nelson a job in Austin as the head of a new Texas Energy Commission due to his support of bio-fuels. In January 2008, Nelson filed a suit against the Texas Democratic Party, alleging that the party violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution by refusing to allow co-plaintiff Kucinich to appear on the primary ballot because he had scratched out part of the loyalty oath on his application.

In 2004, Nelson and his wife Annie became partners with Bob and Kelly King in the building of two Pacific Bio-diesel plants, one in Salem, Oregon, and the other at Carl’s Corner, Texas (the Texas plant was founded by Carl Cornelius, a longtime Nelson friend and the eponym for Carl’s Corner). In 2005, Nelson and several other business partners formed Willie Nelson Biodiesel (“Bio-Willie”), a company that is marketing bio-diesel bio-fuel to truck stops. The fuel is made from vegetable oil (mainly soybean oil), and can be burned without modification in diesel engines.

Nelson is an advocate for better treatment for horses and has been campaigning for the passage of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (H.R. 503/S. 311) alongside the Animal Welfare Institute. He is on its board of directors and has adopted a number of horses from Habitat for Horses. In 2008, Nelson signed on to warn consumers about the cruel and illegal living conditions for calves raised to produce milk for dairy products. He wrote letters to Land O’Lakes and Challenge Dairy, two of the major corporations that use milk from calves raised at California’s Mendes Calf Ranch, which employs an intensive confinement practice that was the subject of a lawsuit and campaign brought by the Animal Legal Defense Fund. Nelson is seen in the film The Garden supporting the impoverished community South Central Farm in Southern Los Angeles.

A supporter of the LGBT movement, Nelson published in 2006 through iTunes a version of Ned Sublette’s “Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other”, that met instant success. During an interview with Texas Monthly in 2013, regarding the Defense of Marriage Act and Same-sex marriage in the United States, Nelson responded to a comparison the interviewer made with the Civil Rights Movement, stating: “We’ll look back and say it was crazy that we ever even argued about this”. He also presented two logos with the pink equal sign, symbol of the LGBT movement. The first one, featured the sign represented with two long braids; while the second one, featured the sign represented with two marijuana cigarettes. The use of the logos became popular quickly in social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

In June 2018, Nelson deplored the Trump administration family separation policy. During his Fourth of July Picnic, he performed a song with Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for the Senate election in Texas. Nelson endorsed O’Rourke, and received negative reactions from the conservative part of his followers. On September 29, 2018, Nelson offered a free concert in Austin supporting the candidate’s run. The last number he performed was “Vote ‘Em Out”, a new track that was subsequently released as a single.

Personal life

Nelson has been married four times and has seven children. His first marriage was to Martha Matthews from 1952 to 1962. The couple had three children: Lana, Susie, and Willie “Billy” Hugh, Jr. The latter killed himself in 1991. The marriage was marked by violence, with Matthews a*saulting Nelson several times, including one incident when she sewed him up in bedsheets and beat him with a broomstick. Nelson’s next marriage was to Shirley Collie in 1963. The couple divorced in 1971, after Collie found a bill from the maternity ward of a Houston hospital charged to Nelson and Connie Koepke for the birth of Paula Carlene Nelson. Nelson married Koepke the same year, and they had another daughter, Amy Lee Nelson. Following a divorce in 1988, he married his current wife, Annie D’Angelo, in 1991. They have two sons, Lukas Autry and Jacob Micah.

Nelson owns “Luck, Texas”, a ranch in Spicewood, and also lives in Maui, Hawaii with several celebrity neighbors. While swimming in Hawaii in 1981, Nelson’s lung collapsed. He was taken to the Maui Memorial Hospital and his scheduled concerts were canceled. Nelson temporarily stopped smoking cigarettes each time his lungs became congested, and resumed when the congestion ended. He was then smoking between two and three packs per day. After suffering from pneumonia several times, he decided to quit either marijuana or tobacco. He chose to quit tobacco.[181] In 2008, he started to smoke marijuana with a carbon-free system to avoid the effects of smoke. In 2004 Nelson underwent surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome, as he had damaged his wrists by continuously playing the guitar. On the recommendation of his doctor, he canceled his scheduled concerts and only wrote songs during his recovery. In 2012 he canceled a fund-raising appearance in the Denver area. He suffered from breathing problems due to high altitude and emphysema and was taken to a local hospital. His publicist Elaine Schock confirmed soon after that Nelson’s health was good and that he was heading to his next scheduled concert in Dallas, Texas. After repeated instances of pneumonia and emphysema through the years, Nelson underwent stem-cell therapy in 2015 to improve the state of his lungs.

During his childhood, Nelson grew interested in martial arts. He ordered self-defense manuals on jujitsu and judo that he saw advertised in Batman and Superman comic books. Nelson started to formally practice kung fu after he moved to Nashville, in the 1960s. During the 1980s, Nelson began training in taekwondo and now holds a second-degree black belt in that discipline. During the 1990s, Nelson started to practice the Korean martial art GongKwon Yusul. In 2014, after twenty years in the discipline, his Grand Master Sam Um presented him with a fifth-degree black belt in a ceremony held in Austin, Texas. A 2014 Tae Kwon Do Times magazine interview revealed that Nelson had developed an unorthodox manner of training during the lengthy periods of time he was on tour. Nelson would conduct his martial arts training on his tour bus “The Honeysuckle Rose” and send videos to his supervising Master for review and critique.

Legal issues

Nelson has been arrested several times for marijuana possession. The first occasion was in 1974 in Dallas, Texas. In 1977 after a tour with Hank Cochran, Nelson traveled to The Bahamas. Nelson and Cochran arrived late to the airport and boarded the flight without luggage. The bags were later sent to them. As Nelson and Cochran claimed their luggage in the Bahamas, a customs officer questioned Nelson after marijuana was found in a pair of his jeans. Nelson was arrested and jailed. As Cochran made arrangements to pay the bail, he took Nelson a six-pack of beer to his cell. Nelson was released a few hours later. Inebriated, he fell after he jumped celebrating and was taken to the emergency room. He then appeared before the judge, who dropped the charges but ordered Nelson to never return to the country.

In 1994, highway patrolmen found marijuana in his car near Waco, Texas. His requirement to appear in court prevented him attending the Grammy awards that year.  While traveling to Ann W. Richards’ funeral in 2006, Nelson, along with his manager and his sister, Bobbie, were arrested in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana and charged with possession of marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms.  Nelson received six months probation.

On November 26, 2010, Nelson was arrested in Sierra Blanca, Texas, for possession of six ounces of marijuana found in his tour bus while traveling from Los Angeles back to Texas. He was released after paying bail of $2,500. Prosecutor Kit Bramblett supported not sentencing Nelson to jail due to the small amount of marijuana involved, but suggested instead a $100 fine and told Nelson that he would have him sing “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” for the court. Judge Becky Dean-Walker said that Nelson would have to pay the fine but not to perform the song, explaining that the prosecutor was joking. Nelson’s lawyer Joe Turner reached an agreement with the prosecutor. Nelson was set to pay a $500 fine to avoid a two-year jail sentence with a 30-day review period, which in case of another incident would end the agreement. The judge later rejected the agreement, claiming that Nelson was receiving preferential treatment for his celebrity status; the offense normally carried a one-year jail sentence. Bramblett declared that the case would remain open until it was either dismissed or the judge changed her opinion.

Legacy

Nelson is widely recognized as an American icon. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1993, and he received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1998.[ In 2011, Nelson was inducted to the National Agricultural Hall of Fame, for his labor in Farm Aid and other fund raisers to benefit farmers. In 2015 Nelson won the Gershwin Prize, the lifetime award of the Library of Congress. In 2018 The Texas Institute of Letters inducted him among its members for his songwriting. He was included by Rolling Stone on its 100 Greatest Singers and 100 Greatest Guitarists lists.

In 2003, Texas Governor Perry signed bill No. 2582, introduced by State Representative Elizabeth Ames Jones and Senator Jeff Wentworth, which funded the Texas Music Project, the state’s official music charity. Nelson was named honorary chairman of the advisory board of the project. In 2005, Democratic Texas Senator Gonzalo Barrientos introduced a bill to name 49 miles (79 km) of the Travis County section of State Highway 130 after Nelson, and at one point 23 of the 31 state senators were co-sponsors of the bill. The legislation was dropped after two Republican senators, Florence Shapiro and Wentworth, objected, citing Nelson’s lack of connection to the highway, his fund raisers for Democrats, his drinking, and his marijuana advocacy.

An important collection of Willie Nelson materials (1975–1994) became part of the Wittliff collections of Southwestern Writers, Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas. The collection contains lyrics, screenplays, letters, concert programs, tour itineraries, posters, articles, clippings, personal effects, promotional items, souvenirs, and documents. It documents Nelson’s IRS troubles and how Farm Aid contributions were used. Most of the material was collected by Nelson’s friend Bill Wittliff, who wrote or co-wrote Honeysuckle Rose, Barbarosa and Red Headed Stranger. In 2014, Nelson donated his personal collection to the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. The items include photographs, correspondence, song manuscripts, posters, certificate records, awards, signed books, screenplays, personal items and gifts and tributes from Nelson’s fans.

In April 2010, Nelson received the “Feed the Peace” award from The Nobelity Project for his extensive work with Farm Aid and overall contributions to world peace. On June 23, 2010, he was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry. Nelson is an honorary trustee of the Dayton International Peace Museum. In 2010, Austin, Texas renamed Second Street to Willie Nelson Boulevard. The city also unveiled a life-size statue to honor him, placed at the entrance of Austin City Limits’ new studio. The non-profit organization Capital Area Statues commissioned sculptor Clete Shields to execute the project. The statue was unveiled on April 20, 2012. The date selected by the city of Austin unintentionally coincided with the number 4/20, a*sociated with cannabis culture. In spite of the coincidence and Nelson’s advocacy for the legalization of marijuana, the ceremony was scheduled also for 4:20 pm. During the ceremony, Nelson performed the song “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die”. The same year, Nelson was honored during the 46th Annual Country Music Association Awards as the first recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award, which was also named after him.[ In 2013, he received an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music. The following year, he was part of the inaugural class inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame. Also included among the first inductees was his friend Darrell Royal, whose jamming parties that Nelson participated in were the source of inspiration for the show.

For many years, Nelson’s image was marked by his red hair, often divided into two long braids partially concealed under a bandanna. In the April 2007 issue of Stuff Magazine Nelson was interviewed about his long locks. “I started braiding my hair when it started getting too long, and that was, I don’t know, probably in the 70’s.” On May 26, 2010, the Associated Press reported that Nelson had cut his hair, and Nashville music journalist Jimmy Carter published a photograph of the pigtail-free Nelson on his website. Nelson wanted a more maintainable hairstyle, as well helping him stay cool more easily at his Maui home. In October 2014, the braids of Nelson were sold for $37,000 at an auction of the Waylon Jennings estate. In 1983, Nelson cut his braids and gave them to Jennings as a gift during a party celebrating Jennings’ sobriety.

Nelson’s touring and recording group, the Family, is full of longstanding members. The original lineup included his sister Bobbie Nelson, drummer Paul English, harmonicist Mickey Raphael, bassist Bee Spears, Billy English (Paul’s younger brother), and Jody Payne. The current lineup includes all the members but Jody Payne, who retired, and Bee Spears, who died in 2011. Willie & Family tours North America in the bio-diesel bus Honeysuckle Rose, which is fueled by Bio-Willie. Nelson’s tour buses were customized by Florida Coach since 1979. The company built the Honeysuckle Rose I in 1983, which was replaced after a collision in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1990. The interior was salvaged and reused for the second version of the bus the same year. Nelson changed his tour bus in 1996, 2005 and 2013, currently touring on the Honeysuckle Rose V.

Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar (born October 11, 1992), known professionally as Cardi B, is an American rapper, songwriter, and actress. Born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx, New York City, she became an Internet celebrity after several of her posts and videos became popular on Vine and Instagram. From 2015 to 2017, she appeared as a regular cast member on the VH1 reality television series Love & Hip Hop: New York, which depicted her pursuit of her music aspirations. She released two mixtapes—Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, before signing with label Atlantic Records in early 2017.

Her debut studio album, Invasion of Privacy (2018), debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, broke several streaming records, was certified triple platinum by the RIAA and named by Billboard the top female rap album of the 2010s. Critically acclaimed, it won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album, making Cardi B the only woman to win the award as a solo artist, as well as the first female rap artist in 15 years to be nominated for Album of the Year. It spawned two number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100; “Bodak Yellow”, which made her the second female rapper to top the chart with a solo output—following Lauryn Hill in 1998—and “I Like It”, which made her the first female rapper to attain multiple number-one songs on the chart. Her Maroon 5 collaboration “Girls Like You” made her the only female rapper to top the Hot 100 three times. “WAP”, the lead single of her second album, expanded her record as the female rapper with the most Hot 100 number-one singles as her fourth leader, and made her the only female rap artist to achieve chart-topping singles in two decades (2010s and 2020s).

Recognized by Forbes as one of the most influential female rappers of all time, Cardi B is known for her aggressive flow and candid lyrics, which have received widespread media coverage. She is the highest-certified female rapper of all time on the RIAA’s Top Artists (Digital Singles) ranking, also appearing among the ten highest-certified female artists and having the top certified song by a female rap artist. She is the only female rapper with multiple billion-streamers on Spotify. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, eight Billboard Music Awards, five Guinness World Records, five American Music Awards, eleven BET Hip Hop Awards and two ASCAP Songwriter of the Year awards. In 2018 Time magazine included her on their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2020, Billboard honored her as Woman of the Year.

Early life

Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar was born on October 11, 1992, in Washington Heights, Manhattan. The daughter of a Dominican father and Trinidadian mother, she was raised in the Highbridge neighborhood of the South Bronx, and spent much time at her paternal grandmother’s home in Washington Heights, which she credits with giving her “such a thick accent.” Almánzar developed the stage name “Cardi B” as a derivation of Bacardi, a rum brand that was formerly her nickname. She has said she was a gang member with the Bloods in her youth, since the age of 16 However, she has stated ever since that she would not encourage joining a gang.[15] She went on to attend Renaissance High School for Musical Theater & Technology, a vocational high school on the Herbert H. Lehman High School campus.

During her teens, Cardi B was employed at a deli in Tribeca. She was fired, and her manager suggested she apply to be a stripper at the strip club across the street. Cardi B has said that becoming a stripper was positive for her life in many ways: “It really saved me from a lot of things. When I started stripping I went back to school.” She has stated that she became a stripper in order to escape poverty and domestic violence, having been in an abusive relationship at the time after being kicked out of her mother’s house, and that stripping was her only way to earn enough money to escape the situation and get an education. She attended Borough of Manhattan Community College before eventually dropping out. While stripping, Cardi B lied to her mother by telling her she was making money babysitting.

In 2013, she began to gain publicity due to several of her videos spreading on social media, on Vine and her Instagram page.

Career

2015–2016: Career beginnings

In 2015, Cardi B joined the cast of the VH1 reality television series Love & Hip Hop: New York, debuting in season six. Jezebel considered her the breakout star of the show’s sixth season. The sixth and seventh seasons chronicle her rise to stardom and her turbulent relationship with her incarcerated fiancé. On December 30, 2016, after two seasons, she announced that she would be leaving the show to further pursue a career in music.

In November 2015, Cardi B made her musical debut on Jamaican reggae fusion singer Shaggy’s remix to his single “Boom Boom”, alongside fellow Jamaican dancehall singer Popcaan. She made her music video debut on December 15, 2015, with the song “Cheap Ass Weave”, her rendition of British rapper Lady Leshurr’s “Queen’s Speech 4”. On March 7, 2016, Cardi B released her first full-length project, a mixtape titled Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 1. In November 2016, she was featured on the digital cover of Vibe magazine’s “Viva” issue. On September 12, 2016, KSR Group released the compilation Underestimated: The Album, which is a collaboration between KSR Group artists Cardi B, HoodCelebrityy, SwiftOnDemand, Cashflow Harlem, and Josh X. It was previously released only to attendees of their U.S. tour. KSR Group’s flagship artist Cardi B said “I wanted to make a song that would make girls dance, twerk and at the same time encourage them to go get that Shmoney,” in regard to the compilation’s single “What a Girl Likes”.

She appeared on the December 9, 2015 episode of Uncommon Sense with Charlamagne. On April 6, 2016, she was on the twelfth episode of Khloé Kardashian’s Kocktails with Khloé: In it, she revealed how she told her mother that she was a stripper. In November 2016, it was announced that she would be joining the cast of the BET series Being Mary Jane. TVLine describes her character, Mercedes, as a “round-the-way beauty with a big weave, big boobs and a big booty to match her oversize, ratchet personality.”

In 2016, Cardi B was featured in her first endorsement deal with Romantic Depot, a large New York chain of lingerie stores that sell sexual health and wellness products. The ad campaign was featured on radio and cable TV. This was noted by the NY Post in a feature article about “Cardi B’s meteoric rise from stripper to superstar” in April 2018.

2017–2018: Breakthrough with Invasion of Privacy

On January 20, 2017, Cardi B released her second mixtape, Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 2. In February 2017, Cardi B partnered with MAC Cosmetics and Rio Uribe’s Gypsy Sport for an event for New York Fashion Week. In late February, it was reported that Cardi B signed her first major record label recording contract with Atlantic Records. On February 25, 2017, Cardi B was the opening act for East Coast hip hop group The Lox’s Filthy America… It’s Beautiful Tour, alongside fellow New York City-based rappers Lil’ Kim and Remy Ma. In April 2017, she was featured in i-D’s “A-Z of Music” video sponsored by Marc Jacobs. Cardi also guest-starred on the celebrity panel show Hip Hop Squares, appearing on the March 13 and April 3, 2017 episodes. In May 2017, the nominees for the 2017 BET Awards were announced, revealing that Cardi B had been nominated for Best New Artist and Best Female Hip-Hop Artist, tying with DJ Khaled and Kendrick Lamar for the most nominations with nine. Although she failed to win any awards, losing to Chance the Rapper and Remy Ma, respectively, Cardi B performed at the BET Awards Afterparty show. On June 11, 2017, during Hot 97’s annual Summer Jam music festival, Remy Ma brought out Cardi B, along with The Lady of Rage, MC Lyte, Young M.A, Monie Love, Lil’ Kim and Queen Latifah, to celebrate female rappers and perform Latifah’s 1993 hit single “U.N.I.T.Y.” about female empowerment. In June 2017, it was revealed that Cardi B would be on the cover of The Fader’s Summer Music issue for July/August 2017. She performed at MoMA PS1 on August 19 to a crowd of 4,000.

On June 16, 2017, Atlantic Records released Cardi B’s commercial debut single, “Bodak Yellow”, via digital distribution. She performed the single on The Wendy Williams Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live! The song climbed the charts for several months, and, on the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated September 25, 2017, “Bodak Yellow” reached the number one spot, making Cardi B the first female rapper to do so with a solo single since Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” debuted atop the chart in 1998.  The song stayed atop the charts for three consecutive weeks, tying with American pop singer Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” as the longest running female at the number one spot in 2017. Cardi B became the first person of Dominican descent to reach number one in the history of the Hot 100 since it was launched in 1958. An editor of The New York Times called it “the rap anthem of the summer”. Selected by The Washington Post and Pitchfork music critics as the best song of 2017,  “Bodak Yellow” was eventually certified nonuple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The song received nominations for Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song at the 60th Grammy Awards.  It won Single of the Year at the 2017 BET Hip Hop Awards.

With her collaborations “No Limit” and “MotorSport”, she became the first female rapper to land her first three entries in the top 10 of the Hot 100,  and the first female artist to achieve the same on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. In October 2017, Cardi B headlined Power 105.1’s annual Powerhouse music celebration, alongside The Weeknd, Migos, and Lil Uzi Vert, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. In December, she released two songs: a collaboration with Puerto Rican singer Ozuna titled “La Modelo”, and “Bartier Cardi”, the second single from her debut album.

On January 3, 2018, Cardi B was featured on Bruno Mars’ remix version of “Finesse”, and also appeared in the 90s inspired video. It reached the top three on the Hot 100, Canada and New Zealand. On January 18, 2018, Cardi B became the first woman to have five top 10 singles simultaneously on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. She released another single, “Be Careful”, on March 30, 2018, a week before her album’s release.

Her debut studio album, Invasion of Privacy, was released on April 6, 2018, to universal acclaim from music critics. Editors from Variety and The New York Times called it “one of the most powerful debuts of this millennium” and “a hip-hop album that doesn’t sound like any of its temporal peers,” respectively. The album entered at number one in the United States, while she became the first female artist to chart 13 entries simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100, on the chart issue dated April 21. It also became the most streamed album by a female artist in a single week in Apple Music, and the largest on-demand audio streaming week ever for an album by a woman. Cardi held the latter record until 2019. The album’s title reflects Cardi B’s feeling that as she gained popularity her privacy was being invaded in a variety of ways. Following the album’s release, during a performance on Saturday Night Live, Cardi B officially announced her pregnancy, after much media speculation. She also co-hosted an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Several months later, in July 2018, the album’s fourth single, “I Like It”, which features vocals from Bad Bunny and J Balvin, reached number one on the Hot 100; this marked her second number one on the chart and made her the first female rapper to achieve multiple chart-toppers. It received critical acclaim, with Rolling Stone naming it “the best summer song of all time” in 2020. Her collaboration with Maroon 5, “Girls Like You”, also reached number one the Hot 100 chart, extending her record among female rappers and also making her the sixth female artist to achieve three number-one singles on the chart during the 2010s. The song’s music video has received more than 2.7 billion views on YouTube and was the fifth-best selling song of the year globally. With “Girls Like You” following “I Like It” at the top of the Billboard Radio Songs chart, Cardi B became the first female rapper to ever replace herself at number one on that chart. The single spent seven weeks atop the Hot 100, making Cardi the female rapper with the most cumulative weeks atop the chart, with eleven weeks. It spent 33 weeks in the top 10, tying both Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” and Post Malone and Swae Lee’s “Sunflower” for the longest top 10 run in the chart’s archives at the time. In October 2018, Invasion of Privacy was certified double platinum by the RIAA, and the following year it was updated to triple platinum. With the thirteen tracks, she became the first female artist to have all songs from an album certified gold or higher in the US.

Cardi B received the most nominations for the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards with 12 mentions—including for Video of the Year, winning three awards. She also tied with Drake for the most nominations at the 2018 American Music Awards. She won three AMAs and performed at the ceremony. Her single “Money” earned her a fourth Video Music Award. Her collaboration with DJ Snake “Taki Taki” topped the charts in a number of Hispanic countries, made Cardi B the first female rapper to top the Spotify Global 50 chart, and has garnered more than 1.8 billion views. Both singles were certified multiple-platinum by the RIAA. People en Español named her Star of the Year,  and Entertainment Weekly deemed her “a pop culture phenomenon”, as she was named one of “2018 Entertainers of the Year.”

On November 30, 2018, Cardi B was honored at Ebony’s annual Power 100 Gala. Cardi ranked fifth on the 2018 Billboard Year-End Top Artists chart, while Invasion of Privacy ranked sixth. She achieved the most-streamed album of the year by a female artist globally in Apple Music, and ranked as the most streamed female artist of the year in the United States in Spotify. Editorial staff from Apple Music and Billboard named “I Like It” the best song of 2018,  while Time magazine and Rolling Stone named Invasion of Privacy the best album of the year. Also in 2018, Time included her on their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.[ In its decade-end review article, NME stated that the era secured “her crown as the new Queen of Rap.”

2019–present: Hustlers, Rhythm + Flow and upcoming second studio album

Cardi B received five nominations at the 61st Grammy Awards, including for Album of the Year, Best Rap Album and Record of the Year (“I Like It”). She became the third female rapper to be nominated for Album of the Year, following Lauryn Hill (1999) and Missy Elliott (2004). On February 10, 2019, she then performed at the award ceremony, where she wore three vintage Thierry Mugler couture looks during the telecast and became the first female rapper to win Best Rap Album as a solo artist. Cardi B also led the 2019 Billboard Music Awards nominations, with 21, the most nominations in a single year ever by a woman and the third most nominations in a year ever (behind Drake and The Chainsmokers, who both had 22 in a year). She ended up winning six awards, including for Top Hot 100 Song, bringing her career total wins to seven—the most of any female rapper in history. An article by Omaha World-Herald called her “the biggest rapper in the world.”

On February 15, 2019, Cardi B released “Please Me”, a collaboration with Bruno Mars, which became her seventh top-ten song on the Hot 100, reaching number three. The song marked Cardi and Bruno’s second collaboration, following “Finesse” in 2018. The official music video was released two weeks later. On March 1, Cardi set a new attendance record at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, with 75,580 fans in the audience. With “Backin’ It Up”, “Twerk” and “Money”, Cardi became the first female artist to occupy the top three on the Billboard Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop airplay chart. Her following single titled “Press” was released on May 31, 2019. The parental-advisory labeled music video marked her directorial debut—being credited as co-director, and was released on June 26, 2019. It had its debut performance at the 2019 BET Awards, where she won Album of the Year. During the summer of 2019 she embarked on an arena tour.

Cardi B made her film debut in Hustlers directed by Lorene Scafaria, opposite Jennifer Lopez, Constance Wu, and Lili Reinhart. The film was released on September 13, 2019 to critical acclaim. Cardi B, along with Chance the Rapper and T.I., were confirmed as judges for the Netflix series Rhythm + Flow, a ten-part hip-hop talent search that premiered on October 9, 2019, which she also executive produced. She will next appear in F9, which is set to be released on May 28, 2021, by Universal Pictures. In September 2019, Cardi B became the highest-certified female rapper of all time on the RIAA’s Top Artists (Digital Singles) ranking, with 31.5 million certified units, also being the ninth highest-certified female artist overall. Forbes has recognized her as one of the most influential female rappers of all time. In December 2019, Cardi B embarked on her first tour of Africa, performing in Nigeria and Ghana. Her collaboration “Clout” was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance. She was the most streamed female rapper of 2019 in the US, according to Spotify. Consequence of Sound deemed her “one of the most formidable hip-hop artists of the decade.”  In March 2020, Cardi B created a reaction video about the coronavirus pandemic. DJ iMarkkeyz, a Brooklyn DJ known for turning memes and online moments into full-length songs, created a track, based on her reaction titled “Coronavirus”, which became an internet meme and was released to music platforms. Netflix announced the return of Rhythm + Flow for 2021.

Cardi B released the single “WAP” featuring American rapper Megan Thee Stallion on August 7, 2020 as the lead single off her forthcoming second studio album. The song received critical acclaim and was praised for its sex positive messages. The Colin Tilley-directed music video accompanied the song itself, and broke the record for the biggest 24-hour debut for an all-female collaboration on YouTube. She became the only female rap artist to top the Global Spotify chart multiple times.[151] “WAP” debuted at number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, garnering Cardi B her fourth chart-topper in the US, extending her record as the female rapper with the most number-one singles, and also making her the first female rapper to achieve Hot 100 number one singles in two different decades (2010s and 2020s). With 93 million streaming units, it became the largest first-week streams for a song, breaking the all-time record held by Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings”. It has spent four weeks atop the Hot 100. The single has also spent multiple weeks at number one in seven other countries, including Australia and the United Kingdom. Neil Shah of The Wall Street Journal deemed it “a big moment for female rappers” and “a historic sign that women artists are making their mark on hip-hop like never before”. “WAP” became the first number one single on the inaugural Billboard Global 200 chart. Cardi B won the Billboard Music Award for Top Rap Female Artist for the third time at the 2020 ceremony.  In December 2020, Cardi B became the first female rapper to be named Woman of the Year at the Billboard Women in Music Awards. With her win for “WAP” at the American Music Awards, she became the first artist to win the American Music Award for Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Song multiple times, following her win for “Bodak Yellow” in 2018.

Artistry

Influences

In Billboard’s “You Should Know” series, Cardi B said the first albums she ever purchased were by American entertainers Missy Elliott and Tweet, respectively. She has credited Puerto Rican rapper Ivy Queen and Jamaican dancehall artist Spice as influences, as well as Lady Gaga, Lil’ Kim, Madonna,  and Selena.  When asked about the initial direction for her music, Cardi B said in an interview,

“When I first started rapping […] I liked certain songs from Khia and Trina, and they [were] fighting songs. I haven’t heard fighting songs for a very long time,” crediting the two female rappers for her aggressive rap style. She continued, saying “a lot of girls they cannot afford red bottoms, a lot of girls they cannot afford foreign cars […] but I know that every girl has beef with a girl […] I know that every bitch don’t like some bitch, and it’s like ‘that’s what I wanna rap about.’”

She also credits growing up in the South Bronx and real life experiences as influences for her songwriting; “I wouldn’t be able to rap about the things that I rap about now [if I hadn’t grown up there].

Musical style

Her first studio album, Invasion of Privacy, is primarily a hip hop record, which comprises elements of trap, Latin music, and R&B. Consequence of Sound described her flow as “acrobatic and nimble.” AllMusic editor David Jeffries called Cardi B “a raw and aggressive rapper”. Stereogum called her voice “a full-bodied New Yawk nasal bleat, the sort of thing that you’ve heard if someone has ever told you that you stupid for taking too long at swiping your MetroCard.” They continued to call her voice “an unabashedly loud and sexual f*ck-you New York honk—that translates perfectly to rap.” In a 2017 Complex article about her, the editor wrote “unapologetic does not begin to describe the totally unfiltered and sheer Cardi B-ness of Cardi B’s personality. She’s a hood chick who’s not afraid to be hood no matter the setting. Cardi B is Cardi B 24/7, 365, this is why she resonates with people, and that same energy comes out in her music.” Her flow has been described as aggressive. Cardi B has defended her musical content primarily comprising sexually-charged lyrics—like most contemporary female rappers; she stated that the content “seems like that’s what people want to hear”, since she faced negative reactions after releasing her more emotional song, “Be Careful.”

Other ventures

In February 2017, she partnered with M.A.C and Rio Uribe’s Gypsy Sport for an event for New York Fashion Week. During an April 2017 interview with HotNewHipHop, Cardi B spoke on being rejected by fashion designers. Her April appearance in i-D’s “A-Z of Music” video was sponsored by designer Marc Jacobs, and she made the cover of The Fader’s July/August 2017 Summer Music issue. Tom Ford’s Cardi B-inspired lipstick, and named after her, was released in September 2018. It sold out within 24 hours. In November, she partnered with Reebok, promoting the brand’s Aztrek sneaker. The same month she released a clothing line collection with Fashion Nova.

Cardi B teamed up with Pepsi for two television commercials, which aired during the Super Bowl LIII and the 61st Annual Grammy Awards. In early 2019, Cardi also joined other hip hop artists (including her husband Offset, as part of Migos) in releasing her flavors of snack food Rap Snacks: two flavors of chips, and two of popcorn. The bags’ artwork were inspired by the cover of Invasion of Privacy. In partnership with Reebok, she released a footwear and apparel collection, inspired by her personal style and paying homage to “classic 80s styling” and motifs.

Public image

Cardi B identifies as a feminist. The New York Times wrote “on Love & Hip Hop: New York some viewers saw her as a hero of female empowerment, as she made pronouncements such as ‘Ever since I started using guys, I feel so much better about myself. I feel so damn powerful.’”

Political statements

The star has been called “unabashedly, directly political” and often uses social media to advocate for causes she believes in, such as gun control. During the 2016 presidential primaries, she warned her fans of President Trump’s immigration policies and encouraged them to vote for Senator Bernie Sanders. At the Grammy Awards in 2018, she appeared in a video along with Hillary Clinton to narrate a portion of Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff’s insider’s account of Trump’s administration, and stated “Why am I even reading this shit? I can’t believe this. I can’t believe—this is how he really lives his life?” Cardi B endorsed Sanders once again in his second bid for the presidency in the 2020 United States presidential election, while also praising U.S. Representative Tim Ryan. She also stated that one of the reasons for her endorsement is Sanders’ long-time involvement in supporting underprivileged minorities and “people getting Medicare because he knows they can’t afford it,” while Politico website argued that she “might be one of Bernie’s most powerful 2020 allies.” She has also used her social pages to raise awareness for victims of police brutality, and has encouraged people to vote for mayors, judges and district attorneys in local elections. In a conversation with Democratic candidate Joe Biden for Elle, they discussed Medicare, free college tuition, and racial equality.[ According to a study published by The Hollywood Reporter, Cardi B ranked as the fifth most influential celebrity, and fourth among Generation Z, for the 2020 presidential election.

She has praised President Franklin D. Roosevelt for advocating for the Social Security program and the New Deal project in general and has noted her admiration for his wife Eleanor Roosevelt’s humanitarianism and advocacy for African-Americans. She said of President Roosevelt, “he helped us get over the Depression, all while he was in a wheelchair. Like, this man was suffering from polio at the time of his presidency, and yet all he was worried about was trying to make America great—make America great again for real. He’s the real ‘Make America Great Again,’ because if it wasn’t for him, old people wouldn’t even get Social Security.” Sanders himself has praised her for her “leading role” in calling attention to Social Security. During the 2018–19 United States federal government shutdown she released a video on Instagram, where she said “our country is a hellhole right now”.

On October 8, 2020, Cardi B posted a message on her Instagram condemning Azerbaijan for attacking Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), a disputed territory, and asked her followers to donate to Armenia Fund, a humanitarian organization that supports Armenia’s development and the needy. The next day she removed the message and apologized to her followers for posting such a message and instead she said she is just in favor of ending the war.

Controversies

Cardi B caused controversy after throwing one of her high heel shoes at, and attempting to physically fight, fellow rapper Nicki Minaj at an after-party hosted by Harper’s Bazaar during New York Fashion Week 2018. She later stated that Minaj had previously “liked” comments made by other users on social media who spoke negatively about Cardi B’s abilities to take care of her newly born daughter. Minaj denied the accusations. Nevertheless, she covered the spring fashion issue of Harper’s Bazaar in early 2019, featuring her in a Cinderella-themed photo shoot wearing a red gown and leaving a shoe behind, which some writers found reflective of the incident.

After the release of “Girls” in May 2018, a collaboration where she had a featured verse, Cardi B responded to the accusations of the song trivializing and sexualizing LGBT relationships. She stated on Twitter, “We never try to cause harm or had bad intentions with the song.” Cardi B then went on to say, “I personally myself had experiences with other women.”

In March 2019, a livestream from Instagram resurfaced from 2016 where she can be heard claiming that in the past she “had drugged and robbed men” who willingly came with her to hotel rooms for sex. She stated that the men she referred to were conscious, willing and aware; they were getting “twisted in the club” before approaching her, and denied putting anything on a man’s drink. She added that she took some money from them because they wasted her time by falling asleep, and then “kept coming back.” She concluded by saying that at the time she had very limited options to survive, and feels a responsibility not to glorify it.

Fashion

Cardi has a noted affinity for Christian Louboutin heels, a running theme in her song “Bodak Yellow”. She has also mentioned her affinity for cheap, fast-fashion brands stating “I don’t care if it cost $20 or $15. If it looks good on me, it looks good on me”. In November 2018 she released a collection with Fashion Nova.  Cardi wore vintage Thierry Mugler to the 2018 Grammy Awards. An article from Vogue noted she “is famous for her statement getups—whether she’s rocking archival Mugler on the red carpet, or dripping in Chanel while sitting courtside at a basketball game.” Her over-the-top manicures, designed by nail artist Jenny Bui and studded with Swarovski crystals, has become a part of her signature look.

In 2018, she became the first female rapper in the US to appear on the cover of Vogue. Photographed by Annie Leibovitz, the cover, one of four for the January 2019 issue that included Stella McCartney, features her in a red and white Michael Kors dress and matching red Jimmy Choo shoes, while holding her daughter, Kulture.

In 2019, the Council of Fashion Designers of America included her on their list of “28 Black Fashion Forces”.

Cardi B became the face of Balenciaga’s ad campaign for the winter 2020 season. The campaign includes billboards in several international locations, including the Louvre museum. Vogue’s Brooke Bobb commented, “This is Cardi’s first campaign for a luxury fashion house, though she’s definitely no stranger to the Parisian style scene”, citing her floral printed Richard Quinn ensemble “that literally covered her from head to toe” and her being “a front row fixture” at high fashion shows, adding, “She and her stylist Kollin Carter have been wildly successful in carving out a much-needed space for Cardi within the fashion industry, and they’ve cultivated a personal style that is all her own while being inspiring to all”.

In 2020, Cardi B became the first female rapper to be awarded by the FN Achievement Awards when she won the Style Influencer of the Year award. In a press release for the awards show, she was called an “influence just about everything in pop culture—from music, fashion and style to social media, politics and even public service”.

Impact

Multiple publications, including Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, and Entertainment Weekly, have called her “Hip Hop’s Reigning Queen” since the release of Invasion of Privacy. Spin staff credited her for opening “the table to a new generation of pop artists remaking American music in their own image and accents. [Cardi B] recognized that POC artists no longer need to pander or soften themselves in order to become household names.” An article from Uproxx noted Cardi B for promoting up-and-coming female rappers; “[she is] choosing to use her position at the height of stardom to open doors for other women to flourish in hip-hop at a greater level than any since the Golden Era and “Ladies First”. This is something of a departure from tradition; for the decade previous to Cardi’s precipitous come-up, it seemed hip-hop had an unspoken, Highlander-esque rule in place regarding women.” The New Yorker also credited her for “changing a genre that has rarely allowed for more than one female superstar at a time.” Billboard editors stated that with “Bodak Yellow”‘s commercial success, “she left an indelible mark on the summer of 2017, not only because she rewrote history, but she gave hope to the have nots…”. “I Like It” became the first Latin trap song to reach number one on the Hot 100, which reflected “the times, the moment and the new openness of the world” towards Spanish-infused music in streaming services according to the magazine. In 2020, The Wall Street Journal’s Neil Shah stated that “today’s female-rap renaissance was sparked partly by the success of Cardi B”, while Genius staff credited her for “helping jumpstart a new wave of female hip-hop signings and promotion at labels”.

NPR defined “Cardi B effect” as “a branding power rooted in specific authenticity, created and permeated by rapper Cardi B” and noticed that with her breakthrough, “brands finally started to become hip to [her] effect, noticing the cultural markers outside of the rap world that were proving it wasn’t limited to clubs, concerts and radio.” Business magazine Inc. stated that her success “shows how social media changed everything we knew about traditional marketing and media”, which no longer relies on a “well-thought marketing scheme or millions of dollars in advertising.” Articles by Vogue and The Telegraph have referred to her as a “fashion icon for our times.” In 2019, a life-sized sculpture of her was on display at the Brooklyn Museum, as part of Spotify’s RapCaviar “Pantheon”. Bloomberg reported that her data bill helped to boost Ghana’s GDP growth in 2019, after it was part of a concert tour. She inspired the creation of the sitcom Partners in Rhyme, executively produced by MC Lyte about a young woman in high school who “aspires to be the next Cardi B.” P-Valley creator Katori Hall credited her influence for “helping prepare the public” for the storyline depicted in the TV series. Singer-songwriter Rosalía has cited her among her influences. Cardi B has been credited for supporting and uniting female rappers in the industry.

Achievements

Cardi B is the recipient of numerous accolades, including a Grammy Award, eight Billboard Music Awards, five Guinness World Records, five American Music Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards, four BET Awards, and eleven BET Hip Hop Awards. Time included her on their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2018. She received the ASCAP award for Songwriter of the Year in 2019, becoming the first female rapper to win the award. She received the honor for the second time in 2020, making her the first female songwriter to win the award twice. In 2020, Cardi B became the first female rapper to be named Woman of the Year at the Billboard Women in Music Awards.

Cardi B is the female rapper with the most Billboard Hot 100 number one singles (4) and the one with the most total weeks on the top position (15). “Bodak Yellow”—certified nonuple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)—became the highest-certified single by a female rapper. “I Like It” became the first song led by a female rapper to surpass a billion streams on Spotify, also making her the first woman in hip hop with multiple billion-streamers on the service, with a total of three so far. Invasion of Privacy was the top female rap album of the 2010s, according to the Billboard 200 decade-end chart. It also became the longest-charting album by a female rapper on the Billboard 200, and the most-streamed album by a female rapper on Spotify.  Invasion of Privacy—which made her the first female rapper to win the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album as a solo artist—became the first female rap album in fifteen years to be nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Rolling Stone and Billboard ranked her debut album number 13 and 34 on their critics’ lists of best albums of the 2010s respectively, both the highest rank for a female rapper for the decade.

Personal life

Cardi B is Catholic;  she has mentioned her “strong relationship” with God in interviews, often saying that she directly communicates with God.

Cardi B’s younger sister, Hennessy Carolina, also has a strong following on social media and has accompanied her to award shows, such as the 2017 Grammy Awards.

In an interview in 2018, Cardi talked about being Afro-Latina and Afro-Caribbean:

We are Caribbean people […] Some people want to decide if you’re black or not, depending on your skin complexion, because they don’t understand Caribbean people or our culture. I feel like people need to understand or get a passport and travel. I don’t got to tell you that I’m black. I expect you to know about it. When my father taught me about Caribbean countries, he told me that these Europeans took over our lands. That’s why we all speak different languages […] Just like everybody else, we came over here the same way. I hate when people try to take my roots from me. Because we know that there’s African roots inside of us…

She has been a resident of Edgewater, New Jersey, renting an apartment for $3,000 a month that she says would be twice as much in Manhattan for an equivalently sized unit.

Cardi has opened up about the #MeToo movement and being sexually a*saulted.

Relationships

As of early 2017, Cardi B began publicly dating fellow American rapper Offset, of the southern hip hop group Migos. When speaking on her relationship with Offset, Cardi B told The Fader, “It’s been a blessing, me meeting him and meeting his friends. I see how hard they work. And that motivated me to work even harder. And I see how good things are going for them and how popping it is to be number one. And I’m like, I want that. A lot of people just see they jewelry and they money, but I don’t think a lot of people see how hard they work for that shit every single day.” Cardi B and Offset became engaged on October 27, 2017, after Offset proposed to her at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, during the Power 99 Powerhouse concert. On April 7, 2018, during her second performance on Saturday Night Live, Cardi B wore a stunning, white Christian Siriano evening gown which, along with several deliberate camera side shots, revealed her pregnancy. She was about 6 months (24 weeks) pregnant at the time. On June 25, 2018, TMZ found a marriage license revealing Cardi B and Offset had actually secretly married in September 2017, doing so one month before the public proposal. Cardi B later went on to confirm this revelation in a social media post. In July 2018, Cardi B gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Kulture Kiari Cephus  In December 2018 she announced on Instagram that she and Offset had broken up, though the pair later reunited. In February 2019, the couple made a public appearance for the Grammys.  He accompanied her on the stage during her acceptance speech for Best Rap Album. In September 2020, it was reported that Cardi B had filed for divorce, but the next month it was revealed they were back together.

Legal issues

On October 1, 2018, Cardi B agreed to meet with investigators at a Queens police station in connection with an alleged a*sault. She denied involvement through her attorney. She was charged with two misdemeanors: a*sault and reckless endangerment. Cardi B appeared in court for her arraignment on December 7, 2018, after she failed to show up for the originally scheduled date due to a scheduling conflict, according to her attorney. She was ordered by the judge to avoid having any contact with the two bartenders. She was released by the judge despite prosecutors requesting bail to be set at $2,500. On June 21, 2019, a grand jury indicted Cardi B on 14 charges, including two counts of felony a*sault with intent to cause serious physical injury, stemming from the incident. She was arraigned on June 25, 2019 and pleaded not guilty on all charges

Anthony Frank Iommi (/aɪˈoʊmi/; born 19 February 1948) is an English guitarist, songwriter and producer. He was lead guitarist and one of the four founding members of heavy metal band Black Sabbath, and was the band’s primary composer and sole continuous member for nearly five decades. Iommi was ranked number 25 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”.

While working in a factory as a teenager, Iommi lost the tips of the middle and ring fingers of his right hand in an accident, an event which crucially impacted his playing style. He briefly left Black Sabbath (then known as Earth) in 1968 to join Jethro Tull, but did not record any material with the band, and subsequently returned to Black Sabbath in 1969. In 2000, he released his first solo album Iommi, followed by 2005’s Fused, which featured his former bandmate Glenn Hughes. After releasing Fused, he formed Heaven & Hell, which disbanded after Ronnie James Dio’s death in 2010.

In 2011, he published his autobiography, entitled Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath.

Early life

Iommi was born in Birmingham, the only child of Sylvia Maria (née Valenti, born in Palermo) Iommi and Anthony Frank Iommi. Sylvia’s family were vineyard owners in Italy. The family was Catholic, though they rarely attended Mass. Their family home in the Park Lane area of Aston also housed a shop which was a popular meeting place in the neighbourhood.,  with the living room doubling as the shop’s stockroom. His mother ran the shop while his father was a carpenter by trade.

Born and raised in Handsworth, Birmingham, Iommi attended Birchfield Road School, where future bandmate Ozzy Osbourne was also a student one year behind him. At age 8 or 9, while being chased by another boy, Iommi fell and suffered a bad cut on his upper lip. As a result, he gained the nickname “Scarface”, which made him more self-conscious of the scar, so he eventually grew his trademark moustache as a means of covering it.

At about age 10, Iommi began working out and learned judo, karate, and later boxing as a means of protecting himself from the local gangs which congregated in his neighbourhood.  He envisioned a future as a bouncer in a nightclub. Iommi initially wanted to play the drums, but due to the excessive noise he chose the guitar instead as a teenager, after being inspired by the likes of Hank Marvin and the Shadows. He has always played guitar left-handed. After completing school, Iommi worked briefly as a plumber and later in a factory manufacturing rings. He stated that at one point he worked in a music store, but quit after being falsely accused of stealing.

Accident

At the age of 17, Iommi lost the tips of the middle and ring fingers of his right hand in an industrial accident on his last day of work in a sheet metal factory. Iommi described how he “was told ‘you’ll never play again’. It was just unbelievable. I sat in the hospital with my hand in this bag and I thought, that’s it – I’m finished. But eventually I thought ‘I’m not going to accept that. There must be a way I can play’.” After the injury Iommi’s factory foreman played him a recording of famous jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, which encouraged him to continue as a musician. As Iommi later wrote:

My friend said, “Listen to this guy play”, and I went, “No way! Listening to someone play the guitar is the very last thing I want to do right now!” But he kept insisting and he ended up playing the record for me. I told him I thought it was really good and then he said, ‘You know, the guy’s only playing with two fingers on his fretboard hand because of an injury he sustained in a terrible fire.’ I was totally knocked back by this revelation and was so impressed by what I had just heard that I suddenly became inspired to start trying to play again.”

Inspired by Reinhardt’s two-fingered guitar playing, Iommi decided to try playing guitar again, though the injury made it quite painful to do so. Although it was an option, Iommi never seriously considered switching hands and learning to play right-handed. In an interview with Guitar World magazine, he was asked if he was “ever tempted to switch to right-handed playing.” Iommi responded:

If I knew what I know now I probably would have switched. At the time I had already been playing two or three years, and it seemed like I had been playing a long time. I thought I’d never be able to change the way I played. The reality of the situation was that I hadn’t been playing very long at all, and I probably could have spent the same amount of time learning to play right handed. I did have a go at it, but I just didn’t have the patience. It seemed impossible to me. I decided to make do with what I had, and I made some plastic fingertips for myself. I just persevered with it.

He ultimately decided to continue playing left-handed. To do so, he fitted homemade thimbles to his injured fingers to extend and protect them; the thimbles were made from an old Fairy Liquid bottle – “melted it down, got a hot soldering iron and shaped it like a finger” – and cut sections from a leather jacket to cover his new homemade prosthetic, which created two technical problems. First, the thimbles prevented him from feeling the strings, causing a tendency to press down very hard on them. Second, he had difficulty bending strings, leading him to seek light-gauge guitar strings to make it easier to do so. However, Iommi recalls that such strings were not manufactured at the time, so he used banjo strings instead, until around 1970–71 when Picato Strings began making light-gauge guitar strings. Furthermore, he used the injured fingers predominantly for fretting chords rather than single-note solos. In 1974, Iommi told Guitar Player magazine that the thimbles “helped with his technique” because he had to use his little finger more than he had before the accident. Later, he also began tuning his guitar to lower pitches, sometimes as far as three semitones below standard guitar tuning (e.g., on “Children of the Grave”, “Lord of this World”, and “Into the Void”, all on the album Master of Reality). Although Iommi states that the main purpose of doing so was to create a “bigger, heavier sound”, slackening the strings makes it easier to bend them.

Iommi reflected in 2016 saying that his greatest regret is losing his fingertips.

It became a burden. Some people say it helped me invent the kind of music I play, but I don’t know whether it did. It’s just something I’ve had to learn to live with. It affects your playing style; you can’t feel the strings, and there are certain chords I can’t play. Right at the beginning I was told by doctors: “You won’t be playing guitar.” But I believed I could do it, and I did.

Career

Pre-Black Sabbath

Iommi had played in several blues/rock bands, one of the earliest of which was the Rockin’ Chevrolets from 1964 to 1965. The band had regular bookings. Iommi later joined The Birds And Bees, and when they were offered work in Germany, Iommi decided to leave his factory job to take up the opportunity. From 1966 to 1967 Iommi played in a band named the Rest. It was in the Rest that Iommi first met future-Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward, who played drums and sang in the band.[

From January until July 1968 Iommi was guitarist in Mythology, with Ward joining a month later in mid-February. In May 1968 police raided the group’s practice flat and found cannabis resin, which resulted in fines for the band members. Most significantly, the incident made it quite difficult for the band to secure future bookings as most club owners avoided bands they viewed as drug users. Mythology subsequently split up after a gig in Silloth on 13 July 1968.

In August 1968 at the same time as the break-up of Mythology, another Birmingham band called Rare Breed also broke up. Vocalist Ozzy Osbourne joined with Iommi and Ward after the duo responded to an advert in a local music shop proclaiming “Ozzy Zig Requires Gig – has own PA”.  Requiring a bassist, Osbourne mentioned his former Rare Breed bandmate Geezer Butler, who was subsequently hired along with slide guitarist Jimmy Phillips and saxophonist Alan “Aker” Clarke. The six-piece band were named the Polka Tulk Blues Band. After just two gigs (the last of which was at the Banklands Youth Club in Workington), Phillips and Clarke were dismissed from the band, which soon after shortened its name to Polka Tulk.

Earth and Jethro Tull

Iommi, Butler, Ward and Osbourne renamed the band Earth in September 1968. The same month Iommi briefly departed to join Jethro Tull. However, after only two performances (an appearance on “The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus” in which the band mimed “A Song for Jeffrey”, which Ian Anderson sang live and a live appearance at BBC), Iommi was back with Earth in November 1968.

Concerning his brief working relationship with Jethro Tull vocalist Ian Anderson, Iommi said:

I learned quite a lot from him, I must say. I learned that you have got to work at it. You have to rehearse. When I came back and I got the band (Earth) back together, I made sure that everybody was up early in the morning and rehearsing. I used to go and pick them up. I was the only one at the time that could drive. I used to have to drive the bloody van and get them up at quarter to nine every morning; which was, believe me, early for us then. I said to them, “This is how we have got to do it because this is how Jethro Tull did it.” They had a schedule and they knew that they were going to work from this time till that time. I tried that with our band and we got into doing it. It worked. Instead of just strolling in at any hour, it made it more like we were saying, “Let’s do it!”

Black Sabbath

In August 1969, after being confused with another group named Earth (who had minor success in England), the group renamed themselves Black Sabbath. His factory accident affected the Black Sabbath sound; Iommi had detuned his guitar by 1971’s Master of Reality album, lowering string tension and easing the pain to his fingertips. Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler did the same to match Iommi. Sabbath was among the first bands to detune, and the technique became a mainstay of heavy metal music. Iommi combined blues-like guitar solos and dark, minor-key riffing with a revolutionary high-gain, heavily distorted tone with his use of power chords, a modified treble-boosting effect-pedal and a Gibson SG.

By the late 1970s, Black Sabbath were suffering from substance abuse, managerial problems, and touring exhaustion. In addition, the band’s slow, blues-driven riffs were seen by some as outmoded against the rising generation of metal bands such as Judas Priest and Motörhead. After the albums Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die! were not universally critically well received, Iommi and Butler decided that Sabbath needed a fresh start so, in the summer of 1979, they replaced Osbourne with Ronnie James Dio, the former vocalist for Rainbow. With Dio, Black Sabbath produced Heaven and Hell, an album that attempted to update Black Sabbath’s sound for the 1980s and include the soaring vocals that characterised the NWOBHM (New wave of British heavy metal) scene. Halfway through the 1980 tour, Bill Ward dropped out due to alcohol problems and displeasure with the direction that Dio was taking the band. He was replaced by Vinny Appice. With Iommi and Geezer Butler the only original members, this line-up produced Mob Rules. Dio quit the following year to begin a solo career, so Sabbath went through a revolving door line-up for the next decade with a succession of frontmen – Ian Gillan, Glenn Hughes, Ray Gillen and Tony Martin. After Ian Gillan (formerly of Deep Purple) departed the band in 1984, Geezer Butler left as well. With Sabbath in effective hiatus, Iommi recorded his first solo album, entitled Seventh Star. The album featured Glenn Hughes (also formerly of Deep Purple) on vocals, but due to label pressures, it was billed as a release by “Black Sabbath featuring Tony Iommi.”

In 1992, Iommi appeared at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, playing four songs with the remaining members of Queen and other guest artists. Geezer Butler also returned to Sabbath that year. In the following year Iommi teamed up with fellow Black Country band Diamond Head and co-wrote the song “Starcrossed (Lovers in the Night)” for their 1993 Death and Progress album. At Osbourne’s “farewell” concert at Costa Mesa in 1992, Dio refused to perform and abruptly left the band. As a result, Rob Halford was recruited to perform as the vocalist for two gigs (Halford also sang at one of the dates on the 2004 Ozzfest tour, when Osbourne couldn’t perform due to bronchitis). Following Osbourne’s solo set, the show concluded with the other members of the original Black Sabbath line-up joining for a 4-song reunion.

Black Sabbath went on to record two further albums with Tony Martin before the original line-up reunited as a touring band in 1997. While Bill Ward played at the two initial reunion shows at Birmingham NEC in December 1997, he was not present for the following two reunion tours, his second absence due to a heart attack. Ward was replaced by Mike Bordin and then Vinny Appice.

On 11 November 2011, the original band members announced that they were reuniting and recording a new album, although Bill Ward did not participate and Brad Wilk took his place at drums for the sessions. The new album, 13, was released in June 2013.

Solo career

In 2000, Iommi released his first proper solo album, titled Iommi. The album featured several guest vocalists including Ian Astbury, Skin, Henry Rollins, Serj Tankian, Dave Grohl, Billy Corgan, Phil Anselmo, Peter Steele and Ozzy Osbourne. In late 2004 Iommi’s second solo album was released, entitled The 1996 DEP Sessions. This album was originally recorded in 1996 but was never officially released. However, a copy with a drum track by Dave Holland was available as a bootleg called Eighth Star. Glenn Hughes performed vocals on the album and he furthered his collaboration with Hughes with the release of his third solo album, Fused. Released on 12 July 2005, John Mellencamp drummer Kenny Aronoff completed the trio on the album.

Iommi has signed with Mike Fleiss’s movie production company Next Films to score a series of horror films entitled Black Sabbath.

Since 1989 Tony Iommi was involved in the Rock Aid Armenia project. In October 2009 Iommi and his colleague Ian Gillan were awarded the Orders of Honor – Armenia’s highest order, which were delivered to them by the Prime Minister of Armenia for their help after the Spitak earthquake. They formed the supergroup WhoCares and recorded a single called “Out of my Mind”, which was released 6 May 2011 for the benefit of the music school to be built in Gyumri, Armenia. In January 2012, when Iommi was announced to have stage 3 lymphoma, the Armenian Prime Minister sent a letter of support: “We know your spirit is strong as ever, and we do believe the genius of your inspiration that guides you through the work on the new Black Sabbath album will transform into a boost of strength and energy that you need now, when things look tough”.

Heaven & Hell

In October 2006 it was reported that Iommi would tour with Ronnie James Dio, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward again, but under the name Heaven & Hell. Later it was announced that Ward had decided not to participate and Vinny Appice was hired as his replacement. Rhino Records released The Dio Years (under the ‘Black Sabbath’ moniker) album on 3 April 2007. The album showcased older tracks with Dio and also included three brand new songs recorded with Dio and Appice.

The band started an American tour in April 2007 with Megadeth and Down as opening acts. The tour finished in November in England with the prospect of an album to follow in 2008. During this period the band’s show at the New York Radio City Music Hall was released as both a live DVD and CD with a vinyl release in the UK in 2008. During the summer of 2008 the band embarked on the Metal Masters Tour along with Judas Priest, Motörhead and Testament.  The band’s first and only studio album, The Devil You Know, was released on 28 April 2009.

In November 2008 Iommi had a star revealed on the Birmingham Walk of Stars. Dio died of stomach cancer in May 2010, and on 14 June 2010, Iommi announced that Heaven & Hell would perform a one-off tribute to Ronnie James Dio at the High Voltage Festival, London on 24 July 2010. This was the band’s last performance under the name.

Eurovision Song Contest

Iommi wrote the song “Lonely Planet” which was sung by Dorians for Armenia in the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest.

Personal life

Iommi purchased his first house in Stafford, England, in 1972. He also purchased an adjacent property for his parents.

Iommi has been married four times.

• In late 1973 Iommi married Susan Snowdon, to whom he had been introduced by Black Sabbath’s then-manager Patrick Meehan. The song “Fluff”, an Iommi instrumental composition later released on the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath album, was played as Snowdon walked down the aisle. Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham was Iommi’s best man for the ceremony. The marriage lasted for three years. Iommi said in a 1991 Guitar World interview that the troubled recording and mixing of Black Sabbath’s 1976 album Technical Ecstasy contributed to the end of his marriage.
• Iommi married an American model named Melinda in 1980. They had a daughter, Toni-Marie Iommi, in 1983, who was the vocalist for the now-defunct band LunarMile. Iommi divorced Melinda in the mid-1980s. When Toni-Marie was 12 years old, Iommi won custody of her after she was placed in foster care. Toni-Marie has described her early childhood with a mentally unbalanced mother as difficult but says that her father finally “saved her”. She has stated that with her father she was able to regain her trust in other people. Mikko “Linde” Lindström, guitarist with Finnish band HIM, became engaged to Toni-Marie in August 2010. In 2013, the couple were reported to have broken-up.
• In 1986–87 Iommi met an Englishwoman named Valery, and after a six-year relationship they married. She had a son from a previous relationship named Jay. They divorced in the late 90s.  Iommi confirmed in the same Guitar World interview referenced above (a co-interview with Metallica’s James Hetfield) that he has a son. He told Hetfield regarding the band’s so-called “Black Album”, that “my son gave me a copy of your latest album…”
• In 2005, Iommi married Maria Sjöholm, formerly vocalist for Swedish alternative metal band Drain STH. They met around 1998, when Tony was working on music for Drain STH. After a year of talking on the phone, in 1999, Maria relocated to England and moved into Tony’s home. On 19 August 2005, without telling anyone, Maria and Tony married at the Sunset Marquis hotel, with only one witness present. On page 312 of his book, Tony calls the low-key wedding the “Best thing I ever did!”

During the mid-1980s Iommi was briefly engaged to rock musician Lita Ford, formerly of The Runaways. Iommi co-produced her solo album The Bride Wore Black, which to date remains unreleased. Ford herself has said that her involvement with him during that period was strictly personal and that he had no involvement in the half-finished album. She said in a 1989 Kerrang! interview that “there’s a certain amount of bad blood between Tony and I.”

On 19 November 2013, Iommi received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts degree from Coventry University. The honorary degree came “in recognition of his contribution to the world of popular music”, and recognized “his role as one of the founding fathers of heavy metal music and his status as one of the industry’s most influential figures”, the university said.[ Iommi is also a Visiting Professor of Music at Coventry University.

Iommi holds dual British-Italian citizenship, acquiring Italian citizenship due to being born to an Italian mother.

Illness

In early 2012, Iommi was diagnosed with the early stages of lymphoma, for which he underwent successful treatment. Black Sabbath’s 2013 tour dates were arranged so that Iommi was free to return to the UK once every six weeks to have an antibody administered. On 3 January 2014, in a New Year message, Iommi announced that he would be finishing his regular treatment some time that year.  A few months later, Black Sabbath announced that due to Iommi’s health issues, they were undertaking their final tour. As of 11 August 2016 Tony Iommi announced that his cancer was in remission.

According to a report in Rolling Stone magazine from 9 December 2016, Iommi revealed that he was due to have an operation to remove a lump from his throat. In an early 2017 interview with the UK radio show Planet Rock, Iommi explained that the lump wasn’t cancerous.

Religion

Iommi said in 2016 that he believed in God and was a Catholic, but that he had not attended church services since childhood. In January 2017, a choral work by Iommi entitled “How Good It Is” – with lyrics inspired by Psalm 133 – received its debut performance at Birmingham Cathedral.[ Catherine Ogle, the Dean of Birmingham, said, “This is a most wonderful gift Tony offered to the cathedral.”

In his autobiography, Tony writes that his parents were Catholics but weren’t regular churchgoers. He continues, ‘I hardly go to church either. I wouldn’t know what to do there. I actually do believe in a God, but I don’t feel that I have to press the point.’

Legacy and influence

Tony Iommi is widely considered to be one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time. In 2005, Metal Hammer magazine ranked him number 1 on the poll of the “Riff Lords”, praising his “highly distinctive style of fretsmanship that’s economical yet crushingly effective”. In 2007, Classic Rock magazine ranked him number 6 on their list of the “100 Wildest Guitar Heroes”. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 25 in their list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”. Joel McIver ranked him the 6th greatest metal guitarist of all time. In 2012, readers of Guitar World ranked Iommi the 7th-greatest rock guitarist of all time. Editors of the same magazine ranked him the greatest heavy metal guitarist of all time.

Iommi has won a number of awards. These include Q Awards (Gibson Les Paul Award, 2015), Kerrang! Awards (Icon, 2018), as well as three Grammy Awards won as a member of Black Sabbath.

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull has said: “Tony managed to turn his physical impairment around into something that makes him one of the guitar legends – if not for his dexterity of playing but at least for the fact that his contribution to rock music is a unique one”. Gene Simmons of Kiss regards him as “the man who came up with the riffs that launched an army of guitar players”;  Ozzy Osbourne calls him “the master of the metal riff” and Ronnie James Dio called him “the ultimate riff master”.

Furthermore, Iommi is recognised by many as the main creator of heavy metal music. Brian May of Queen considers him “the true father of heavy metal”, Eddie Van Halen stated that “without Tony, heavy metal wouldn’t exist. He is the creator of heavy!” and James Hetfield of Metallica, who was profoundly influenced by Iommi, defines him “The king of the heavy riff”. Rob Halford, vocalist for Judas Priest, when filling in for Ozzy Osbourne during an August 2004 concert in Philadelphia, introduced Iommi to the audience as “The man who invented the heavy metal riff”. Michael Amott of Carcass and Arch Enemy considers Iommi his “guitar hero”  and the world’s greatest guitarist “because he invented the heavy tone and evil riff”. According to Lamb of God singer Randy Blythe, “Iommi is the reason heavy metal exists”.

He has been credited as the forerunner of other styles: Martin Popoff defines him “the godfather of stoner rock”; Jeff Kitts and Brad Tolinski of Guitar World a*sert that “grunge, goth, thrash, industrial, death, doom… whatever. None of it would exist without Tony Iommi”. According to Hawaii Public Radio: “it is hard to imagine Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam or Alice in Chains without Black Sabbath, and without Tony Iommi. Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Metallica, Slayer, Pantera and essentially every metal band can be traced to the musical framework found in Iommi compositions”. Many notable musicians count Iommi as a major influence on their own playing; some of them include Jeff Hanneman (Slayer), Dimebag Darrell (Pantera), Slash (Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver), Scott Ian (Anthrax), Zakk Wylde (Ozzy Osbourne, Black Label Society), Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), Billy Corgan (The Smashing Pumpkins),[ Kim Thayil (Soundgarden), and Nick Oliveri (Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age). Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains was strongly influenced by Iommi’s dark bendings, which he uses often. Andy LaRocque of King Diamond said that the clean guitar part of “Sleepless Nights” from the Conspiracy album is inspired by Iommi’s playing on Never Say Die!

Equipment

Iommi’s deep and heavy sound was partly born out of necessity—his “revolutionary signature sound” being the result of the accident and the subsequent downtuning by three semitones. He said that his “extreme volume” was likewise necessary, “because we were fed up with people talking over us while we were playing.”

Guitars

Built in Birmingham by luthier John Diggins sometime between 1975 and 1978, the guitar was first used for overdubs on the ‘Heaven and Hell’ album and later became one of Iommi’s main guitars. The guitar is equipped with a 24 fret neck with custom cross inlays, four control knobs (three of which are functional), a disconnected second output jack, a hole for a master volume knob on the pick guard covered up with a black stopper and a highly distressed finish. He had two more built for him. One was made to the same specifications of his first Jaydee SG with a red finish. Another one was made and used during the Born Again era, which can be seen on the music videos for “Trashed” and “Zero the Hero.” The differences are the finish, headstock, use of a stoptail bridge, and use of rail humbuckers, as opposed to the 18-pole humbuckers on his two other versions.

• Gibson SG, aka “Monkey”

A 1965 Gibson SG Special in red finish fitted with a Gibson P-90 pick-up in the bridge position and a custom-wound John Birch Simplux, a P-90 style single coil in the neck position. The guitar became Iommi’s main instrument after his white Stratocaster’s neck pick-up failed during the recording of Black Sabbath’s self-titled album. It is currently on permanent display at the New York City Hard Rock Café.

• Gibson Custom Shop SG

The guitar was built by the Gibson Custom Shop in Nashville after Iommi’s specifications and finished in 1997. The guitar is one of two made as prototypes for the Gibson Custom Shop Limited Edition Iommi Special SG. The guitar features a neck with 24 frets and four control knobs, of which only two are active (much like his old Jaydee Custom guitar).

On 11 August 2010, Iommi announced on his website that this guitar was stolen from the RJD tribute show that Heaven & Hell performed at High Voltage on 24 July 2010. He is asking that anyone with information or leads let them know. He is offering a reward for its safe return.

• Epiphone P94 Iommi SG

A stock Epiphone SG signature model in black finish fitted with P-94 pick-ups which is a version of the Gibson P-90 pick-up designed to fit into existing humbucker housings.

• Gibson SG Standard

A regular left-handed version of the SG fitted with two extra frets to give Iommi the full two octaves which he prefers. The guitar is equipped with his signature pick-up. Iommi was the first guitarist to have a signature pick-up designed and built by Gibson. He also has another model fitted with a Floyd Rose floating tremolo.

• Fender Stratocaster

Iommi played a Fender Stratocaster that was spraypainted white by Iommi and his father during the early days with Black Sabbath. However, the neck pick-up malfunctioned during the recording of their first album, so Iommi quickly turned to his backup Gibson SG to finish the record. Currently Iommi owns two Stratocasters, one of which has been modified with his signature pick-up in the bridge position.

• St. Moritz Tony Iommi Custom SG

Custom built for Iommi by St. Moritz guitars, this is a replica of Iommi’s Gibson SG “Monkey”. It was used on the 13 album and for the tour.

• BC Rich Ironbird

Custom built for Iommi by BC Rich. Features include Dimarzio pick-ups, two built-in preamps, scalloped fretboard and Iommi’s trademark cross inlays. This guitar can be seen in Tony’s Star Licks Video, for Star Licks Productions along with a left handed BC Rich mockingbird.

• Gibson Barney Kessel

A rare left-handed version of the jazz guitarist Barney Kessel artist model, built sometime in the first half of the 1960s.

• Epiphone Riviera 12 string

Originally a regular right-handed version in red finish that was converted by Epiphone to a left-handed version to fit Iommi.

• LaBella custom gauge strings
• Shure Wireless systems
• A Gibson Tony Iommi Signature Pick Up has been available for the past two decades. The pick-up got its first ‘blooding’ on the Black Sabbath reunion/Ozzfest tour in the summer,of 1997, loaded into an SG that J.T. Riboloff of Gibson built. They also feature in the two SGs (one black and one red) that the Gibson Custom Shop built for Iommi in late 1997, as prototypes for the Tony Iommi special Custom Shop model. The pick-up is still in production, and available in silver, gold or black covers. It has been used in the Custom Shop models, the factory Iommi SG and most recently in the Epiphone Iommi SG.

Effects

• Boss chorus pedal
• Boss octave pedal
• Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster
• Drawmer LX22 compressor
• Korg DL8000R multi-tap delay
• Korg SDD1000 rackmount delay
• Peavey Addverb III
• Tycobrahe wah pedal

Amplifiers

• Laney TI100 Tony Iommi Signature: Current main amp. Two channel version of the GH100TI.
• Laney GH 100 TI Tony Iommi Signature amplifiers: Iommi’s main up from 1993 – early 2012.
• ENGL Powerball Amplifiers: only used in 2009
• Laney 4×12 cabinets
• Various Marshall amplifiers: from early to mid-1980s to 1993, including 9005 Power Amplifiers and 9001 Preamps, 4×12″ speaker cabinets, 2554 Silver Jubilee Combo, 2558 Silver Jubilee Combo, Paul Reed Smith modded JCM800 head. Marshall 1959 Super Lead modified by John “Dawk” Stillwell for Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules.
• Laney Supergroup Heads: his main amplifier from 1968 to 1979. For Black Sabbath’s ‘The End’ tour, Laney re-engineered the original Iommi amp, LA 100BL (Supergroup) and these amps were used throughout the tour.
• Orange 1972 w/ 4×12 cab Only used for the filming of the music videos for Iron Man and Paranoid.
• Laney Klipp: used on Master of Reality (Requires source verification?)
• Mesa Boogie Mark series heads: from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s

Ludwig van Beethoven (/ˈlʊdvɪɡ væn ˈbeɪtoʊvən/ (About this soundlisten); German: [ˈluːtvɪç fan ˈbeːtˌhoːfn̩] (About this soundlisten); baptised 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist whose music ranks amongst the most performed of the classical music repertoire; he remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music. His works span the transition from the classical period to the romantic era in classical music. His career has conventionally been divided into early, middle, and late periods. The “early” period, during which he forged his craft, is typically considered to have lasted until 1802. From 1802 to around 1812, his “middle” period showed an individual development from the “classical” styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and is sometimes characterized as “heroic.” During this time he began to suffer increasingly from deafness. In his “late” period from 1812 to his death in 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression.

Born in Bonn, Beethoven’s musical talent was obvious at an early age, and he was initially harshly and intensively taught by his father Johann van Beethoven. Beethoven was later taught by the composer and conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe, under whose tutelage he published his first work, a set of keyboard variations, in 1783. He found relief from a dysfunctional home life with the family of Helene von Breuning, whose children he loved, befriended, and taught piano. At age 21, he moved to Vienna, which subsequently became his base, and studied composition with Haydn. Beethoven then gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist, and he was soon courted by Karl Alois, Prince Lichnowsky for compositions, which resulted in his three Opus 1 piano trios (the earliest works to which he accorded an opus number) in 1795.

His first major orchestral work, the First Symphony, appeared in 1800, and his first set of string quartets was published in 1801. During this period, his hearing began to deteriorate, but he continued to conduct, premiering his Third and Fifth Symphonies in 1804 and 1808, respectively. His Violin Concerto appeared in 1806. His last piano concerto (No. 5, Op. 73, known as the ‘Emperor’), dedicated to his frequent patron Archduke Rudolf of Austria, was premiered in 1810, but not with Beethoven as soloist. He was almost completely deaf by 1814, and he then gave up performing and appearing in public. He described his problems with health and his unfulfilled personal life in two letters, his “Heiligenstadt Testament” (1802) to his brothers and his unsent love letter to an unknown “Immortal Beloved” (1812).

In the years from 1810, increasingly less socially involved, Beethoven composed many of his most admired works including his later symphonies and his mature chamber music and piano sonatas. His only opera, Fidelio, which had been first performed in 1805, was revised to its final version in 1814. He composed his Missa Solemnis in the years 1819–1823, and his final, Ninth, Symphony, one of the first examples of a choral symphony, in 1822–1824. Written in his last years, his late string quartets of 1825–26 are amongst his final achievements. After some months of bedridden illness, he died in 1827. Beethoven’s works remain mainstays of the classical music repertoire.

Life and career

Family and early life

Beethoven was the grandson of Ludwig van Beethoven (1712–1773)[n 1], a musician from the town of Mechelen in the Austrian Duchy of Brabant (in what is now the Flemish region of Belgium) who had moved to Bonn at the age of 21. Ludwig was employed as a bass singer at the court of Clemens August, Archbishop-Elector of Cologne, eventually rising to become, in 1761, Kapellmeister (music director) and hence a pre-eminent musician in Bonn. The portrait he commissioned of himself towards the end of his life remained displayed in his grandson’s rooms as a talisman of his musical heritage. Ludwig had one son, Johann (1740–1792), who worked as a tenor in the same musical establishment and gave keyboard and violin lessons to supplement his income.

Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767; she was the daughter of Heinrich Keverich (1701–1751), who had been the head chef at the court of the Archbishopric of Trier. Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn at what is now the Beethoven House Museum, Bonnstrasse 20. There is no authentic record of the date of his birth; however, the registry of his baptism, in the Catholic Parish of St. Remigius on 17 December 1770, survives, and the custom in the region at the time was to carry out baptism within 24 hours of birth. There is a consensus, (with which Beethoven himself agreed) that his birth date was 16 December, but no documentary proof of this.

Of the seven children born to Johann van Beethoven, only Ludwig, the second-born, and two younger brothers survived infancy. Kaspar Anton Karl was born on 8 April 1774, and Nikolaus Johann, (generally known as Johann) the youngest, was born on 2 October 1776.

Beethoven’s first music teacher was his father. He later had other local teachers: the court organist Gilles van den Eeden (d. 1782), Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer (a family friend, who provided keyboard tuition), Franz Rovantini (a relative, who instructed him in playing the violin and viola),[2] and court concertmaster Franz Anton Ries for the violin. His tuition began in his fifth year. The regime was harsh and intensive, often reducing him to tears. With the involvement of the insomniac Pfeiffer, there were irregular late-night sessions, with the young Beethoven being dragged from his bed to the keyboard. His musical talent was obvious at a young age. Johann, aware of Leopold Mozart’s successes in this area (with his son Wolfgang and daughter Nannerl), attempted to promote his son as a child prodigy, claiming that Beethoven was six (he was seven) on the posters for his first public performance in March 1778.

1780–1792: Bonn

In 1780 or 1781, Beethoven began his studies with his most important teacher in Bonn, Christian Gottlob Neefe. Neefe taught him composition; in March 1783 appeared Beethoven’s first published work, a set of keyboard variations (WoO 63).[n 2] Beethoven soon began working with Neefe as a*sistant organist, at first unpaid (1782), and then as a paid employee (1784) of the court chapel. His first three piano sonatas, WoO 47, sometimes known as “Kurfürst” (“Elector”) for their dedication to the Elector Maximilian Friedrich (1708–1784), were published in 1783. In the same year, the first printed reference to Beethoven appeared in the Magazin der Musik – “Louis van Beethoven [sic] … a boy of 11 years and most promising talent. He plays the piano very skilfully and with power, reads at sight very well … the chief piece he plays is Das wohltemperierte Klavier of Sebastian Bach, which Herr Neefe puts into his hands …” Maximilian Friedrich’s successor as the Elector of Bonn was Maximilian Franz. He gave some support to Beethoven, appointing him Court Organist and paying towards his visit to Vienna of 1792.

He was introduced in these years to several people who became important in his life. He often visited the cultivated von Breuning family, at whose home he taught piano to some of the children, and where the widowed Frau von Breuning offered him a motherly friendship. Here he also met Franz Wegeler, a young medical student, who became a lifelong friend (and was to marry one of the von Breuning daughters). The von Breuning family environment offered an alternative to his home life, which was increasingly dominated by his father’s decline. Another frequenter of the von Breunings was Count Ferdinand von Waldstein, who became a friend and financial supporter during Beethoven’s Bonn period. Waldstein was to commission in 1791 Beethoven’s first work for the stage, the ballet Musik zu einem Ritterballett (WoO 1).

In the period 1785–90 there is virtually no record of Beethoven’s activity as a composer. This may be attributed to the lukewarm response his initial publications had attracted, and also to ongoing problems in the Beethoven family. His mother died in 1787, shortly after Beethoven’s first visit to Vienna, where he stayed for about two weeks and almost certainly met Mozart. In 1789 Beethoven’s father was forcibly retired from the service of the Court (as a consequence of his alcoholism) and it was ordered that half of his father’s pension be paid directly to Ludwig for support of the family. He contributed further to the family’s income by teaching (to which Wegeler said he had “an extraordinary aversion” ) and by playing viola in the court orchestra. This familiarized him with a variety of operas, including works by Mozart, Gluck and Paisiello. Here he also befriended Anton Reicha, a composer, flautist and violinist of about his own age who was a nephew of the court orchestra’s conductor, Josef Reicha.

From 1790 to 1792, Beethoven composed several works (none were published at the time) showing a growing range and maturity. Musicologists have identified a theme similar to those of his Third Symphony in a set of variations written in 1791. It was perhaps on Neefe’s recommendation that Beethoven received his first commissions; the Literary Society in Bonn commissioned a cantata to mark the occasion of the death in 1790 of Joseph II (WoO 87), and a further cantata, to celebrate the subsequent accession of Leopold II as Holy Roman Emperor (WoO 88), may have been commissioned by the Elector. These two Emperor Cantatas were never performed at the time and they remained lost until the 1880s when they were described by Johannes Brahms as “Beethoven through and through” and as such prophetic of the style which would mark his music as distinct from the classical tradition.

Beethoven was probably first introduced to Joseph Haydn in late 1790 when the latter was travelling to London and stopped in Bonn around Christmas time. A year and a half later, they met in Bonn on Haydn’s return trip from London to Vienna in July 1792, when Beethoven played in the orchestra at the Redoute in Godesberg. Arrangements were likely made at that time for Beethoven to study with the older master. Waldstein wrote to him before his departure: “You are going to Vienna in fulfilment of your long-frustrated wishes … With the help of a*siduous labour you shall receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.”

1792–1802: Vienna – the early years

Beethoven left Bonn for Vienna in November 1792, amid rumours of war spilling out of France; he learned shortly after his arrival that his father had died. Over the next few years, Beethoven responded to the widespread feeling that he was a successor to the recently deceased Mozart by studying that master’s work and writing works with a distinctly Mozartian flavour.

He did not immediately set out to establish himself as a composer, but rather devoted himself to study and performance. Working under Haydn’s direction, he sought to master counterpoint. He also studied violin under Ignaz Schuppanzigh. Early in this period, he also began receiving occasional instruction from Antonio Salieri, primarily in Italian vocal composition style; this relationship persisted until at least 1802, and possibly as late as 1809.

With Haydn’s departure for England in 1794, Beethoven was expected by the Elector to return home to Bonn. He chose instead to remain in Vienna, continuing his instruction in counterpoint with Johann Albrechtsberger and other teachers. In any case, by this time it must have seemed clear to his employer that Bonn would fall to the French, as it did in October 1794, effectively leaving Beethoven without a stipend or the necessity to return. However, several Viennese noblemen had already recognised his ability and offered him financial support, among them Prince Joseph Franz Lobkowitz, Prince Karl Lichnowsky, and Baron Gottfried van Swieten.

Assisted by his connections with Haydn and Waldstein, Beethoven began to develop a reputation as a performer and improviser in the salons of the Viennese nobility. His friend Nikolaus Simrock began publishing his compositions, starting with a set of keyboard variations on a theme of Dittersdorf (WoO 66). By 1793, he had established a reputation in Vienna as a piano virtuoso, but he apparently withheld works from publication so that their eventual appearance would have greater impact.

His first public performance in Vienna was in March 1795, where he first performed one of his piano concertos. Shortly after this performance, he arranged for the publication of the first of his compositions to which he a*signed an opus number, the three piano trios, Opus 1. These works were dedicated to his patron Prince Lichnowsky, and were a financial success; Beethoven’s profits were nearly sufficient to cover his living expenses for a year. In 1799 Beethoven participated in (and won) a notorious piano ‘duel’ at the home of Baron Raimund Wetzlar (a former patron of Mozart) against the virtuoso Joseph Wölfl; and in the following year he similarly triumphed against Daniel Steibelt at the salon of Count Moritz von Fries. Beethoven’s eighth piano sonata the “Pathétique” (Op. 13), published in 1799 is described by the musicologist Barry Cooper as “surpass[ing] any of his previous compositions, in strength of character, depth of emotion, level of originality, and ingenuity of motivic and tonal manipulation.”

Beethoven composed his first six string quartets (Op. 18) between 1798 and 1800 (commissioned by, and dedicated to, Prince Lobkowitz). They were published in 1801. He also completed his Septet (Op. 20) in 1799, which was one of his most popular works during his lifetime. With premieres of his First and Second Symphonies in 1800 and 1803, he became regarded as one of the most important of a generation of young composers following Haydn and Mozart. But his melodies, musical development, use of modulation and texture, and characterisation of emotion all set him apart from his influences, and heightened the impact some of his early works made when they were first published.[46] For the premiere of his First Symphony, he hired the Burgtheater on 2 April 1800, and staged an extensive programme, including works by Haydn and Mozart, as well as his Septet, the Symphony, and one of his piano concertos (the latter three works all then unpublished). The concert, which the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung described as “the most interesting concert in a long time,” was not without difficulties; among the criticisms was that “the players did not bother to pay any attention to the soloist.” By the end of 1800, Beethoven and his music were already much in demand from patrons and publishers.

In May 1799, he taught piano to the daughters of Hungarian Countess Anna Brunsvik. During this time, he fell in love with the younger daughter Josephine. Amongst his other students, from 1801 to 1805, he tutored Ferdinand Ries, who went on to become a composer and later wrote about their encounters. The young Carl Czerny, who later became a renowned music teacher himself, studied with Beethoven from 1801 to 1803. In late 1801, he met a young countess, Julie Guicciardi, through the Brunsvik family; he mentions his love for Julie in a November 1801 letter to a friend, but class difference prevented any consideration of pursuing this. He dedicated his 1802 Sonata Op. 27 No. 2, now commonly known as the Moonlight Sonata, to her.

In the spring of 1801 he completed The Creatures of Prometheus, a ballet. The work received numerous performances in 1801 and 1802, and he rushed to publish a piano arrangement to capitalise on its early popularity.[50] In the spring of 1802 he completed the Second Symphony, intended for performance at a concert that was cancelled. The symphony received its premiere instead at a subscription concert in April 1803 at the Theater an der Wien, where he had been appointed composer in residence. In addition to the Second Symphony, the concert also featured the First Symphony, the Third Piano Concerto, and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. Reviews were mixed, but the concert was a financial success; he was able to charge three times the cost of a typical concert ticket.

His business dealings with publishers also began to improve in 1802 when his brother Kaspar, who had previously a*sisted him casually, began to a*sume a larger role in the management of his affairs. In addition to negotiating higher prices for recently composed works, Kaspar also began selling some of his earlier unpublished compositions and encouraged him (against Beethoven’s preference) to also make arrangements and transcriptions of his more popular works for other instrument combinations. Beethoven acceded to these requests, as he could not prevent publishers from hiring others to do similar arrangements of his works.

1802–1812: The ‘heroic’ period

Deafness

Beethoven told the English pianist Charles Neate (in 1815) that he dated his hearing loss from a fit he suffered in 1798 induced by a quarrel with a singer. During its gradual decline, his hearing was further impeded by a severe form of tinnitus. As early as 1801, he wrote to Wegeler and another friend Karl Amenda, describing his symptoms and the difficulties they caused in both professional and social settings (although it is likely some of his close friends were already aware of the problems). The cause was probably otosclerosis, perhaps accompanied by degeneration of the auditory nerve.

On the advice of his doctor, Beethoven moved to the small Austrian town of Heiligenstadt, just outside Vienna, from April to October 1802 in an attempt to come to terms with his condition. There he wrote the document now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter to his brothers which records his thoughts of suicide due to his growing deafness and records his resolution to continue living for and through his art. The letter was never sent and was discovered in his papers after his death. The letters to Wegeler and Amenda were not so despairing; in them Beethoven commented also on his ongoing professional and financial success at this period, and his determination, as he expressed it to Wegeler, to “seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not crush me completely.” In 1806, Beethoven noted on one of his musical sketches “Let your deafness no longer be a secret – even in art.”

Beethoven’s hearing loss did not prevent him from composing music, but it made playing at concerts—an important source of income at this phase of his life—increasingly difficult. (It also contributed substantially to his social withdrawal.) Czerny remarked however that Beethoven could still hear speech and music normally until 1812.  Beethoven never became totally deaf; in his final years he was still able to distinguish low tones and sudden loud sounds.

The ‘heroic’ style

Beethoven’s return to Vienna from Heiligenstadt was marked by a change in musical style, and is now often designated as the start of his middle or “heroic” period characterised by many original works composed on a grand scale. According to Carl Czerny, Beethoven said, “I am not satisfied with the work I have done so far. From now on I intend to take a new way.”  An early major work employing this new style was the Third Symphony in E flat Op. 55, known as the Eroica, written in 1803–04. The idea of creating a symphony based on the career of Napoleon may have been suggested to Beethoven by Count Bernadotte in 1798.[65] Beethoven, sympathetic to the ideal of the heroic revolutionary leader, originally gave the symphony the title “Bonaparte”, but disillusioned by Napoleon declaring himself Emperor in 1804, he scratched Napoleon’s name from the manuscript’s title page, and the symphony was published in 1806 with its present title and the subtitle “to celebrate the memory of a great man.” The Eroica was longer and larger in scope than any previous symphony. When it premiered in early 1805 it received a mixed reception. Some listeners objected to its length or misunderstood its structure, while others viewed it as a masterpiece.

Other middle period works extend in the same dramatic manner the musical language Beethoven had inherited. The Rasumovsky string quartets, and the Waldstein and Appassionata piano sonatas share the heroic spirit of the Third Symphony. Other works of this period include the Fourth through Eighth Symphonies, the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives, the opera Fidelio, and the Violin Concerto.[68] Beethoven was hailed in 1810 by the writer and composer E. T. A. Hoffmann, in an influential review in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, as the greatest of (what he considered) the three “Romantic” composers, (that is, ahead of Haydn and Mozart); in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony his music, wrote Hoffmann, “sets in motion terror, fear, horror, pain, and awakens the infinite yearning that is the essence of romanticism”.

During this time Beethoven’s income came from publishing his works, from performances of them, and from his patrons, for whom he gave private performances and copies of works they commissioned for an exclusive period before their publication. Some of his early patrons, including Prince Lobkowitz and Prince Lichnowsky, gave him annual stipends in addition to commissioning works and purchasing published works. Perhaps his most important aristocratic patron was Archduke Rudolf of Austria, the youngest son of Emperor Leopold II, who in 1803 or 1804 began to study piano and composition with him. They became friends, and their meetings continued until 1824. Beethoven was to dedicate 14 compositions to Rudolf, including some of his major works such as the Archduke Trio Op. 97 (1811) and Missa solemnis Op. 123 (1823).

His position at the Theater an der Wien was terminated when the theatre changed management in early 1804, and he was forced to move temporarily to the suburbs of Vienna with his friend Stephan von Breuning. This slowed work on Leonore, (his original title for his opera), his largest work to date, for a time. It was delayed again by the Austrian censor and finally premiered, under its present title of Fidelio in November 1805 to houses that were nearly empty because of the French occupation of the city. In addition to being a financial failure, this version of Fidelio was also a critical failure, and Beethoven began revising it.

Despite this failure, Beethoven continued to attract recognition. In 1807 the musician and publisher Muzio Clementi secured the rights for publishing his works in England, and Haydn’s former patron Prince Esterházy commissioned a mass (the Mass in C, Op. 86) for his wife’s name-day. But he could not count on such recognition alone. A colossal benefit concert which he organized in December 1808, and was widely advertised, included the premieres of the Fifth and Sixth (Pastoral) symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto, extracts from the Mass in C, the scena and aria Ah! perfido Op. 65 and the Choral Fantasy op. 80. There was a large audience, (including Czerny and the young Ignaz Moscheles). But it was under-rehearsed, involved many stops and starts, and during the Fantasia Beethoven was noted shouting at the musicians “badly played, wrong, again!” The financial outcome is unknown.

In the autumn of 1808, after having been rejected for a position at the Royal Theatre, Beethoven had received an offer from Napoleon’s brother Jérôme Bonaparte, then king of Westphalia, for a well-paid position as Kapellmeister at the court in Cassel. To persuade him to stay in Vienna, Archduke Rudolf, Prince Kinsky and Prince Lobkowitz, after receiving representations from Beethoven’s friends, pledged to pay him a pension of 4000 florins a year. In the event, Archduke Rudolf paid his share of the pension on the agreed date. Kinsky, immediately called to military duty, did not contribute and died in November 1812 after falling from his horse. The Austrian currency destabilized and Lobkowitz went bankrupt in 1811 so that to benefit from the agreement Beethoven eventually had recourse to the law, which in 1815 brought him some recompense.

The imminence of war reaching Vienna itself was felt in early 1809. In April Beethoven had completed writing his Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 73, which the musicologist Alfred Einstein has described as “the apotheosis of the military concept” in Beethoven’s music. Archduke Rudolf left the capital with the Imperial family in early May, prompting Beethoven’s piano sonata Les Adieux, (Sonata No. 26, Op. 81a), actually entitled by Beethoven in German “Das Lebewohl” (The Farewell), of which the final movement, “Das Wiedersehen” (The Return), is dated in the manuscript with the date of Rudolf’s homecoming of 30 January 1810. During the French bombardment of Vienna in May Beethoven took refuge in the cellar of the house of his brother Kaspar. The subsequent occupation of Vienna and the disruptions to cultural life and to Beethoven’s publishers, together with Beethoven’s poor health at the end of 1809, explain his significantly reduced output during this period, although other notable works of the year include his String Quartet No. 10 in F major, Op. 74 (known as The Harp) and the Piano Sonata No. 24 in F sharp major op. 78, dedicated to Josephine’s sister Therese Brunsvik.

At the end of 1809 Beethoven was commissioned to write incidental music for Goethe’s play Egmont. The result (an overture, and nine additional entractes and vocal pieces, Op. 84), which appeared in 1810 fitted well with Beethoven’s “heroic” style and he became interested in Goethe, setting three of his poems as songs (Op. 83) and learning about the poet from a mutual acquaintance, Bettina Brentano (who also wrote to Goethe at this time about Beethoven). Other works of this period in a similar vein were the F minor String Quartet Op. 95, to which Beethoven gave the subtitle Quartetto serioso, and the Op. 97 Piano Trio in B flat major known, from its dedication to his patron Rudolph as the Archduke Trio.

In the spring of 1811, Beethoven became seriously ill, suffering headaches and high fever. His doctor Johann Malfatti recommended him to take a cure at the spa of Teplitz (now Teplice in Czechia) where he wrote two more overtures and sets of incidental music for dramas, this time by August von Kotzebue – King Stephen Op. 117 and The Ruins of Athens Op. 113. Advised again to visit Teplitz in 1812 he met there with Goethe, who wrote: “His talent amazed me; unfortunately he is an utterly untamed personality, who is not altogether wrong in holding the world to be detestable, but surely does not make it any more enjoyable … by his attitude.” Beethoven wrote to his publishers Breitkopf and Härtel that “Goethe delights far too much in the court atmosphere, far more than is becoming in a poet.” But following their meeting he began a setting for choir and orchestra of Goethe’s Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage) (Op. 112), completed in 1815. After this was published in 1822 with a dedication to the poet, Beethoven wrote to him “The admiration, the love and esteem which already in my youth I cherished for the one and only immortal Goethe have persisted.”

“The Immortal Beloved”

While he was at Teplitz in 1812 he wrote a ten-page love letter to his “Immortal Beloved”, which he never sent to its addressee. The identity of the intended recipient was long a subject of debate, although the musicologist Maynard Solomon has convincingly demonstrated that the intended recipient must have been Antonie Brentano; other candidates have included Julie Guicciardi, Therese Malfatti and Josephine Brunsvik.

All of these had been regarded by Beethoven as possible soulmates during his first decade in Vienna. Guicciardi, although she flirted with Beethoven, never had any serious interest in him and married Wenzel Robert von Gallenberg in November 1803. (Beethoven insisted to his later secretary and biographer, Anton Schindler, that Gucciardi had “sought me out, crying, but I scorned her.”)   Josephine had since Beethoven’s initial infatuation with her married the elderly Count Joseph Deym, who died in 1804. Beethoven began to visit her and commenced a passionate correspondence. Initially, he accepted that Josephine could not love him, but he continued to address himself to her even after she had moved to Budapest, finally demonstrating that he had got the message in his last letter to her of 1807: “I thank you for wishing still to appear as if I were not altogether banished from your memory”.[90] Malfatti was the niece of Beethoven’s doctor, and he had proposed to her in 1810. He was 40, she was 19 – the proposal was rejected.  She is now remembered as the recipient of the piano bagatelle Für Elise.

Antonie (Toni) Brentano (née von Birkenstock), ten years younger than Beethoven, was the wife of Franz Brentano, the half-brother of Bettina Brentano, who provided Beethoven’s introduction to the family. It would seem that Antonie and Beethoven had an affair during 1811–1812. Antonie left Vienna with her husband in late 1812 and never met with (or apparently corresponded with) Beethoven again, although in her later years she wrote and spoke fondly of him.

After 1812 there are no reports of any romantic liaisons of Beethoven; it is, however, clear from his correspondence of the period and, later, from the conversation books, that he would occasionally resort to prostitutes.

1813–1822: Acclaim

Family problems

In early 1813 Beethoven apparently went through a difficult emotional period, and his compositional output dropped. His personal appearance degraded—it had generally been neat—as did his manners in public, notably when dining.

Family issues may have played a part in this. Beethoven had visited his brother Johann at the end of October 1812. He wished to end Johann’s cohabitation with Therese Obermayer, a woman who already had an illegitimate child. He was unable to convince Johann to end the relationship and appealed to the local civic and religious authorities, but Johann and Therese married on 8 November.

The illness and eventual death of his brother Kaspar from tuberculosis became an increasing concern. Kaspar had been ill for some time; in 1813 Beethoven lent him 1500 florins, to procure the repayment of which he was ultimately led to complex legal measures. After Kaspar died on 15 November 1815, Beethoven immediately became embroiled in a protracted legal dispute with Kaspar’s wife Johanna over custody of their son Karl, then nine years old. Beethoven had successfully applied to Kaspar to have himself named the sole guardian of the boy. A late codicil to Kaspar’s will gave him and Johanna joint guardianship. While Beethoven was successful at having his nephew removed from her custody in January 1816, and had him removed to a private school in 1818 he was again preoccupied with the legal processes around Karl. While giving evidence to the court for the nobility, the Landrechte, Beethoven was unable to prove that he was of noble birth and as a consequence, on 18 December 1818 the case was transferred to the civil magistracy of Vienna, where he lost sole guardianship. He only regained custody after intensive legal struggles in 1820. During the years that followed, Beethoven frequently interfered in his nephew’s life in what Karl perceived as an overbearing manner.

Post-war Vienna

Beethoven was finally motivated to begin significant composition again in June 1813, when news arrived of Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Vitoria by a coalition led by the Duke of Wellington. The inventor Mälzel persuaded him to write a work commemorating the event for his mechanical instrument the Panharmonicon. This Beethoven also transcribed for orchestra as Wellington’s Victory (Op. 91, also known as the Battle Symphony).[n 8] It was first performed on 8 December, along with his Seventh Symphony, Op. 92, at a charity concert for victims of the war, a concert whose success led to its repeat on 12 December. The orchestra included several leading and rising musicians who happened to be in Vienna at the time, including Giacomo Meyerbeer and Domenico Dragonetti. The work received repeat performances at concerts staged by Beethoven in January and February 1814. These concerts brought Beethoven more profit than any others in his career, and enabled him to buy the bank shares that were eventually to be the most valuable a*sets in his estate at his death.

Beethoven’s renewed popularity led to demands for a revival of Fidelio, which, in its third revised version, was also well received at its July opening in Vienna, and was frequently staged there during the following years. Beethoven’s publishers, Artaria, commissioned the 20-year old Moscheles to prepare a piano score of the opera, which he inscribed “Finished, with God’s help!” – to which Beethoven added “O Man, help thyself.”[n 9] That summer Beethoven composed a piano sonata for the first time in five years, his (Sonata in E minor, Opus 90). He was also one of many composers who produced music in a patriotic vein to entertain the many heads of state and diplomats who came to the Congress of Vienna that began in November 1814, with the cantata Der glorreiche Augenblick (The Glorious Moment) (Op. 136) and similar choral works which, in the words of Maynard Solomon “broadened Beethoven’s popularity, [but] did little to enhance his reputation as a serious composer.”

In April and May 1814, playing in his Archduke Trio, Beethoven made his last public appearances as a soloist. The composer Louis Spohr noted: “the piano was badly out of tune, which Beethoven minded little, since he did not hear it … there was scarcely anything left of the virtuosity of the artist … I was deeply saddened.” From 1814 onwards Beethoven used for conversation ear-trumpets designed by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel (a number of these are on display at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn).

His 1815 compositions include an expressive second setting of the poem “An die Hoffnung” (Op. 94) in 1815. Compared to its first setting in 1805 (a gift for Josephine Brunsvik), it was “far more dramatic … The entire spirit is that of an operatic scena.” But his energy seemed to be dropping: apart from these works, he wrote the two cello sonatas Op. 101 nos. 1 and 2, and a few minor pieces, and began but abandoned a sixth piano concerto.

Pause

Between 1815 and 1819 Beethoven’s output dropped again to a level unique in his mature life. He attributed part of this to a lengthy illness (he called it an “inflammatory fever”) that he had for more than a year, starting in October 1816. His biographer Maynard Solomon suggests it is also doubtless a consequence of the ongoing legal problems concerning his nephew Karl,  and of Beethoven finding himself increasingly at odds with current musical trends. Unsympathetic to developments in German romanticism that featured the supernatural (as in operas by Spohr, Heinrich Marschner and Carl Maria von Weber), he also “resisted the impending Romantic fragmentation of the … cyclic forms of the Classical era into small forms and lyric mood pieces” and turned towards study of Bach, Handel and Palestrina. An old connection was renewed in 1817 when Maelzel sought and obtained, Beethoven’s endorsement for his newly developed metronome. During these years the few major works he completed include the 1818 Hammerklavier Sonata (Sonata No. 29 in B flat major, Op. 106) and his settings of poems by Alois Jeitteles, An die ferne Geliebte Op. 98, (1816), which introduced the song cycle into classical repertoire. In 1818 he began musical sketches that were eventually to form part of his final Ninth Symphony.

By early 1818 Beethoven’s health had improved, and his nephew Karl, now aged 11, moved in with him in January, (although within a year Karl’s mother had won him back in the courts). By now Beethoven’s hearing had again seriously deteriorated, necessitating Beethoven and his interlocutors writing in notebooks to carry out conversations. These ‘conversation books’ are a rich written resource for his life from this period onwards. They contain discussions about music, business, and personal life; they are also a valuable source for his contacts and for investigations into how he intended his music should be performed, and of his opinions of the art of music. His household management had also improved somewhat with the help of Nannette Streicher. A proprietor of the Stein piano workshop and a personal friend, Streicher had a*sisted in Beethoven’s care during his illness; she continued to provide some support, and in her he finally found a skilled cook. A testimonial to the esteem in which Beethoven was held in England was the presentation to him in this year by Thomas Broadwood, the proprietor of the company, of a Broadwood piano, for which Beethoven expressed thanks. He was not well enough, however, to carry out a visit to London that year which had been proposed by the Philharmonic Society.

Despite the time occupied by his ongoing legal struggles over Karl, which involved continuing extensive correspondence and lobbying, two events sparked off Beethoven’s major composition projects in 1819. The first was the announcement of Archduke Rudolf’s promotion to Cardinal-Archbishop as Archbishop of Olomouc (now in Czechia), which triggered the Missa Solemnis Op. 123, intended to be ready for his installation in Olomouc in March 1820. The other was the invitation by the publisher Antonio Diabelli to fifty Viennese composers, including Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Czerny and the 8-year old Franz Liszt, to compose a variation each on a theme which he provided. Beethoven was spurred to outdo the competition and by mid-1819 had already completed 20 variations of what were to become the 33 Diabelli Variations op. 120. Neither of these works was to be completed for a few years. A significant tribute of 1819, however, was Archduke Rudolf’s set of forty piano variations on a theme written for him by Beethoven (WoO 200) and dedicated to the master. Beethoven’s portrait by Ferdinand Schimon [de] of this year, which was one of the most familiar images of him for the next century, was described by Schindler as, despite its artistic weaknesses, “in the rendering of that particular look, the majestic forehead … the firmly shut mouth and the chin shaped like a shell, … truer to nature than any other picture.”

Beethoven’s determination over the following years to write the Mass for Rudolf was not motivated by any devout Catholicism. Although he had been born a Catholic, the form of religion as practised at the court in Bonn where he grew up was, in the words of Maynard Solomon, “a compromise ideology that permitted a relatively peaceful coexistence between the Church and rationalism.”. Beethoven’s Tagebuch (a diary he kept on an occasional basis between 1812 and 1818) shows his interest in a variety of religious philosophies, including those of India, Egypt and the Orient and the writings of the Rig-Veda. In a letter to Rudolf of July 1821, Beethoven shows his belief in a personal God: “God … sees into my innermost heart and knows that as a man I perform most conscientiously and on all occasions the duties which Humanity, God, and Nature enjoin upon me.” On one of the sketches for the Missa Solemnis he wrote “Plea for inner and outer peace.”

Beethoven’s status was confirmed by the series of Concerts sprituels given in Vienna by the choirmaster Franz Xaver Gebauer in the 1819/1820 and 1820/1821 seasons, during which all eight of his symphonies to date, plus the oratorio Christus and the Mass in C, were performed. Beethoven was typically underwhelmed: when in an April 1820 conversation book a friend mentioned Gebauer, Beethoven wrote in reply “Geh! Bauer” (“Begone, peasant!”)

It was in 1819 that Beethoven was first approached by the publisher Moritz Schlesinger who won the suspicious composer round, whilst visiting him at Mödling, by procuring for him a plate of roast veal. One consequence of this was that Schlesinger was to secure Beethoven’s three last piano sonatas and his final quartets; part of the attraction to Beethoven was that Schlesinger had publishing facilities in Germany and France, and connections in England, which could overcome problems of copyright piracy. The first of the three sonatas, for which Beethoven contracted with Schlesinger in 1820 at 30 ducats per sonata, (further delaying completion of the Mass), was sent to the publisher at the end of that year (the Sonata in E major, Op. 109, dedicated to Maximiliane, Antonie Brentano’s daughter).

The start of 1821 saw Beethoven once again in poor health, suffering from rheumatism and jaundice. Despite this he continued work on the remaining piano sonatas he had promised to Schlesinger (the Sonata in A flat major Op. 110 was published in December), and on the Mass. In early 1822 Beethoven sought a reconciliation with his brother Johann, whose marriage in 1812 had met with his disapproval, and Johann now became a regular visitor (as witnessed by the conversation books of the period) and began to a*sist him in his business affairs, including him lending him money against ownership of some of his compositions. He also sought some reconciliation with the mother of his nephew, including supporting her income, although this did not meet with the approval of the contrary Karl. Two commissions at the end of 1822 improved Beethoven’s financial prospects. In November the Philharmonic Society of London offered a commission for a symphony, which he accepted with delight, as an appropriate home for the Ninth Symphony on which he was working. Also in November Prince Nikolai Galitzin of Saint Petersburg offered to pay Beethoven’s asking price for three string quartets. Beethoven set the price at the high level of 50 ducats per quartet in a letter dictated to his nephew Karl, who was then living with him.

During 1822, Anton Schindler, who in 1840 became one of Beethoven’s earliest and most influential (but not always reliable) biographers, began to work as the composer’s unpaid secretary. He was later to claim that he had been a member of Beethoven’s circle since 1814, but there is no evidence for this. Cooper suggests that “Beethoven greatly appreciated his a*sistance, but did not think much of him as a man.”

1823–1827: The final years

The year 1823 saw the completion of three notable works, all of which had occupied Beethoven for some years, namely the Missa Solemnis, the Ninth Symphony and the Diabelli Variations.

Beethoven at last presented the manuscript of the completed Missa to Rudolph on 19 March (more than a year after the Archduke’s enthronement as Archbishop). He was not however in a hurry to get it published or performed as he had formed a notion that he could profitably sell manuscripts of the work to various courts in Germany and Europe at 50 ducats each. One of the few who took up this offer was Louis XVIII of France, who also sent Beethoven a heavy gold medallion. The Symphony and the variations took up most of the rest of Beethoven’s working year. Diabelli hoped to publish both works, but the potential prize of the Mass excited many other publishers to lobby Beethoven for it, including Schlesinger and Carl Friedrich Peters. (In the end, it was obtained by Schotts).

Beethoven had become critical of the Viennese reception of his works. He told the visiting Johann Friedrich Rochlitz in 1822:

You will hear nothing of me here … Fidelio? They cannot give it, nor do they want to listen to it. The symphonies? They have no time for them. My concertos? Everyone grinds out only the stuff he himself has made. The solo pieces? They went out of fashion long ago, and here fashion is everything. At the most, Schuppanzigh occasionally digs up a quartet.

He, therefore, enquired about premiering the Missa and the Ninth Symphony in Berlin. When his Viennese admirers learnt of this, they pleaded with him to arrange local performances. Beethoven was won over, and the symphony was first performed, along with sections of the Missa Solemnis, on 7 May 1824, to great acclaim at the Kärntnertortheater.[ Beethoven stood by the conductor Michael Umlauf during the concert beating time (although Umlauf had warned the singers and orchestra to ignore him), and because of his deafness was not even aware of the applause which followed until he was turned to witness it. The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung gushed, “inexhaustible genius had shown us a new world”, and Carl Czerny wrote that the Symphony “breathes such a fresh, lively, indeed youthful spirit … so much power, innovation, and beauty as ever [came] from the head of this original man, although he certainly sometimes led the old wigs to shake their heads.” The concert did not net Beethoven much money, as the expenses of mounting it were very high. A second concert on 24 May, in which the producer guaranteed him a minimum fee, was poorly attended; nephew Karl noted that “many people [had] already gone into the country”. It was Beethoven’s last public concert. Beethoven accused Schindler of either cheating him or mismanaging the ticket receipts; this led to the replacement of Schindler as Beethoven’s secretary by Karl Holz, (who was the second violinist in the Schuppanzigh Quartet), although by 1826 Beethoven and Schindler were reconciled.

Beethoven then turned to writing the string quartets for Galitzin, despite failing health. The first of these, the quartet in E♭ major, Op. 127 was premiered by the Schuppanzigh Quartet in March 1825. While writing the next, the quartet in A minor, Op. 132, in April 1825, he was struck by a sudden illness. Recuperating in Baden, he included in the quartet its slow movement to which he gave the title “Holy song of thanks (‘Heiliger Dankgesang’) to the Divinity, from a convalescent, in the Lydian mode.”  The next quartet to be completed was the Thirteenth, op. 130, in B♭ major. In six movements, the last, contrapuntal movement proved to be very difficult for both the performers and the audience at its premiere in March 1826 (again by the Schuppanzigh Quartet). Beethoven was persuaded by the publisher Artaria, for an additional fee, to write a new finale, and to issue the last movement as a separate work (the Grosse Fugue, Op. 133). Beethoven’s favourite was the last of this series, the quartet in C♯ minor Op. 131, which he rated as his most perfect single work.

Beethoven’s relations with his nephew Karl had continued to be stormy; Beethoven’s letters to him were demanding and reproachful. In August, Karl, who had been seeing his mother again against Beethoven’s wishes, attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head. He survived and after discharge from hospital went to recuperate in the village of Gneixendorf with Beethoven and his uncle Johann. Whilst in Gneixendorf, Beethoven completed a further quartet, (Op. 135 in F major) which he sent to Schlesinger. Under the introductory slow chords in the last movement, Beethoven wrote in the manuscript “Muss es sein?” (“Must it be?”); the response, over the faster main theme of the movement, is “Es muss sein!” (“It must be!”). The whole movement is headed “Der schwer gefasste Entschluss” (“The Difficult Decision”). Following this in November Beethoven completed his final composition, the replacement finale for the op. 130 quartet.  Beethoven at this time was already ill and depressed; he began to quarrel with Johann, insisting that Johann made Karl his heir, in preference to Johann’s wife.

Death

On his return journey to Vienna from Gneixendorf in December 1826, illness struck Beethoven again. He was attended until his death by Dr. Andreas Wawruch, who throughout December noticed symptoms including fever, jaundice and dropsy, with swollen limbs, coughing and breathing difficulties. Several operations were carried out to tap off the excess fluid from Beethoven’s abdomen.

Karl stayed by Beethoven’s bedside during December, but left after the beginning of January to join the army at Iglau and did not see his uncle again, although he wrote to him shortly afterwards “My dear father … I am living in contentment and regret only that I am separated from you.” Immediately following Karl’s departure, Beethoven wrote a will making his nephew his sole heir. Later in January, Beethoven was attended by Dr. Malfatti, whose treatment (recognizing the seriousness of his patient’s condition) was largely centred on alcohol. As the news spread of the severity of Beethoven’s condition, many old friends came to visit, including Diabelli, Schuppanzigh, Lichnowsky, Schindler, the composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel and his pupil Ferdinand Hiller. Many tributes and gifts were also sent, including £100 from the Philharmonic Society in London and a case of expensive wine from Schotts. During this period, Beethoven was almost completely bedridden despite occasional brave efforts to rouse himself. On March 24, he said to Schindler and the others present “Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est” (“Applaud, friends, the comedy is over.”) Later that day, when the wine from Schott arrived, he whispered, “Pity – too late.”

Beethoven died on 26 March 1827 at the age of 56; only his friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner and a “Frau van Beethoven” (possibly his old enemy Johanna van Beethoven) were present. According to Hüttenbrenner, at about 5 in the afternoon there was a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder: “Beethoven opened his eyes, lifted his right hand and looked up for several seconds with his fist clenched … not another breath, not a heartbeat more.” Many visitors came to the death-bed; some locks of the dead man’s hair were retained by Hüttenbrenner and Hiller, amongst others. An autopsy revealed Beethoven suffered from significant liver damage, which may have been due to his heavy alcohol consumption,  and also considerable dilation of the auditory and other related nerves.

Beethoven’s funeral procession in Vienna on 29 March 1827 was attended by an estimated 10,000 people. Franz Schubert and the violinist Joseph Mayseder were among the torchbearers. A funeral oration by the poet Franz Grillparzer was read. Beethoven was buried in the Währing cemetery, north-west of Vienna, after a requiem mass at the church of the Holy Trinity (Dreifaltigkeitskirche) in Alserstrasse. Beethoven’s remains were exhumed for study in 1863, and moved in 1888 to Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof where they were reinterred in a grave adjacent to that of Schubert.

Music

The “three periods”

The historian William Drabkin notes that as early as 1818 a writer had proposed a three-period division of Beethoven’s works and that such a division (albeit often adopting different dates or works to denote changes in period) eventually became a convention adopted by all of Beethoven’s biographers, starting with Schindler, F.-J. Fétis and Wilhelm von Lenz. Later writers sought to identify sub-periods within this generally accepted structure. Its drawbacks include that it generally omits a fourth period, that is, the early years in Bonn, whose works are less often considered; and that it ignores the differential development of Beethoven’s composing styles over the years for different categories of work. The piano sonatas, for example, were written throughout Beethoven’s life in a progression that can be interpreted as continuous development; the symphonies do not all demonstrate linear progress; of all of the types of composition, perhaps the quartets, which seem to group themselves in three periods (Op. 18 in 1801–1802, Opp. 59, 74 and 95 in 1806–1814, and the quartets, today known as ‘late’, from 1824 onwards) fit this categorization most neatly. Drabkin concludes that “now that we have lived with them so long … as long as there are programme notes, essays written to accompany recordings, and all-Beethoven recitals, it is hard to imagine us ever giving up the notion of discrete stylistic periods.”

Bonn 1782–1792

Some forty compositions, including ten very early works written by Beethoven up to 1785, survive from the years that Beethoven lived in Bonn. It has been suggested that Beethoven largely abandoned composition between 1785 and 1790, possibly as a result of negative critical reaction to his first published works. A 1784 review in Johann Nikolaus Forkel’s influential Musikalischer Almanack compared Beethoven’s efforts to those of rank beginners. The three early piano quartets of 1785 (WoO 36), closely modelled on violin sonatas of Mozart, show his dependency on the music of the period. Beethoven himself was not to give any of the Bonn works an opus number, save for those which he reworked for use later in his career, for example, some of the songs in his Op. 52 collection (1805) and the Wind Octet reworked in Vienna in 1793 to become his String Quintet, Op. 4. Charles Rosen points out that Bonn was something of a backwater compared to Vienna; Beethoven was unlikely to be acquainted with the mature works of Haydn or Mozart, and Rosen opines that his early style was closer to that of Hummel or Muzio Clementi. Kernan suggests that at this stage Beethoven was not especially notable for his works in sonata style, but more for his vocal music; his move to Vienna in 1792 set him on the path to develop the music in the genres he became known for.

The first period

The conventional “first period” begins after Beethoven’s arrival in Vienna in 1792. In the first few years he seems to have composed less than he did at Bonn, and his Piano Trios, op.1 were not published until 1795. From this point onward, he had mastered the ‘Viennese style’ (best known today from Haydn and Mozart) and was making the style his own. His works from 1795 to 1800 are larger in scale than was the norm (writing sonatas in four movements, not three, for instance); typically he uses a scherzo rather than a minuet and trio; and his music often includes dramatic, even sometimes over-the-top, uses of extreme dynamics and tempi and chromatic harmony. It was this that led Haydn to believe the third trio of Op.1 was too difficult for an audience to appreciate.

He also explored new directions and gradually expanded the scope and ambition of his work. Some important pieces from the early period are the first and second symphonies, the set of six string quartets Opus 18, the first two piano concertos, and the first dozen or so piano sonatas, including the famous Pathétique sonata, Op. 13.

The middle period

His middle (heroic) period began shortly after the personal crisis brought on by his recognition of encroaching deafness. It includes large-scale works that express heroism and struggle. Middle-period works include six symphonies (Nos. 3–8), the last two piano concertos, the Triple Concerto and violin concerto, five string quartets (Nos. 7–11), several piano sonatas (including the Waldstein and Appassionata sonatas), the Kreutzer violin sonata and his only opera, Fidelio.

The “middle period” is sometimes a*sociated with a “heroic” manner of composing, but the use of the term “heroic” has become increasingly controversial in Beethoven scholarship. The term is more frequently used as an alternative name for the middle period. The appropriateness of the term “heroic” to describe the whole middle period has been questioned as well: while some works, like the Third and Fifth Symphonies, are easy to describe as “heroic”, many others, like his Symphony No. 6, Pastoral or his Piano Sonata No. 24, are not.

The late period

Beethoven’s late period began in the decade 1810-1819. He began a renewed study of older music, including works by Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, that were then being published in the first attempts at complete editions. Many of Beethoven’s late works include fugal material. The overture The Consecration of the House (1822) was an early work to attempt to incorporate these influences. A new style emerged, now called his “late period”. He returned to the keyboard to compose his first piano sonatas in almost a decade: the works of the late period include the last five piano sonatas and the Diabelli Variations, the last two sonatas for cello and piano, the late string quartets (see below), and two works for very large forces: the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony.[citation needed] Works from this period are characterised by their intellectual depth, their formal innovations, and their intense, highly personal expression. The String Quartet, Op. 131 has seven linked movements, and the Ninth Symphony adds choral forces to the orchestra in the last movement. Other compositions from this period include the Missa solemnis, the last five string quartets (including the massive Große Fuge) and the last five piano sonatas.

Legacy

The Beethoven Monument in Bonn was unveiled in August 1845, in honour of the 75th anniversary of his birth. It was the first statue of a composer created in Germany, and the music festival that accompanied the unveiling was the impetus for the very hasty construction of the original Beethovenhalle in Bonn (it was designed and built within less than a month, on the urging of Franz Liszt). A statue to Mozart had been unveiled in Salzburg, Austria, in 1842. Vienna did not honour Beethoven with a statue until 1880.

There is a museum, the Beethoven House, the place of his birth, in central Bonn. The same city has hosted a musical festival, the Beethovenfest, since 1845. The festival was initially irregular but has been organised annually since 2007.

The Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies serves as a museum, research center, and host of lectures and performances devoted solely to this life and works.

His music features twice on the Voyager Golden Record, a phonograph record containing a broad sample of the images, common sounds, languages, and music of Earth, sent into outer space with the two Voyager probes.

The third largest crater on Mercury is named in his honour, as is the main-belt asteroid 1815 Beethoven.

A 7-foot cast bronze statue of Beethoven by sculptor Arnold Foerster was installed in 1932 in Pershing Square, Los Angeles; it was dedicated to William Andrews Clark Jr., founder of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Thomas Earl Petty (October 20, 1950 – October 2, 2017) was an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and actor. He was the lead vocalist and guitarist of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, formed in 1976. He previously led the band Mudcrutch, and was also a member of the late 1980s supergroup the Traveling Wilburys.

Petty recorded a number of hit singles with the Heartbreakers and as a solo artist. His hit singles with the Heartbreakers include “Don’t Do Me Like That” (1979), “Refugee” (1980), “The Waiting” (1981), “Don’t Come Around Here No More” (1985) and “Learning to Fly” (1991). Petty’s hit singles as a solo act include “I Won’t Back Down” (1989), “Free Fallin’” (1989), and “You Don’t Know How It Feels” (1994). In his career, he sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. Petty and the Heartbreakers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.

Petty died of an accidental drug overdose on October 2, 2017, one week after the end of the Heartbreakers’ 40th Anniversary Tour.

Early life

Petty was born October 20, 1950, in Gainesville, Florida, the first of two sons of Kitty (Katherine) Petty, a local tax office worker, and Earl Petty, who was a traveling salesman. He had a brother, Bruce, who was seven years younger. His interest in rock and roll music began at age ten when he met Elvis Presley. In the summer of 1961, his uncle was working on the set of Presley’s film Follow That Dream, in nearby Ocala, and invited Petty to watch the shoot. He instantly became a Presley fan, and when he returned that Saturday, he was greeted by his friend Keith Harben, and soon traded his Wham-O slingshot for a collection of Elvis 45’s. Of that meeting with Presley, Petty said, “Elvis glowed.”[8] In a 2006 interview, Petty said he knew he wanted to be in a band the moment he saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. “The minute I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show—and it’s true of thousands of guys—there was the way out. There was the way to do it. You get your friends and you’re a self-contained unit. And you make the music. And it looked like so much fun. It was something I identified with. I had never been hugely into sports. … I had been a big fan of Elvis. But I really saw in the Beatles that here’s something I could do. I knew I could do it. It wasn’t long before there were groups springing up in garages all over the place.” He dropped out of high school at age 17 to play bass with his newly formed band.

In an interview with the CBC in 2014, Petty stated that the Rolling Stones were “my punk music”. He credited the group with inspiring him by demonstrating that he and musicians like him could make it in rock and roll.

Don Felder, a fellow Gainesville resident, who later joined the Eagles, claimed in his autobiography that he was one of his first guitar teachers although Petty said that Felder taught him to play piano instead. As a young man, Petty worked briefly on the grounds crew of the University of Florida, but never attended as a student. An Ogeechee lime tree that he purportedly planted while employed at the university is now called the Tom Petty tree (Petty stated that he did not recall planting any trees). He also worked briefly as a gravedigger.

Petty also overcame a difficult relationship with his father. According to Petty, his father found it difficult to accept that Petty was “a mild-mannered kid who was interested in the arts” and subjected him to verbal and physical abuse on a regular basis. Petty has described his father as a “wild, gambling drinker guy”. Petty was close to his mother and remained close to his brother, Bruce.

Career

1976–1987: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Shortly after embracing his musical aspirations, Petty started a band known as the Epics, later to evolve into Mudcrutch. The band included future Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench and was popular in Gainesville, but their recordings went unnoticed by a mainstream audience. Their only single, “Depot Street”, released in 1975 by Shelter Records, failed to chart.

After Mudcrutch split up, Petty reluctantly agreed to pursue a solo career. Tench decided to form his own group, whose sound Petty appreciated. Eventually, Petty and Campbell collaborated with Tench, Ron Blair and Stan Lynch, forming the first lineup of the Heartbreakers. Their eponymous debut album gained minute popularity amongst American audiences, achieving greater success in Britain. The singles “American Girl” and “Breakdown” (re-released in 1977) peaked at No. 40 after the band toured in the United Kingdom in support of Nils Lofgren. The debut album was released by Shelter Records, which at that time was distributed by ABC Records.

Their second album, You’re Gonna Get It!, was the band’s first Top 40 album,[22] featuring the singles “I Need to Know” and “Listen to Her Heart”. Their third album, Damn the Torpedoes, quickly went platinum, selling nearly two million copies; it includes their breakthrough singles “Don’t Do Me Like That”, “Here Comes My Girl”, “Even the Losers” and “Refugee”.

In September 1979, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers performed at a Musicians United for Safe Energy concert at Madison Square Garden in New York. Their rendition of “Cry to Me” was featured on the resulting album, No Nukes.

The 4th album Hard Promises, released in 1981, became a top-ten hit, going platinum and spawning the hit single “The Waiting”. The album also featured Petty’s first duet, “Insider” with Stevie Nicks.

Bass player Ron Blair quit the group and was replaced on the fifth album, Long After Dark (1982), by Howie Epstein; the resulting lineup lasted until 1994. The album contained the hit “You Got Lucky”. In 1985, the band participated in Live Aid, playing four songs at John F. Kennedy Stadium, in Philadelphia. Southern Accents was also released in 1985. This album included the hit single “Don’t Come Around Here No More”, which was produced by Dave Stewart. The song’s video featured Petty dressed as the Mad Hatter, mocking and chasing Alice from the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, then cutting and eating her as if she were a cake. The ensuing tour led to the live album Pack Up the Plantation: Live! and an invitation from Bob Dylan—Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers joined him on his True Confessions Tour. They also played some dates with the Grateful Dead in 1986 and 1987. Also in 1987, the group released Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) which includes “Jammin’ Me” which Petty wrote with Dylan.

1988–1991: Traveling Wilburys and solo career

In 1988, Petty joined George Harrison’s group, the Traveling Wilburys, which also included Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne. The band’s first song, “Handle with Care”, was intended as a B-side of one of Harrison’s singles, but was judged too good for that purpose and the group decided to record a full album, Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1. A second Wilburys album, mischievously titled Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3 and recorded without the recently deceased Orbison, followed in 1990. The album was named Vol. 3 as a response to a series of bootlegged studio sessions being sold as Travelling Wilburys Vol. 2. Petty incorporated Traveling Wilburys songs into his live shows, consistently playing “Handle with Care” in shows from 2003 to 2006, and for his 2008 tour adding “surprises” such as “End of the Line” to the set list.

In 1989, Petty released Full Moon Fever, which featured hits “I Won’t Back Down”, “Free Fallin’” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream”. It was nominally his first solo album, although several Heartbreakers and other well-known musicians participated: Mike Campbell co-produced the album with Petty and Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra, and backing musicians included Campbell, Lynne, and fellow Wilburys Roy Orbison and George Harrison (Ringo Starr appears on drums in the video for “I Won’t Back Down”, but they were actually performed by Phil Jones).

Petty and the Heartbreakers reformed in 1991 and released Into the Great Wide Open, which was co-produced by Lynne and included the hit singles “Learning To Fly” and “Into the Great Wide Open”, the latter featuring Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway in the music video.

Before leaving MCA Records, Petty and the Heartbreakers got together to record, live in the studio, two new songs for a Greatest Hits package: “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” and Thunderclap Newman’s “Something in the Air”. This was Stan Lynch’s last recorded performance with the Heartbreakers. Petty commented “He left right after the session without really saying goodbye.” The package went on to sell over ten million copies, therefore receiving diamond certification by the RIAA.

1991–2017: Move to Warner Bros. Records

In 1989, while still under contract to MCA, Petty secretly signed a lucrative deal with Warner Bros. Records, to which the Traveling Wilburys had been signed. His first album on his new label, 1994’s Wildflowers (Petty’s second of three solo albums), included the highly beloved title track[33], as well as the singles “You Don’t Know How It Feels”, “You Wreck Me”, “It’s Good to Be King”, and “A Higher Place”. The album, produced by Rick Rubin, sold over three million copies in the United States.

In 1996, Petty, with the Heartbreakers, released a soundtrack to the movie She’s the One, starring Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Aniston (see Songs and Music from “She’s the One”). The album’s singles were “Walls (Circus)” (featuring Lindsey Buckingham), “Climb that Hill”, and a song written by Lucinda Williams, “Change the Locks”. The album also included a cover of “Asshole”, a song by Beck. The same year, the band accompanied Johnny Cash on Unchained (provisionally entitled “Petty Cash”), for which Cash would win a Grammy for Best Country Album (Cash would later cover Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” on American III: Solitary Man).

In 1999, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released their last album with Rubin at the helm, Echo. Two songs were released as singles in the U.S., “Room at the Top” and “Free Girl Now”. The album reached number 10 in the U.S. album charts.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers played “I Won’t Back Down” at the America: A Tribute to Heroes benefit concert for victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The following year, they played “Taxman”, “I Need You” and “Handle with Care” (joined for the last by Jeff Lynne, Dhani Harrison, and Jim Keltner) at the Concert for George in honor of Petty’s friend and former bandmate George Harrison.

Petty’s 2002 release, The Last DJ, was an album-length critique of the practices within the music industry. The title track, inspired by Los Angeles radio personality Jim Ladd, bemoaned the end of the freedom that radio DJs once had to personally select songs for their station’s playlists. The album peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200 album chart in the United States.

In 2005, Petty began hosting his own show “Buried Treasure” on XM Satellite Radio, on which he shared selections from his personal record collection.

In 2006, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers headlined the fifth annual Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival as part of their “30th Anniversary Tour”. Special guests included Stevie Nicks, Pearl Jam, the Allman Brothers Band, Trey Anastasio, the Derek Trucks Band, and the Black Crowes. Nicks joined Petty and the Heartbreakers on stage for “a selection of songs” including “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”.

In July 2006, Petty released a solo album titled Highway Companion, which included the hit “Saving Grace”. It debuted at number four on the Billboard 200, which was Petty’s highest chart position since the introduction of the Nielsen SoundScan system for tracking album sales in 1991. Highway Companion was briefly promoted on the tour with the Heartbreakers in 2006, with performances of “Saving Grace”, “Square One”, “Down South” and “Flirting with Time”.

During the summer of 2007, Petty reunited with his old bandmates Tom Leadon and Randall Marsh along with Heartbreakers Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell to reform his pre-Heartbreakers band Mudcrutch. The quintet recorded an album of 14 songs that was released on April 29, 2008 (on iTunes, an additional song “Special Place” was available if the album was pre-ordered). The band supported the album with a brief tour of California in the spring of 2008.

In 2007, Petty and the Heartbreakers’ contributed a cover of “I’m Walkin’” to the album Goin’ Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino. The album’s sales helped buy instruments for students in New Orleans public schools and they contributed to the building of a community center in the city’s Hurricane Katrina-damaged Ninth Ward.

On February 3, 2008, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers performed during the halftime-show of Super Bowl XLII at the University of Phoenix Stadium. They played “American Girl”, “I Won’t Back Down”, “Free Fallin’” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream”. That summer, the band toured North America with Steve Winwood as the opening act. Winwood joined Petty and the Heartbreakers on stage at select shows and performed his Spencer Davis Group hit “Gimme Some Lovin’”, and occasionally he performed his Blind Faith hit “Can’t Find My Way Home”. In November 2009 the boxed set The Live Anthology, a compilation of live recordings from 1978 to 2006, was released.

The band’s twelfth album Mojo was released on June 15, 2010, and reached number two on the Billboard 200 album chart. Petty described the album as “Blues-based. Some of the tunes are longer, more jam-y kind of music. A couple of tracks really sound like the Allman Brothers—not the songs but the atmosphere of the band.” To promote the record, the band appeared as the musical guests on Saturday Night Live on May 15, 2010.  The release of Mojo was followed by a North American summer tour. Prior to the tour, five of the band’s guitars, including two owned by Petty, were stolen from their practice space in Culver City, California in April 2010. The items were recovered by Los Angeles police the next week.

In 2012, the band went on a world tour that included their first European dates in 20 years and their first ever concerts in the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.

On July 28, 2014, Reprise Records released Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ thirteenth studio album, Hypnotic Eye. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, becoming the first Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album to ever top the chart. On November 20, 2015, the Tom Petty Radio channel debuted on SiriusXM.

In 2017, the Heartbreakers embarked on a 40th Anniversary Tour of the United States. The tour began on April 20 in Oklahoma City and ended on September 25 with a performance at the Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, California. The Hollywood Bowl concert, which would ultimately be the Heartbreakers’ final show, ended with a performance of “American Girl”.

On September 28, 2018, Reprise Records released An American Treasure, a 60-track career-spanning box set featuring dozens of previously unreleased recordings, alternate versions of classic songs, rarities, historic live performances and deep tracks. The box set was preceded by the first single, “Keep A Little Soul”, in July 2018. The song is an unreleased outtake originally recorded in 1982 during the Long After Dark sessions.

Acting

Petty’s first appearance in film took place in 1978, when he had a cameo in FM. He later had a small part in 1987’s Made in Heaven and appeared in several episodes of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show between 1987 and 1990, playing himself as one of Garry Shandling’s neighbors.  Petty was also featured in Shandling’s other show, The Larry Sanders Show, as one of the Story within a story final guests. In the episode, Petty gets bumped from the show and nearly comes to blows with Greg Kinnear.

Petty appeared in the 1997 film The Postman, directed by and starring Kevin Costner, as the Bridge City Mayor (from the dialogue it is implied that he is playing a future history version of himself).  In 2002, he appeared on The Simpsons in the episode “How I Spent My Strummer Vacation”, along with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Lenny Kravitz, Elvis Costello, and Brian Setzer. In it, Petty spoofed himself as a tutor to Homer Simpson on the art of lyric writing, composing a brief song about a drunk girl driving down the road while concerned with the state of public schools. Later in the episode, he loses a toe during a riot.

Petty had a recurring role as the voice of Elroy “Lucky” Kleinschmidt in the animated comedy series King of the Hill from 2004 to 2009. In 2010, Petty made a five-second cameo appearance with comedian Andy Samberg in a musical video titled “Great Day” featured on the bonus DVD as part of The Lonely Island’s new album Turtleneck & Chain.

Views on artistic control

Petty was known as a staunch guardian of his artistic control and artistic freedom. In 1979, he was involved in a legal dispute when ABC Records was sold to MCA Records. He refused to be transferred to another record label without his consent. In May 1979, he filed for bankruptcy and was signed to the new MCA subsidiary Backstreet Records.

In early 1981, the upcoming Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album, which would become Hard Promises, was slated to be the next MCA release with the new list price of $9.98, following Steely Dan’s Gaucho and the Olivia Newton-John/Electric Light Orchestra Xanadu soundtrack. This so-called “superstar pricing” was $1.00 more than the usual list price of $8.98.  Petty voiced his objections to the price hike in the press and the issue became a popular cause among music fans. Non-delivery of the album and naming it Eight Ninety-Eight were considered, but eventually MCA decided against the price increase.

In 1987, Petty sued tire company B.F. Goodrich for $1 million for using a song very similar to his song “Mary’s New Car” in a TV commercial. The ad agency that produced the commercial had previously sought permission to use Petty’s song but was refused. A judge issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting further use of the ad and the suit was later settled out of court.

Some have claimed that the Red Hot Chili Peppers single “Dani California”, released in May 2006, is very similar to Petty’s “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”.[ Petty told Rolling Stone Magazine, “I seriously doubt that there is any negative intent there. And a lot of rock ‘n’ roll songs sound alike. Ask Chuck Berry. The Strokes took ‘American Girl’ for their song ‘Last Nite’, and I saw an interview with them where they actually admitted it. That made me laugh out loud. I was like, ‘OK, good for you’ … If someone took my song note for note and stole it maliciously, then maybe [I’d sue]. But I don’t believe in lawsuits much. I think there are enough frivolous lawsuits in this country without people fighting over pop songs.”

In January 2015, it was revealed that Petty and Jeff Lynne would receive royalties from Sam Smith’s song “Stay with Me” after its writers acknowledged similarities between it and “I Won’t Back Down”. Petty and co-composer Lynne were each awarded 12.5% of the royalties from “Stay with Me”, and their names were added to the ASCAP song credit. Petty clarified that he did not believe Smith plagiarized him, saying, “All my years of songwriting have shown me these things can happen. Most times you catch it before it gets out the studio door but in this case it got by. Sam’s people were very understanding of our predicament and we easily came to an agreement”.

Personal life

Petty married Jane Benyo in 1974, and they divorced in 1996. Benyo once told mutual friend Stevie Nicks that she had met Petty at “the age of seventeen”. Nicks misheard Benyo’s North Florida accent, inspiring the title of her song “Edge of Seventeen”. Petty and Benyo had two daughters: Adria, a director, and Annakim, an artist. On June 3, 2001, Petty married Dana York, who had a son, Dylan, from an earlier marriage.

In May 1987, an arsonist set fire to Petty’s house in Encino, California. Firefighters were able to salvage the basement recording studio and the original tapes stored there, as well as his Gibson Dove acoustic guitar. His signature gray top hat, however, was destroyed.

Petty struggled with heroin addiction from roughly 1996 through 1999. He credited the emotional pain from the dissolution of his marriage to Benyo as a major contributing cause. He later said that “using heroin went against my grain. I didn’t want to be enslaved to anything.”  He eventually went to a treatment center, and was able to successfully treat his addiction before the tour for Echo in mid-1999.

Petty spoke in 2014 of the benefits from his practice of Transcendental Meditation.

Death

Petty was found unconscious at his home, not breathing and in cardiac arrest, in the early morning of October 2, 2017. He was resuscitated and taken to the UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, California, where he died at 8:40 pm PDT[82] after premature reports of his death throughout the day. A memorial service was held at the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles on October 16, 2017.

On January 19, 2018, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner announced that Petty had died accidentally from mixed drug toxicity,[ a combination of fentanyl, oxycodone, acetylfentanyl and despropionyl fentanyl (all opioids); temazepam and alprazolam (both sedatives); and citalopram (an antidepressant). In a statement on his official website, Petty’s wife and daughter said he had multiple medical problems, including emphysema, knee difficulties “and most significantly a fractured hip”. He was prescribed pain medication for these problems and informed on the day of his death that his hip injury had worsened. The statement read, “[it] is our feeling that the pain was simply unbearable and was the cause for his overuse of medication.[..] We feel confident that this was, as the coroner found, an unfortunate accident.”

On September 28, 2018, Petty’s wife Dana gave an interview to Billboard saying that Petty put off hip surgery his doctors had recommended for some time. “He’d had it in mind it was his last tour and he owed it to his long-time crew, from decades some of them, and his fans.” Dana said that Petty was in a good mood the day before his death: “He had those three shows in L.A. Never had he been so proud of himself, so happy, so looking forward to the future – and then he’s gone.”

Equipment

Petty owned and used a number of guitars over the years. From 1976 to 1982, his main instrument was a sunburst 1964 Fender Stratocaster. He also used a number of Rickenbacker guitars from 1979 onward. The Rickenbacker 660/12TP was designed by Petty (specifically the neck) and featured his signature from 1991 to 1997. He also extensively played several Fender Telecasters.

As a bassist, Petty played a Fender Jazz Bass, Rickenbacker 4003, Höfner Club Bass and Danelectro Longhorn among others. A black Danelectro U2 of Petty can be found in a Hard Rock Cafe.

For acoustic guitars, Petty had a signature C.F. Martin HD-40, and wrote virtually all of his songs on a Gibson Dove acoustic saved from his 1987 house fire. He also used a Gibson J-200 in a natural finish and a late 1970s Guild D25 12-string acoustic.

Petty’s later amplifier setup featured two Fender Vibro-King 60-watt combos.

Awards and honors

In 1994, You Got Lucky, a Petty tribute album featuring such bands as Everclear and Silkworm was released

In April 1996, Petty received UCLA’s George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement.  The next month, Petty won the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers’ Golden Note Award.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1999, for their contribution to the recording industry.

In December 2001, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame[103], which further honored Petty with an exhibit of his items from July 2006 until 2007.

Petty received the Billboard Century Award, the organization’s highest honor for creative achievement on December 6, 2005.

In September 2006, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers received the keys to the city of Gainesville, Florida, where he and his bandmates either lived or grew up.

Peter Bogdanovich’s documentary film on Petty’s career titled Runnin’ Down a Dream premiered at the New York Film Festival in October 2007.

Petty was honored as MusiCares Person of the Year in February 2017 for his contributions to music and for his philanthropy.

A week after his death in 2017, a tribute to Petty was painted on Gainesville’s Southwest 34th Street Wall. It reads “Love you always, Gainesville No. 1 Son, Thanks, Tommy”.

In October 2018, on what would have been the singer’s 68th birthday, the city of Gainesville renamed the former Northeast Park, a park where a young Petty had often visited, as Tom Petty Park.

Michael Trent Reznor (born May 17, 1965) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and composer. He is best known as the founder, lead vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and principal songwriter of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, which he founded in 1988 and of which he was the sole official member until 2016.[a] The first Nine Inch Nails album, Pretty Hate Machine (1989), was a commercial and critical success. Reznor has since released 11 more Nine Inch Nails studio albums.

Reznor began his career in the mid-1980s as a member of synth-pop bands such as Option 30, The Innocent, and Exotic Birds. He has contributed to the albums of artists such as Marilyn Manson, whom he mentored, and rapper Saul Williams. Alongside his wife Mariqueen Maandig and long-time Nine Inch Nails collaborators Atticus Ross and Rob Sheridan, he formed the post-industrial group How to Destroy Angels in 2009.

Reznor and Ross scored the David Fincher films The Social Network (2010), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), and Gone Girl (2014). They won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Social Network and the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. They also scored the 2018 film Bird Box and composed original music for the 2019 TV series Watchmen, winning a Primetime Emmy Award for the latter. In 1997, Reznor appeared on Time’s list of the year’s most influential people, and Spin magazine described him as “the most vital artist in music”.

Early life

Michael Trent Reznor was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania, on May 17, 1965, the son of Nancy Lou (née Clark) and Michael Reznor. He grew up in Mercer, Pennsylvania, and is of German and Irish descent. His great-grandfather, George Reznor, founded the heating and air conditioning manufacturer The Reznor Company in 1888.[12] After his parents divorced when he was six years old, Reznor’s sister Tera lived with their mother while he went to live with his maternal grandparents. He began playing the piano at the age of 12 and showed an early aptitude for music. His grandfather, Bill Clark, told People in February 1995, “[Reznor] was a good kid […] a Boy Scout who loved to skateboard, build model planes, and play the piano. Music was his life, from the time he was a wee boy. He was so gifted.”

Reznor has acknowledged that his sheltered life left him feeling isolated from the outside world. In a September 1994 interview with Rolling Stone, he said of his career choices, “I don’t know why I want to do these things, other than my desire to escape from Small Town, U.S.A., to dismiss the boundaries, to explore. It isn’t a bad place where I grew up, but there was nothing going on but the cornfields. My life experience came from watching movies, watching TV and reading books and looking at magazines. And when your culture comes from watching TV every day, you’re bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities. None of that happened where I was. You’re almost taught to realize it’s not for you.” However, in April 1995, he told Details that he did not “want to give the impression it was a miserable childhood”.

At Mercer Area Junior/Senior High School, Reznor learned to play the tenor saxophone and tuba, and was a member of both the jazz band and marching band. The school’s former band director remembered him as “very upbeat and friendly”. He became involved in theater while in high school, being awarded the “Best in Drama” accolade by his classmates for his roles as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar and Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man. He graduated in 1983 and enrolled at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he studied computer engineering.

Career

Early projects

While still in high school, Reznor joined local band Option 30 and played three shows a week with them. After a year of college, he dropped out to pursue a career in music in Cleveland, Ohio. His first band in Cleveland was the Urge, a cover band. In 1985, he joined The Innocent as a keyboardist; they released one album, Livin’ in the Street, but Reznor left the band after three months. In 1986, he joined local band Exotic Birds and appeared with them as a fictional band called The Problems in the 1987 film Light of Day. Reznor also contributed on keyboards to the band Slam Bamboo during this time.

Reznor got a job at Cleveland’s Right Track Studio as an a*sistant engineer and janitor. Studio owner Bart Koster later commented, “He was so focused in everything he did. When that guy waxed the floor, it looked great.”  Reznor asked Koster for permission to record demos of his own songs for free during unused studio time. Koster agreed, remarking that it cost him “just a little wear on [his] tape heads”.

Nine Inch Nails

While a*sembling the earliest Nine Inch Nails recordings, Reznor was unable to find a band that could articulate his songs as he wanted. Instead, inspired by Prince, he played all the instruments except drums himself. He continued in this role on most Nine Inch Nails studio recordings, though he has occasionally involved other musicians, a*sistants, drummers, and rhythm experts. Several labels responded favorably to the demo material, and Reznor signed with TVT Records. Nine selections from the Right Track demos were unofficially released in 1988 as Purest Feeling and many of these songs appeared in revised form on Pretty Hate Machine, Reznor’s first official release under the Nine Inch Nails name.

Pretty Hate Machine was released in 1989 and was a moderate commercial success, certified Gold in 1992. Amid pressure from his record label to produce a follow-up to Pretty Hate Machine, Reznor secretly began recording under various pseudonyms to avoid record company interference, resulting in an EP called Broken (1992). Nine Inch Nails was included in the Lollapalooza tour in the summer of 1991, and won a Grammy Award in 1993 under “Best Heavy Metal Performance” for the song “Wish”.

Nine Inch Nails’ second full-length album, The Downward Spiral, entered the Billboard 200 chart in 1994 at number two, and remains the highest-selling Nine Inch Nails release in America. To record the album, Reznor rented and moved into the 10050 Cielo Drive mansion, where the Tate–LaBianca murders had been perpetrated by the Manson Family in 1969. He built a studio space in the house, which he renamed Le Pig, after the word that was scrawled on the front door in Sharon Tate’s blood by her murderers. Reznor told Entertainment Weekly that, despite the notoriety attached to the house, he chose to record there because he “looked at a lot of places, and this just happened to be the one I liked most”. He has also explained that he was fascinated by the house due to his interest in “American folklore,” but has stated that he does not “want to support serial-killer bullshit.”

Nine Inch Nails toured extensively over the next few years, including a performance at Woodstock ’94, although Reznor admitted to the audience that he did not like to play large venues. Around this time, Reznor’s studio perfectionism, struggles with addiction, and bouts of writer’s block prolonged the production of a follow-up to The Downward Spiral.

In 1999, the double album The Fragile was released. It was partially successful, but lost money for Reznor’s label, so he funded the North American Fragility Tour out of his own pocket. A further six years followed before the next Nine Inch Nails album With Teeth was released. Reznor went into rehab during the time between the two records, and was able to manage his drug addictions. With Teeth reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200.[ After With Teeth, Reznor released the concept album Year Zero in 2007, which has an alternate reality game themed after the album (see Year Zero (game)) which is about how the current policies of the American government will affect the world in the year 2022. After Year Zero’s release, Reznor broke from large record labels and released two albums, Ghosts I-IV and The Slip, independently on his own label, The Null Corporation. In 2009, Nine Inch Nails went on hiatus following the Wave Goodbye Tour. In 2013, Nine Inch Nails returned to large record labels, signing with Columbia Records. In September, the album Hesitation Marks was released, and earlier in August the Tension 2013 tour began.

In 2019, Reznor received a songwriting credit on the Lil Nas X song “Old Town Road”, due to the song heavily sampling the 2008 Nine Inch Nails instrumental track “34 Ghosts IV”. It reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 2019, with Reznor and Ross both receiving songwriting and production credit. The song would go on to become the chart’s longest-running #1 hit, staying at the top for a record 19 weeks.

Collaboration with other artists

One of Reznor’s earliest collaborations was a Ministry side project in 1990 under the name of 1000 Homo DJs. Reznor sang vocals on a cover of Black Sabbath’s “Supernaut”. Due to legal issues with his label, Reznor’s vocals had to be distorted to make his voice unrecognizable. The band also recorded additional versions with Al Jourgensen doing vocals. While there is still debate as to which version is Reznor and which is Jourgensen, it has been definitively stated that Reznor’s vocals were used in the TVT Records’ Black Box box set. He also performed with another of Jourgensen’s side projects, Revolting Cocks, in 1990. He said: “I saw a whole side of humanity that I didn’t know existed. It was decadence on a new level, but with a sense of humor.”

Reznor then sang the vocals on the 1991 Pigface track “Suck” from their first album Gub, which also featured production work from Steve Albini. Reznor sang backing vocals on “Past the Mission” on Tori Amos’ 1994 album Under the Pink.[40] He produced Marilyn Manson’s first album, Portrait of an American Family (1994), and several tracks on Manson’s albums Smells Like Children (1995) and Antichrist Superstar (1996). Relations between Reznor and Manson subsequently soured, and Manson later said: “I had to make a choice between being friends and having a mediocre career, or breaking things off and continuing to succeed. It got too competitive. And he can’t expect me not to want to be more successful than him.”

Reznor was in the David Bowie video for the song “I’m Afraid of Americans” in 1997. In the video, Reznor is a stalker who shows up wherever David Bowie goes. In a 2016 Rolling Stone article after Bowie’s death, Reznor recalled how touring with Bowie in 1995-96 inspired Reznor to stay sober.

Reznor produced a remix of The Notorious B.I.G.’s song “Victory”, featuring Busta Rhymes, in 1998. Under the stage name Tapeworm, Reznor collaborated for nearly 10 years with Danny Lohner, Maynard James Keenan, and Atticus Ross, but the project was eventually terminated before any official material was released. The only known released Tapeworm material is a reworked version of a track called “Vacant” (retitled “Passive”) on A Perfect Circle’s 2004 album eMOTIVe, as well as a track called “Potions” on Puscifer’s 2009 album “C” Is for.

In 2006, Reznor played his first “solo” shows at Neil Young’s annual Bridge School Benefit. Backed by a four piece string section, he performed stripped-down versions of many Nine Inch Nails songs. Reznor featured on El-P’s 2007 album I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, providing guest vocals on the track “Flyentology”. Reznor co-produced Saul Williams’ 2007 album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! after Williams toured with Nine Inch Nails in 2005 and 2006. Reznor convinced Williams to release the album as a free download, while giving fans the option of paying $5 for higher quality files, or downloading all of the songs at a lower quality for free. Reznor was also credited as “Musical Consultant” on the 2004 film Man on Fire. The movie features six Nine Inch Nails songs.[50] He has produced a number of songs for Jane’s Addiction in his home studio in Beverly Hills. The first recordings, new versions of the early tracks “Chip Away” and “Whores”, were released simultaneously on Jane’s Addiction’s website and the NINJA 2009 Tour Sampler digital EP.

In November 2012, Reznor revealed on Reddit that he would be working with Queens of the Stone Age on a song for their sixth studio album, …Like Clockwork.  He had worked with the band once before, providing backing vocals on the title track of the 2007 album Era Vulgaris. Josh Homme has since revealed that Reznor was originally meant to produce the album.

In January 2013, Reznor was seen in a documentary entitled Sound City, directed by former Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl. Sound City is based on real-life recording studio Sound City Studios, originating in Van Nuys, California. It has housed the works of some of the most famed names in music history since its founding in 1969. The film has been chosen as an official selection for the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and will be available to download from its official website on February 1, 2013.  Reznor also contributed to the soundtrack for the film, on the track “Mantra”, along with Dave Grohl and Josh Homme.

Reznor appeared in a live performance with Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham, Dave Grohl, and Queens of the Stone Age at the January 2014 Grammy Award ceremony. In an interview with a New Zealand media outlet, Reznor explained his thought process at the time that he was considering his participation in the performance:

I spent a long time talking about the pros and cons. You know, “Do we want to be on a shit show on TV?” No, not really. “Do we want to be affiliated with the Grammys?” No, not really. “Would we like to reach a large audience and actually do something with integrity on our terms?” Well, yeah. Let’s roll the dice and go into it with the best intentions, with a performance we think is worthy and might–you know–stand out from the crowd. Or it might not!

How to Destroy Angels

In April 2010, it was announced that Reznor had formed a new band with his wife Mariqueen Maandig and Atticus Ross, called How to Destroy Angels. The group digitally released a self-titled six song EP on June 1, 2010, with the retail edition becoming available on July 6, 2010. They covered the Bryan Ferry song “Is Your Love Strong Enough?” for the soundtrack for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which was released on December 9, 2011. On September 21, 2012, Reznor announced that the group’s next release would be an EP entitled An Omen EP, set for release on Columbia Records in November 2012, and that some of the EP’s songs would later appear on the band’s first full-length album in 2013. On October 8, 2012, they released a song and music video from An Omen EP entitled “Keep it Together”. How to Destroy Angels announced in January 2013 that their first full-length album entitled Welcome Oblivion would be released on March 5 of the same year.

As an independent artist

Following the release of Year Zero, Reznor announced later that Nine Inch Nails had split from its contractual obligations with Interscope Records, and would distribute its next major albums independently. In May 2008 Reznor founded The Null Corporation and Nine Inch Nails released the studio album The Slip as a free digital download. In his appreciation for his following and fan base, and having no contractual obligation, he made “The Slip” available for free on his website, stating “This one’s on me.” A month and a half after its online release, The Slip had been downloaded 1.4 million times from the official Nine Inch Nails website.

In February 2009, Reznor posted his thoughts about the future of Nine Inch Nails on NIN.com, stating that “I’ve been thinking for some time now it’s time to make NIN disappear for a while.” Reznor noted in an interview on the official website that while he has not stopped creating music as Nine Inch Nails, the group will not be touring in the foreseeable future.

Video games

The original music from id Software’s 1996 video game Quake is credited to “Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails”;  Reznor helped record sound effects and ambient audio, and the NIN logo appears on the nailgun ammunition boxes in the game. Reznor’s a*sociation with id Software began with Reznor being a fan of the original Doom. He reunited with id Software in 2003 as the sound engineer for Doom 3, though due to “time, money and bad management”, he had to abandon the project, and his audio work did not make it into the game’s final release.

Nine Inch Nails’ 2007 major studio recording, Year Zero, was released alongside an accompanying alternate reality game. With its lyrics written from the perspective of multiple fictitious characters, Reznor described Year Zero as a concept album criticizing the United States government’s current policies and how they will affect the world 15 years in the future. In July 2012, it was announced that Reznor had composed and performed the theme music for Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

Film composition

In 1994, Reznor produced the soundtrack for Oliver Stone’s film Natural Born Killers, using a portable Pro Tools in his hotel room. Nine Inch Nails recorded an exclusive song, “Burn” for the film. The group also recorded a cover version of Joy Division’s “Dead Souls” for The Crow soundtrack.

Reznor produced the soundtrack for David Lynch’s 1997 film Lost Highway. He produced two pieces of the film’s score, “Driver Down” and “Videodrones; Questions”, with Peter Christopherson. He tried to get Coil onto the soundtrack, but couldn’t convince Lynch. Nine Inch Nails also recorded a new song, “The Perfect Drug” for the soundtrack. The release spawned its release as a single, the music video for which was also directed by Mark Romanek.

In 2001, Reznor was asked by Mark Romanek to provide the score for One Hour Photo, but the music did not work for the film and was not used. These compositions eventually evolved into Still. A remix of the Nine Inch Nails track “You Know What You Are?” by Clint Mansell was used as part of the latter’s soundtrack to the 2005 film adaptation of Doom. In 2009, Trent Reznor composed “Theme for Tetsuo” for the Japanese cyberpunk film Tetsuo: The Bullet Man from Shinya Tsukamoto.

Reznor collaborated with Ross to compose the score for David Fincher’s The Social Network, a 2010 drama film about the founding of Facebook. Says Reznor, “When I actually read the script and realized what he was up to, I said goodbye to that free time I had planned.”[86] The score was noted for portraying “Mark Zuckerberg the genius, developing a brilliant idea over ominous undertones,” and received nearly unanimous praise. The film’s score was released in October 2010 in multiple formats, including digital download, compact disc, 5.1 surround on Blu-ray, and vinyl record. A 5-song sampler EP was released for free via digital download.

On January 7, 2011, Reznor announced that he would again be working with Fincher, this time to provide the score for the American adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. A cover of “Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin, produced by Reznor and Ross, with Karen O (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) as the featured singer, accompanied a trailer for the film. Reznor and Ross’ second collaboration with Fincher was scored as the film was shot, based on the concept, “What if we give you music the minute you start to edit stuff together?” Reznor explained in 2014 that the composition process was “a lot more work,” and that he “would be hesitant to go as far in that direction in the future.”

Reznor and Ross again collaborated, to score Fincher’s film Gone Girl. Fincher was inspired by music he heard while at an appointment with a chiropractor and tasked Reznor with creating the musical equivalent of an insincere facade. Reznor explained Fincher’s request in an interview: “David [Fincher] was at the chiropractor and heard this music that was inauthentically trying to make him feel OK, and that became a perfect metaphor for this film. […] The challenge was, simply, what is the musical equivalent of the same sort of façade of comfort and a feeling of insincerity that that music represented? [My primary aim was] to instill doubt [and] remind you that things aren’t always what they seem to be.”

Richard Butler of The Psychedelic Furs sang a cover version of the song “She,” which was used in the film’s teaser trailer. The soundtrack album was released on the Columbia label on September 30, 2014.

During Reznor and Ross’ keynote session at the 2014 “Billboard and Hollywood Reporter Film & TV Music Conference,” held on November 5, Reznor said that he is open to working with other filmmakers besides Fincher, the only director he had worked with as a composer up until that point: “I’m open to any possibility. […] Scoring for film kind of came up unexpectedly. It was always something I’d been interested in and it was really a great experience and I’ve learned a lot.” Reznor further explained that he cherishes his previous experiences with Fincher as “there’s a pursuit and dedication to uncompromised excellence”.

In 2018, Reznor and Ross scored Susanne Bier’s film Bird Box and Jonah Hill’s directorial debut Mid90s. Reznor and Ross will next score the 2020 animated Disney film Soul, and reunite with Fincher to score his upcoming Netflix drama film Mank.

Business activity

Dispute with John Malm

In 2004, Reznor’s former manager John Malm Jr. filed a suit against Reznor for over $2 million in deferred commissions. The suit alleged that Reznor “reneged on every single contract he and Malm ever entered into” and that Reznor refused to pay Malm money to which he was contractually entitled. Weeks later, Reznor filed a counter-suit in the U.S. District Court of New York, charging Malm with fraud and breach of fiduciary duties. Reznor’s suit arose from a five-year management contract signed in the early days of Nine Inch Nails, between Reznor and Malm’s management company J. Artist Management. This contract, according to the suit, was unlawful and immoral in that it secured Malm 20% of Reznor’s gross earnings, rather than his net earnings, as is the standard practice between artists and their management. The suit also alleged that the contract secured this percentage even if Malm was no longer representing Reznor, and for all Reznor’s album advances. The suit also described how Malm had misappropriated the ownership rights regarding Nine Inch Nails, including the trademark name “NIИ”. According to testimony by Malm, Reznor gave him half of the “NIИ” trademark “as a gift.”

Reznor stated that he began to fully understand his financial situation after tackling his addiction to drugs and alcohol. Reznor requested a financial statement from Malm in 2003, only to discover that he had only $400,000 in liquid a*sets. He told the court, “It was not pleasant discovering you have a tenth as much as you’ve been told you have.” Malm’s lawyers, however, claimed that Malm had worked for years “pro bono”, and that Reznor’s inability to release an album or tour and his uninhibited spending were the reasons for Reznor’s financial situation. After a three-week trial in 2005, jurors sided with Reznor, awarding him upwards of $2.95 million and returning to him complete control of his trademarks. After adjustment for inflation, Reznor’s award rose to nearly $5 million.

Beats Music

In January 2013, Reznor and TopSpin Media founder Ian Rogers were chosen to head Beats Electronics’ new music subscription service, Project Daisy, described by Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine as having “hardware, brand, distribution partnerships, and artist relations to differentiate Daisy from the competition”. There was some speculation as to what Reznor’s role would be within the company, but he was later named chief creative officer. He promised that he and the other members would strive to create a music subscription service that will be like “having your own guy when you go to the record store, who knows what you like but can also point you down some paths you wouldn’t have necessarily encountered”. The service was officially launched in the United States on January 21, 2014.

Reznor has continued on in a similar role under Beats’ new ownership at Apple, where he has been involved in the launch of Apple Music.

Criticism of the music industry

In May 2007, Reznor made a post on the official Nine Inch Nails website condemning Universal Music Group—the parent company of the band’s record label, Interscope Records—for their pricing and distribution plans for Nine Inch Nails’ 2007 album Year Zero. He labeled the company’s retail pricing of Year Zero in Australia as “ABSURD,” concluding that “as a reward for being a ‘true fan’ you get ripped off”. Reznor went on to say that as “the climate grows more and more desperate for record labels, their answer to their mostly self-inflicted wounds seems to be to screw the consumer over even more.” Reznor’s post, specifically his criticism of the recording industry at large, elicited considerable media attention. In September 2007, Reznor continued his attack on Universal Music Group at a concert in Australia, urging fans there to “steal” his music online instead of purchasing it legally. Reznor went on to encourage the crowd to “steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin’.”

While on tour in Prague in 2009, Reznor realized the importance of the marketing aspect of a major label when he saw a lot of promotion for Radiohead’s then-upcoming tour, but little promotion for his current Nine Inch Nails tour or any of its recently released albums. At a 2012 panel discussion with David Byrne and Josh Kun, he stated that the marketing from a major label outweighed the aspects of being independent that he liked, namely the ability to release albums whenever he wanted to avoid leaking and to take a larger cut of the profits from record sales. Reznor’s first album released through a major label after his return was How to Destroy Angels’ An Omen EP released in November 2012 through Columbia Records. On working with Columbia for the release of the EP, Reznor said that “so far it’s been pleasantly pleasant”.

In 2013, Reznor returned to Columbia Records for Hesitation Marks, the eighth Nine Inch Nails studio album. On the Columbia release of Hesitation Marks, Reznor has stated: “I’m trying to make the best thing I can make… and I also want as many people as possible to be aware that it’s out there.”

Musical style and influences

Prior to releasing Pretty Hate Machine, Reznor was primarily influenced by punk rock, specifically The Clash. He later said, “I f*cked around with some bad music; I was trying to sound like other bands. I thought The Clash were cool so I was trying to be cool, too. Important political statements, no one’s going to make fun of me for them. But the journal entries of a horny, sad guy who doesn’t fit in … the words I was writing in my journal to keep myself from going crazy were the real lyrics I needed.”

Reznor’s subsequent work was described by People magazine in 1995 as “self-loathing, sexual obsession, torture and suicide over a thick sludge of gnashing guitars and computer-synthesized beats”. The magazine also said that “[Reznor], like Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne before him, has built his name on theatrics and nihilism”. Nine Inch Nails concerts were often picketed by fundamentalist Christians. Reznor’s former high school band director considered him to be “very upbeat and friendly” in reality and theorized that “all that ‘dark avenging angel’ stuff is marketing”. Conversely, the owner of the recording studio where Reznor recorded the first Nine Inch Nails album said of Reznor’s “pain-driven” stage act, “It’s planned, but it is not contrived. He’s pulling that stuff out from inside somewhere. You cannot fake that delivery.” Pain and sorrow came to be regarded as such defining elements of Reznor’s music that a group of fans once responded with joy when told that his dog had died because “it’s good for his music when he is depressed” and that “it’s good to see [Reznor] back in hell, where he belongs”.

Reznor possesses a baritone vocal range. He mentioned that college radio introduced him to bands such as Bauhaus, Joy Division, and Throbbing Gristle, which were inspirational for him. He is a fan of David Bowie, and has cited Bowie’s 1977 album Low as one of his favorite albums; he stated that he played the album constantly during the recording of The Downward Spiral for inspiration. In 1995, Nine Inch Nails toured as a co-headlining act on the North American leg of David Bowie’s Outside Tour. Reznor also appeared in Bowie’s video for “I’m Afraid of Americans”, cast as Bowie’s stalker. Reznor also made several remixes for the single release of the same song, as well as a remix of “The Hearts Filthy Lesson”. Reznor also states in the 2010 documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage that the band Rush had played a major part in his childhood influences.  He also stated that he considered Rush to be “one of the best bands ever” and had gained a perspective on how keyboards could be introduced into hard rock after listening to their 1982 album Signals.

Reznor once said that “Freddie Mercury’s death meant more to [him] than John Lennon’s” and he covered Queen’s “Get Down Make Love”, which was co-produced by Ministry frontman Al Jourgensen and released on the single for “Sin”. He also expressed the significant influence that Coil had on his work, saying that Horse Rotorvator was “deeply influential”. Another large influence on the band’s sound is Gary Numan, which is evident as Reznor once said that “after hearing ‘Cars’ I knew I wanted to make music with synthesizers”. The 2005 single “Only” exemplifies the disco-style beats and synthesizers drawn from Numan’s persuasion. In many interviews with Musician, Spin, and Alternative Press, Reznor mentioned Devo, The Cars, The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Pere Ubu, Soft Cell,  Prince, Ministry, Test Dept, Cabaret Voltaire  and The Cure’s 1985 album, The Head on the Door, as important influences. According to Todd Rundgren, Reznor told him that he listened to Rundgren’s 1973 album, A Wizard, a True Star with “great regularity”. In a radio interview, Reznor stated the first song he ever wrote “Down in It” was a “total rip-off” of the Skinny Puppy song “Dig It”.

Reznor also cited Depeche Mode, in particular their 1986 album Black Celebration, as a major influence: “It was the summer of ’86. I’d dropped out of college and was living in Cleveland trying to find my way in the local music scene. I knew where I wanted to go with my life but I didn’t know how to get there. A group of friends and I drove down to Blossom Music Center amphitheatre to see the Black Celebration tour. DM was one of our favorite bands and the Black Celebration record took my love for them to a new level. I’ve thought about that night a lot over the years. It was a perfect summer night and I was in exactly the right place I was supposed to be. The music, the energy, the audience, the connection… it was spiritual and truly magic. I left that show grateful, humbled, energized, focused, and in awe of how powerful and transformative music can be… and I started writing what would eventually become Pretty Hate Machine. Many times, particularly when we’re playing an amphitheatre, I’ll think of that show while I’m onstage and hope someone in the audience is in the midst of a perfect summer night feeling how DM made me feel so many years ago.”

Legacy

Reznor’s work as Nine Inch Nails has influenced many newer artists, which according to Reznor range from “generic imitations” dating from the band’s initial success to younger bands echoing his style in a “truer, less imitative way”. Following the release of The Downward Spiral, mainstream artists began to take notice of Nine Inch Nails’ influence: David Bowie compared NIN’s impact to that of The Velvet Underground. In 1997, Reznor appeared in Time magazine’s list of the year’s most influential people, and Spin magazine described him as “the most vital artist in music”. Bob Ezrin, producer for Pink Floyd, Kiss, Alice Cooper, and Peter Gabriel, described Reznor in 2007 as a “true visionary” and advised aspiring artists to take note of his no-compromise attitude. During an appearance at the Kerrang! Awards in London that year, Reznor accepted the Kerrang! Icon, honoring Nine Inch Nails’ long-standing influence on rock music.

Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose, an early supporter of Nine Inch Nails, was heavily influenced by Reznor in the writing and composition of the band’s Chinese Democracy album. Steven Wilson of progressive rock band Porcupine Tree has stated that he is influenced by and much admires Reznor’s production work, in particular The Fragile, and in 2008 said that “[Reznor] is the only one [he’d] let near [his] music”. Writing for Revolver magazine on the 25th anniversary of Broken, musician Greg Puciato stated that one of the few vivid musical memories of his teenage years was listening to the EP at age 12, front-to-back, in the first digipak he had seen. Later, after discovering the story behind its release, it became a giant influence on him, particularly “when it comes to [his] own artistic path or output”. Timbaland has cited Reznor as his favorite studio producer.

Awards

In 2011, Reznor and Ross won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score and the Academy Award for Best Original Score for their work on The Social Network.

For their work on Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, Reznor and Ross were nominated for the 2012 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and won the 2013 Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media. Neither man was present to accept the award; Reznor, who has a contentious history with the Grammys, simply tweeted, “Why thanks, y’all.”

Ross and Reznor’s Gone Girl score was nominated for Best Original Score in a Feature Film at the 5th Hollywood Music in Media Awards (HMMA)—the award was eventually won by Antonio Sanchez for Birdman on November 4, 2014.  In a November 2014 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Reznor revealed that he values Oscar trophies above Grammy awards: “When the Oscar [nomination] came up, it felt very different. I can’t tell if that’s because I’m older or it felt like it’s coming from a more sincere pedigree.”

Reznor and Ross won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Limited Series and were nominated for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for their work on the series Watchmen.

Personal life

During the five years following the release of The Downward Spiral in 1994, Reznor suffered from depression, worsened by the death of the grandmother who had raised him. He began abusing alcohol, cocaine, and other drugs. He successfully completed rehab in 2001, and reflected on his self-destructive past in a 2005 Kerrang! interview: “There was a persona that had run its course. I needed to get my priorities straight, my head screwed on. Instead of always working, I took a couple of years off, just to figure out who I was and working out if I wanted to keep doing this or not. I had become a terrible addict; I needed to get my shit together, figure out what had happened.” In contrast to his former suicidal tendencies, he admitted in another interview that he is “pretty happy”.

Reznor married Filipino-American singer Mariqueen Maandig in October 2009. They live in Los Angeles and have five children: sons Lazarus Echo Reznor (born October 10, 2010) and Balthazar Venn Reznor (born December 31, 2011), a third son whose name has not been revealed (born November 1, 2015), daughter Nova Lux Reznor (born December 2016), and a fifth child whose name and gender have not been revealed (born January 2020).

Richard George Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside CH FRIBA FCSD FREng RA (born 23 July 1933) is an Italian-British architect noted for his modernist and functionalist designs in high-tech architecture.

Rogers is perhaps best known for his work on the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Lloyd’s building and Millennium Dome both in London, the Senedd in Cardiff, and the European Court of Human Rights building in Strasbourg. He is a winner of the RIBA Gold Medal, the Thomas Jefferson Medal, the RIBA Stirling Prize, the Minerva Medal and Pritzker Prize. He is a Senior Partner at Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, previously known as the Richard Rogers Partnership.

Early life and career

Richard Rogers was born in Florence (Tuscany) in 1933 into an Anglo-Italian family. His father, William Nino Rogers (1906–1993), was the cousin of Italian architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers. His ancestors moved from Sunderland to Venice in about 1800, later settling in Trieste, Milan and Florence. In 1939 William Nino Rogers decided to come back to England. Upon moving to England, Richard Rogers went to St Johns School, Leatherhead. Rogers did not excel academically, which made him believe that he was “stupid because he could not read or memorize his school work” and as a consequence he stated that he became “very depressed”.[3] He wasn’t able to read until the age of 11, and it was not until after he had his first child that he realised that he was dyslexic. After leaving St Johns School, he undertook a foundation course at Epsom School of Art (now University for the Creative Arts) before going into National Service between 1951 and 1953. He then attended the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, where he gained the Architectural Association’s Diploma (AA Dipl) from 1954 until 1959, subsequently graduating with a master’s degree (M Arch) from the Yale School of Architecture in 1962 on a Fulbright Scholarship. While studying at Yale, Rogers met fellow architecture student Norman Foster and planning student Su Brumwell.

After leaving Yale he joined Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in New York. On returning to England in 1963, he, Norman Foster and Brumwell set up architectural practice as Team 4 with Wendy Cheeseman (Brumwell later married Rogers, Cheeseman married Foster). Rogers and Foster earned a reputation for what was later termed by the media high-tech architecture.

By 1967, Team 4 had split up, but Rogers continued to collaborate with Su Rogers, along with John Young and Laurie Abbott. In early 1968 he was commissioned to design a house and studio for Humphrey Spender near Maldon, Essex, a glass cube framed with I-beams. He continued to develop his ideas of prefabrication and structural simplicity to design a Wimbledon house for his parents. This was based on ideas from his conceptual Zip-Up House, such as the use of standardized components based on refrigerator panels to make energy-efficient buildings.

Rogers subsequently joined forces with Italian architect Renzo Piano, a partnership that was to prove fruitful. His career leapt forward when he, Piano and Gianfranco Franchini won the design competition for the Pompidou Centre in July 1971, alongside a team from Ove Arup that included Irish engineer Peter Rice.

This building established Rogers’s trademark of exposing most of the building’s services (water, heating and ventilation ducts, and stairs) on the exterior, leaving the internal spaces uncluttered and open for visitors to the centre’s art exhibitions. This style, dubbed “Bowellism” by some critics, was not universally popular at the time the centre opened in 1977, but today the Pompidou Centre is a widely admired Parisian landmark. Rogers revisited this inside-out style with his design for London’s Lloyd’s building, completed in 1986 – another controversial design which has since become a famous and distinctive landmark in its own right.

Later career

After working with Piano, Rogers established the Richard Rogers Partnership along with Marco Goldschmied, Mike Davies and John Young in 1977. This became Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners in 2007. The firm maintains offices in London, Shanghai and Sydney.

Rogers has devoted much of his later career to wider issues surrounding architecture, urbanism, sustainability and the ways in which cities are used. One early illustration of his thinking was an exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1986, entitled “London As It Could Be”, which also featured the work of James Stirling and Rogers’ former partner Norman Foster. This exhibition made public a series of proposals for transforming a large area of central London, subsequently dismissed as impractical by the city’s authorities.

In 1995, he became the first architect to deliver the BBC’s annual Reith Lectures. This series of five talks, titled Sustainable City, were later adapted into the book Cities for a Small Planet (Faber and Faber: London 1997, ISBN 0-571-17993-2). The BBC made these lectures available to the public for download in July 2011.

In 1998, he set up the Urban Task Force at the invitation of the British government, to help identify causes of urban decline and establish a vision of safety, vitality and beauty for Britain’s cities. This work resulted in a white paper, Towards an Urban Renaissance, outlining more than 100 recommendations for future city designers. Rogers also served for several years as chair of the Greater London Authority panel for Architecture and Urbanism. He has been chair of the board of Trustees of The Architecture Foundation. From 2001 to 2008 he was chief advisor on architecture and urbanism to Mayor of London Ken Livingstone; he was subsequently asked to continue his role as an advisor by new mayor Boris Johnson in 2008. He stood down from the post in October 2009. Rogers has also served as an advisor to two mayors of Barcelona on urban strategies.

Amidst this extra-curricular activity, Rogers has continued to create controversial and iconic works. Perhaps the most famous of these, the Millennium Dome, was designed by the Rogers practice in conjunction with engineering firm Buro Happold and completed in 1999. It was the subject of fierce political and public debate over the cost and contents of the exhibition it contained; the building itself cost £43 million.

In May 2006, Rogers’ practice was chosen as the architect of Tower 3 of the new World Trade Center in New York City, replacing the old World Trade Center which was destroyed in the September 11 attacks.

Some of Rogers’s recent plans have failed to get off the ground. The practice was appointed to design the replacement to the Central Library in the Eastside of Birmingham; however, his plan was shelved for financial reasons. City Park Gate, the area adjacent to the land the library would have stood on, is now being designed by Ken Shuttleworth’s Make Architects.

John Winston Ono Lennon[nb 1] MBE (born John Winston Lennon, 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter and peace activist[2] who gained worldwide fame as the founder, co-lead vocalist, and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. His songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney remains the most successful in musical history.[3] In 1969, he started the Plastic Ono Band with his second wife, Yoko Ono. After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, Lennon continued a career as a solo artist and as Ono’s collaborator.

Born in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager. In 1956, he formed his first band, the Quarrymen, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. He was initially the group’s de facto leader, a role gradually ceded to McCartney. Lennon was characterised for the rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, writing, drawings, on film and in interviews. In the mid-1960s, he had two books published: In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works, both collections of nonsense writings and line drawings. Starting with 1967’s “All You Need Is Love”, his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement and the larger counterculture.

From 1968 to 1972, Lennon produced more than a dozen records with Ono, including a trilogy of avant-garde albums, his first solo LP John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and the international top 10 singles “Give Peace a Chance”, “Instant Karma!”, “Imagine” and “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”. In 1969, he held the two week-long anti-war demonstration Bed-Ins for Peace. After moving to New York City in 1971, his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a three-year attempt by the Nixon administration to deport him. In 1975, Lennon disengaged from the music business to raise his infant son Sean and, in 1980, returned with the Ono collaboration Double Fantasy. He was shot and killed in the archway of his Manhattan apartment building by a Beatles fan, Mark David Chapman, three weeks after the album’s release.

As a performer, writer or co-writer, Lennon had 25 number one singles in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Double Fantasy, his best-selling album, won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. In 1982, Lennon was honoured with the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2002, Lennon was voted eighth in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer and thirty-eighth greatest artist of all time. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (in 1997) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (twice, as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 1994).

Biography

1940–1957: Early years

Lennon was born at Liverpool Maternity Hospital to Julia (née Stanley) (1914–1958) and Alfred Lennon (1912–1976). Alfred was a merchant seaman of Irish descent who was away at the time of his son’s birth.[4] His parents named him John Winston Lennon after his paternal grandfather, John “Jack” Lennon, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill.[5] His father was often away from home but sent regular pay cheques to 9 Newcastle Road, Liverpool, where Lennon lived with his mother;[6] the cheques stopped when he went absent without leave in February 1944.[7][8] When he eventually came home six months later, he offered to look after the family, but Julia, by then pregnant with another man’s child, rejected the idea.[9] After her sister Mimi complained to Liverpool’s Social Services twice, Julia gave her custody of Lennon. In July 1946, Lennon’s father visited her and took his son to Blackpool, secretly intending to emigrate to New Zealand with him.[10] Julia followed them – with her partner at the time, Bobby Dykins – and after a heated argument, his father forced the five-year-old to choose between them. In one account of this incident, Lennon twice chose his father, but as his mother walked away, he began to cry and followed her.[11] According to author Mark Lewisohn, however, Lennon’s parents agreed that Julia should take him and give him a home. A witness who was there that day, Billy Hall, has said that the dramatic portrayal of a young John Lennon being forced to make a decision between his parents is inaccurate.[12] Lennon had no further contact with Alf for close to 20 years.[13]

Throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence, Lennon lived at Mendips, 251 Menlove Avenue, Woolton, with Mimi and her husband George Toogood Smith, who had no children of their own.[14] His aunt purchased volumes of short stories for him, and his uncle, a dairyman at his family’s farm, bought him a mouth organ and engaged him in solving crossword puzzles.[15] Julia visited Mendips on a regular basis, and when John was 11 years old, he often visited her at 1 Blomfield Road, Liverpool, where she played him Elvis Presley records, taught him the banjo, and showed him how to play “Ain’t That a Shame” by Fats Domino.[16] In September 1980, Lennon commented about his family and his rebellious nature:

A part of me would like to be accepted by all facets of society and not be this loudmouthed lunatic poet/musician. But I cannot be what I am not … I was the one who all the other boys’ parents – including Paul’s father – would say, “Keep away from him” … The parents instinctively recognised I was a troublemaker, meaning I did not conform and I would influence their children, which I did. I did my best to disrupt every friend’s home … Partly out of envy that I didn’t have this so-called home … but I did … There were five women that were my family. Five strong, intelligent, beautiful women, five sisters. One happened to be my mother. [She] just couldn’t deal with life. She was the youngest and she had a husband who ran away to sea and the war was on and she couldn’t cope with me, and I ended up living with her elder sister. Now those women were fantastic … And that was my first feminist education … I would infiltrate the other boys’ minds. I could say, “Parents are not gods because I don’t live with mine and, therefore, I know.”

He regularly visited his cousin, Stanley Parkes, who lived in Fleetwood and took him on trips to local cinemas.[18] During the school holidays Parkes often visited Lennon with Leila Harvey, another cousin, and the threesome often travelled to Blackpool two or three times a week to watch shows. They would visit the Blackpool Tower Circus and see artists such as Dickie Valentine, Arthur Askey, Max Bygraves and Joe Loss, with Parkes recalling that Lennon particularly liked George Formby.[19] After Parkes’s family moved to Scotland, the three cousins often spent their school holidays together there. Parkes recalled, “John, cousin Leila and I were very close. From Edinburgh we would drive up to the family croft at Durness, which was from about the time John was nine years old until he was about 16.”[20] Lennon’s uncle George died of a liver haemorrhage on 5 June 1955, aged 52.[21]

Lennon was raised as an Anglican and attended Dovedale Primary School.[22] After passing his eleven-plus exam, he attended Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool from September 1952 to 1957, and was described by Harvey at the time as a “happy-go-lucky, good-humoured, easy going, lively lad”.[23] He often drew comical cartoons that appeared in his own, self-made school magazine called the Daily Howl.[24][nb 2]

In 1956, Julia bought John his first guitar. The instrument was an inexpensive Gallotone Champion acoustic for which she lent her son five pounds and ten shillings on the condition that the guitar be delivered to her own house and not Mimi’s, knowing well that her sister was not supportive of her son’s musical aspirations.[26] Mimi was sceptical of his claim that he would be famous one day, and she hoped that he would grow bored with music, often telling him, “The guitar’s all very well, John, but you’ll never make a living out of it.”[27]

On 15 July 1958, Julia Lennon was struck and killed by a car while she was walking home after visiting the Smiths’ house.[28] His mother’s death traumatised the teenage Lennon, who, for the next two years, drank heavily and frequently got into fights, consumed by a “blind rage”.[29] Julia’s memory would later serve as a major creative inspiration for Lennon, inspiring songs such as the 1968 Beatles song “Julia”.[30]

Lennon’s senior school years were marked by a shift in his behaviour. Teachers at Quarry Bank High School described him thus: “He has too many wrong ambitions and his energy is often misplaced”, and “His work always lacks effort. He is content to “drift” instead of using his abilities.”[31] Lennon’s misbehaviour created a rift in his relationship with his aunt.

Lennon failed his O-level examinations, and was accepted into the Liverpool College of Art after his aunt and headmaster intervened.[32] At the college he began to wear Teddy Boy clothes and was threatened with expulsion for his behaviour.[33] In the description of Cynthia Powell, Lennon’s fellow student and subsequently his wife, he was “thrown out of the college before his final year”.

1956–1970: The Quarrymen to the Beatles

1956–1966: Formation, fame and touring

At the age of 15, Lennon formed a skiffle group, the Quarrymen. Named after Quarry Bank High School, the group was established by Lennon in September 1956.[35] By the summer of 1957, the Quarrymen played a “spirited set of songs” made up of half-skiffle and half-rock and roll.[36] Lennon first met Paul McCartney at the Quarrymen’s second performance, which was held in Woolton on 6 July at the St Peter’s Church garden fête. Lennon then asked McCartney to join the band.[37]

McCartney said that Aunt Mimi “was very aware that John’s friends were lower class”, and would often patronise him when he arrived to visit Lennon.[38] According to McCartney’s brother Mike, their father similarly disapproved of Lennon, declaring that Lennon would get his son “into trouble”.[39] McCartney’s father nevertheless allowed the fledgling band to rehearse in the family’s front room at 20 Forthlin Road.[40][41] During this time Lennon wrote his first song, “Hello Little Girl”, which became a UK top 10 hit for the Fourmost in 1963.[42]

McCartney recommended that his friend George Harrison become the lead guitarist.[43] Lennon thought that Harrison, then 14 years old, was too young. McCartney engineered an audition on the upper deck of a Liverpool bus, where Harrison played “Raunchy” for Lennon and was asked to join.[44] Stuart Sutcliffe, Lennon’s friend from art school, later joined as bassist.[45] Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Sutcliffe became “The Beatles” in early 1960. In August that year, the Beatles were engaged for a 48-night residency in Hamburg, in West Germany, and were desperately in need of a drummer. They asked Pete Best to join them.[46] Lennon’s aunt, horrified when he told her about the trip, pleaded with Lennon to continue his art studies instead.[47] After the first Hamburg residency, the band accepted another in April 1961, and a third in April 1962. As with the other band members, Lennon was introduced to Preludin while in Hamburg,[48] and regularly took the drug as a stimulant during their long, overnight performances.

Brian Epstein managed the Beatles from 1962 until his death in 1967. He had no previous experience managing artists, but he had a strong influence on the group’s dress code and attitude on stage.[50] Lennon initially resisted his attempts to encourage the band to present a professional appearance, but eventually complied, saying “I’ll wear a bloody balloon if somebody’s going to pay me.”[51] McCartney took over on bass after Sutcliffe decided to stay in Hamburg, and Best was replaced with drummer Ringo Starr; this completed the four-piece line-up that would remain until the group’s break-up in 1970. The band’s first single, “Love Me Do”, was released in October 1962 and reached No. 17 on the British charts. They recorded their debut album, Please Please Me, in under 10 hours on 11 February 1963,[52] a day when Lennon was suffering the effects of a cold,[53] which is evident in the vocal on the last song to be recorded that day, “Twist and Shout”.[54] The Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership yielded eight of its fourteen tracks. With a few exceptions, one being the album title itself, Lennon had yet to bring his love of wordplay to bear on his song lyrics, saying: “We were just writing songs … pop songs with no more thought of them than that – to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant”.[52] In a 1987 interview, McCartney said that the other Beatles idolised Lennon: “He was like our own little Elvis … We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest.”

The Beatles achieved mainstream success in the UK early in 1963. Lennon was on tour when his first son, Julian, was born in April. During their Royal Variety Show performance, which was attended by the Queen Mother and other British royalty, Lennon poked fun at the audience: “For our next song, I’d like to ask for your help. For the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands … and the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery.”[56] After a year of Beatlemania in the UK, the group’s historic February 1964 US debut appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show marked their breakthrough to international stardom. A two-year period of constant touring, filmmaking, and songwriting followed, during which Lennon wrote two books, In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works.[57] The Beatles received recognition from the British establishment when they were appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1965 Queen’s Birthday Honours.[58]

Lennon grew concerned that fans who attended Beatles concerts were unable to hear the music above the screaming of fans, and that the band’s musicianship was beginning to suffer as a result.[59] Lennon’s “Help!” expressed his own feelings in 1965: “I meant it … It was me singing ‘help’”.[60] He had put on weight (he would later refer to this as his “Fat Elvis” period),[61] and felt he was subconsciously seeking change.[62] In March that year he and Harrison were unknowingly introduced to LSD when a dentist, hosting a dinner party attended by the two musicians and their wives, spiked the guests’ coffee with the drug.[63] When they wanted to leave, their host revealed what they had taken, and strongly advised them not to leave the house because of the likely effects. Later, in a lift at a nightclub, they all believed it was on fire; Lennon recalled: “We were all screaming … hot and hysterical.”[64] In March 1966, during an interview with Evening Standard reporter Maureen Cleave, Lennon remarked, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink … We’re more popular than Jesus now – I don’t know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity.”[65] The comment went virtually unnoticed in England but caused great offence in the US when quoted by a magazine there five months later. The furore that followed, which included the burning of Beatles records, Ku Klux Klan activity and threats against Lennon, contributed to the band’s decision to stop touring.

1966–1970: Studio years, break-up and solo work

After the band’s final concert on 29 August 1966, Lennon filmed the anti-war black comedy How I Won the War – his only appearance in a non-Beatles feature film – before rejoining his bandmates for an extended period of recording, beginning in November.[67] Lennon had increased his use of LSD[68] and, according to author Ian MacDonald, his continuous use of the drug in 1967 brought him “close to erasing his identity”.[69] The year 1967 saw the release of “Strawberry Fields Forever”, hailed by Time magazine for its “astonishing inventiveness”,[70] and the group’s landmark album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which revealed lyrics by Lennon that contrasted strongly with the simple love songs of the group’s early years.[71] In late June, the Beatles performed Lennon’s “All You Need Is Love” as Britain’s contribution to the Our World satellite broadcast, before an international audience estimated at up to 400 million.[72] Intentionally simplistic in its message,[73] the song formalised his pacifist stance and provided an anthem for the Summer of Love.

After the Beatles were introduced to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the group attended an August weekend of personal instruction at his Transcendental Meditation seminar in Bangor, Wales.[75] During the seminar, they were informed of Epstein’s death. “I knew we were in trouble then”, Lennon said later. “I didn’t have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music. I was scared – I thought, ‘We’ve f*cking had it now.’”[76] McCartney organised the group’s first post-Epstein project,[77] the self-written, -produced and -directed television film Magical Mystery Tour, which was released in December that year. While the film itself proved to be their first critical flop, its soundtrack release, featuring Lennon’s Lewis Carroll-inspired “I Am the Walrus”, was a success.[78][79]

Led by Harrison and Lennon’s interest, the Beatles travelled to the Maharishi’s ashram in India in February 1968 for further guidance.[80] While there, they composed most of the songs for their double album The Beatles,[81] but the band members’ mixed experience with Transcendental Meditation signalled a sharp divergence in the group’s camaraderie.[82] On their return to London, they became increasingly involved in business activities with the formation of Apple Corps, a multimedia corporation composed of Apple Records and several other subsidiary companies. Lennon described the venture as an attempt to achieve “artistic freedom within a business structure”.[83] Released amid a period of civic unrest and protests, the band’s debut single for the Apple label included Lennon’s B-side “Revolution”, in which he called for a “plan” rather than committing to Maoist revolution. The song’s pacifist message led to ridicule from political radicals in the New Left press.[84] Adding to the tensions at the Beatles’ recording sessions that year, Lennon insisted on having his new girlfriend, the Japanese artist Yoko Ono, beside him, thereby contravening the band’s policy regarding wives and girlfriends in the studio. He was especially pleased with his songwriting contributions to the double album and identified it as a superior work to Sgt. Pepper.[85] At the end of 1968, Lennon participated in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, a television special that was not broadcast. Lennon performed with the Dirty Mac, a supergroup composed of Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Mitch Mitchell. The group also backed a vocal performance by Ono. A film version was released in 1996.

By late 1968, Lennon’s increased drug use and growing preoccupation with Ono, combined with the Beatles’ inability to agree on how the company should be run, left Apple in need of professional management. Lennon asked Lord Beeching to take on the role, but he declined, advising Lennon to go back to making records. Lennon was approached by Allen Klein, who had managed the Rolling Stones and other bands during the British Invasion. In early 1969, Klein was appointed as Apple’s chief executive by Lennon, Harrison and Starr,[87] but McCartney never signed the management contract.[88] Lennon and Ono were married on 20 March 1969, and soon released a series of 14 lithographs called “Bag One” depicting scenes from their honeymoon,[89] eight of which were deemed indecent and most of which were banned and confiscated.[90] Lennon’s creative focus continued to move beyond the Beatles, and between 1968 and 1969 he and Ono recorded three albums of experimental music together: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins[91] (known more for its cover than for its music), Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions and Wedding Album. In 1969, they formed the Plastic Ono Band, releasing Live Peace in Toronto 1969. Between 1969 and 1970, Lennon released the singles “Give Peace a Chance”, which was widely adopted as an anti-Vietnam War anthem,[92] “Cold Turkey”, which documented his withdrawal symptoms after he became addicted to heroin,[93] and “Instant Karma!”.

In protest at Britain’s involvement in “the Nigeria-Biafra thing”[95] (namely, the Nigerian Civil War),[96] its support of America in the Vietnam War and (perhaps jokingly) against “Cold Turkey” slipping down the charts,[97] Lennon returned his MBE medal to the Queen. This gesture had no effect on his MBE status, which could not be renounced.[98] The medal, together with Lennon’s letter, is held at the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood.[99]

Lennon left the Beatles in September 1969,[100] but agreed not to inform the media while the group renegotiated their recording contract. He was outraged that McCartney publicised his own departure on releasing his debut solo album in April 1970. Lennon’s reaction was, “Jesus Christ! He gets all the credit for it!”[101] He later wrote, “I started the band. I disbanded it. It’s as simple as that.”[102] In a December 1970 interview with Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine, he revealed his bitterness towards McCartney, saying, “I was a fool not to do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a record.”[103] Lennon also spoke of the hostility he perceived the other members had towards Ono, and of how he, Harrison and Starr “got fed up with being sidemen for Paul … After Brian Epstein died we collapsed. Paul took over and supposedly led us. But what is leading us when we went round in circles?”

1970–1980: Solo career

1970–1972: Initial solo success and activism

In 1970, Lennon and Ono went through primal therapy with Arthur Janov in Los Angeles, California. Designed to release emotional pain from early childhood, the therapy entailed two half-days a week with Janov for four months; he had wanted to treat the couple for longer, but they felt no need to continue and returned to London.[106] Lennon’s debut solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970), was received with praise by many music critics, but its highly personal lyrics and stark sound limited its commercial performance.[107] Critic Greil Marcus remarked, “John’s singing in the last verse of ‘God’ may be the finest in all of rock.”[108] The album featured the song “Mother”, in which Lennon confronted his feelings of childhood rejection,[109] and the Dylanesque “Working Class Hero”, a bitter attack against the bourgeois social system which, due to the lyric “you’re still f*cking peasants”, fell foul of broadcasters.[110][111] In January 1971, Tariq Ali expressed his revolutionary political views when he interviewed Lennon, who immediately responded by writing “Power to the People”. In his lyrics to the song, Lennon reversed the non-confrontational approach he had espoused in “Revolution”, although he later disowned “Power to the People”, saying that it was borne out of guilt and a desire for approval from radicals such as Ali.[112] Lennon became involved with Ali in a protest against the prosecution of Oz magazine for alleged obscenity. Lennon denounced the proceedings as “disgusting fascism”, and he and Ono (as Elastic Oz Band) released the single “God Save Us/Do the Oz” and joined marches in support of the magazine.

Eager for a major commercial success, Lennon adopted a more accessible sound for his next album, Imagine (1971).[117] Rolling Stone reported that “it contains a substantial portion of good music” but warned of the possibility that “his posturings will soon seem not merely dull but irrelevant”.[118] The album’s title track later became an anthem for anti-war movements,[119] while the song “How Do You Sleep?” was a musical attack on McCartney in response to lyrics on Ram that Lennon felt, and McCartney later confirmed,[120] were directed at him and Ono.[121][nb 3] In “Jealous Guy”, Lennon addressed his demeaning treatment of women, acknowledging that his past behaviour was the result of long-held insecurity.[123] In gratitude for his guitar contributions to Imagine, Lennon initially agreed to perform at Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh benefit shows in New York.[124] Harrison refused to allow Ono to participate at the concerts, however, which resulted in the couple having a heated argument and Lennon pulling out of the event.

Lennon and Ono moved to New York in August 1971 and immediately embraced US radical left politics. The couple released their “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” single in December.[126] During the new year, the Nixon administration took what it called a “strategic counter-measure” against Lennon’s anti-war and anti-Nixon propaganda. The administration embarked on what would be a four-year attempt to deport him.[127][128] Lennon was embroiled in a continuing legal battle with the immigration authorities, and he was denied permanent residency in the US; the issue would not be resolved until 1976.[129]

Some Time in New York City was recorded as a collaboration with Ono and was released in 1972 with backing from the New York band Elephant’s Memory. A double LP, it contained songs about women’s rights, race relations, Britain’s role in Northern Ireland and Lennon’s difficulties in obtaining a green card.[130] The album was a commercial failure and was maligned by critics, who found its political sloganeering heavy-handed and relentless.[131] The NME’s review took the form of an open letter in which Tony Tyler derided Lennon as a “pathetic, ageing revolutionary”.[132] In the US, “Woman Is the Nigger of the World” was released as a single from the album and was televised on 11 May, on The Dick Cavett Show. Many radio stations refused to broadcast the song because of the word “nigger”.[133] Lennon and Ono gave two benefit concerts with Elephant’s Memory and guests in New York in aid of patients at the Willowbrook State School mental facility.[134] Staged at Madison Square Garden on 30 August 1972, they were his last full-length concert appearances.[135] After George McGovern lost the 1972 presidential election to Richard Nixon, Lennon and Ono attended a post-election wake held in the New York home of activist Jerry Rubin.[127] Lennon was depressed and got intoxicated; he left Ono embarrassed after he had sex with a female guest. Ono’s song “Death of Samantha” was inspired by the incident.[

1973–1975: “Lost weekend”

While Lennon was recording Mind Games in 1973, he and Ono decided to separate. The ensuing 18-month period apart, which he later called his “lost weekend”,[137] was spent in Los Angeles and New York City in the company of May Pang. Mind Games, credited to the “Plastic U.F.Ono Band”, was released in November 1973. Lennon also contributed “I’m the Greatest” to Starr’s album Ringo (1973), released the same month. With Harrison joining Starr and Lennon at the recording session for the song, it marked the only occasion when three former Beatles recorded together between the band’s break-up and Lennon’s death.[138][nb 4]

In early 1974, Lennon was drinking heavily and his alcohol-fuelled antics with Harry Nilsson made headlines. In March, two widely publicised incidents occurred at The Troubadour club. In the first incident, Lennon stuck an unused menstrual pad on his forehead and scuffled with a waitress. The second incident occurred two weeks later, when Lennon and Nilsson were ejected from the same club after heckling the Smothers Brothers.[140] Lennon decided to produce Nilsson’s album Pussy Cats, and Pang rented a Los Angeles beach house for all the musicians.[141] After a month of further debauchery, the recording sessions were in chaos, and Lennon returned to New York with Pang to finish work on the album. In April, Lennon had produced the Mick Jagger song “Too Many Cooks (Spoil the Soup)” which was, for contractual reasons, to remain unreleased for more than 30 years. Pang supplied the recording for its eventual inclusion on The Very Best of Mick Jagger (2007).[142]

Lennon had settled back in New York when he recorded the album Walls and Bridges. Released in October 1974, it included “Whatever Gets You thru the Night”, which featured Elton John on backing vocals and piano, and became Lennon’s only single as a solo artist to top the US Billboard Hot 100 chart during his lifetime.[143][nb 5] A second single from the album, “#9 Dream”, followed before the end of the year. Starr’s Goodnight Vienna (1974) again saw a*sistance from Lennon, who wrote the title track and played piano.[145] On 28 November, Lennon made a surprise guest appearance at Elton John’s Thanksgiving concert at Madison Square Garden, in fulfilment of his promise to join the singer in a live show if “Whatever Gets You thru the Night”, a song whose commercial potential Lennon had doubted, reached number one. Lennon performed the song along with “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “I Saw Her Standing There”, which he introduced as “a song by an old estranged fiancé of mine called Paul”.[146]

Lennon co-wrote “Fame”, David Bowie’s first US number one, and provided guitar and backing vocals for the January 1975 recording.[147] In the same month, Elton John topped the charts with his cover of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, featuring Lennon on guitar and back-up vocals; Lennon is credited on the single under the moniker of “Dr. Winston O’Boogie”. He and Ono were reunited shortly afterwards. Lennon released Rock ‘n’ Roll (1975), an album of cover songs, in February. “Stand by Me”, taken from the album and a US and UK hit, became his last single for five years.[148] He made what would be his final stage appearance in the ATV special A Salute to Lew Grade, recorded on 18 April and televised in June.[149] Playing acoustic guitar and backed by an eight-piece band, Lennon performed two songs from Rock ‘n’ Roll (“Stand by Me”, which was not broadcast, and “Slippin’ and Slidin’”) followed by “Imagine”.[149] The band, known as Etc., wore masks behind their heads, a dig by Lennon, who thought Grade was two-faced.

1975–1980: Hiatus and return

Sean was Lennon’s only child with Ono. Sean was born on 9 October 1975 (Lennon’s thirty-fifth birthday), and John took on the role of househusband. Lennon began what would be a five-year hiatus from the music industry, during which time, he later said, he “baked bread” and “looked after the baby”.[151] He devoted himself to Sean, rising at 6 am daily to plan and prepare his meals and to spend time with him.[152] He wrote “Cookin’ (In the Kitchen of Love)” for Starr’s Ringo’s Rotogravure (1976), performing on the track in June in what would be his last recording session until 1980.[153] He formally announced his break from music in Tokyo in 1977, saying, “we have basically decided, without any great decision, to be with our baby as much as we can until we feel we can take time off to indulge ourselves in creating things outside of the family.”[154] During his career break he created several series of drawings, and drafted a book containing a mix of autobiographical material and what he termed “mad stuff”,[155] all of which would be published posthumously.

Lennon emerged from his five-year interruption in music recording in October 1980, when he released the single “(Just Like) Starting Over”. The following month saw the release of Double Fantasy, which contained songs written during the summer of 1980, spent in Bermuda. Lennon sailed a 43-foot sailing boat with his younger son in June 1980 journey to the British colony, where they briefly lived at Knapton Hill before local businessman Rolf Oskar Luthi vacated his Undercliff, his home at Fairylands, to enable the Lennons to take up temporary residence.[156][157][158][159]

The music reflected Lennon’s fulfilment in his new-found stable family life.[160] Sufficient additional material was recorded for a planned follow-up album Milk and Honey, which was released posthumously, in 1984.[161] Double Fantasy was jointly released by Lennon and Ono very shortly before his death; the album was not well received and drew comments such as Melody Maker’s “indulgent sterility … a godawful yawn”.

8 December 1980: Murder

At approximately 5:00 p.m. on 8 December 1980, Lennon autographed a copy of Double Fantasy for fan Mark David Chapman before leaving The Dakota with Ono for a recording session at the Record Plant.[163] After the session, Lennon and Ono returned to their Manhattan apartment in a limousine at around 10:50 p.m. EST. They exited the vehicle and walked through the archway of the building when Chapman shot Lennon twice in the back and twice in the shoulder[164] at close range. Lennon was rushed in a police cruiser to the emergency room of Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:00 p.m. (EST).

Ono issued a statement the next day, saying “There is no funeral for John”, ending it with the words, “John loved and prayed for the human race. Please do the same for him.”[166] His remains were cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Ono scattered his ashes in New York’s Central Park, where the Strawberry Fields memorial was later created.[167] Chapman avoided going to trial when he ignored his attorney’s advice and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20-years-to-life.[168][nb 6]

In the weeks following the murder, “(Just Like) Starting Over” and Double Fantasy topped the charts in the UK and the US.[170] In a further example of the public outpouring of grief, “Imagine” hit number one in the UK in January 1981 and “Happy Xmas” peaked at number two.[171] Later that year, Roxy Music’s cover version of “Jealous Guy”, recorded as a tribute to Lennon, was also a UK number-one.

Personal relationships

Cynthia Lennon

Lennon met Cynthia Powell (1939–2015) in 1957, when they were fellow students at the Liverpool College of Art.[172] Although Powell was intimidated by Lennon’s attitude and appearance, she heard that he was obsessed with the French actress Brigitte Bardot, so she dyed her hair blonde. Lennon asked her out, but when she said that she was engaged, he shouted, “I didn’t ask you to f*ckin’ marry me, did I?”[173] She often accompanied him to Quarrymen gigs and travelled to Hamburg with McCartney’s girlfriend to visit him.[174] Lennon was jealous by nature and eventually grew possessive, often terrifying Powell with his anger and physical violence.[175] Lennon later said that until he met Ono, he had never questioned his chauvinistic attitude towards women. He said that the Beatles song “Getting Better” told his own story, “I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically – any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace.”[176]

Recalling his July 1962 reaction when he learned that Cynthia was pregnant, Lennon said, “There’s only one thing for it Cyn. We’ll have to get married.”[177] The couple wed on 23 August at the Mount Pleasant Register Office in Liverpool, with Brian Epstein serving as best man. His marriage began just as Beatlemania was taking off across the UK. He performed on the evening of his wedding day and would continue to do so almost daily from then on.[178] Epstein feared that fans would be alienated by the idea of a married Beatle, and he asked the Lennons to keep their marriage secret. Julian was born on 8 April 1963; Lennon was on tour at the time and did not see his infant son until three days later.[179]

Cynthia attributed the start of the marriage breakdown to Lennon’s use of LSD, and she felt that he slowly lost interest in her as a result of his use of the drug.[180] When the group travelled by train to Bangor, Wales in 1967 for the Maharishi Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation seminar, a policeman did not recognise her and stopped her from boarding. She later recalled how the incident seemed to symbolise the end of their marriage.[181] After Cynthia arrived home at Kenwood, she found Lennon with Ono and left the house to stay with friends. Alexis Mardas later claimed to have had sex with her that night, and a few weeks later he informed her that Lennon was seeking a divorce and custody of Julian on the grounds of her adultery with him. After negotiations, Lennon capitulated and agreed to let her divorce him on the same grounds. The case was settled out of court in November 1968, with Lennon giving her £100,000 ($240,000 in US dollars at the time), a small annual payment and custody of Julian.

Brian Epstein

The Beatles were performing at Liverpool’s Cavern Club in November 1961 when they were introduced to Brian Epstein after a midday concert. Epstein was homosexual, and according to biographer Philip Norman, one of Epstein’s reasons for wanting to manage the group was that he was attracted to Lennon. Almost as soon as Julian was born, Lennon went on holiday to Spain with Epstein, which led to speculation about their relationship. When he was later questioned about it, Lennon said, “Well, it was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated. But it was a pretty intense relationship. It was my first experience with a homosexual that I was conscious was homosexual. We used to sit in a café in Torremolinos looking at all the boys and I’d say, ‘Do you like that one? Do you like this one?’ I was rather enjoying the experience, thinking like a writer all the time: I am experiencing this.”[183] Soon after their return from Spain, at McCartney’s twenty-first birthday party in June 1963, Lennon physically attacked Cavern Club master of ceremonies Bob Wooler for saying “How was your honeymoon, John?” The MC, known for his wordplay and affectionate but cutting remarks, was making a joke,[184] but ten months had passed since Lennon’s marriage, and the deferred honeymoon was still two months in the future.[185] Lennon was drunk at the time and the matter was simple: “He called me a queer so I battered his bloody ribs in.”[186]

Lennon delighted in mocking Epstein for his homosexuality and for the fact that he was Jewish.[187] When Epstein invited suggestions for the title of his autobiography, Lennon offered Queer Jew; on learning of the eventual title, A Cellarful of Noise, he parodied, “More like A Cellarful of Boys”.[188] He demanded of a visitor to Epstein’s flat, “Have you come to blackmail him? If not, you’re the only bugger in London who hasn’t.”[187] During the recording of “Baby, You’re a Rich Man”, he sang altered choruses of “Baby, you’re a rich fag Jew”.[

Julian Lennon

During his marriage to Cynthia, Lennon’s first son Julian was born at the same time that his commitments with the Beatles were intensifying at the height of Beatlemania. Lennon was touring with the Beatles when Julian was born on 8 April 1963. Julian’s birth, like his mother Cynthia’s marriage to Lennon, was kept secret because Epstein was convinced that public knowledge of such things would threaten the Beatles’ commercial success. Julian recalled that as a small child in Weybridge some four years later, “I was trundled home from school and came walking up with one of my watercolour paintings. It was just a bunch of stars and this blonde girl I knew at school. And Dad said, ‘What’s this?’ I said, ‘It’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds.’”[191] Lennon used it as the title of a Beatles song, and though it was later reported to have been derived from the initials LSD, Lennon insisted, “It’s not an acid song.”[192] Lennon was distant from Julian, who felt closer to McCartney than to his father. During a car journey to visit Cynthia and Julian during Lennon’s divorce, McCartney composed a song, “Hey Jules”, to comfort him. It would evolve into the Beatles song “Hey Jude”. Lennon later said, “That’s his best song. It started off as a song about my son Julian … he turned it into ‘Hey Jude’. I always thought it was about me and Yoko but he said it wasn’t.”[193]

Lennon’s relationship with Julian was already strained, and after Lennon and Ono moved to New York in 1971, Julian did not see his father again until 1973.[194] With Pang’s encouragement, arrangements were made for Julian and his mother to visit Lennon in Los Angeles, where they went to Disneyland.[195] Julian started to see his father regularly, and Lennon gave him a drumming part on a Walls and Bridges track.[196] He bought Julian a Gibson Les Paul guitar and other instruments, and encouraged his interest in music by demonstrating guitar chord techniques.[196] Julian recalls that he and his father “got on a great deal better” during the time he spent in New York: “We had a lot of fun, laughed a lot and had a great time in general.”[197]

In a Playboy interview with David Sheff shortly before his death, Lennon said, “Sean is a planned child, and therein lies the difference. I don’t love Julian any less as a child. He’s still my son, whether he came from a bottle of whiskey or because they didn’t have pills in those days. He’s here, he belongs to me, and he always will.”[198] He said he was trying to reestablish a connection with the then 17-year-old, and confidently predicted, “Julian and I will have a relationship in the future.”[198] After his death it was revealed that he had left Julian very little in his will.

Yoko Ono

Lennon first met Yoko Ono on 9 November 1966 at the Indica Gallery in London, where Ono was preparing her conceptual art exhibit. They were introduced by gallery owner John Dunbar.[200] Lennon was intrigued by Ono’s “Hammer A Nail”: patrons hammered a nail into a wooden board, creating the art piece. Although the exhibition had not yet begun, Lennon wanted to hammer a nail into the clean board, but Ono stopped him. Dunbar asked her, “Don’t you know who this is? He’s a millionaire! He might buy it.” According to Lennon’s recollection in 1980, Ono had not heard of the Beatles, but she relented on condition that Lennon pay her five shillings, to which Lennon said he replied, “I’ll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in.”[201] Ono subsequently related that Lennon had taken a bite out of the apple on display in her work Apple, much to her fury.[202][nb 7]

Ono began to telephone and visit Lennon at his home. When Cynthia asked him for an explanation, Lennon explained that Ono was only trying to obtain money for her “avant-garde bullshit”.[205] While his wife was on holiday in Greece in May 1968, Lennon invited Ono to visit. They spent the night recording what would become the Two Virgins album, after which, he said, they “made love at dawn”.[206] When Lennon’s wife returned home she found Ono wearing her bathrobe and drinking tea with Lennon who simply said, “Oh, hi.”[207] Ono became pregnant in 1968 and miscarried a male child on 21 November 1968,[167] a few weeks after Lennon’s divorce from Cynthia was granted.[208]

Two years before the Beatles disbanded, Lennon and Ono began public protests against the Vietnam War. They were married in Gibraltar on 20 March 1969,[209] and spent their honeymoon at the Hilton Amsterdam, campaigning with a week-long Bed-In for Peace. They planned another Bed-In in the United States, but were denied entry,[210] so held one instead at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they recorded “Give Peace a Chance”.[211] They often combined advocacy with performance art, as in their “Bagism”, first introduced during a Vienna press conference. Lennon detailed this period in the Beatles song “The Ballad of John and Yoko”.[212] Lennon changed his name by deed poll on 22 April 1969, adding “Ono” as a middle name. The brief ceremony took place on the roof of the Apple Corps building, where the Beatles had performed their rooftop concert three months earlier. Although he used the name John Ono Lennon thereafter, official documents referred to him as John Winston Ono Lennon, since he was not permitted to revoke a name given at birth.[1] The couple settled at Tittenhurst Park at Sunninghill in Berkshire.[213] After Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a king-size bed to be brought to the recording studio as he worked on the Beatles’ last album, Abbey Road.[214]

Ono and Lennon moved to New York, to a flat on Bank Street, Greenwich Village. Looking for somewhere with better security, they relocated in 1973 to the more secure Dakota overlooking Central Park at 1 West 72nd Street.

May Pang

ABKCO Industries was formed in 1968 by Allen Klein as an umbrella company to ABKCO Records. Klein hired May Pang as a receptionist in 1969. Through involvement in a project with ABKCO, Lennon and Ono met her the following year. She became their personal a*sistant. In 1973, after she had been working with the couple for three years, Ono confided that she and Lennon were becoming estranged. She went on to suggest that Pang should begin a physical relationship with Lennon, telling her, “He likes you a lot.” Astounded by Ono’s proposition, Pang nevertheless agreed to become Lennon’s companion. The pair soon left for Los Angeles, beginning an 18-month period he later called his “lost weekend”.[137] In Los Angeles, Pang encouraged Lennon to develop regular contact with Julian, whom he had not seen for two years. He also rekindled friendships with Starr, McCartney, Beatles roadie Mal Evans, and Harry Nilsson. While Lennon was drinking with Nilsson, he misunderstood something that Pang had said and attempted to strangle her. Lennon relented only after he was physically restrained by Nilsson.[216]

In June, Lennon and Pang returned to Manhattan in their newly rented penthouse apartment where they prepared a spare room for Julian when he visited them.[216] Lennon, who had been inhibited by Ono in this regard, began to reestablish contact with other relatives and friends. By December, he and Pang were considering a house purchase, and he refused to accept Ono’s telephone calls. In January 1975, he agreed to meet Ono, who claimed to have found a cure for smoking. After the meeting, he failed to return home or call Pang. When Pang telephoned the next day, Ono told her that Lennon was unavailable because he was exhausted after a hypnotherapy session. Two days later, Lennon reappeared at a joint dental appointment; he was stupefied and confused to such an extent that Pang believed he had been brainwashed. Lennon told Pang that his separation from Ono was now over, although Ono would allow him to continue seeing her as his mistress.

Sean Lennon

Ono had previously suffered three miscarriages in her attempt to have a child with Lennon. When Ono and Lennon were reunited, she became pregnant again. She initially said that she wanted to have an abortion but changed her mind and agreed to allow the pregnancy to continue on the condition that Lennon adopt the role of househusband, which he agreed to do.

Following Sean’s birth, Lennon’s subsequent hiatus from the music industry would span five years. He had a photographer take pictures of Sean every day of his first year and created numerous drawings for him, which were posthumously published as Real Love: The Drawings for Sean. Lennon later proudly declared, “He didn’t come out of my belly but, by God, I made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and to how he sleeps, and to the fact that he swims like a fish.”

Former Beatles

While Lennon and Starr remained consistently friendly during the years that followed the Beatles’ break-up in 1970, his relationships with McCartney and Harrison varied. He was initially close to Harrison, but the two drifted apart after Lennon moved to the US in 1971. When Harrison was in New York for his December 1974 Dark Horse tour, Lennon agreed to join him on stage but failed to appear after an argument over Lennon’s refusal to sign an agreement that would finally dissolve the Beatles’ legal partnership.[220][nb 8] Harrison later said that when he visited Lennon during his five years away from music, he sensed that Lennon was trying to communicate, but his bond with Ono prevented him.[221] Harrison offended Lennon in 1980 when he published an autobiography that made little mention of him.[222] Lennon told Playboy, “I was hurt by it. By glaring omission … my influence on his life is absolutely zilch … he remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met in subsequent years. I’m not in the book.”[223]

Lennon’s most intense feelings were reserved for McCartney. In addition to attacking him with the lyrics of “How Do You Sleep?”, Lennon argued with him through the press for three years after the group split. The two later began to reestablish something of the close friendship they had once known, and in 1974, they even played music together again before eventually growing apart once more. During McCartney’s final visit in April 1976, Lennon said that they watched the episode of Saturday Night Live in which Lorne Michaels made a $3,000 offer to get the Beatles to reunite on the show.[224] According to Lennon, the pair considered going to the studio to make a joke appearance, attempting to claim their share of the money, but they were too tired.[225] Lennon summarised his feelings towards McCartney in an interview three days before his death: “Throughout my career, I’ve selected to work with … only two people: Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono … That ain’t bad picking.”[226]

Along with his estrangement from McCartney, Lennon always felt a musical competitiveness with him and kept an ear on his music. During his career break from 1975 until shortly before his death, according to Fred Seaman, Lennon and Ono’s a*sistant at the time, Lennon was content to sit back as long as McCartney was producing what Lennon saw as mediocre material.[227] Lennon took notice when McCartney released “Coming Up” in 1980, which was the year Lennon returned to the studio. “It’s driving me crackers!” he jokingly complained, because he could not get the tune out of his head.[227] That same year, Lennon was asked whether the group were dreaded enemies or the best of friends, and he replied that they were neither, and that he had not seen any of them in a long time. But he also said, “I still love those guys. The Beatles are over, but John, Paul, George and Ringo go on.”

Political activism

Lennon and Ono used their honeymoon as a Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel; the March 1969 event attracted worldwide media ridicule.[229][230] During a second Bed-In three months later at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal,[231] Lennon wrote and recorded “Give Peace a Chance”. Released as a single, the song was quickly interpreted as an anti-war anthem and sung by a quarter of a million demonstrators against the Vietnam War in Washington, DC, on 15 November, the second Vietnam Moratorium Day.[92][232] In December, they paid for billboards in 10 cities around the world which declared, in the national language, “War Is Over! If You Want It”.[233]

During the year, Lennon and Ono began to support efforts by the family of James Hanratty to prove his innocence.[234] Hanratty had been hanged in 1962. According to Lennon, those who had condemned Hanratty were “the same people who are running guns to South Africa and killing blacks in the streets … The same bastards are in control, the same people are running everything, it’s the whole bullshit bourgeois scene.”[235] In London, Lennon and Ono staged a “Britain Murdered Hanratty” banner march and a “Silent Protest For James Hanratty”,[236] and produced a 40-minute documentary on the case. At an appeal hearing more than thirty years later, Hanratty’s conviction was upheld after DNA evidence was found to match.

Lennon and Ono showed their solidarity with the Clydeside UCS workers’ work-in of 1971 by sending a bouquet of red roses and a cheque for £5,000.[238] On moving to New York City in August that year, they befriended two of the Chicago Seven, Yippie peace activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman.[239] Another political activist, John Sinclair, poet and co-founder of the White Panther Party, was serving ten years in prison for selling two joints of marijuana after previous convictions for possession of the drug.[240] In December 1971 at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 15,000 people attended the “John Sinclair Freedom Rally”, a protest and benefit concert with contributions from Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, and others.[241] Lennon and Ono, backed by David Peel and Jerry Rubin, performed an acoustic set of four songs from their forthcoming Some Time in New York City album including “John Sinclair”, whose lyrics called for his release. The day before the rally, the Michigan Senate passed a bill that significantly reduced the penalties for possession of marijuana and four days later Sinclair was released on an appeal bond.[242] The performance was recorded and two of the tracks later appeared on John Lennon Anthology (1998).[243]

Following the Bloody Sunday incident in Northern Ireland in 1972, in which fourteen unarmed civil rights protesters were shot dead by the British Army, Lennon said that given the choice between the army and the IRA (who were not involved in the incident) he would side with the latter. Lennon and Ono wrote two songs protesting British presence and actions in Ireland for their Some Time in New York City album: “The Luck of the Irish” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday”. In 2000, David Shayler, a former member of Britain’s domestic security service MI5, suggested that Lennon had given money to the IRA, though this was swiftly denied by Ono.[244] Biographer Bill Harry records that following Bloody Sunday, Lennon and Ono financially supported the production of the film The Irish Tapes, a political documentary with an Irish Republican slant.

According to FBI surveillance reports, and confirmed by Tariq Ali in 2006, Lennon was sympathetic to the International Marxist Group, a Trotskyist group formed in Britain in 1968.[247] However, the FBI considered Lennon to have limited effectiveness as a revolutionary, as he was “constantly under the influence of narcotics”.[248]

In 1973, Lennon contributed a limerick called “Why Make It Sad to Be Gay?” to Len Richmond’s The Gay Liberation Book.[249] Lennon’s last act of political activism was a statement in support of the striking minority sanitation workers in San Francisco on 5 December 1980. He and Ono planned to join the workers’ protest on 14 December.

Deportation attempt

Following the impact of “Give Peace a Chance” and “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” on the anti-war movement, the Nixon administration heard rumours of Lennon’s involvement in a concert to be held in San Diego at the same time as the Republican National Convention and[251] tried to have him deported. Nixon believed that Lennon’s anti-war activities could cost him his reelection;[252] Republican Senator Strom Thurmond suggested in a February 1972 memo that “deportation would be a strategic counter-measure” against Lennon.[253] The next month the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) began deportation proceedings, arguing that his 1968 misdemeanour conviction for cannabis possession in London had made him ineligible for admission to the United States. Lennon spent the next three-and-a-half years in and out of deportation hearings until 8 October 1975, when a court of appeals barred the deportation attempt, stating “the courts will not condone selective deportation based upon secret political grounds”.[254][130] While the legal battle continued, Lennon attended rallies and made television appearances. He and Ono co-hosted The Mike Douglas Show for a week in February 1972, introducing guests such as Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale to mid-America.[255] In 1972, Bob Dylan wrote a letter to the INS defending Lennon, stating:

John and Yoko add a great voice and drive to the country’s so-called art institution. They inspire and transcend and stimulate and by doing so, only help others to see pure light and in doing that, put an end to this dull taste of petty commercialism which is being passed off as Artist Art by the overpowering mass media. Hurray for John and Yoko. Let them stay and live here and breathe. The country’s got plenty of room and space. Let John and Yoko stay!

On 23 March 1973, Lennon was ordered to leave the US within 60 days.[258] Ono, meanwhile, was granted permanent residence. In response, Lennon and Ono held a press conference on 1 April 1973 at the New York City Bar Association, where they announced the formation of the state of Nutopia; a place with “no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people”.[259] Waving the white flag of Nutopia (two handkerchiefs), they asked for political asylum in the US. The press conference was filmed, and appeared in a 2006 documentary, The US vs. John Lennon.[260][nb 9] Soon after the press conference, Nixon’s involvement in a political scandal came to light, and in June the Watergate hearings began in Washington, DC. They led to the president’s resignation 14 months later.[262] In December 1974, when he and members of his tour entourage visited the White House, Harrison asked Gerald Ford, Nixon’s successor, to intercede in the matter.[263] Ford’s administration showed little interest in continuing the battle against Lennon, and the deportation order was overturned in 1975. The following year, Lennon received his “green card” certifying his permanent residency, and when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as president in January 1977, Lennon and Ono attended the Inaugural Ball.

FBI surveillance and declassified documents

After Lennon’s death, historian Jon Wiener filed a Freedom of Information Act request for FBI files that documented the Bureau’s role in the deportation attempt.[264] The FBI admitted it had 281 pages of files on Lennon, but refused to release most of them on the grounds that they contained national security information. In 1983, Wiener sued the FBI with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. It took 14 years of litigation to force the FBI to release the withheld pages.[265] The ACLU, representing Wiener, won a favourable decision in their suit against the FBI in the Ninth Circuit in 1991.[266] The Justice Department appealed the decision to the Supreme Court in April 1992, but the court declined to review the case.[267] In 1997, respecting President Bill Clinton’s newly instigated rule that documents should be withheld only if releasing them would involve “foreseeable harm”, the Justice Department settled most of the outstanding issues outside court by releasing all but 10 of the contested documents.[267]

Wiener published the results of his 14-year campaign in January 2000. Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files contained facsimiles of the documents, including “lengthy reports by confidential informants detailing the daily lives of anti-war activists, memos to the White House, transcripts of TV shows on which Lennon appeared, and a proposal that Lennon be arrested by local police on drug charges”.[268] The story is told in the documentary The US vs. John Lennon. The final 10 documents in Lennon’s FBI file, which reported on his ties with London anti-war activists in 1971 and had been withheld as containing “national security information provided by a foreign government under an explicit promise of confidentiality”, were released in December 2006. They contained no indication that the British government had regarded Lennon as a serious threat; one example of the released material was a report that two prominent British leftists had hoped Lennon would finance a left-wing bookshop and reading room.

Writing and art

Beatles biographer Bill Harry wrote that Lennon began drawing and writing creatively at an early age with the encouragement of his uncle. He collected his stories, poetry, cartoons and caricatures in a Quarry Bank High School exercise book that he called the Daily Howl. The drawings were often of crippled people, and the writings satirical, and throughout the book was an abundance of wordplay. According to classmate Bill Turner, Lennon created the Daily Howl to amuse his best friend and later Quarrymen bandmate Pete Shotton, to whom he would show his work before he let anyone else see it. Turner said that Lennon “had an obsession for Wigan Pier. It kept cropping up”, and in Lennon’s story A Carrot in a Potato Mine, “the mine was at the end of Wigan Pier.” Turner described how one of Lennon’s cartoons depicted a bus stop sign annotated with the question, “Why?” Above was a flying pancake, and below, “a blind man wearing glasses leading along a blind dog – also wearing glasses”.[270]

Lennon’s love of wordplay and nonsense with a twist found a wider audience when he was 24. Harry writes that In His Own Write (1964) was published after “Some journalist who was hanging around the Beatles came to me and I ended up showing him the stuff. They said, ‘Write a book’ and that’s how the first one came about”. Like the Daily Howl it contained a mix of formats including short stories, poetry, plays and drawings. One story, “Good Dog Nigel”, tells the tale of “a happy dog, urinating on a lamp post, barking, wagging his tail – until he suddenly hears a message that he will be killed at three o’clock”. The Times Literary Supplement considered the poems and stories “remarkable … also very funny … the nonsense runs on, words and images prompting one another in a chain of pure fantasy”. Book Week reported, “This is nonsense writing, but one has only to review the literature of nonsense to see how well Lennon has brought it off. While some of his homonyms are gratuitous word play, many others have not only double meaning but a double edge.” Lennon was not only surprised by the positive reception, but that the book was reviewed at all, and suggested that readers “took the book more seriously than I did myself. It just began as a laugh for me”.[271]

In combination with A Spaniard in the Works (1965), In His Own Write formed the basis of the stage play The John Lennon Play: In His Own Write, co-adapted by Victor Spinetti and Adrienne Kennedy. After negotiations between Lennon, Spinetti and the artistic director of the National Theatre, Sir Laurence Olivier, the play opened at The Old Vic in 1968. Lennon and Ono attended the opening night performance, their second public appearance together.[272] In 1969, Lennon wrote “Four in Hand”, a skit based on his teenage experiences of group masturbation, for Kenneth Tynan’s play Oh! Calcutta![273] After Lennon’s death, further works were published, including Skywriting by Word of Mouth (1986), Ai: Japan Through John Lennon’s Eyes: A Personal Sketchbook (1992), with Lennon’s illustrations of the definitions of Japanese words, and Real Love: The Drawings for Sean (1999). The Beatles Anthology (2000) also presented examples of his writings and drawings.

Musicianship

Instruments played

Lennon played a mouth organ during a bus journey to visit his cousin in Scotland; the music caught the driver’s ear. Impressed, the driver told Lennon of a harmonica he could have if he came to Edinburgh the following day, where one had been stored in the bus depot since a passenger had left it on a bus.[274] The professional instrument quickly replaced Lennon’s toy. He would continue to play the harmonica, often using the instrument during the Beatles’ Hamburg years, and it became a signature sound in the group’s early recordings. His mother taught him how to play the banjo, later buying him an acoustic guitar. At 16, he played rhythm guitar with the Quarrymen.[275]

As his career progressed, he played a variety of electric guitars, predominantly the Rickenbacker 325, Epiphone Casino and Gibson J-160E, and, from the start of his solo career, the Gibson Les Paul Junior.[276][277] Double Fantasy producer Jack Douglas claimed that since his Beatle days Lennon habitually tuned his D-string slightly flat, so his Aunt Mimi could tell which guitar was his on recordings.[278] Occasionally he played a six-string bass guitar, the Fender Bass VI, providing bass on some Beatles numbers (“Back in the U.S.S.R.”, “The Long and Winding Road”, “Helter Skelter”) that occupied McCartney with another instrument.[279] His other instrument of choice was the piano, on which he composed many songs, including “Imagine”, described as his best-known solo work.[280] His jamming on a piano with McCartney in 1963 led to the creation of the Beatles’ first US number one, “I Want to Hold Your Hand”.[281] In 1964, he became one of the first British musicians to acquire a Mellotron keyboard, though it was not heard on a Beatles recording until “Strawberry Fields Forever” in 1967.

Vocal style

The British critic Nik Cohn observed of Lennon, “He owned one of the best pop voices ever, rasped and smashed and brooding, always fierce.” Performing “Twist and Shout,” Cohn wrote, Lennon would “rant his way into total incoherence, half rupture himself.”[283] When the Beatles recorded “Twist and Shout”, the final track during the mammoth one-day session that produced the band’s 1963 debut album, Please Please Me, Lennon’s voice, already compromised by a cold, came close to giving out. Lennon said, “I couldn’t sing the damn thing, I was just screaming.”[284] In the words of biographer Barry Miles, “Lennon simply shredded his vocal cords in the interests of rock ‘n’ roll.”[285] The Beatles’ producer, George Martin, tells how Lennon “had an inborn dislike of his own voice which I could never understand. He was always saying to me: ‘DO something with my voice! … put something on it … Make it different.’”[286] Martin obliged, often using double-tracking and other techniques.

As his Beatles era segued into his solo career, his singing voice found a widening range of expression. Biographer Chris Gregory writes of Lennon “tentatively beginning to expose his insecurities in a number of acoustic-led ‘confessional’ ballads, so beginning the process of ‘public therapy’ that will eventually culminate in the primal screams of ‘Cold Turkey’ and the cathartic John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.”[287] Music critic Robert Christgau calls this Lennon’s “greatest vocal performance … from scream to whine, is modulated electronically … echoed, filtered, and double tracked.”[288] David Stuart Ryan notes Lennon’s vocal delivery to range from “extreme vulnerability, sensitivity and even naivety” to a hard “rasping” style.[289] Wiener too describes contrasts, saying the singer’s voice can be “at first subdued; soon it almost cracks with despair”.[290] Music historian Ben Urish recalls hearing the Beatles’ Ed Sullivan Show performance of “This Boy” played on the radio a few days after Lennon’s murder: “As Lennon’s vocals reached their peak … it hurt too much to hear him scream with such anguish and emotion. But it was my emotions I heard in his voice. Just like I always had.”

Legacy

Music historians Schinder and Schwartz wrote of the transformation in popular music styles that took place between the 1950s and the 1960s. They said that the Beatles’ influence cannot be overstated: having “revolutionised the sound, style, and attitude of popular music and opened rock and roll’s doors to a tidal wave of British rock acts”, the group then “spent the rest of the 1960s expanding rock’s stylistic frontiers”.[292] Liam Gallagher and his group Oasis were among the many who acknowledged the band’s influence; he identified Lennon as a hero. In 1999, he named his first son Lennon Gallagher in tribute.[293] On National Poetry Day in 1999, the BBC conducted a poll to identify the UK’s favourite song lyric and announced “Imagine” as the winner.[116]

In 1997, Yoko Ono and the BMI Foundation established an annual music competition programme for songwriters of contemporary musical genres to honour John Lennon’s memory and his large creative legacy.[294] Over $400,000 have been given through BMI Foundation’s John Lennon Scholarships to talented young musicians in the United States.[294]

In a 2006 Guardian article, Jon Wiener wrote: “For young people in 1972, it was thrilling to see Lennon’s courage in standing up to [US President] Nixon. That willingness to take risks with his career, and his life, is one reason why people still admire him today.”[295] For music historians Urish and Bielen, Lennon’s most significant effort was “the self-portraits … in his songs [which] spoke to, for, and about, the human condition.”[296]

In 2013, Downtown Music Publishing signed a publishing administration agreement for the US with Lenono Music and Ono Music, home to the song catalogues of John Lennon and Yoko Ono respectively. Under the terms of the agreement, Downtown represents Lennon’s solo works, including “Imagine”, “Instant Karma (We All Shine On)”, “Power to the People”, “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”, “Jealous Guy”, “(Just Like) Starting Over” and others.

Lennon continues to be mourned throughout the world and has been the subject of numerous memorials and tributes. In 2002, the airport in Lennon’s home town was renamed the Liverpool John Lennon Airport.[298] On what would have been Lennon’s 70th birthday in 2010, Cynthia and Julian Lennon unveiled the John Lennon Peace Monument in Chavasse Park, Liverpool.[299] The sculpture, entitled Peace & Harmony, exhibits peace symbols and carries the inscription “Peace on Earth for the Conservation of Life · In Honour of John Lennon 1940–1980”.[300] In December 2013, the International Astronomical Union named one of the craters on Mercury after Lennon.

Accolades

The Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership is regarded as one of the most influential and successful of the 20th century. As performer, writer or co-writer, Lennon had 25 number one singles in the US Hot 100 chart.[nb 10] His album sales in the US stand at 14 million units.[307] Double Fantasy was his best-selling album,[308] at three million shipments in the US.[309] Released shortly before his death, it won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year.[310] The following year, the BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music was given to Lennon.[311]

Participants in a 2002 BBC poll voted him eighth of “100 Greatest Britons”.[312] Between 2003 and 2008, Rolling Stone recognised Lennon in several reviews of artists and music, ranking him fifth of “100 Greatest Singers of All Time”[313] and 38th of “100 Greatest Artists of All Time”,[314] and his albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, 22nd and 76th respectively of “Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time”.[314][315] He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) with the other Beatles in 1965 (returned in 1969).[316][317] Lennon was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987[318] and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Sir James Paul McCartney CH MBE (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter, musician, and record and film producer who gained worldwide fame as co-lead vocalist and bassist for the Beatles. His songwriting partnership with John Lennon remains the most successful in history.[4] After the group disbanded in 1970, he pursued a solo career and formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda, and Denny Laine.

A self-taught musician, McCartney is proficient on bass, guitar, keyboards, and drums. He is known for his melodic approach to bass-playing (mainly playing with a plectrum), his versatile and wide tenor vocal range (spanning over four octaves), and his eclecticism (exploring styles ranging from pre-rock and roll pop to classical and electronica). McCartney began his career as a member of the Quarrymen in 1957, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Starting with the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, he gradually became the Beatles’ de facto leader, providing the creative impetus for most of their music and film projects. His Beatles songs “And I Love Her” (1964), “Yesterday” (1965), “Eleanor Rigby” (1966) and “Blackbird” (1968) rank among the most covered songs in history.[5][6]

In 1970, McCartney debuted as a solo artist with the album McCartney. Throughout the 1970s, he led Wings, one of the most successful bands of the decade, with more than a dozen international top 10 singles and albums. McCartney resumed his solo career in 1980. Since 1989, he has toured consistently as a solo artist. In 1993, he formed the music duo the Fireman with Youth of Killing Joke. Beyond music, he has taken part in projects to promote international charities related to such subjects as animal rights, seal hunting, land mines, vegetarianism, poverty, and music education.

McCartney is one of the most successful composers and performers of all time. He has written or co-written 32 songs that have reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and as of 2009, had sales of 25.5 million RIAA-certified units in the United States. His honours include two inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 1999), 18 Grammy Awards, an appointment as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1965, and a knighthood in 1997 for services to music. As of 2020, he is also one of the wealthiest musicians in the world, with an estimated fortune of £800 million.

Early life

James Paul McCartney was born on 18 June 1942 at Walton Hospital in the Walton area of Liverpool, where his mother, Mary Patricia (née Mohin), had qualified to practise as a nurse. His father, James (“Jim”) McCartney, was absent from his son’s birth due to his work as a volunteer firefighter during World War II.[8] McCartney has a younger brother named Michael and a stepsister named Ruth. The children were baptised in their mother’s Catholic faith, even though their father was a former Protestant who had turned agnostic. Religion was not emphasised in the household.[9]

McCartney attended Stockton Wood Road Primary School in Speke from 1947 until 1949, when he transferred to Joseph Williams Junior School in Belle Vale because of overcrowding at Stockton.[10] In 1953, he was one of only three students out of 90 to pass the 11-Plus exam, meaning he could attend the Liverpool Institute, a grammar school rather than a secondary modern school.[11] In 1954, he met schoolmate George Harrison on the bus from his suburban home in Speke. The two quickly became friends; McCartney later admitted: “I tended to talk down to him because he was a year younger.”

Career

1957–1960: The Quarrymen

At the age of fifteen on 6 July 1957, McCartney met John Lennon and his band, the Quarrymen, at the St Peter’s Church Hall fête in Woolton.[26] The Quarrymen played a mix of rock and roll and skiffle, a type of popular music with jazz, blues and folk influences.[27] Soon afterwards, the members of the band invited McCartney to join as a rhythm guitarist, and he formed a close working relationship with Lennon. Harrison joined in 1958 as lead guitarist, followed by Lennon’s art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe on bass, in 1960.[28] By May 1960, the band had tried several names, including Johnny and the Moondogs, Beatals and the Silver Beetles.[29] They adopted the name the Beatles in August 1960 and recruited drummer Pete Best shortly before a five-engagement residency in Hamburg.

1960–1970: The Beatles

In 1961, Sutcliffe left the band and McCartney reluctantly became their bass player.[31] While in Hamburg, they recorded professionally for the first time and were credited as the Beat Brothers, who were the backing band for English singer Tony Sheridan on the single “My Bonnie”.[32] This resulted in attention from Brian Epstein, who was a key figure in their subsequent development and success. He became their manager in January 1962.[33] Ringo Starr replaced Best in August, and the band had their first hit, “Love Me Do”, in October, becoming popular in the UK in 1963, and in the US a year later. The fan hysteria became known as “Beatlemania”, and the press sometimes referred to McCartney as the “cute Beatle”.[34][nb 2] McCartney co-wrote (with Lennon) several of their early hits, including “I Saw Her Standing There”, “She Loves You”, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (1963) and “Can’t Buy Me Love” (1964).[36]

In August 1965, the Beatles released the McCartney composition “Yesterday”, featuring a string quartet. Included on the Help! LP, the song was the group’s first recorded use of classical music elements and their first recording that involved only a single band member.[37] “Yesterday” became one of the most covered songs in popular music history.[38] Later that year, during recording sessions for the album Rubber Soul, McCartney began to supplant Lennon as the dominant musical force in the band. Musicologist Ian MacDonald wrote, “from [1965] … [McCartney] would be in the ascendant not only as a songwriter, but also as instrumentalist, arranger, producer, and de facto musical director of the Beatles.”[39] Critics described Rubber Soul as a significant advance in the refinement and profundity of the band’s music and lyrics.[40] Considered a high point in the Beatles catalogue, both Lennon and McCartney said they had written the music for the song “In My Life”.[41] McCartney said of the album, “we’d had our cute period, and now it was time to expand.”[42] Recording engineer Norman Smith stated that the Rubber Soul sessions exposed indications of increasing contention within the band: “the clash between John and Paul was becoming obvious … [and] as far as Paul was concerned, George [Harrison] could do no right—Paul was absolutely finicky.”[43]

In 1966, the Beatles released the album Revolver. Featuring sophisticated lyrics, studio experimentation, and an expanded repertoire of musical genres ranging from innovative string arrangements to psychedelic rock, the album marked an artistic leap for the Beatles.[44] The first of three consecutive McCartney A-sides, the single “Paperback Writer” preceded the LP’s release.[45] The Beatles produced a short promotional film for the song, and another for its B-side, “Rain”. The films, described by Harrison as “the forerunner of videos”, aired on The Ed Sullivan Show and Top of the Pops in June 1966.[46] Revolver also included McCartney’s “Eleanor Rigby”, which featured a string octet. According to Gould, the song is “a neoclassical tour de force … a true hybrid, conforming to no recognizable style or genre of song”.[47] Except for some backing vocals, the song included only McCartney’s lead vocal and the strings arranged by producer George Martin.

The band gave their final commercial concert at the end of their 1966 US tour.[50] Later that year, McCartney completed his first musical project independently of the group—a film score for the UK production The Family Way. The score was a collaboration with Martin, who used two McCartney themes to write thirteen variations. The soundtrack failed to chart, but it won McCartney an Ivor Novello Award for Best Instrumental Theme.[51]

Upon the end of the Beatles’ performing career, McCartney sensed unease in the band and wanted them to maintain creative productivity. He pressed them to start a new project, which became Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, widely regarded as rock’s first concept album.[52] McCartney was inspired to create a new persona for the group, to serve as a vehicle for experimentation and to demonstrate to their fans that they had musically matured. He invented the fictional band of the album’s title track.[53] As McCartney explained, “We were fed up with being the Beatles. We really hated that f*cking four little mop-top approach. We were not boys we were men … and [we] thought of ourselves as artists rather than just performers.”[54]

Starting in November 1966, the band adopted an experimental attitude during recording sessions for the album.[55] Their recording of “A Day in the Life” required a forty-piece orchestra, which Martin and McCartney took turns conducting.[56] The sessions produced the double A-side single “Strawberry Fields Forever”/”Penny Lane” in February 1967, and the LP followed in June.[35][nb 4] Based on an ink drawing by McCartney, the LP’s cover included a collage designed by pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, featuring the Beatles in costume as the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, standing with a host of celebrities.[58] The cover piqued a frenzy of analysis.Epstein’s death in August 1967 created a void, which left the Beatles perplexed and concerned about their future.[61] McCartney stepped in to fill that void and gradually became the de facto leader and business manager of the group that Lennon had once led.[62][dubious – discuss] In his first creative suggestion after this change of leadership, McCartney proposed that the band move forward on their plans to produce a film for television, which was to become Magical Mystery Tour. According to Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, the project was “an administrative nightmare throughout”.[63] McCartney largely directed the film, which brought the group their first unfavourable critical response.[64] However, the film’s soundtrack was more successful. It was released in the UK as a six-track double extended play disc (EP), and as an identically titled LP in the US, filled out with five songs from the band’s recent singles.[35] The only Capitol compilation later included in the group’s official canon of studio albums, the Magical Mystery Tour LP achieved $8 million in sales within three weeks of its release, higher initial sales than any other Capitol LP up to that point.

The Beatles’ animated film Yellow Submarine, loosely based on the imaginary world evoked by McCartney’s 1966 composition, premiered in July 1968. Though critics admired the film for its visual style, humour and music, the soundtrack album issued six months later received a less enthusiastic response.[66] By late 1968, relations within the band were deteriorating. The tension grew during the recording of their eponymous double album, also known as the “White Album”.[67][nb 5] Matters worsened the following year during the Let It Be sessions, when a camera crew filmed McCartney lecturing the group: “We’ve been very negative since Mr. Epstein passed away … we were always fighting [his] discipline a bit, but it’s silly to fight that discipline if it’s our own”.[69]

In March 1969, McCartney married his first wife, Linda Eastman, and in August, the couple had their first child, Mary, named after his late mother.[70] Abbey Road was the band’s last recorded album, and Martin suggested “a continuously moving piece of music”, urging the group to think symphonically.[71] McCartney agreed, but Lennon did not. They eventually compromised, agreeing to McCartney’s suggestion: an LP featuring individual songs on side one, and a long medley on side two.[71] In October 1969, a rumour surfaced that McCartney had died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike, but this was quickly refuted when a November Life magazine cover featured him and his family, accompanied by the caption “Paul is still with us”.[72]

McCartney was in the midst of business disagreements with his bandmates when he announced his departure from the group on 10 April 1970.[73] He filed a suit for the band’s formal dissolution on 31 December 1970, and in March 1971 the court appointed a receiver to oversee Apple’s finances. An English court legally dissolved the Beatles’ partnership on 9 January 1975, though sporadic lawsuits against their record company EMI, Klein, and each other persisted until 1989.

1970–1981: Wings

As the Beatles were breaking up in 1969–70, McCartney fell into a depression. His wife helped him pull out of that condition by praising his work as a songwriter and convincing him to continue writing and recording. In her honour, he wrote “Maybe I’m Amazed”, explaining that with the Beatles breaking up, “that was my feeling: Maybe I’m amazed at what’s going on … Maybe I’m a man and maybe you’re the only woman who could ever help me; Baby won’t you help me understand … Maybe I’m amazed at the way you pulled me out of time, hung me on the line, Maybe I’m amazed at the way I really need you.” He added that “every love song I write is for Linda.”[79][80]

In 1970, McCartney continued his musical career with his first solo release, McCartney, a US number-one album. Apart from some vocal contributions from Linda, McCartney is a one-man album, with McCartney providing compositions, instrumentation and vocals.[81][nb 8] In 1971, he collaborated with Linda and drummer Denny Seiwell on a second album, Ram. A UK number one and a US top five, Ram included the co-written US number-one hit single “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”.[83] Later that year, ex-Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine joined the McCartneys and Seiwell to form the band Wings. McCartney had this to say on the group’s formation: “Wings were always a difficult idea … any group having to follow [the Beatles’] success would have a hard job … I found myself in that very position. However, it was a choice between going on or finishing, and I loved music too much to think of stopping.”[84][nb 9] In September 1971, the McCartneys’ daughter Stella was born, named in honour of Linda’s grandmothers, both of whom were named Stella.[86]

Following the addition of guitarist Henry McCullough, Wings’ first concert tour began in 1972 with a debut performance in front of an audience of seven hundred at the University of Nottingham. Ten more gigs followed as they travelled across the UK in a van during an unannounced tour of universities, during which the band stayed in modest accommodation and received pay in coinage collected from students, while avoiding Beatles songs during their performances.[87] McCartney later said, “The main thing I didn’t want was to come on stage, faced with the whole torment of five rows of press people with little pads, all looking at me and saying, ‘Oh well, he is not as good as he was.’ So we decided to go out on that university tour which made me less nervous … by the end of that tour I felt ready for something else, so we went into Europe.”[88] During the seven-week, 25-show Wings Over Europe Tour, the band played almost solely Wings and McCartney solo material: the Little Richard cover “Long Tall Sally” was the only song that had previously been recorded by the Beatles. McCartney wanted the tour to avoid large venues; most of the small halls they played had capacities of fewer than 3,000 people.[89]

In March 1973, Wings achieved their first US number-one single, “My Love”, included on their second LP, Red Rose Speedway, a US number one and UK top five.[90][nb 10] McCartney’s collaboration with Linda and former Beatles producer Martin resulted in the song “Live and Let Die”, which was the theme song for the James Bond film of the same name. Nominated for an Academy Award, the song reached number two in the US and number nine in the UK. It also earned Martin a Grammy for his orchestral arrangement.[91] Music professor and author Vincent Benitez described the track as “symphonic rock at its best”.

After the departure of McCullough and Seiwell in 1973, the McCartneys and Laine recorded Band on the Run. The album was the first of seven platinum Wings LPs.[94] It was a US and UK number one, the band’s first to top the charts in both countries and the first ever to reach Billboard magazine’s charts on three separate occasions. One of the best-selling releases of the decade, it remained on the UK charts for 124 weeks. Rolling Stone named it one of the Best Albums of the Year for 1973, and in 1975, Paul McCartney and Wings won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance for the song “Band on the Run” and Geoff Emerick won the Grammy for Best Engineered Recording for the album.[95][nb 12] In 1974, Wings achieved a second US number-one single with the title track.[97] The album also included the top-ten hits “Jet” and “Helen Wheels”, and earned the 413th spot on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[98][nb 13]

Wings followed Band on the Run with the chart-topping albums Venus and Mars (1975) and Wings at the Speed of Sound (1976).[100][nb 14] In 1975, they began the fourteen-month Wings Over the World Tour, which included stops in the UK, Australia, Europe and the US. The tour marked the first time McCartney performed Beatles songs live with Wings, with five in the two-hour set list: “I’ve Just Seen a Face”, “Yesterday”, “Blackbird”, “Lady Madonna” and “The Long and Winding Road”.[102] Following the second European leg of the tour and extensive rehearsals in London, the group undertook an ambitious US arena tour that yielded the US number-one live triple LP Wings over America.[103]

In September 1977, the McCartneys had a third child, a son they named James. In November, the Wings song “Mull of Kintyre”, co-written with Laine, was quickly becoming one of the best-selling singles in UK chart history.[104] The most successful single of McCartney’s solo career, it achieved double the sales of the previous record holder, “She Loves You”, and went on to sell 2.5 million copies and hold the UK sales record until the 1984 charity single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

London Town (1978) spawned a US number-one single (“With a Little Luck”), and continued Wings’ string of commercial successes, making the top five in both the US and the UK. Critical reception was unfavourable, and McCartney expressed disappointment with the album.[107][nb 16] Back to the Egg (1979) featured McCartney’s a*semblage of a rock supergroup dubbed “Rockestra” on two tracks. The band included Wings along with Pete Townshend, David Gilmour, Gary Brooker, John Paul Jones, John Bonham and others. Though certified platinum, critics panned the album.[109] Wings completed their final concert tour in 1979, with twenty shows in the UK that included the live debut of the Beatles songs “Got to Get You into My Life”, “The Fool on the Hill” and “Let it Be”.[110]

In 1980, McCartney released his second solo LP, the self-produced McCartney II, which peaked at number one in the UK and number three in the US. As with his first album, he composed and performed it alone.[111] The album contained the song “Coming Up”, the live version of which, recorded in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1979 by Wings, became the group’s last number-one hit.[112] By 1981, McCartney felt he had accomplished all he could creatively with Wings and decided he needed a change. The group discontinued in April 1981 after Laine quit following disagreements over royalties and salaries.

1982–1990

In 1982, McCartney collaborated with Stevie Wonder on the Martin-produced number-one hit “Ebony and Ivory”, included on McCartney’s Tug of War LP, and with Michael Jackson on “The Girl Is Mine” from Thriller.[117][nb 19] “Ebony and Ivory” was McCartney’s record 28th single to hit number one on the Billboard 100.[119] The following year, he and Jackson worked on “Say Say Say”, McCartney’s most recent US number one as of 2014. McCartney earned his latest UK number one as of 2014 with the title track of his LP release that year, “Pipes of Peace”.[120][nb 20]

In 1984, McCartney starred in the musical Give My Regards to Broad Street, a feature film he also wrote and produced which included Starr in an acting role. It was disparaged by critics: Variety described the film as “characterless, bloodless, and pointless”;[122] while Roger Ebert awarded it a single star, writing, “you can safely skip the movie and proceed directly to the soundtrack”.[123] The album fared much better, reaching number one in the UK and producing the US top-ten hit single “No More Lonely Nights”, featuring David Gilmour on lead guitar.[124] In 1985, Warner Brothers commissioned McCartney to write a song for the comedic feature film Spies Like Us. He composed and recorded the track in four days, with Phil Ramone co-producing.[125][nb 21] McCartney participated in Live Aid, performing “Let it Be”, but technical difficulties rendered his vocals and piano barely audible for the first two verses, punctuated by squeals of feedback. Equipment technicians resolved the problems and David Bowie, Alison Moyet, Pete Townshend and Bob Geldof joined McCartney on stage, receiving an enthusiastic crowd reaction.[127]

McCartney collaborated with Eric Stewart on Press to Play (1986), with Stewart co-writing more than half the songs on the LP.[128][nb 22] In 1988, McCartney released Снова в СССР, initially available only in the Soviet Union, which contained eighteen covers; recorded over the course of two days.[130] In 1989, he joined forces with fellow Merseysiders Gerry Marsden and Holly Johnson to record an updated version of “Ferry Cross the Mersey”, for the Hillsborough disaster appeal fund.[131][nb 23] That same year, he released Flowers in the Dirt; a collaborative effort with Elvis Costello that included musical contributions from Gilmour and Nicky Hopkins.[133][nb 24] McCartney then formed a band consisting of himself and Linda, with Hamish Stuart and Robbie McIntosh on guitars, Paul “Wix” Wickens on keyboards and Chris Whitten on drums.[135] In September 1989, they launched the Paul McCartney World Tour, his first in over a decade. During the tour, McCartney performed for the largest paying stadium audience in history on 21 April 1990, when 184,000 people attended his concert at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.[136] That year, he released the triple album Tripping the Live Fantastic, which contained selected performances from the tour.

1991–1999

McCartney ventured into orchestral music in 1991 when the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society commissioned a musical piece by him to celebrate its sesquicentennial. He collaborated with composer Carl Davis, producing Liverpool Oratorio. The performance featured opera singers Kiri Te Kanawa, Sally Burgess, Jerry Hadley and Willard White with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the choir of Liverpool Cathedral.[140] Reviews were negative. The Guardian was especially critical, describing the music as “afraid of anything approaching a fast tempo”, and adding that the piece has “little awareness of the need for recurrent ideas that will bind the work into a whole”.[141] The paper published a letter McCartney submitted in response in which he noted several of the work’s faster tempos and added, “happily, history shows that many good pieces of music were not liked by the critics of the time so I am content to … let people judge for themselves the merits of the work.”[141] The New York Times was slightly more generous, stating, “There are moments of beauty and pleasure in this dramatic miscellany … the music’s innocent sincerity makes it difficult to be put off by its ambitions”.[142] Performed around the world after its London premiere, the Liverpool Oratorio reached number one on the UK classical chart, Music Week.[143]

In 1991, McCartney performed a selection of acoustic-only songs on MTV Unplugged and released a live album of the performance titled Unplugged (The Official Bootleg).[144][nb 27] During the 1990s, McCartney collaborated twice with Youth of Killing Joke as the musical duo “the Fireman”. The two released their first electronica album together, Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest, in 1993.[146] McCartney released the rock album Off the Ground in 1993.[147][nb 28] The subsequent New World Tour followed, which led to the release of the Paul Is Live album later that year.[149][nb 29][nb 30]

Starting in 1994, McCartney took a four-year break from his solo career to work on Apple’s Beatles Anthology project with Harrison, Starr and Martin. He recorded a radio series called Oobu Joobu in 1995 for the American network Westwood One, which he described as “widescreen radio”.[153] Also in 1995, Prince Charles presented him with an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Music—”kind of amazing for somebody who doesn’t read a note of music”, commented McCartney.[154]

In 1997, McCartney released the rock album Flaming Pie. Starr appeared on drums and backing vocals in “Beautiful Night”.[155][nb 31] Later that year, he released the classical work Standing Stone, which topped the UK and US classical charts.[157] In 1998, he released Rushes, the second electronica album by the Fireman.[158] In 1999, McCartney released Run Devil Run.[159][nb 32] Recorded in one week, and featuring Ian Paice and David Gilmour, it was primarily an album of covers with three McCartney originals. He had been planning such an album for years, having been previously encouraged to do so by Linda, who had died of cancer in April 1998.[160]

McCartney did an unannounced performance at the benefit tribute, “Concert for Linda,” his wife of 29 years who died a year earlier. It was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 10 April 1999, and was organised by two of her close friends, Chrissie Hynde and Carla Lane. Also during 1999, he continued his experimentation with orchestral music on Working Classical.

2000–2009

In 2000, he released the electronica album Liverpool Sound Collage with Super Furry Animals and Youth, using the sound collage and musique concrète techniques that had fascinated him in the mid-1960s.[162] He contributed the song “Nova” to a tribute album of classical, choral music called A Garland for Linda (2000), dedicated to his late wife.[163]

Having witnessed the 11 September 2001 attacks from the JFK airport tarmac, McCartney was inspired to take a leading role in organising the Concert for New York City. His studio album release in November that year, Driving Rain, included the song “Freedom”, written in response to the attacks.[164][nb 33] The following year, McCartney went out on tour with a band that included guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, accompanied by Paul “Wix” Wickens on keyboards and Abe Laboriel Jr. on drums.[166] They began the Driving World Tour in April 2002, which included stops in the US, Mexico and Japan. The tour resulted in the double live album Back in the US, released internationally in 2003 as Back in the World.[167][nb 34][nb 35] The tour earned a reported $126.2 million, an average of over $2 million per night, and Billboard named it the top tour of the year.[169] The group continues to play together; McCartney has played live with Brian Ray, Rusty Anderson, Abe Laboriel Jr. and Wix Wickens longer than he played live with the Beatles.[170]

In July 2002, McCartney married Heather Mills. In November, on the first anniversary of George Harrison’s death, McCartney performed at the Concert for George.[171] He participated in the National Football League’s Super Bowl, performing “Freedom” during the pre-game show for Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002 and headlining the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005.[172] The English College of Arms honoured McCartney in 2002 by granting him a coat of arms. His crest, featuring a Liver bird holding an acoustic guitar in its claw, reflects his background in Liverpool and his musical career. The shield includes four curved emblems which resemble beetles’ backs. The arms’ motto is Ecce Cor Meum, Latin for “Behold My Heart”.[173] In 2003, the McCartneys had a child, Beatrice Milly.

In July 2005, he performed at the Live 8 event in Hyde Park, London, opening the show with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (with U2) and closing it with “Drive My Car” (with George Michael), “Helter Skelter”, and “The Long and Winding Road”.[175][nb 36] In September, he released the rock album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, for which he provided most of the instrumentation.[177][nb 37][nb 38] In 2006, McCartney released the classical work Ecce Cor Meum.[180][nb 39] The rock album Memory Almost Full followed in 2007.[181][nb 40] In 2008, he released his third Fireman album, Electric Arguments.[183][nb 41] Also in 2008, he performed at a concert in Liverpool to celebrate the city’s year as European Capital of Culture. In 2009, after a four-year break, he returned to touring and has since performed over 80 shows.[185] More than forty-five years after the Beatles first appeared on American television during The Ed Sullivan Show, he returned to the same New York theatre to perform on Late Show with David Letterman.[186] On 9 September 2009, EMI reissued the Beatles catalogue following a four-year digital remastering effort, releasing a music video game called The Beatles: Rock Band the same day.[187]

McCartney’s enduring fame has made him a popular choice to open new venues. In 2009, he played to three sold-out concerts at the newly built Citi Field, a venue constructed to replace Shea Stadium in Queens, New York. These performances yielded the double live album Good Evening New York City later that year.

2010–present

In 2010, McCartney opened the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; it was his first concert in Pittsburgh since 1990 due to the old Civic Arena being deemed unsuitable for McCartney’s logistical needs.[189][nb 42] In July 2011, McCartney performed at two sold-out concerts at the new Yankee Stadium. A New York Times review of the first concert reported that McCartney was “not saying goodbye but touring stadiums and playing marathon concerts”.[191] McCartney was commissioned by the New York City Ballet, and in September 2011, he released his first score for dance, a collaboration with Peter Martins called Ocean’s Kingdom.[192] Also in 2011, McCartney married Nancy Shevell.[193] He released Kisses on the Bottom, a collection of standards, in February 2012, the same month that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences honoured him as the MusiCares Person of the Year, two days prior to his performance at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards.[194]

McCartney remains one of the world’s top draws. He played to over 100,000 people during two performances in Mexico City in May, with the shows grossing nearly $6 million.[195][nb 43] In June 2012, McCartney closed Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee Concert held outside Buckingham Palace, performing a set that included “Let It Be” and “Live and Let Die”.[197] He closed the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London on 27 July, singing “The End” and “Hey Jude” and inviting the audience to join in on the coda.[198] Having donated his time, he received £1 from the Olympic organisers.[199]

On 12 December 2012, McCartney performed with three former members of Nirvana (Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl, and Pat Smear) during the closing act of 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief, seen by approximately two billion people worldwide.[200] On 28 August 2013, McCartney released the title track of his upcoming studio album New, which came out in October 2013.[201] A primetime entertainment special was taped on 27 January 2014 at the Ed Sullivan Theater with a 9 February 2014 CBS airing. The show featured McCartney and Ringo Starr, and celebrated the legacy of the Beatles and their groundbreaking 1964 performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The show, titled The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to The Beatles, featured 22 classic Beatles songs as performed by various artists, including McCartney and Starr.[202]

On 19 May 2014, it was reported that McCartney was bedridden on doctor’s orders due to an unspecified virus, which forced him to cancel a sold-out concert tour of Japan that was scheduled to begin later in the week. The tour would have included a stop at the famed Budokan Hall. McCartney also had to move his June US dates to October, as part of his doctor’s order to rest to make a full recovery.[203] However, he resumed the tour with a high-energy three hour appearance in Albany, New York on 5 July 2014.[204] On 14 August 2014, McCartney performed in the final concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California before its demolition. It was the same venue that the Beatles played their final concert in 1966.[205] In 2014, McCartney wrote and performed “Hope for the Future,” the ending song for the video game Destiny.[206][207] In November 2014, a 42-song tribute album titled The Art of McCartney was released, which features a wide range of artists covering McCartney’s solo and Beatles work.[208] Also that year, McCartney collaborated with American recording artist Kanye West on the single “Only One”, released on 31 December.[209] In January 2015, McCartney collaborated with West and Barbadian singer Rihanna on the single “FourFiveSeconds”.[210] They released a music video for the song in January[211] and performed it live at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards on 8 February 2015.[212] McCartney is a featured guest on West’s 2015 single “All Day”, which also features Theophilus London and Allan Kingdom.

In February 2015, McCartney appeared and performed with Paul Simon for the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special. McCartney and Simon performed the first verse of “I’ve Just Seen a Face” on acoustic guitars, and McCartney later performed “Maybe I’m Amazed”.[214] McCartney shared lead vocals on the Alice Cooper-led Hollywood Vampires supergroup’s cover of his song “Come and Get It”, which appears on their debut album, released on 11 September 2015.[215] On 10 June 2016, McCartney released the career-spanning collection Pure McCartney.[216] The set includes songs from throughout McCartney’s solo career and his work with Wings and the Fireman, and is available in three different formats (2-CD, 4-CD, 4-LP and Digital). The 4-CD version includes 67 tracks, the majority of which were top 40 hits.[217][218] McCartney appeared in the adventure film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which was released in 2017.[219]

In January 2017, McCartney filed a suit in United States district court against Sony/ATV Music Publishing seeking to reclaim ownership of his share of the Lennon–McCartney song catalogue beginning in 2018. Under US copyright law, for works published before 1978 the author can reclaim copyrights a*signed to a publisher after 56 years.[220][221] McCartney and Sony agreed to a confidential settlement in June 2017.[222][223] On 20 June 2018, McCartney released two songs, “I Don’t Know” and “Come On to Me”, from his album Egypt Station, which was released on 7 September through Capitol Records.[224] Egypt Station became McCartney’s first album in 36 years to top the Billboard 200, and his first to debut at number one.[225]

In October 2020, McCartney announced his new album McCartney III, which is set to be released on 11 December via Capitol Records.

Musicianship

McCartney was largely a self-taught musician, and his approach was described by musicologist Ian MacDonald as “by nature drawn to music’s formal aspects yet wholly untutored … [he] produced technically ‘finished’ work almost entirely by instinct, his harmonic judgement based mainly on perfect pitch and an acute pair of ears … [A] natural melodist—a creator of tunes capable of existing apart from their harmony”. McCartney commented, “I prefer to think of my approach to music as … rather like the primitive cave artists, who drew without training.”

Early influences

McCartney’s earliest musical influences include Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, and Chuck Berry.[230] When asked why the Beatles did not include Presley on the Sgt. Pepper cover, McCartney replied, “Elvis was too important and too far above the rest even to mention … so we didn’t put him on the list because he was more than merely a … pop singer, he was Elvis the King.”[231] McCartney stated that for his bassline for “I Saw Her Standing There”, he directly quoted Berry’s “I’m Talking About You”.[232]

McCartney called Little Richard an idol, whose falsetto vocalisations inspired McCartney’s own vocal technique.[233] McCartney said he wrote “I’m Down” as a vehicle for his Little Richard impersonation.[234] In 1971, McCartney bought the publishing rights to Holly’s catalogue, and in 1976, on the fortieth anniversary of Holly’s birth, McCartney inaugurated the annual “Buddy Holly Week” in England. The festival has included guest performances by famous musicians, songwriting competitions, drawing contests and special events featuring performances by the Crickets.

Bass guitar

Best known for primarily using a plectrum or pick, McCartney occasionally plays fingerstyle.[236] He does not use slapping techniques.[237] He was strongly influenced by Motown artists, in particular James Jamerson, whom McCartney called a hero for his melodic style. He was also influenced by Brian Wilson, as he commented: “because he went to very unusual places”.[238] Another favourite bassist of his is Stanley Clarke.[239] McCartney’s skill as a bass player has been acknowledged by bassists including Sting, Dr. Dre bassist Mike Elizondo, and Colin Moulding of XTC.

During McCartney’s early years with the Beatles, he primarily used a Höfner 500/1 bass, although from 1965, he favoured his Rickenbacker 4001S for recording. While typically using Vox amplifiers, by 1967, he had also begun using a Fender Bassman for amplification.[242] During the late 1980s and early 1990s, he used a Wal 5-String, which he said made him play more thick-sounding basslines, in contrast to the much lighter Höfner, which inspired him to play more sensitively, something he considers fundamental to his playing style.[237] He changed back to the Höfner around 1990 for that reason.[237] He uses Mesa Boogie bass amplifiers while performing live.[243]

MacDonald identified “She’s a Woman” as the turning point when McCartney’s bass playing began to evolve dramatically, and Beatles biographer Chris Ingham singled out Rubber Soul as the moment when McCartney’s playing exhibited significant progress, particularly on “The Word”.[244] Bacon and Morgan agreed, calling McCartney’s groove on the track “a high point in pop bass playing and … the first proof on a recording of his serious technical ability on the instrument.”[245] MacDonald inferred the influence of James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour”, American soul tracks from which McCartney absorbed elements and drew inspiration as he “delivered his most spontaneous bass-part to date”.[246]

Bacon and Morgan described his bassline for the Beatles song “Rain” as “an astonishing piece of playing … [McCartney] thinking in terms of both rhythm and ‘lead bass’ … [choosing] the area of the neck … he correctly perceives will give him clarity for melody without rendering his sound too thin for groove.”[247] MacDonald identified the influence of Indian classical music in “exotic melismas in the bass part” on “Rain” and described the playing as “so inventive that it threatens to overwhelm the track”.[248] By contrast, he recognised McCartney’s bass part on the Harrison-composed “Something” as creative but overly busy and “too fussily extemporised”.[249] McCartney identified Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as containing his strongest and most inventive bass playing, particularly on “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”.

Acoustic guitar

McCartney primarily flatpicks while playing acoustic guitar, though he also uses elements of fingerpicking.[251] Examples of his acoustic guitar playing on Beatles tracks include “Yesterday”, “I’m Looking Through You”, “Michelle”, “Blackbird”, “I Will”, “Mother Nature’s Son” and “Rocky Raccoon”.[252] McCartney singled out “Blackbird” as a personal favourite and described his technique for the guitar part in the following way: “I got my own little sort of cheating way of [fingerpicking] … I’m actually sort of pulling two strings at a time … I was trying to emulate those folk players.”[251] He employed a similar technique for “Jenny Wren”.[253] He played an Epiphone Texan on many of his acoustic recordings, but also used a Martin D-28.

Electric guitar

McCartney played lead guitar on several Beatles recordings, including what MacDonald described as a “fiercely angular slide guitar solo” on “Drive My Car”, which McCartney played on an Epiphone Casino. McCartney said of the instrument: “if I had to pick one electric guitar it would be this.”[256] He contributed what MacDonald described as “a startling guitar solo” on the Harrison composition “Taxman” and the “shrieking” guitar on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Helter Skelter”. MacDonald also praised McCartney’s “coruscating pseudo-Indian” guitar solo on “Good Morning Good Morning”.[257] McCartney also played lead guitar on “Another Girl”.[258]

During his years with Wings, McCartney tended to leave electric guitar work to other group members,[259] though he played most of the lead guitar on Band on the Run.[260] In 1990, when asked who his favourite guitar players were he included Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clapton and David Gilmour, stating, “but I still like Hendrix the best”.[251] He has primarily used a Gibson Les Paul for electric work, particularly during live performances.

Vocals

McCartney is known for his belting power, versatility and wide tenor vocal range, spanning over four octaves.[261][262] He was ranked the 11th greatest singer of all time by Rolling Stone,[263] voted the 8th greatest singer ever by NME readers[264] and number 10 by Music Radar readers in the list of “the 30 greatest lead singers of all time”.[265] Over the years, McCartney has been named a significant vocal influence by Chris Cornell,[266] Billy Joel,[267] Steven Tyler,[268] Brad Delp,[269] and Axl Rose.[270]

McCartney’s vocals have crossed several music genres throughout his career. On “Call Me Back Again”, according to Benitez, “McCartney shines as a bluesy solo vocalist”, while MacDonald called “I’m Down” “a rock-and-roll classic” that “illustrates McCartney’s vocal and stylistic versatility”.[271] MacDonald described “Helter Skelter” as an early attempt at heavy metal, and “Hey Jude” as a “pop/rock hybrid”, pointing out McCartney’s “use of gospel-style melismas” in the song and his “pseudo-soul shrieking in the fade-out”.[272] Benitez identified “Hope of Deliverance” and “Put It There” as examples of McCartney’s folk music efforts while musicologist Walter Everett considered “When I’m Sixty-Four” and “Honey Pie” attempts at vaudeville.[273] MacDonald praised the “swinging beat” of the Beatles’ twenty-four bar blues song, “She’s a Woman” as “the most extreme sound they had manufactured to date”, with McCartney’s voice “at the edge, squeezed to the upper limit of his chest register and threatening to crack at any moment.”[274] MacDonald described “I’ve Got a Feeling” as a “raunchy, mid-tempo rocker” with a “robust and soulful” vocal performance and “Back in the U.S.S.R.” as “the last of [the Beatles’] up-tempo rockers”, McCartney’s “belting” vocals among his best since “Drive My Car”, recorded three years earlier.[275]

McCartney also teasingly tried out classical singing, namely singing various renditions of “Besame Mucho” with the Beatles. He continued experimenting with various musical and vocal styles throughout his post-Beatles career.[276][277][278][text–source integrity?] “Monkberry Moon Delight” was described by Pitchfork’s Jayson Greene as “an absolutely unhinged vocal take, Paul gulping and sobbing right next to your inner ear”, adding that “it could be a latter-day Tom Waits performance”.

Keyboards

McCartney played piano on several Beatles songs, including “She’s a Woman”, “For No One”, “A Day in the Life”, “Hello, Goodbye”, “Lady Madonna”, “Hey Jude”, “Martha My Dear”, “Let It Be” and “The Long and Winding Road”.[280] MacDonald considered the piano part in “Lady Madonna” as reminiscent of Fats Domino, and “Let It Be” as having a gospel rhythm.[281] MacDonald called McCartney’s Mellotron intro on “Strawberry Fields Forever” an integral feature of the song’s character.[282] McCartney played a Moog synthesizer on the Beatles song “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and the Wings track “Loup (1st Indian on the Moon)”.[283] Ingham described the Wings songs “With a Little Luck” and “London Town” as being “full of the most sensitive pop synthesizer touches”.

Drums

McCartney played drums on the Beatles’ songs “Back in the U.S.S.R.”, “Dear Prudence”, “Martha My Dear”, “Wild Honey Pie” and “The Ballad of John and Yoko”.[285] He also played all the drum parts on his first and second solo albums McCartney and McCartney II, as well as on the Wings album Band on the Run and most of the drums on his solo LP Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.[286] His other drumming contributions include Paul Jones’ rendition of “And the Sun Will Shine” (1968),[287] Steve Miller Band’s 1969 tracks “Celebration Song” and “My Dark Hour”,[288][289] and “Sunday Rain” from the Foo Fighters’ 2017 album Concrete and Gold.

Tape loops

In the mid-1960s, when visiting artist friend John Dunbar’s flat in London, McCartney brought tapes he had compiled at then-girlfriend Jane Asher’s home. They included mixes of various songs, musical pieces and comments made by McCartney that Dick James made into a demo for him.[291] Heavily influenced by American avant-garde musician John Cage, McCartney made tape loops by recording voices, guitars and bongos on a Brenell tape recorder and splicing the various loops. He referred to the finished product as “electronic symphonies”.[292] He reversed the tapes, sped them up, and slowed them down to create the desired effects, some of which the Beatles later used on the songs “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “The Fool on the Hill”.

Personal life

Creative outlets

While at school during the 1950s, McCartney thrived at art a*signments, often earning top accolades for his visual work. However, his lack of discipline negatively affected his academic grades, preventing him from earning admission to art college.[294] During the 1960s, he delved into the visual arts, explored experimental cinema, and regularly attended film, theatrical and classical music performances. His first contact with the London avant-garde scene was through artist John Dunbar, who introduced McCartney to art dealer Robert Fraser.[295] At Fraser’s flat he first learned about art appreciation and met Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Peter Blake, and Richard Hamilton.[296] McCartney later purchased works by Magritte, whose painting of an apple had inspired the Apple Records logo.[297] McCartney became involved in the renovation and publicising of the Indica Gallery in Mason’s Yard, London, which Barry Miles had co-founded and where Lennon first met Yoko Ono. Miles also co-founded International Times, an underground paper that McCartney helped to start with direct financial support and by providing interviews to attract advertiser income. Miles later wrote McCartney’s official biography, Many Years from Now (1997).[298]

McCartney became interested in painting after watching artist Willem de Kooning work in de Kooning’s Long Island studio.[299] McCartney took up painting in 1983, and he first exhibited his work in Siegen, Germany, in 1999. The 70-painting show featured portraits of Lennon, Andy Warhol and David Bowie.[300] Though initially reluctant to display his paintings publicly, McCartney chose the gallery because events organiser Wolfgang Suttner showed genuine interest in McCartney’s art.[301] In September 2000, the first UK exhibition of McCartney’s paintings opened, featuring 500 canvases at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol, England.[302] In October 2000, McCartney’s art debuted in his hometown of Liverpool. McCartney said, “I’ve been offered an exhibition of my paintings at the Walker Art Gallery … where John and I used to spend many a pleasant afternoon. So I’m really excited about it. I didn’t tell anybody I painted for 15 years but now I’m out of the closet”.[303] McCartney is lead patron of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, a school in the building formerly occupied by the Liverpool Institute for Boys.[304]

When McCartney was a child, his mother read him poems and encouraged him to read books. His father invited Paul and his brother Michael to solve crosswords with him, to increase their “word power”, as McCartney said.[305] In 2001, McCartney published Blackbird Singing, a volume of poems and lyrics to his songs for which he gave readings in Liverpool and New York City.[306] In the foreword of the book, he explains: “When I was a teenager … I had an overwhelming desire to have a poem published in the school magazine. I wrote something deep and meaningful—which was promptly rejected—and I suppose I have been trying to get my own back ever since”.[307] His first children’s book was published by Faber & Faber in 2005, High in the Clouds: An Urban Furry Tail, a collaboration with writer Philip Ardagh and animator Geoff Dunbar. Featuring a squirrel whose woodland home is razed by developers, it had been scripted and sketched by McCartney and Dunbar over several years, as an animated film. The Observer labelled it an “anti-capitalist children’s book”.[308] In 2018, he wrote the children’s book Hey Grandude! together with illustrator Kathryn Durst, which was published by Random House Books in September 2019. The book is about a grandpa and his three grandchildren with a magic compass on an adventure.

In 1981, McCartney asked Geoff Dunbar to direct a short animated film called Rupert and the Frog Song; McCartney was the writer and producer, and he also added some of the character voices.[311] His song “We All Stand Together” from the film’s soundtrack reached No. 3 in the UK Singles Chart. In 1992, he worked with Dunbar on an animated film about the work of French artist Honoré Daumier, which won them a BAFTA award.[312] In 2004, they worked together on the animated short film Tropic Island Hum.[313] The accompanying single, “Tropic Island Hum”/”We All Stand Together”, reached number 21 in the UK.[314]

McCartney also produced and hosted The Real Buddy Holly Story, a 1985 documentary featuring interviews with Keith Richards, Phil and Don Everly, the Holly family, and others.[315] In 1995, he made a guest appearance on the Simpsons episode “Lisa the Vegetarian” and directed a short documentary about the Grateful Dead.

Business

Since the Rich List began in 1989, McCartney has been the UK’s wealthiest musician, with an estimated fortune of £730 million in 2015.[317] In addition to an interest in Apple Corps and MPL Communications, an umbrella company for his business interests, he owns a significant music publishing catalogue, with access to over 25,000 copyrights, including the publishing rights to the musicals Guys and Dolls, A Chorus Line, Annie and Grease.[318] He earned £40 million in 2003, the highest income that year within media professions in the UK.[319] This rose to £48.5 million by 2005.[320] McCartney’s 18-date On the Run Tour grossed £37 million in 2012.[321]

McCartney signed his first recording contract, as a member of the Beatles, with Parlophone Records, an EMI subsidiary, in June 1962. In the United States, the Beatles recordings were distributed by EMI subsidiary Capitol Records. The Beatles re-signed with EMI for another nine years in 1967. After forming their own record label, Apple Records, in 1968, the Beatles’ recordings would be released through Apple although the masters were still owned by EMI.[35] Following the break-up of the Beatles, McCartney’s music continued to be released by Apple Records under the Beatles’ 1967 recording contract with EMI which ran until 1976. Following the formal dissolution of the Beatles’ partnership in 1975, McCartney re-signed with EMI worldwide and Capitol in the US, Canada and Japan, acquiring ownership of his solo catalogue from EMI as part of the deal. In 1979, McCartney signed with Columbia Records in the US and Canada—reportedly receiving the industry’s most lucrative recording contract to date, while remaining with EMI for distribution throughout the rest of the world.[322] As part of the deal, CBS offered McCartney ownership of Frank Music, publisher of the catalogue of American songwriter Frank Loesser. McCartney’s album sales were below CBS’ expectations and reportedly the company lost at least $9 million on the contract.[323] McCartney returned to Capitol in the US in 1985, remaining with EMI until 2006.[324] In 2007, McCartney signed with Hear Music, becoming the label’s first artist. He remains there as of 2012’s Kisses on the Bottom.[325]

In 1963, Dick James established Northern Songs to publish the songs of Lennon–McCartney.[326] McCartney initially owned 20% of Northern Songs, which became 15% after a public stock offering in 1965. In 1969, James sold a controlling interest in Northern Songs to Lew Grade’s Associated Television (ATV) after which McCartney and John Lennon sold their remaining shares although they remained under contract to ATV until 1973. In 1972, McCartney re-signed with ATV for seven years in a joint publishing agreement between ATV and McCartney Music. Since 1979, MPL Communications has published McCartney’s songs.

McCartney and Yoko Ono attempted to purchase the Northern Songs catalogue in 1981, but Grade declined their offer. Soon afterward, ATV Music’s parent company, Associated Communications Corp., was acquired in a takeover by businessman Robert Holmes à Court, who later sold ATV Music to Michael Jackson in 1985. McCartney has criticised Jackson’s purchase and handling of Northern Songs over the years. In 1995, Jackson merged his catalogue with Sony for a reported £59,052,000 ($95 million), establishing Sony/ATV Music Publishing, in which he retained half-ownership.[327] Northern Songs was formally dissolved in 1995, and absorbed into the Sony/ATV catalogue.[328] McCartney receives writers’ royalties which together are 33⅓ percent of total commercial proceeds in the US, and which vary elsewhere between 50 and 55 percent.[329] Two of the Beatles’ earliest songs—”Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You”—were published by an EMI subsidiary, Ardmore & Beechwood, before signing with James. McCartney acquired their publishing rights from Ardmore in 1978, and they are the only two Beatles songs owned by MPL Communications.

Drugs

McCartney first used drugs in the Beatles’ Hamburg days when they often used Preludin to maintain their energy while performing for long periods.[331] Bob Dylan introduced them to marijuana in a New York hotel room in 1964; McCartney recalls getting “very high” and “giggling uncontrollably”.[332] His use of the drug soon became habitual, and according to Miles, McCartney wrote the lyrics “another kind of mind” in “Got to Get You into My Life” specifically as a reference to cannabis.[333] During the filming of Help!, McCartney occasionally smoked a joint in the car on the way to the studio during filming, and often forgot his lines.[334] Director Richard Lester overheard two physically attractive women trying to persuade McCartney to use heroin, but he refused.[334] Introduced to cocaine by Robert Fraser, McCartney used the drug regularly during the recording of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and for about a year in total but stopped because of his dislike of the unpleasant melancholy he felt afterwards.[335]

Initially reluctant to try LSD, McCartney eventually did so in late 1966, and took his second “acid trip” in March 1967 with Lennon after a Sgt. Pepper studio session.[336] He later became the first Beatle to discuss the drug publicly, declaring: “It opened my eyes … [and] made me a better, more honest, more tolerant member of society.”[337] He made his attitude about cannabis public in 1967, when he, along with the other Beatles and Epstein, added his name to a July advertisement in The Times, which called for its legalisation, the release of those imprisoned for possession, and research into marijuana’s medical uses.[338]

In 1972, a Swedish court fined McCartney £1,000 for cannabis possession. Soon after, Scottish police found marijuana plants growing on his farm, leading to his 1973 conviction for illegal cultivation and a £100 fine. As a result of his drug convictions, the US government repeatedly denied him a visa until December 1973.[339] Arrested again for marijuana possession in 1975 in Los Angeles, Linda took the blame, and the court soon dismissed the charges. In January 1980, when Wings flew to Tokyo for a tour of Japan, customs officials found approximately 8 ounces (200 g) of cannabis in his luggage. They arrested McCartney and brought him to a local jail while the Japanese government decided what to do. After ten days, they released and deported him without charge.[340] In 1984, while McCartney was on holiday in Barbados, authorities arrested him for possession of marijuana and fined him $200.[341] Upon his return to England, he stated: “cannabis is … less harmful than rum punch, whiskey, nicotine and glue, all of which are perfectly legal … I don’t think … I was doing anyone any harm whatsoever.”[342] In 1997, he spoke out in support of decriminalisation of the drug: “People are smoking pot anyway and to make them criminals is wrong.”[295] He did, however, decide to quit cannabis in 2015, citing a desire to set a good example for his grandchildren.

Vegetarianism and activism

Since 1975, McCartney has been a vegetarian.[344][345] He and his wife Linda were vegetarians for most of their 29-year marriage. They decided to stop consuming meat after Paul saw lambs in a field as they were eating a meal of lamb. Soon after, the couple became outspoken animal rights activists.[346] In his first interview after Linda’s death, he promised to continue working for animal rights, and in 1999, he spent £3,000,000 to ensure Linda McCartney Foods remained free of genetically engineered ingredients.[347] In 1995, he narrated the documentary Devour the Earth, written by Tony Wardle.[348] McCartney is a supporter of the animal-rights organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He has appeared in the group’s campaigns, and in 2009, McCartney narrated a video for them titled “Glass Walls”, which was harshly critical of slaughterhouses, the meat industry, and their effect on animal welfare.[349][350][351] McCartney has also supported campaigns headed by the Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society International, World Animal Protection, and the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation.[352][353]

Following McCartney’s marriage to Mills, he joined her in a campaign against land mines, becoming a patron of Adopt-A-Minefield.[354] In a 2003 meeting at the Kremlin with Vladimir Putin, ahead of a concert in Red Square, McCartney and Mills urged Russia to join the anti-landmine campaign.[355] In 2006, the McCartneys travelled to Prince Edward Island to raise international awareness of seal hunting. The couple debated with Danny Williams, Newfoundland’s then Premier, on Larry King Live, stating that fishermen should stop hunting seals and start seal-watching businesses instead.[356] McCartney also supports the Make Poverty History campaign.[357]

McCartney has participated in several charity recordings and performances, including the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, Ferry Aid, Band Aid, Live Aid, Live 8, and the recording of “Ferry Cross the Mersey”.[358] In 2004, he donated a song to an album to aid the “US Campaign for Burma”, in support of Burmese Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. In 2008, he donated a song to Aid Still Required’s CD, organised as an effort to raise funds to a*sist with the recovery from the devastation caused in Southeast Asia by the 2004 tsunami.[359]

In 2009, McCartney wrote to Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, asking him why he was not a vegetarian. As McCartney explained, “He wrote back very kindly, saying, ‘my doctors tell me that I must eat meat’. And I wrote back again, saying, you know, I don’t think that’s right … I think he’s now being told … that he can get his protein somewhere else … It just doesn’t seem right—the Dalai Lama, on the one hand, saying, ‘Hey guys, don’t harm sentient beings … Oh, and by the way, I’m having a steak.’”[360] In 2012, McCartney joined the anti-fracking campaign Artists Against Fracking.[361]

Save the Arctic is a campaign to protect the Arctic and an international outcry and a renewed focus concern on oil development in the Arctic, attracting the support of more than five million people. This includes McCartney, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and 11 Nobel Peace Prize winners.[362][363] In 2015, following British prime minister David Cameron’s decision to give Members of Parliament a free vote on amending the law against fox hunting, McCartney was quoted: “The people of Britain are behind this Tory government on many things but the vast majority of us will be against them if hunting is reintroduced. It is cruel and unnecessary and will lose them support from ordinary people and animal lovers like myself.”[364] During the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, McCartney called for Chinese wet markets (which sell live animals including wild ones) to be banned. He expressed concern over both the health impacts of the practice as well as its cruelty to animals.

Meditation

In August 1967, McCartney met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the London Hilton and later went to Bangor in North Wales to attend a weekend initiation conference, where he and the other Beatles learned the basics of Transcendental Meditation.[366] He said, “The whole meditation experience was very good and I still use the mantra … I find it soothing.”[367] In 2009, McCartney and Starr headlined a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall, raising three million dollars for the David Lynch Foundation to fund instruction in Transcendental Meditation for at-risk youth.

Football

McCartney has publicly professed support for Everton and has also shown favour for Liverpool.[369] In 2008, he ended speculation about his allegiance when he said: “Here’s the deal: my father was born in Everton, my family are officially Evertonians, so if it comes down to a derby match or an FA Cup final between the two, I would have to support Everton. But after a concert at Wembley Arena I got a bit of a friendship with Kenny Dalglish, who had been to the gig and I thought ‘You know what? I am just going to support them both because it’s all Liverpool.’”[

Relationships

Girlfriends

Dot Rhone

McCartney’s first serious girlfriend in Liverpool was Dot Rhone, whom he met at the Casbah club in 1959.[371] According to Spitz, Rhone felt that McCartney had a compulsion to control situations. He often chose clothes and makeup for her, encouraging her to grow her hair out like Brigitte Bardot’s, and at least once insisting she have it restyled, to disappointing effect.[372] When McCartney first went to Hamburg with the Beatles, he wrote to Rhone regularly, and she accompanied Cynthia Lennon to Hamburg when they played there again in 1962.[373] The couple had a two-and-a-half-year relationship, and were due to marry until Rhone’s miscarriage. According to Spitz, McCartney, now “free of obligation”, ended the engagement.

Jane Asher

McCartney first met British actress Jane Asher on 18 April 1963 when a photographer asked them to pose at a Beatles performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London.[375] The two began a relationship, and in November of that year he took up residence with Asher at her parents’ home at 57 Wimpole Street, London.[376] They had lived there for more than two years before the couple moved to McCartney’s own home in St. John’s Wood in March 1966.[377] He wrote several songs while living at the Ashers’, including “Yesterday”, “And I Love Her”, “You Won’t See Me” and “I’m Looking Through You”, the latter three having been inspired by their romance.[378] They had a five-year relationship and planned to marry, but Asher broke off the engagement after she discovered he had become involved with Francie Schwartz,[379] an American screenwriter who moved to London at age 23 thinking she could sell a script to the Beatles. She met McCartney and he invited her to move into his London house, where events ensued that possibly broke up him and Asher.

Wives

Linda Eastman

Linda Eastman was a music fan who once commented, “all my teen years were spent with an ear to the radio.”[381] At times, she played hooky to see artists such as Fabian, Bobby Darin and Chuck Berry.[381] She became a popular photographer with several rock groups, including the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Grateful Dead, the Doors and the Beatles, whom she first met at Shea Stadium in 1966. She commented, “It was John who interested me at the start. He was my Beatle hero. But when I met him the fascination faded fast, and I found it was Paul I liked.”[382] The pair first met properly in 1967 at a Georgie Fame concert at The Bag O’Nails club, during her UK a*signment to photograph rock musicians in London. As Paul remembers, “The night Linda and I met, I spotted her across a crowded club, and although I would normally have been nervous chatting her up, I realised I had to … Pushiness worked for me that night!”[383] Linda said this about their meeting: “I was quite shameless really. I was with somebody else [that night] … and I saw Paul at the other side of the room. He looked so beautiful that I made up my mind I would have to pick him up.”[382] The pair married in March 1969. About their relationship, Paul said, “We had a lot of fun together … just the nature of how we aren’t, our favourite thing really is to just hang, to have fun. And Linda’s very big on just following the moment.”[384] He added, “We were crazy. We had a big argument the night before we got married, and it was nearly called off … [it’s] miraculous that we made it. But we did.”[385]

After the break-up of the Beatles, the two collaborated musically and formed Wings in 1971.[386] They faced derision from some fans and critics, who questioned her inclusion. She was nervous about performing with Paul, who explained, “she conquered those nerves, got on with it and was really gutsy.”[387] Paul defended her musical ability: “I taught Linda the basics of the keyboard … She took a couple of lessons and learned some bluesy things … she did very well and made it look easier than it was … The critics would say, ‘She’s not really playing’ or ‘Look at her—she’s playing with one finger.’ But what they didn’t know is that sometimes she was playing a thing called a Minimoog, which could only be played with one finger. It was monophonic.”[387] He went on to say, “We thought we were in it for the fun … it was just something we wanted to do, so if we got it wrong—big deal. We didn’t have to justify ourselves.”[387] Former Wings guitarist McCullough said of collaborating with Linda, “trying to get things together with a learner in the group didn’t work as far as I was concerned.”[388]

They had four children—Linda’s daughter Heather (legally adopted by Paul), Mary, Stella and James—and remained married until Linda’s death from breast cancer at age 56 in 1998.[389] After Linda died, Paul said, “I got a counsellor because I knew that I would need some help. He was great, particularly in helping me get rid of my guilt [about wishing I’d been] perfect all the time … a real bugger. But then I thought, hang on a minute. We’re just human. That was the beautiful thing about our marriage. We were just a boyfriend and girlfriend having babies.”

Heather Mills

In 2002, McCartney married Heather Mills, a former model and anti-landmine campaigner.[391] In 2003, the couple had a child, Beatrice Milly, named in honour of Mills’s late mother and one of McCartney’s aunts.[174] They separated in April 2006 and divorced acrimoniously in March 2008.[392] In 2004, he commented on media animosity toward his partners: “[the British public] didn’t like me giving up on Jane Asher … I married [Linda], a New York divorcee with a child, and at the time they didn’t like that”.

Nancy Shevell

McCartney married New Yorker Nancy Shevell in a civil ceremony at Marylebone Town Hall, London, on 9 October 2011. The wedding was a modest event attended by a group of about 30 relatives and friends.[193] The couple had been together since November 2007.[394] Shevell is vice president of a family-owned transportation conglomerate which owns New England Motor Freight.[395] She is a former member of the board of the New York area’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.[396] Shevell is about 18 years younger than McCartney.[397] They had known each other for about 20 years prior to marrying, having met because both had homes in the Hamptons.

Beatles

John Lennon

Though McCartney had a strained relationship with Lennon, they briefly became close again in early 1974, and played music together on one occasion.[398] In later years, the two grew apart.[399] McCartney often phoned Lennon, but was apprehensive about the reception he would receive. During one call, Lennon told him, “You’re all pizza and fairytales!”[400] In an effort to avoid talking only about business, they often spoke of cats, babies, or baking bread.[401]

On 24 April 1976, McCartney and Lennon were watching an episode of Saturday Night Live at Lennon’s home in the Dakota when Lorne Michaels made a $3,000 cash offer for the Beatles to reunite. While they seriously considered going to the SNL studio a few blocks away, they decided it was too late. This was their last time together.[402] VH1 fictionalised this event in the 2000 television film Two of Us.[403] McCartney’s last telephone call to Lennon, days before Lennon and Ono released Double Fantasy, was friendly: “[It is] a consoling factor for me, because I do feel it was sad that we never actually sat down and straightened our differences out. But fortunately for me, the last phone conversation I ever had with him was really great, and we didn’t have any kind of blow-up”, he said.

Reaction to Lennon’s murder

On 9 December 1980, McCartney followed the news that Lennon had been murdered the previous night; Lennon’s death created a media frenzy around the surviving members of the band.[406] McCartney was leaving an Oxford Street recording studio that evening when he was surrounded by reporters who asked him for his reaction; he responded: “It’s a drag”. The press quickly criticised him for what appeared to be a superficial response.[407] He later explained, “When John was killed somebody stuck a microphone at me and said: ‘What do you think about it?’ I said, ‘It’s a dra-a-ag’ and meant it with every inch of melancholy I could muster. When you put that in print it says, ‘McCartney in London today when asked for a comment on his dead friend said, “It’s a drag”.’ It seemed a very flippant comment to make.”[407] He described his first exchange with Ono after the murder, and his last conversation with Lennon:

I talked to Yoko the day after he was killed, and the first thing she said was, “John was really fond of you.” The last telephone conversation I had with him we were still the best of mates. He was always a very warm guy, John. His bluff was all on the surface. He used to take his glasses down, those granny glasses, and say, “it’s only me.” They were like a wall you know? A shield. Those are the moments I treasure.

In 1983, McCartney said: “I would not have been as typically human and standoffish as I was if I knew John was going to die. I would have made more of an effort to try and get behind his ‘mask’ and have a better relationship with him.”[407] He said that he went home that night, watched the news on television with his children and cried most of the evening. In 1997, he said that Lennon’s death made the remaining ex-Beatles nervous that they might also be murdered.[408] He told Mojo magazine in 2002 that Lennon was his greatest hero.[409] In 1981, McCartney sang backup on Harrison’s tribute to Lennon, “All Those Years Ago”, which featured Starr on drums.[410] McCartney released “Here Today” in 1982, a song Everett described as “a haunting tribute” to McCartney’s friendship with Lennon

George Harrison

Discussing his relationship with McCartney, Harrison said: “Paul would always help along when you’d done his ten songs—then when he got ’round to doing one of my songs, he would help. It was silly. It was very selfish, actually … There were a lot of tracks, though, where I played bass … because what Paul would do—if he’d written a song, he’d learn all the parts for Paul and then come in the studio and say (sometimes he was very difficult): ‘Do this’. He’d never give you the opportunity to come out with something.”[412]

After Harrison’s death in November 2001, McCartney said he was “a lovely guy and a very brave man who had a wonderful sense of humour”. He went on to say: “We grew up together and we just had so many beautiful times together – that’s what I am going to remember. I’ll always love him, he’s my baby brother.”[413] On the first anniversary of his death, McCartney played Harrison’s “Something” on a ukulele at the Concert for George; he would perform this rendition of the song on many subsequent solo tours.[414] He also performed “For You Blue” and “All Things Must Pass”, and played the piano on Eric Clapton’s rendition of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.

Ringo Starr

During a recording session for The Beatles in 1968, the two got into an argument over McCartney’s critique of Starr’s drum part for “Back in the U.S.S.R.”, which contributed to Starr temporarily leaving the band.[416] Starr later commented on working with McCartney: “Paul is the greatest bass player in the world. But he is also very determined … [to] get his own way … [thus] musical disagreements inevitably arose from time to time.”[417]

McCartney and Starr collaborated on several post-Beatles projects, starting in 1973 when McCartney contributed instrumentation and backing vocals for “Six O’Clock”, a song McCartney wrote for Starr’s album Ringo.[418] McCartney played a kazoo solo on “You’re Sixteen” from the same album.[419] Starr appeared (as a fictional version of himself) in McCartney’s 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street, and played drums on most tracks of the soundtrack album, which includes re-recordings of several McCartney-penned Beatles songs. Starr played drums and sang backing vocals on “Beautiful Night” from McCartney’s 1997 album Flaming Pie. The pair collaborated again in 1998, on Starr’s Vertical Man, which featured McCartney’s backing vocals on three songs, and instrumentation on one.[420] In 2009, the pair performed “With a Little Help from My Friends” at a benefit concert for the David Lynch Foundation.[421] They collaborated on Starr’s album Y Not in 2010. McCartney played bass on “Peace Dream”, and sang a duet with Starr on “Walk with You”.[422] On 7 July 2010, Starr was performing at Radio City Music Hall in New York with his All-Starr Band in a concert celebrating his seventieth birthday. After the encores, McCartney made a surprise appearance, performing the Beatles’ song “Birthday” with Starr’s band.[423] On 26 January 2014, McCartney and Starr performed “Queenie Eye” from McCartney’s new album New at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards.[424] McCartney inducted Starr into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2015, and played bass on his 2017 album Give More Love. On 16 December 2018, Starr and Ronnie Wood joined McCartney onstage to perform “Get Back” at his concert at London’s O2 Arena. Starr also made an appearance on the final day of McCartney’s Freshen Up tour in July 2019, performing “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” and “Helter Skelter”.

Legacy

Achievements

McCartney was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 as a member of the Beatles and again as a solo artist in 1999. In 1979, the Guinness Book of World Records recognised McCartney as the “most honored composer and performer in music”, with 60 gold discs (43 with the Beatles, 17 with Wings) and, as a member of the Beatles, sales of over 100 million singles and 100 million albums, and as the “most successful song writer”, he wrote jointly or solo 43 songs which sold one million or more records between 1962 and 1978.[426] In 2009, Guinness World Records again recognised McCartney as the “most successful songwriter” having written or co-written 188 charted records in the United Kingdom, of which 91 reached the top 10 and 33 made it to number one.

McCartney has written, or co-written, 32 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100: twenty with the Beatles; seven solo or with Wings; one as a co-writer of “A World Without Love”, a number-one single for Peter and Gordon; one as a co-writer on Elton John’s cover of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”; one as a co-writer on Stars on 45’s “Medley”; one as a co-writer with Michael Jackson on “Say Say Say”; and one as writer on “Ebony and Ivory” performed with Stevie Wonder.[428] As of 2009, he has 15.5 million RIAA certified units in the United States as a solo artist plus another 10 million with Wings.[429]

Credited with more number ones in the UK than any other artist, McCartney has participated in twenty-four chart topping singles: seventeen with the Beatles, one solo, and one each with Wings, Stevie Wonder, Ferry Aid, Band Aid, Band Aid 20 and “The Christians et al.”[430][nb 44] He is the only artist to reach the UK number one as a soloist (“Pipes of Peace”), duo (“Ebony and Ivory” with Wonder), trio (“Mull of Kintyre”, Wings), quartet (“She Loves You”, the Beatles), quintet (“Get Back”, the Beatles with Billy Preston) and as part of a musical ensemble for charity (Ferry Aid).[432]

“Yesterday” is one of the most covered songs in history with more than 2,200 recorded versions, and according to the BBC, “the track is the only one by a UK writer to have been aired more than seven million times on American TV and radio and is third in the all-time list … [and] is the most played song by a British writer [last] century in the US”.[433] His 1968 Beatles composition “Hey Jude” achieved the highest sales in the UK that year and topped the US charts for nine weeks, which is longer than any other Beatles single. It was also the longest single released by the band and, at seven minutes eleven seconds, was at that time the longest number one.[434] “Hey Jude” is the best-selling Beatles single, achieving sales of over five million copies soon after its release.[435][nb 45]

In July 2005, McCartney’s performance of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” with U2 at Live 8 became the fastest-released single in history. Available within forty-five minutes of its recording, hours later it had achieved number one on the UK Official Download Chart.

Awards and honours

• 1971: Academy Award winner (as a member of the Beatles)
• 18-time Grammy Award winner:
  • Nine as a member of the Beatles
  • Six as a solo artist
  • Two as a member of Wings
  • One as part of a joint collaboration
• Two-time inductee – Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
  • Class of 1988 as a member of the Beatles
  • Class of 1999 as a solo artist
• 1965: Member of the Order of the British Empire
• 1988: Honorary Doctor of the University degree from University of Sussex
• 1997: Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to music
• 2000: Fellowship into the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors
• 2008: BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music
• 2008: Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Yale University
• 2010: Gershwin Prize for his contributions to popular music
• 2010: Kennedy Center Honors
• 2012: Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
• 2012: Légion d’Honneur for his services to music
• 2012: MusiCares Person of the Year
• 2015: 4148 McCartney, asteroid named after him by the (International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center)
• 2017: Appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to music

“ Just as there is no loss of basic energy in the universe, so no thought or action is without its effects, present or ultimate, seen or unseen, felt or unfelt. ” ― Norman Cousins

George Lawrence Thorogood (born February 24, 1950) is an American musician, singer and songwriter from Wilmington, Delaware.[1] His “high-energy boogie-blues” sound became a staple of 1980s rock radio, with hits like his original songs “Bad to the Bone” and “I Drink Alone”.[2] He has also helped to popularize older songs by American icons, such as “Move It on Over”, “Who Do You Love?”, and “House Rent Blues/One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”.[3]

With his band, the Destroyers, Thorogood has released over 20 albums, of which two have been certified Platinum and six have been certified Gold. He has sold 15 million albums worldwide. Thorogood and band continue to tour extensively, and in 2014 the band celebrated their 40th anniversary of performing.

Music career

Thorogood began his career in the early 1970s as a solo acoustic performer in the style of Robert Johnson and Elmore James[2] after being inspired by a John P. Hammond concert.[4] However, he soon formed a band, the Delaware Destroyers, with high school friend and drummer Jeff Simon.[2] With additional players the Delaware Destroyers developed its sound, a mixture of Chicago blues and rock and roll.[4] The band’s first shows were in the Rathskeller at the University of Delaware and at the Deer Park Tavern.[5][failed verification] Eventually, the band’s name was shortened to the Destroyers. During this time, Thorogood supplemented his income by working as a roadie for Hound Dog Taylor.[6]

Thorogood’s demo, Better Than the Rest, was recorded in 1974, but it wasn’t released until 1979. His major recording debut came with the album George Thorogood and the Destroyers, which was released in 1977. In 1978, Thorogood released his next album with the Destroyers titled Move It on Over, which included a remake of Hank Williams’ “Move It on Over”. He followed those recordings in 1979 with “Please Set a Date” and a reworking of the Bo Diddley song “Who Do You Love” both released in 1979. The band’s early success contributed to the rise of folk label Rounder Records.[7]

During the late 1970s, Thorogood and his band were based in Boston. He was friends with Jimmy Thackery of the Washington, D.C.-based blues band, The Nighthawks. While touring in the 1970s, the Destroyers and the Nighthawks were playing shows in Georgetown at venues across the street from each other. The Destroyers were engaged at The Cellar Door and the Nighthawks at Desperados. At midnight, while both bands played Elmore James’ “Madison Blues” in the same key, Thorogood and Thackery left their clubs, met in the middle of M Street, exchanged guitar patch cords and went on to play with the opposite band in the other club.[8] The connection with the Nighthawks was extended further, when Nighthawks bass player Jan Zukowski supported Thorogood’s set at the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia, PA on July 13, 1985.

Thorogood gained his first mainstream exposure as a support act for the Rolling Stones during their 1981 U.S. tour.[9] He also was the featured musical guest on Saturday Night Live (Season 8, Episode 2) on the October 2, 1982 broadcast. During this time, Thorogood and the Destroyers also became known for their rigorous touring schedule, including the “50/50” tour of 1981,[10] on which the band toured all 50 US states in 50 days.[11] After two shows in Boulder, Colorado, Thorogood and his band flew to Hawaii for one show and then performed a show in Alaska on the following night. The next day Thorogood and his band met his roadies in Washington and continued a one-show-per-state tour for all 50 states in 50 nights. In addition, he played Washington, D.C. on the same day that he performed a show in Maryland, thereby playing 51 shows in 50 days.

With his contract with Rounder Records expiring, Thorogood signed with EMI America Records and in 1982 released the single “Bad to the Bone” and an album of the same name that went gold. The song became the band’s most well-known song[12] through appearances on MTV and use in films, television and commercials. Thorogood and his band went on to have two more gold studio albums in the 1980s, Maverick and Born to Be Bad. The former features concert staple “I Drink Alone” and Thorogood’s only Billboard Hot 100 hit, a remake of Johnny Otis’s “Willie and the Hand Jive”.[13] In 1985, he appeared at Live Aid performing with Bo Diddley and Albert Collins.[9]

Thorogood’s popularity waned in the 1990s, although he had a No. 2 hit on the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart in 1992 with “Get a Haircut”.[13]

In 2012, Thorogood was named one of the “50 Most Influential Delawareans of the Past 50 Years”.[14] He released his first proper solo album in 2017 titled Party of One.

Band members

The Destroyers

• George Thorogood – lead vocals and lead guitar
• Jeff Simon – drums, percussion (1973–present)
• Billy Blough – bass guitar (1976–present)
• Jim Suhler – rhythm guitar (1999–present)
• Buddy Leach – saxophone, piano (2003–present)

Former members

• Michael Levine – bass (1973–1976)
• Ron “Roadblock” Smith – rhythm guitar (1974–1980)
• Hank “Hurricane” Carter – saxophone (1980–2003)
• Ian Stewart

Discography

Studio albums with the Destroyers

• 1977: George Thorogood and the Destroyers (Gold)
• 1978: Move It on Over (Gold)
• 1979: Better Than the Rest (Recorded in 1974)
• 1980: More George Thorogood and the Destroyers
• 1982: Bad to the Bone (Gold)
• 1985: Maverick (Gold)
• 1986: Nadine (CD Rerelease of Better Than the Rest)
• 1988: Born to Be Bad (Gold)
• 1991: Boogie People
• 1993: Haircut
• 1997: Rockin’ My Life Away
• 1999: Half a Boy/Half a Man
• 2003: Ride ‘Til I Die
• 2006: The Hard Stuff
• 2009: The Dirty Dozen
• 2011: 2120 South Michigan Ave.

Solo studio album

• 2017: Party of One– keyboards (1982)

• Steve Chrismar – rhythm guitar (1985–1993)
• Waddy Wachtel – guitar (1997)

Personal life

Thorogood has been a baseball fan[11] for most of his life, playing semi-pro ball as a second baseman during the 1970s (drummer Jeff Simon played center field on the same team). He took his daughter to Chicago for her first major league game (Cubs vs. Rockies), during which he sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”. In a 2011 Guitar World interview, he stated “I’m a Mets fan. There aren’t many of us but you know, that’s me.”

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman; May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author and visual artist. Widely regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture for more than 50 years. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” (1963) and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and anti-war movements. His lyrics during this period incorporated a range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences, defied pop music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture.

Following his self-titled debut album in 1962, which mainly comprised traditional folk songs, Dylan made his breakthrough as a songwriter with the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan the following year. The album features “Blowin’ in the Wind” and the thematically complex “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”. For many of these songs, he adapted the tunes and phraseology of older folk songs. He went on to release the politically charged The Times They Are a-Changin’ and the more lyrically abstract and introspective Another Side of Bob Dylan in 1964. In 1965 and 1966, Dylan drew controversy when he adopted electrically amplified rock instrumentation, and in the space of 15 months recorded three of the most important and influential rock albums of the 1960s: Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966). Commenting on the six-minute single “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965), Rolling Stone wrote: “No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time.”

In July 1966, Dylan withdrew from touring after a motorcycle accident. During this period, he recorded a large body of songs with members of the Band, who had previously backed him on tour. These recordings were released as the collaborative album The Basement Tapes in 1975. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dylan explored country music and rural themes in John Wesley Harding (1967), Nashville Skyline (1969), and New Morning (1970). In 1975, he released Blood on the Tracks, which many saw as a return to form. In the late 1970s, he became a born-again Christian and released a series of albums of contemporary gospel music before returning to his more familiar rock-based idiom in the early 1980s. Dylan’s 1997 album Time Out of Mind marked the beginning of a renaissance for his career. He has released five critically acclaimed albums of original material since then, the most recent being Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020). He also recorded a series of three albums in the 2010s comprising versions of traditional American standards, especially songs recorded by Frank Sinatra. Backed by a changing lineup of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour.

Since 1994, Dylan has published eight books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. He has sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, ten Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Pulitzer Prize Board in 2008 awarded him a special citation for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power”. In 2016, Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.

Life and career

1941–1959: Origins and musical beginnings

Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman (Hebrew:שבתאי זיסל בן אברהם‎ Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham) in St. Mary’s Hospital on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, and raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Range west of Lake Superior. Dylan’s paternal grandparents, Anna Kirghiz and Zigman Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to the United States following the anti-Semitic pogroms of 1905. His maternal grandparents, Florence and Ben Stone, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in the United States in 1902. In his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan wrote that his paternal grandmother’s family originated from the Kağızman district of Kars Province in northeastern Turkey.

Dylan’s father Abram Zimmerman and mother Beatrice “Beatty” Stone were part of a small, close-knit Jewish community. They lived in Duluth until Dylan was six, when his father contracted polio and the family returned to his mother’s hometown, Hibbing, where they lived for the rest of Dylan’s childhood, and his father and paternal uncles ran a furniture and appliances store. In his early years he listened to the radio—first to blues and country stations from Shreveport, Louisiana, and later, when he was a teenager, to rock and roll.

Dylan formed several bands while attending Hibbing High School. In the Golden Chords, he performed covers of songs by Little Richard and Elvis Presley. Their performance of Danny & the Juniors’ “Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay” at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone. In 1959, Dylan’s high school yearbook carried the caption “Robert Zimmerman: to join ‘Little Richard’.” That year, as Elston Gunnn, he performed two dates with Bobby Vee, playing piano and clapping. In September 1959, Dylan moved to Minneapolis and enrolled at the University of Minnesota. His focus on rock and roll gave way to American folk music, as he explained in a 1985 interview:

The thing about rock’n’roll is that for me anyway it wasn’t enough… There were great catch-phrases and driving pulse rhythms… but the songs weren’t serious or didn’t reflect life in a realistic way. I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings.

Living at the Jewish-centric fraternity Sigma Alpha Mu house, Dylan began to perform at the Ten O’Clock Scholar, a coffeehouse a few blocks from campus, and became involved in the Dinkytown folk music circuit. During this period, he began to introduce himself as “Bob Dylan.” In his memoir, he said he had considered adopting the surname Dillon before he unexpectedly saw poems by Dylan Thomas, and decided upon that less common variant. Explaining his change of name in a 2004 interview, he said, “You’re born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.”

1960s

Relocation to New York and record deal

In May 1960, Dylan dropped out of college at the end of his first year. In January 1961, he traveled to New York City to perform there and visit his musical idol Woody Guthrie, who was seriously ill with Huntington’s disease in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. Guthrie had been a revelation to Dylan and influenced his early performances. Describing Guthrie’s impact, he wrote: “The songs themselves had the infinite sweep of humanity in them… [He] was the true voice of the American spirit. I said to myself I was going to be Guthrie’s greatest disciple.” As well as visiting Guthrie in hospital, Dylan befriended Guthrie’s protégé Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Much of Guthrie’s repertoire was channeled through Elliott, and Dylan paid tribute to Elliott in Chronicles: Volume One. Dylan later said he was influenced by African-American poets he heard on the New York streets, especially Big Brown.

From February 1961, Dylan played at clubs around Greenwich Village, befriending and picking up material from folk singers there, including Dave Van Ronk, Fred Neil, Odetta, the New Lost City Ramblers and Irish musicians the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. On April 11, Dylan commenced a two-week engagement at Gerde’s Folk City, supporting John Lee Hooker. In September, New York Times critic Robert Shelton boosted Dylan’s career with a very enthusiastic review of his performance at Gerde’s Folk City: “Bob Dylan: A Distinctive Folk-Song Stylist”. That month, Dylan played harmonica on folk singer Carolyn Hester’s third album. This brought him to the attention of the album’s producer, John Hammond, who signed Dylan to Columbia Records.

Dylan’s first album, Bob Dylan, released March 19, 1962, consisted of familiar folk, blues and gospel with two original compositions. The album sold only 5,000 copies in its first year, just enough to break even. Within Columbia Records, some referred to Dylan as “Hammond’s Folly” and suggested dropping his contract, but Hammond defended him and was supported by songwriter Johnny Cash. In March 1962, Dylan contributed harmonica and backup vocals to the album Three Kings and the Queen, accompanying Victoria Spivey and Big Joe Williams on a recording for Spivey Records. While working for Columbia, Dylan recorded under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt for Broadside, a folk magazine and record label. Dylan used the pseudonym Bob Landy to record as a piano player on The Blues Project, a 1964 anthology album by Elektra Records. As Tedham Porterhouse, Dylan played harmonica on Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s 1964 album Jack Elliott.

Dylan made two important career moves in August 1962: he legally changed his name to Bob Dylan, and signed a management contract with Albert Grossman. (In June 1961, Dylan had signed an agreement with Roy Silver. In 1962, Grossman paid Silver $10,000 to become sole manager.) Grossman remained Dylan’s manager until 1970, and was known for his sometimes confrontational personality and protective loyalty. Dylan said, “He was kind of like a Colonel Tom Parker figure … you could smell him coming.” Tension between Grossman and John Hammond led to the latter suggesting Dylan work with the young African-American jazz producer Tom Wilson, who produced several tracks for the second album without formal credit. Wilson produced the next three albums Dylan recorded.

Dylan made his first trip to the United Kingdom from December 1962 to January 1963. He had been invited by television director Philip Saville to appear in a drama, Madhouse on Castle Street, which Saville was directing for BBC Television. At the end of the play, Dylan performed “Blowin’ in the Wind”, one of its first public performances. The film recording of Madhouse on Castle Street was discarded by the BBC in 1968. While in London, Dylan performed at London folk clubs, including the Troubadour, Les Cousins, and Bunjies. He also learned material from UK performers, including Martin Carthy.

By the release of Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, in May 1963, he had begun to make his name as a singer-songwriter. Many songs on the album were labeled protest songs, inspired partly by Guthrie and influenced by Pete Seeger’s passion for topical songs. “Oxford Town”, for example, was an account of James Meredith’s ordeal as the first black student to risk enrollment at the University of Mississippi. The first song on the album, “Blowin’ in the Wind”, partly derived its melody from the traditional slave song, “No More Auction Block”, while its lyrics questioned the social and political status quo. The song was widely recorded by other artists and became a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary. Another song, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”, was based on the folk ballad “Lord Randall”. With veiled references to an impending apocalypse, it gained resonance when the Cuban Missile Crisis developed a few weeks after Dylan began performing it. Like “Blowin’ in the Wind”, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” marked a new direction in songwriting, blending a stream-of-consciousness, imagist lyrical attack with traditional folk form.

Dylan’s topical songs led to his being viewed as more than just a songwriter. Janet Maslin wrote in 1980 of Freewheelin’: “These were the songs that established [Dylan] as the voice of his generation—someone who implicitly understood how concerned young Americans felt about nuclear disarmament and the growing Civil Rights Movement: his mixture of moral authority and nonconformity was perhaps the most timely of his attributes.” Freewheelin’ also included love songs and surreal talking blues. Humor was an important part of Dylan’s persona, and the range of material on the album impressed listeners, including the Beatles. George Harrison said of the album: “We just played it, just wore it out. The content of the song lyrics and just the attitude—it was incredibly original and wonderful.”

The rough edge of Dylan’s singing was unsettling to some but an attraction to others. Novelist Joyce Carol Oates wrote: “When we first heard this raw, very young, and seemingly untrained voice, frankly nasal, as if sandpaper could sing, the effect was dramatic and electrifying.”[ Many early songs reached the public through more palatable versions by other performers, such as Joan Baez, who became Dylan’s advocate and lover. Baez was influential in bringing Dylan to prominence by recording several of his early songs and inviting him on stage during her concerts. “It didn’t take long before people got it, that he was pretty damned special,” says Baez.

Others who had hits with Dylan’s songs in the early 1960s included the Byrds, Sonny & Cher, the Hollies, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Association, Manfred Mann and the Turtles. Most attempted a pop feel and rhythm, while Dylan and Baez performed them mostly as sparse folk songs. The covers became so ubiquitous that CBS promoted him with the slogan “Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan”.

“Mixed-Up Confusion”, recorded during the Freewheelin’ sessions with a backing band, was released as Dylan’s first single in December 1962, but then swiftly withdrawn. In contrast to the mostly solo acoustic performances on the album, the single showed a willingness to experiment with a rockabilly sound. Cameron Crowe described it as “a fascinating look at a folk artist with his mind wandering towards Elvis Presley and Sun Records.”

Protest and Another Side

In May 1963, Dylan’s political profile rose when he walked out of The Ed Sullivan Show. During rehearsals, Dylan had been told by CBS television’s head of program practices that “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” was potentially libelous to the John Birch Society. Rather than comply with censorship, Dylan refused to appear.

By this time, Dylan and Baez were prominent in the civil rights movement, singing together at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. Dylan’s third album, The Times They Are a-Changin’, reflected a more politicized Dylan. The songs often took as their subject matter contemporary stories, with “Only a Pawn in Their Game” addressing the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers; and the Brechtian “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” the death of black hotel barmaid Hattie Carroll, at the hands of young white socialite William Zantzinger. On a more general theme, “Ballad of Hollis Brown” and “North Country Blues” addressed despair engendered by the breakdown of farming and mining communities. This political material was accompanied by two personal love songs, “Boots of Spanish Leather” and “One Too Many Mornings”.

By the end of 1963, Dylan felt both manipulated and constrained by the folk and protest movements. Accepting the “Tom Paine Award” from the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee shortly after the a*sassination of John F. Kennedy, an intoxicated Dylan questioned the role of the committee, characterized the members as old and balding, and claimed to see something of himself and of every man in Kennedy’s a*sassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Another Side of Bob Dylan, recorded in a single evening on June 9, 1964, had a lighter mood. The humorous Dylan reemerged on “I Shall Be Free No. 10” and “Motorpsycho Nightmare”. “Spanish Harlem Incident” and “To Ramona” are passionate love songs, while “Black Crow Blues” and “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)” suggest the rock and roll soon to dominate Dylan’s music. “It Ain’t Me Babe”, on the surface a song about spurned love, has been described as a rejection of the role of political spokesman thrust upon him.[81] His newest direction was signaled by two lengthy songs: the impressionistic “Chimes of Freedom”, which sets social commentary against a metaphorical landscape in a style characterized by Allen Ginsberg as “chains of flashing images,”  and “My Back Pages”, which attacks the simplistic and arch seriousness of his own earlier topical songs and seems to predict the backlash he was about to encounter from his former champions as he took a new direction.

In the latter half of 1964 and into 1965, Dylan moved from folk songwriter to folk-rock pop-music star. His jeans and work shirts were replaced by a Carnaby Street wardrobe, sunglasses day or night, and pointed “Beatle boots”. A London reporter wrote: “Hair that would set the teeth of a comb on edge. A loud shirt that would dim the neon lights of Leicester Square. He looks like an undernourished cockatoo.” Dylan began to spar with interviewers. Appearing on the Les Crane television show and asked about a movie he planned, he told Crane it would be a cowboy horror movie. Asked if he played the cowboy, Dylan replied, “No, I play my mother.”

Going electric

Dylan’s late March 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home was another leap,[85] featuring his first recordings with electric instruments, under producer Tom Wilson’s guidance.[86] One influence on Dylan’s decision to go electric was The Animals’ version of “The House of the Rising Sun”. Drummer John Steel states Dylan told him when he first heard this version on his car radio, he stopped to listen, “jumped out of his car” and “banged on the bonnet”. The first single, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, owed much to Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business”;[ its free-association lyrics described as harking back to the energy of beat poetry and as a forerunner of rap and hip-hop. The song was provided with an early music video, which opened D. A. Pennebaker’s cinéma vérité presentation of Dylan’s 1965 tour of Great Britain, Dont Look Back. Instead of miming, Dylan illustrated the lyrics by throwing cue cards containing key words from the song on the ground. Pennebaker said the sequence was Dylan’s idea, and it has been imitated in music videos and advertisements.

The second side of Bringing It All Back Home contained four long songs on which Dylan accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. “Mr. Tambourine Man” became one of his best-known songs when the Byrds recorded an electric version that reached number one in the US and UK. “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” were two of Dylan’s most important compositions.

In 1965, headlining the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan performed his first electric set since high school with a pickup group featuring Mike Bloomfield on guitar and Al Kooper on organ. Dylan had appeared at Newport in 1963 and 1964, but in 1965 met with cheering and booing and left the stage after three songs. One version has it that the boos were from folk fans whom Dylan had alienated by appearing, unexpectedly, with an electric guitar. Murray Lerner, who filmed the performance, said: “I absolutely think that they were booing Dylan going electric.” An alternative account claims audience members were upset by poor sound and a short set. This account is supported by Kooper and one of the directors of the festival who claims his recording proves the only boos were in response to MC Peter Yarrow’s flustered announcement that there was only enough time for a short set.

Nevertheless, Dylan’s performance provoked a hostile response from the folk music establishment. In the September issue of Sing Out!, Ewan MacColl wrote: “Our traditional songs and ballads are the creations of extraordinarily talented artists working inside disciplines formulated over time …’But what of Bobby Dylan?’ scream the outraged teenagers … Only a completely non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pap of pop music, could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel.” On July 29, four days after Newport, Dylan was back in the studio in New York, recording “Positively 4th Street”. The lyrics contained images of vengeance and paranoia, and have been interpreted as Dylan’s put-down of former friends from the folk community he had known in clubs along West 4th Street.

Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde

In July 1965, Dylan’s six-minute single “Like a Rolling Stone” peaked at number two in the U.S. chart. In 2004 and in 2011, Rolling Stone listed it as number one of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”. Bruce Springsteen, in his speech for Dylan’s inauguration into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, said that on first hearing the single, “that snare shot sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind.” The song opened Dylan’s next album, Highway 61 Revisited, named after the road that led from Dylan’s Minnesota to the musical hotbed of New Orleans. The songs were in the same vein as the hit single, flavored by Mike Bloomfield’s blues guitar and Al Kooper’s organ riffs. “Desolation Row”, backed by acoustic guitar and understated bass, offers the sole exception, with Dylan alluding to figures in Western culture in a song described by Andy Gill as “an 11-minute epic of entropy, which takes the form of a Fellini-esque parade of grotesques and oddities featuring a huge cast of celebrated characters, some historical (Einstein, Nero), some biblical (Noah, Cain and Abel), some fictional (Ophelia, Romeo, Cinderella), some literary (T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound), and some who fit into none of the above categories, notably Dr. Filth and his dubious nurse”.

In support of the album, Dylan was booked for two U.S. concerts with Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks from his studio crew and Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, former members of Ronnie Hawkins’s backing band the Hawks. On August 28 at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, the group was heckled by an audience still annoyed by Dylan’s electric sound. The band’s reception on September 3 at the Hollywood Bowl was more favorable.

From September 24, 1965, in Austin, Texas, Dylan toured the U.S. and Canada for six months, backed by the five musicians from the Hawks who became known as The Band. While Dylan and the Hawks met increasingly receptive audiences, their studio efforts foundered. Producer Bob Johnston persuaded Dylan to record in Nashville in February 1966, and surrounded him with top-notch session men. At Dylan’s insistence, Robertson and Kooper came from New York City to play on the sessions. The Nashville sessions produced the double album Blonde on Blonde (1966), featuring what Dylan called “that thin wild mercury sound”. Kooper described it as “taking two cultures and smashing them together with a huge explosion”: the musical world of Nashville and the world of the “quintessential New York hipster” Bob Dylan.

On November 22, 1965, Dylan quietly married 25-year-old former model Sara Lownds. Robertson has described how he received a phone call that morning to accompany the couple to a courthouse on Long Island, and then to a reception hosted by Albert and Sally Grossman at the Algonquin Hotel. Some of Dylan’s friends, including Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, say that, immediately after the event, Dylan denied he was married. Journalist Nora Ephron made the news public in the New York Post in February 1966 with the headline “Hush! Bob Dylan is wed.”

Dylan toured Australia and Europe in April and May 1966. Each show was split in two. Dylan performed solo during the first half, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. In the second, backed by the Hawks, he played electrically amplified music. This contrast provoked many fans, who jeered and slow handclapped. The tour culminated in a raucous confrontation between Dylan and his audience at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England on May 17, 1966. A recording of this concert was released in 1998: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966. At the climax of the evening, a member of the audience, angered by Dylan’s electric backing, shouted: “Judas!” to which Dylan responded, “I don’t believe you … You’re a liar!” Dylan turned to his band and said, “Play it f*cking loud!” as they launched into the final song of the night—”Like a Rolling Stone”.

During his 1966 tour, Dylan was described as exhausted and acting “as if on a death trip”. D. A. Pennebaker, the filmmaker accompanying the tour, described Dylan as “taking a lot of amphetamine and who-knows-what-else”. In a 1969 interview with Jann Wenner, Dylan said, “I was on the road for almost five years. It wore me down. I was on drugs, a lot of things … just to keep going, you know?” In 2011, BBC Radio 4 reported that, in an interview that Robert Shelton taped in 1966, Dylan said he had kicked heroin in New York City: “I got very, very strung out for a while … I had about a $25-a-day habit and I kicked it.” Some journalists questioned the validity of this confession, pointing out that Dylan had “been telling journalists wild lies about his past since the earliest days of his career”.

Motorcycle accident and reclusion

After his tour, Dylan returned to New York, but the pressures increased. ABC Television had paid an advance for a TV show. His publisher, Macmillan, was demanding a manuscript of the poem/novel Tarantula. Manager Albert Grossman had scheduled a concert tour for the latter part of the year.

On July 29, 1966, Dylan crashed his 500 cc Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle near his home in Woodstock, New York, and was thrown to the ground. Though the extent of his injuries was never disclosed, Dylan said that he broke several vertebrae in his neck. Mystery still surrounds the circumstances of the accident since no ambulance was called to the scene and Dylan was not hospitalized. Dylan’s biographers have written that the crash offered Dylan the chance to escape the pressures around him. Dylan confirmed this interpretation in his autobiography: “I had been in a motorcycle accident and I’d been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race.”Dylan withdrew from public and, apart from a few appearances, did not tour again for almost eight years.

Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began to edit D. A. Pennebaker’s film of his 1966 tour. A rough cut was shown to ABC Television, which rejected it as incomprehensible to a mainstream audience. The film was subsequently titled Eat the Document on bootleg copies, and it has been screened at a handful of film festivals.[135] In 1967 he began recording with the Hawks at his home and in the basement of the Hawks’ nearby house, “Big Pink”. These songs, initially demos for other artists to record, provided hits for Julie Driscoll and the Brian Auger Trinity (“This Wheel’s on Fire”), the Byrds (“You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, “Nothing Was Delivered”) and Manfred Mann (“Mighty Quinn”). Columbia released selections in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. Over the years, many more songs recorded by Dylan and his band in 1967 appeared on bootleg recordings, culminating in the 2014 official Columbia release The Basement Tapes Complete which contained 138 songs and alternative takes. In the coming months, the Hawks recorded the album Music from Big Pink using songs they worked on in their basement in Woodstock, and renamed themselves the Band, beginning a long recording and performing career of their own.

In October and November 1967, Dylan returned to Nashville. Back in the studio after 19 months, he was accompanied by Charlie McCoy on bass, Kenny Buttrey on drums, and Pete Drake on steel guitar.The result was John Wesley Harding, a contemplative record of shorter songs, set in a landscape that drew on the American West and the Bible. The sparse structure and instrumentation, with lyrics that took the Judeo-Christian tradition seriously, departed from Dylan’s own work and from the psychedelic fervor of the 1960s. It included “All Along the Watchtower”, with lyrics derived from the Book of Isaiah (21:5–9). The song was later recorded by Jimi Hendrix, whose version Dylan acknowledged as definitive. Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967, and Dylan made his first live appearance in twenty months at a Guthrie memorial concert held at Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1968, where he was backed by the Band.

Dylan’s next release, Nashville Skyline (1969), was mainstream country featuring Nashville musicians, a mellow-voiced Dylan, a duet with Johnny Cash, and the hit single “Lay Lady Lay”. Variety wrote, “Dylan is definitely doing something that can be called singing. Somehow he has managed to add an octave to his range.” During one recording session, Dylan and Cash recorded a series of duets but only their version of Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country” was released on the album.

In May 1969, Dylan appeared on the first episode of Johnny Cash’s television show and sang a duet with Cash of “Girl from the North Country”, with solos of “Living the Blues” and “I Threw It All Away.” Dylan next traveled to England to top the bill at the Isle of Wight festival on August 31, 1969, after rejecting overtures to appear at the Woodstock Festival closer to his home.

1970s

In the early 1970s, critics charged that Dylan’s output was varied and unpredictable. Rolling Stone writer Greil Marcus asked “What is this shit?” on first listening to Self Portrait, released in June 1970. It was a double LP including few original songs, and was poorly received. In October 1970, Dylan released New Morning, considered a return to form. This album included “Day of the Locusts”, a song in which Dylan gave an account of receiving an honorary degree from Princeton University on June 9, 1970. In November 1968, Dylan had co-written “I’d Have You Anytime” with George Harrison; Harrison recorded “I’d Have You Anytime” and Dylan’s “If Not for You” for his 1970 solo triple album All Things Must Pass. Dylan’s surprise appearance at Harrison’s 1971 Concert for Bangladesh attracted media coverage, reflecting that Dylan’s live appearances had become rare.

Between March 16 and 19, 1971, Dylan reserved three days at Blue Rock, a small studio in Greenwich Village, to record with Leon Russell. These sessions resulted in “Watching the River Flow” and a new recording of “When I Paint My Masterpiece”. On November 4, 1971, Dylan recorded “George Jackson”, which he released a week later. For many, the single was a surprising return to protest material, mourning the killing of Black Panther George Jackson in San Quentin State Prison that year. Dylan contributed piano and harmony to Steve Goodman’s album, Somebody Else’s Troubles, under the pseudonym Robert Milkwood Thomas (referencing Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas and his own previous name) in September 1972.

In 1972, Dylan signed to Sam Peckinpah’s film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, providing songs and backing music for the movie, and playing “Alias”, a member of Billy’s gang with some historical basis. Despite the film’s failure at the box office, the song “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” became one of Dylan’s most covered songs.

Also in 1972, Dylan protested the move to deport John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who had been convicted of possessing cannabis, by sending a letter to the U.S. Immigration Service, in part: “Hurray for John & Yoko. Let them stay and live here and breathe. The country’s got plenty of room and space. Let John and Yoko stay!”

Return to touring

Dylan began 1973 by signing with a new label, David Geffen’s Asylum Records when his contract with Columbia Records expired. His next album, Planet Waves, was recorded in the fall of 1973, using the Band as his backing group as they rehearsed for a major tour. The album included two versions of “Forever Young”, which became one of his most popular songs. As one critic described it, the song projected “something hymnal and heartfelt that spoke of the father in Dylan”, and Dylan himself commented: “I wrote it thinking about one of my boys and not wanting to be too sentimental.” Columbia Records simultaneously released Dylan, a collection of studio outtakes, widely interpreted as a churlish response to Dylan’s signing with a rival record label.

In January 1974, Dylan, backed by the Band, embarked on a North American tour of 40 concerts—his first tour for seven years. A live double album, Before the Flood, was released on Asylum Records. Soon, according to Clive Davis, Columbia Records sent word they “will spare nothing to bring Dylan back into the fold.” Dylan had second thoughts about Asylum, unhappy that Geffen had sold only 600,000 copies of Planet Waves despite millions of unfulfilled ticket requests for the 1974 tour; he returned to Columbia Records, which reissued his two Asylum albums.

After the tour, Dylan and his wife became estranged. He filled a small red notebook with songs about relationships and ruptures, and recorded an album entitled Blood on the Tracks in September 1974. Dylan delayed the release and re-recorded half of the songs at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis with production a*sistance from his brother, David Zimmerman.

Released in early 1975, Blood on the Tracks received mixed reviews. In the NME, Nick Kent described “the accompaniments [as] often so trashy they sound like mere practice takes.”[174] In Rolling Stone, Jon Landau wrote that “the record has been made with typical shoddiness.” Over the years critics came to see it as one of Dylan’s greatest achievements. For the Salon website, journalist Bill Wyman wrote: “Blood on the Tracks is his only flawless album and his best produced; the songs, each of them, are constructed in disciplined fashion. It is his kindest album and most dismayed, and seems in hindsight to have achieved a sublime balance between the logorrhea-plagued excesses of his mid-1960s output and the self-consciously simple compositions of his post-accident years.” Novelist Rick Moody called it “the truest, most honest account of a love affair from tip to stern ever put down on magnetic tape.”

In the middle of that year, Dylan wrote a ballad championing boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, imprisoned for a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1966. After visiting Carter in jail, Dylan wrote “Hurricane”, presenting the case for Carter’s innocence. Despite its length—over eight minutes—the song was released as a single, peaking at 33 on the U.S. Billboard chart, and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan’s next tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue. The tour featured about one hundred performers and supporters from the Greenwich Village folk scene, including T-Bone Burnett, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Joni Mitchell, David Mansfield, Roger McGuinn, Mick Ronson, Joan Baez and Scarlet Rivera, whom Dylan discovered walking down the street, her violin case on her back.

Running through late 1975 and again through early 1976, the tour encompassed the release of the album Desire, with many of Dylan’s new songs featuring a travelogue-like narrative style, showing the influence of his new collaborator, playwright Jacques Levy.  The 1976 half of the tour was documented by a TV concert special, Hard Rain, and the LP Hard Rain; no concert album from first half of the tour was released until 2002’s Live 1975.

he 1975 tour with the Revue provided the backdrop to Dylan’s nearly four-hour film Renaldo and Clara, a sprawling narrative mixed with concert footage and reminiscences. Released in 1978, the movie received poor, sometimes scathing, reviews.  Later in that year, a two-hour edit, dominated by the concert performances, was more widely released. More than forty years later, a documentary about the 1975 leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese was released by Netflix on June 12, 2019.

In November 1976, Dylan appeared at the Band’s “farewell” concert, with Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison and Neil Young. Martin Scorsese’s 1978 cinematic chronicle of the concert, The Last Waltz, included about half of Dylan’s set.  In 1976, Dylan wrote and duetted on “Sign Language” for Eric Clapton’s No Reason To Cry.

In 1978, Dylan embarked on a year-long world tour, performing 114 shows in Japan, the Far East, Europe and North America, to a total audience of two million. Dylan a*sembled an eight-piece band and three backing singers. Concerts in Tokyo in February and March were released as the live double album, Bob Dylan at Budokan.  Reviews were mixed. Robert Christgau awarded the album a C+ rating, giving the album a derisory review,  while Janet Maslin defended it in Rolling Stone, writing: “These latest live versions of his old songs have the effect of liberating Bob Dylan from the originals.”  When Dylan brought the tour to the U.S. in September 1978, the press described the look and sound as a ‘Las Vegas Tour’.  The 1978 tour grossed more than $20 million, and Dylan told the Los Angeles Times that he had debts because “I had a couple of bad years. I put a lot of money into the movie, built a big house … and it costs a lot to get divorced in California.”

In April and May 1978, Dylan took the same band and vocalists into Rundown Studios in Santa Monica, California, to record an album of new material: Street-Legal.  It was described by Michael Gray as, “after Blood On The Tracks, arguably Dylan’s best record of the 1970s: a crucial album documenting a crucial period in Dylan’s own life.” However, it had poor sound and mixing (attributed to Dylan’s studio practices), muddying the instrumental detail until a remastered CD release in 1999 restored some of the songs’ strengths.

Christian period

n the late 1970s, Dylan converted to Evangelical Christianity, undertaking a three-month discipleship course run by the Association of Vineyard Churches; and released three albums of contemporary gospel music. Slow Train Coming (1979) featured the guitar accompaniment of Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits) and was produced by veteran R&B producer Jerry Wexler. Wexler said that Dylan had tried to evangelize him during the recording. He replied: “Bob, you’re dealing with a 62-year-old Jewish atheist. Let’s just make an album.” Dylan won the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for the song “Gotta Serve Somebody.” His second Christian-themed album, Saved (1980), received mixed reviews, described by Michael Gray as “the nearest thing to a follow-up album Dylan has ever made, Slow Train Coming II and inferior”. His third overtly Christian album was Shot of Love in 1981. When touring in late 1979 and early 1980, Dylan would not play his older, secular works, and he delivered declarations of his faith from the stage, such as:

Years ago they … said I was a prophet. I used to say, “No I’m not a prophet”, they say “Yes you are, you’re a prophet.” I said, “No it’s not me.” They used to say “You sure are a prophet.” They used to convince me I was a prophet. Now I come out and say Jesus Christ is the answer. They say, “Bob Dylan’s no prophet.” They just can’t handle it.

Dylan’s Christianity was unpopular with some fans and musicians. Shortly before his murder, John Lennon recorded “Serve Yourself” in response to Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody.” By 1981, Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times that “neither age (he’s now 40) nor his much-publicized conversion to born-again Christianity has altered his essentially iconoclastic temperament.”

1980s

In late 1980, Dylan briefly played concerts billed as “A Musical Retrospective”, restoring popular 1960s songs to the repertoire. Shot of Love, recorded early the next year, featured his first secular compositions in more than two years, mixed with Christian songs. “Every Grain of Sand” reminded some of William Blake’s verses.

In the 1980s, reception of Dylan’s recordings varied, from the well-regarded Infidels in 1983 to the panned Down in the Groove in 1988. Michael Gray condemned Dylan’s 1980s albums for carelessness in the studio and for failing to release his best songs. As an example of the latter, the Infidels recording sessions, which again employed Knopfler on lead guitar and also as the album’s producer, resulted in several notable songs that Dylan left off the album. Best regarded of these were “Blind Willie McTell”, a tribute to the dead blues musician and an evocation of African American history,  “Foot of Pride” and “Lord Protect My Child.” These three songs were released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.

Between July 1984 and March 1985, Dylan recorded Empire Burlesque.[213] Arthur Baker, who had remixed hits for Bruce Springsteen and Cyndi Lauper, was asked to engineer and mix the album. Baker said he felt he was hired to make Dylan’s album sound “a little bit more contemporary.”

In 1985 Dylan sang on USA for Africa’s famine relief single “We Are the World”. He also joined Artists United Against Apartheid providing vocals for their single “Sun City”. On July 13, 1985, he appeared at the climax at the Live Aid concert at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia. Backed by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, he performed a ragged version of “Hollis Brown”, his ballad of rural poverty, and then said to the worldwide audience exceeding one billion people: “I hope that some of the money … maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe … one or two million, maybe … and use it to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks.”[215] His remarks were widely criticized as inappropriate, but they did inspire Willie Nelson to organize a series of events, Farm Aid, to benefit debt-ridden American farmers.

In April 1986, Dylan made a foray into rap music when he added vocals to the opening verse of “Street Rock”, featured on Kurtis Blow’s album Kingdom Blow. Dylan’s next studio album, Knocked Out Loaded, in July 1986 contained three covers (by Little Junior Parker, Kris Kristofferson and the gospel hymn “Precious Memories”), plus three collaborations (with Tom Petty, Sam Shepard and Carole Bayer Sager), and two solo compositions by Dylan. One reviewer commented that “the record follows too many detours to be consistently compelling, and some of those detours wind down roads that are indisputably dead ends. By 1986, such uneven records weren’t entirely unexpected by Dylan, but that didn’t make them any less frustrating.” It was the first Dylan album since The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963) to fail to make the Top 50. Since then, some critics have called the 11-minute epic that Dylan co-wrote with Sam Shepard, “Brownsville Girl”, a work of genius.

In 1986 and 1987, Dylan toured with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, sharing vocals with Petty on several songs each night. Dylan also toured with the Grateful Dead in 1987, resulting in a live album Dylan & The Dead. This received negative reviews; AllMusic said it was “Quite possibly the worst album by either Bob Dylan or the Grateful Dead.”Dylan then initiated what came to be called the Never Ending Tour on June 7, 1988, performing with a back-up band featuring guitarist G. E. Smith. Dylan would continue to tour with a small, changing band for the next 30 years.

In 1987, Dylan starred in Richard Marquand’s movie Hearts of Fire, in which he played Billy Parker, a washed-up rock star turned chicken farmer whose teenage lover (Fiona) leaves him for a jaded English synth-pop sensation played by Rupert Everett. Dylan also contributed two original songs to the soundtrack—”Night After Night”, and “I Had a Dream About You, Baby”, as well as a cover of John Hiatt’s “The Usual”. The film was a critical and commercial flop.

Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1988, with Bruce Springsteen’s introduction declaring, “Bob freed your mind the way Elvis freed your body. He showed us that just because music was innately physical did not mean that it was anti-intellectual.”

The album Down in the Groove in May 1988 sold even more poorly than his previous studio album.[226] Michael Gray wrote: “The very title undercuts any idea that inspired work may lie within. Here was a further devaluing of the notion of a new Bob Dylan album as something significant.” The critical and commercial disappointment of that album was swiftly followed by the success of the Traveling Wilburys. Dylan co-founded the band with George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty, and in late 1988 their multi-platinum Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 reached three on the US album chart,  featuring songs that were described as Dylan’s most accessible compositions in years.  Despite Orbison’s death in December 1988, the remaining four recorded a second album in May 1990 with the title Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3.

Dylan finished the decade on a critical high note with Oh Mercy produced by Daniel Lanois. Michael Gray wrote that the album was: “Attentively written, vocally distinctive, musically warm, and uncompromisingly professional, this cohesive whole is the nearest thing to a great Bob Dylan album in the 1980s.” The track “Most of the Time”, a lost love composition, was later prominently featured in the film High Fidelity, while “What Was It You Wanted?” has been interpreted both as a catechism and a wry comment on the expectations of critics and fans. The religious imagery of “Ring Them Bells” struck some critics as a re-affirmation of faith.

1990s

Dylan’s 1990s began with Under the Red Sky (1990), an about-face from the serious Oh Mercy. It contained several apparently simple songs, including “Under the Red Sky” and “Wiggle Wiggle”. The album was dedicated to “Gabby Goo Goo”, a nickname for the daughter of Dylan and Carolyn Dennis, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, who was four.  Musicians on the album included George Harrison, Slash from Guns N’ Roses, David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Elton John. The record received bad reviews and sold poorly.

In 1990 and 1991 Dylan was described by his biographers as drinking heavily, impairing his performances on stage. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan dismissed allegations that drinking was interfering with his music: “That’s completely inaccurate. I can drink or not drink. I don’t know why people would a*sociate drinking with anything I do, really.”

Defilement and remorse were themes Dylan addressed when he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award from American actor Jack Nicholson in February 1991.  The event coincided with the start of the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein and Dylan performed “Masters of War”. He then made a short speech: “My daddy once said to me, he said, ‘Son, it is possible for you to become so defiled in this world that your own mother and father will abandon you. If that happens, God will believe in your ability to mend your own ways.’”  The sentiment was subsequently revealed to be a quote from 19th-century German Jewish intellectual Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.

Over the next few years Dylan returned to his roots with two albums covering traditional folk and blues songs: Good as I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993), backed solely by his acoustic guitar.  Many critics and fans commented on the quiet beauty of the song “Lone Pilgrim”,  written by a 19th-century teacher. In November 1994 Dylan recorded two live shows for MTV Unplugged. He said his wish to perform traditional songs was overruled by Sony executives who insisted on hits. The album from it, MTV Unplugged, included “John Brown”, an unreleased 1962 song of how enthusiasm for war ends in mutilation and disillusionment.

With a collection of songs reportedly written while snowed in on his Minnesota ranch, Dylan booked recording time with Daniel Lanois at Miami’s Criteria Studios in January 1997. The subsequent recording sessions were, by some accounts, fraught with musical tension.[246] Before the album’s release Dylan was hospitalized with a life-threatening heart infection, pericarditis, brought on by histoplasmosis. His scheduled European tour was cancelled, but Dylan made a speedy recovery and left the hospital saying, “I really thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon.” He was back on the road by mid-year, and performed before Pope John Paul II at the World Eucharistic Conference in Bologna, Italy. The Pope treated the audience of 200,000 people to a homily based on Dylan’s lyric “Blowin’ in the Wind”.

In September Dylan released the new Lanois-produced album, Time Out of Mind. With its bitter a*sessment of love and morbid ruminations, Dylan’s first collection of original songs in seven years was highly acclaimed. One critic wrote: “the songs themselves are uniformly powerful, adding up to Dylan’s best overall collection in years.” This collection of complex songs won him his first solo “Album of the Year” Grammy Award.

In December 1997, U.S. President Bill Clinton presented Dylan with a Kennedy Center Honor in the East Room of the White House, paying this tribute: “He probably had more impact on people of my generation than any other creative artist. His voice and lyrics haven’t always been easy on the ear, but throughout his career Bob Dylan has never aimed to please. He’s disturbed the peace and discomforted the powerful.”

2000s

Dylan commenced the 2000s by winning the Polar Music Prize in May 2000 and his first Oscar; his song “Things Have Changed”, written for the film Wonder Boys, won an Academy Award for Best Song in 2001.  The Oscar, by some reports a facsimile, tours with him, presiding over shows atop an amplifier.

“Love and Theft” was released on September 11, 2001. Recorded with his touring band, Dylan produced the album himself under the pseudonym Jack Frost. The album was critically well received and earned nominations for several Grammy awards.  Critics noted that Dylan was widening his musical palette to include rockabilly, Western swing, jazz, and even lounge ballads.  “Love and Theft” generated controversy when The Wall Street Journal pointed out similarities between the album’s lyrics and Japanese author Junichi Saga’s book Confessions of a Yakuza.

In 2003, Dylan revisited the evangelical songs from his Christian period and participated in the CD project Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan. That year Dylan also released the film Masked & Anonymous, which he co-wrote with director Larry Charles under the alias Sergei Petrov.[261] Dylan played the central character in the film, Jack Fate, alongside a cast that included Jeff Bridges, Penélope Cruz and John Goodman. The film polarised critics: many dismissed it as an “incoherent mess”;  a few treated it as a serious work of art.

In October 2004, Dylan published the first part of his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One. Confounding expectations,  Dylan devoted three chapters to his first year in New York City in 1961–1962, virtually ignoring the mid-1960s when his fame was at its height. He also devoted chapters to the albums New Morning (1970) and Oh Mercy (1989). The book reached number two on The New York Times’ Hardcover Non-Fiction best seller list in December 2004 and was nominated for a National Book Award.[

No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed film biography of Dylan,[268] was first broadcast on September 26–27, 2005, on BBC Two in the UK and PBS in the US.  The documentary focuses on the period from Dylan’s arrival in New York in 1961 to his motorcycle crash in 1966, featuring interviews with Suze Rotolo, Liam Clancy, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples and Dylan himself. The film received a Peabody Award in April 2006  and a Columbia-duPont Award in January 2007.[  The accompanying soundtrack featured unreleased songs from Dylan’s early career.

Dylan earned another distinction when a 2007 study of US legal opinions found his lyrics were quoted by judges and lawyers more than those of any other songwriter, 186 times versus 74 by the Beatles, who were second. Among those quoting Dylan were US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia, both conservatives. The most widely cited lines included “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” from “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose” from “Like a Rolling Stone”.

Modern Times

Dylan’s career as a radio presenter commenced on May 3, 2006, with his weekly radio program, Theme Time Radio Hour for XM Satellite Radio, with song selections on chosen themes. Dylan played classic and obscure records from the 1920s to the present day, including contemporary artists as diverse as Blur, Prince, L.L. Cool J and the Streets. The show was praised by fans and critics, as Dylan told stories and made eclectic references, commenting on his musical choices. In April 2009, Dylan broadcast the 100th show in his radio series; the theme was “Goodbye” and the final record played was Woody Guthrie’s “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh”.

Dylan resurrected his Theme Time Radio Hour format when he broadcast a two-hour special on the theme of “Whiskey” on Sirius Radio on September 21, 2020.

Dylan released his Modern Times album in August 2006. Despite some coarsening of Dylan’s voice (a critic for The Guardian characterised his singing on the album as “a catarrhal death rattle” ) most reviewers praised the album, and many described it as the final installment of a successful trilogy, embracing Time Out of Mind and “Love and Theft”.  Modern Times entered the U.S. charts at number one, making it Dylan’s first album to reach that position since 1976’s Desire.[  The New York Times published an article exploring similarities between some of Dylan’s lyrics in Modern Times and the work of the Civil War poet Henry Timrod.

Nominated for three Grammy Awards, Modern Times won Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album and Bob Dylan also won Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for “Someday Baby.” Modern Times was named Album of the Year, 2006, by Rolling Stone magazine,  and by Uncut in the UK.  On the same day that Modern Times was released the iTunes Music Store released Bob Dylan: The Collection, a digital box set containing all of his albums (773 tracks in total), along with 42 rare and unreleased tracks.

In August 2007, the award-winning film biography of Dylan I’m Not There, written and directed by Todd Haynes, was released—bearing the tagline “inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan.”[ The movie used six different actors to represent different aspects of Dylan’s life: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw. Dylan’s previously unreleased 1967 recording from which the film takes its name was released for the first time on the film’s original soundtrack; all other tracks are covers of Dylan songs, specially recorded for the movie by a diverse range of artists, including Sonic Youth, Eddie Vedder, Mason Jennings, Stephen Malkmus, Jeff Tweedy, Karen O, Willie Nelson, Cat Power, Richie Havens and Tom Verlaine.

On October 1, 2007, Columbia Records released the triple CD retrospective album Dylan, anthologising his entire career under the Dylan 07 logo.  The sophistication of the Dylan 07 marketing campaign was a reminder that Dylan’s commercial profile had risen considerably since the 1990s. This became evident in 2004, when Dylan appeared in a TV advertisement for Victoria’s Secret lingerie.  Three years later, in October 2007, he participated in a multi-media campaign for the 2008 Cadillac Escalade. Then, in 2009, he gave the highest profile endorsement of his career, appearing with rapper will.i.am in a Pepsi ad that debuted during the telecast of Super Bowl XLIII.  The ad, broadcast to a record audience of 98 million viewers, opened with Dylan singing the first verse of “Forever Young” followed by will.i.am doing a hip hop version of the song’s third and final verse.

The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 – Tell Tale Signs was released in October 2008, as both a two-CD set and a three-CD version with a 150-page hardcover book. The set contains live performances and outtakes from selected studio albums from Oh Mercy to Modern Times, as well as soundtrack contributions and collaborations with David Bromberg and Ralph Stanley.  The pricing of the album—the two-CD set went on sale for $18.99 and the three-CD version for $129.99—led to complaints about “rip-off packaging” from some fans and commentators.  The release was widely acclaimed by critics.  The abundance of alternative takes and unreleased material suggested to one reviewer that this volume of old outtakes “feels like a new Bob Dylan record, not only for the astonishing freshness of the material, but also for the incredible sound quality and organic feeling of everything here.”
Together Through Life and Christmas in the Heart

Bob Dylan released his album Together Through Life on April 28, 2009. In a conversation with music journalist Bill Flanagan, published on Dylan’s website, Dylan explained that the genesis of the record was when French film director Olivier Dahan asked him to supply a song for his new road movie, My Own Love Song; initially only intending to record a single track, “Life Is Hard,” “the record sort of took its own direction.” Nine of the ten songs on the album are credited as co-written by Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter. The album received largely favorable reviews, although several critics described it as a minor addition to Dylan’s canon of work.

In its first week of release, the album reached number one in the Billboard 200 chart in the U.S.,  making Bob Dylan (67 years of age) the oldest artist to ever debut at number one on that chart.[ It also reached number one on the UK album chart, 39 years after Dylan’s previous UK album chart topper New Morning. This meant that Dylan currently holds the record for the longest gap between solo number one albums in the UK chart.

Dylan’s album, Christmas in the Heart, was released in October 2009, comprising such Christmas standards as “Little Drummer Boy”, “Winter Wonderland” and “Here Comes Santa Claus.”[310] Critics pointed out that Dylan was “revisiting yuletide styles popularized by Nat King Cole, Mel Tormé, and the Ray Conniff Singers.” Dylan’s royalties from the sale of this album were donated to the charities Feeding America in the USA, Crisis in the UK, and the World Food Programme.

The album received generally favorable reviews.  The New Yorker wrote that Dylan had welded a pre-rock musical sound to “some of his croakiest vocals in a while”, and speculated that his intentions might be ironic: “Dylan has a long and highly publicized history with Christianity; to claim there’s not a wink in the childish optimism of ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’ or ‘Winter Wonderland’ is to ignore a half-century of biting satire.” In an interview published in The Big Issue, journalist Bill Flanagan asked Dylan why he had performed the songs in a straightforward style, and Dylan responded: “There wasn’t any other way to play it. These songs are part of my life, just like folk songs. You have to play them straight too.”

2010s

Tempest

Volume 9 of Dylan’s Bootleg Series, The Witmark Demos was issued in October 18, 2010. It comprised 47 demo recordings of songs taped between 1962 and 1964 for Dylan’s earliest music publishers: Leeds Music in 1962, and Witmark Music from 1962 to 1964. One reviewer described the set as “a hearty glimpse of young Bob Dylan changing the music business, and the world, one note at a time.”[316] The critical aggregator website Metacritic awarded the album a Metascore of 86, indicating “universal acclaim.”[317] In the same week, Sony Legacy released Bob Dylan: The Original Mono Recordings, a box set that for the first time presented Dylan’s eight earliest albums, from Bob Dylan (1962) to John Wesley Harding (1967), in their original mono mix in the CD format. The CDs were housed in miniature facsimiles of the original album covers, replete with original liner notes. The set was accompanied by a booklet featuring an essay by music critic Greil Marcus.[318][319]

On April 12, 2011, Legacy Recordings released Bob Dylan in Concert – Brandeis University 1963, taped at Brandeis University on May 10, 1963, two weeks prior to the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. The tape was discovered in the archive of music writer Ralph J. Gleason, and the recording carries liner notes by Michael Gray, who says it captures Dylan “from way back when Kennedy] was President and the Beatles hadn’t yet reached America. It reveals him not at any Big Moment but giving a performance like his folk club sets of the period… This is the last live performance we have of Bob Dylan before he becomes a star.”[320]

The extent to which his work was studied at an academic level was demonstrated on Dylan’s 70th birthday on May 24, 2011, when three universities organized symposia on his work. The University of Mainz,[321] the University of Vienna,[322] and the University of Bristol[323] invited literary critics and cultural historians to give papers on aspects of Dylan’s work. Other events, including tribute bands, discussions and simple singalongs, took place around the world, as reported in The Guardian: “From Moscow to Madrid, Norway to Northampton and Malaysia to his home state of Minnesota, self-confessed ‘Bobcats’ will gather today to celebrate the 70th birthday of a giant of popular music.”

On May 29, 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Dylan a Presidential Medal of Freedom in the White House. At the ceremony, Obama praised Dylan’s voice for its “unique gravelly power that redefined not just what music sounded like but the message it carried and how it made people feel.”[325]

Dylan’s 35th studio album, Tempest was released on September 11, 2012.[326] The album features a tribute to John Lennon, “Roll On John”, and the title track is a 14-minute song about the sinking of the Titanic.[327] Reviewing Tempest for Rolling Stone, Will Hermes gave the album five out of five stars, writing: “Lyrically, Dylan is at the top of his game, joking around, dropping wordplay and allegories that evade pat readings and quoting other folks’ words like a freestyle rapper on fire.”[328] The critical aggregator website Metacritic awarded the album a score of 83 out of 100, indicating “universal acclaim.”[329]

Volume 10 of Dylan’s Bootleg Series, Another Self Portrait (1969–1971), was released in August 2013.[330] The album contained 35 previously unreleased tracks, including alternative takes and demos from Dylan’s 1969–1971 recording sessions during the making of the Self Portrait and New Morning albums. The box set also included a live recording of Dylan’s performance with the Band at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969. Another Self Portrait received favorable reviews, earning a score of 81 on the critical aggregator, Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim.”[331] AllMusic critic Thom Jurek wrote, “For fans, this is more than a curiosity, it’s an indispensable addition to the catalog.”[332]

Columbia Records released a boxed set containing all 35 Dylan studio albums, six albums of live recordings, and a collection, entitled Sidetracks, of non-album material, Bob Dylan: Complete Album Collection: Vol. One, in November 2013.[333][334] To publicize the 35 album box set, an innovative video of the song “Like a Rolling Stone” was released on Dylan’s website. The interactive video, created by director Vania Heymann, allowed viewers to switch between 16 simulated TV channels, all featuring characters who are lip-synching the lyrics of the 48-year-old song.[335][336]

Dylan appeared in a commercial for the Chrysler 200 car which was screened during the 2014 Super Bowl American football game played on February 2, 2014. At the end of the commercial, Dylan says: “So let Germany brew your beer, let Switzerland make your watch, let Asia a*semble your phone. We will build your car.” Dylan’s Super Bowl commercial generated controversy and op-ed pieces discussing the protectionist implications of his words, and whether the singer had “sold out” to corporate interests.[337][338][339][340][341]

In 2013 and 2014, auction house sales demonstrated the high cultural value attached to Dylan’s mid-1960s work and the record prices that collectors were willing to pay for artefacts from this period. In December 2013, the Fender Stratocaster which Dylan had played at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival fetched $965,000, the second highest price paid for a guitar.[342][343] In June 2014, Dylan’s hand-written lyrics of “Like a Rolling Stone”, his 1965 hit single, fetched $2 million dollars at auction, a record for a popular music manuscript.[344][345]

A massive 960 page, thirteen and a half pound edition of Dylan’s lyrics, The Lyrics: Since 1962 was published by Simon & Schuster in the fall of 2014. The book was edited by literary critic Christopher Ricks, Julie Nemrow and Lisa Nemrow, to offer variant versions of Dylan’s songs, sourced from out-takes and live performances. A limited edition of 50 books, signed by Dylan, was priced at $5,000. “It’s the biggest, most expensive book we’ve ever published, as far as I know,” said Jonathan Karp, Simon & Schuster’s president and publisher.[346][347]

A comprehensive edition of the Basement Tapes, songs recorded by Dylan and the Band in 1967, was released as The Basement Tapes Complete in November 2014. These 138 tracks in a six-CD box form Volume 11 of Dylan’s Bootleg Series. The 1975 album, The Basement Tapes, had contained just 24 tracks from the material which Dylan and the Band had recorded at their homes in Woodstock, New York in 1967. Subsequently, over 100 recordings and alternate takes had circulated on bootleg records. The sleeve notes for the new box set are by Sid Griffin, author of Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes.[348][349] The box set earned a score of 99 on the critical aggregator, Metacritic.

Shadows in the Night, Fallen Angels and Triplicate

In February 2015, Dylan released Shadows in the Night, featuring ten songs written between 1923 and 1963,[351][352] which have been described as part of the Great American Songbook.[353] All the songs on the album were recorded by Frank Sinatra but both critics and Dylan himself cautioned against seeing the record as a collection of “Sinatra covers.”[351][354] Dylan explained, “I don’t see myself as covering these songs in any way. They’ve been covered enough. Buried, as a matter a fact. What me and my band are basically doing is uncovering them. Lifting them out of the grave and bringing them into the light of day.”[355] In an interview, Dylan said he had been thinking about making this record since hearing Willie Nelson’s 1978 album Stardust.[356] Dylan’s first foray into this material was in 2001 when he recorded Dean Martin’s “Return to Me” for the third season of The Sopranos.[357]

Shadows In the Night received favorable reviews, scoring 82 on the critical aggregator Metacritic, which indicates “universal acclaim”.[358] Critics praised the restrained instrumental backings and the quality of Dylan’s singing.[353][359] Bill Prince in GQ commented: “A performer who’s had to hear his influence in virtually every white pop recording made since he debuted his own self-titled album back in 1962 imagines himself into the songs of his pre-rock’n’roll early youth.”[354] The album debuted at number one in the UK Albums Chart in its first week of release.[360]

The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966, consisting of previously unreleased material from the three albums Dylan recorded between January 1965 and March 1966: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde was released in November 2015. The set was released in three formats: a 2-CD “Best Of” version, a 6-CD “Deluxe edition”, and an 18-CD “Collector’s Edition” in a limited edition of 5,000 units. On Dylan’s website the “Collector’s Edition” was described as containing “every single note recorded by Bob Dylan in the studio in 1965/1966.”[361][362] The critical aggregator website Metacritic awarded Cutting Edge a score of 99, indicating universal acclaim.[363] The Best of the Cutting Edge entered the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart at number one on November 18, based on its first-week sales.[364]

The sale of Dylan’s extensive archive of about 6,000 items of memorabilia to the George Kaiser Family Foundation and the University of Tulsa was announced on March 2, 2016. It was reported the sale price was “an estimated $15 million to $20 million”. The archive comprises notebooks, drafts of Dylan lyrics, recordings, and correspondence.[365] The archive will be housed at Helmerich Center for American Research, a facility at the Gilcrease Museum.[366]

Dylan released Fallen Angels—described as “a direct continuation of the work of ‘uncovering’ the Great Songbook that he began on last year’s Shadows In the Night”—in May.[367] The album contained twelve songs by classic songwriters such as Harold Arlen, Sammy Cahn and Johnny Mercer, eleven of which had been recorded by Sinatra.[367] Jim Farber wrote in Entertainment Weekly: “Tellingly, [Dylan] delivers these songs of love lost and cherished not with a burning passion but with the wistfulness of experience. They’re memory songs now, intoned with a present sense of commitment. Released just four days ahead of his 75th birthday, they couldn’t be more age-appropriate.”[368] The album received a score of 79 on critical aggregator website Metacritic, denoting “generally favorable reviews”.[369]

A massive 36-CD collection, The 1966 Live Recordings, including every known recording of Bob Dylan’s 1966 concert tour was released in November 2016.[370] The recordings commence with the concert in White Plains New York on February 5, 1966, and end with the Royal Albert Hall concert in London on May 27.[371][372] The New York Times reported most of the concerts had “never been heard in any form”, and described the set as “a monumental addition to the corpus”.[373]

Dylan released a triple album of a further 30 recordings of classic American songs, Triplicate, in March 2017. Dylan’s 38th studio album was recorded in Hollywood’s Capitol Studios and features his touring band.[374] Dylan posted a long interview on his website to promote the album, and was asked if this material was an exercise in nostalgia. “Nostalgic? No I wouldn’t say that. It’s not taking a trip down memory lane or longing and yearning for the good old days or fond memories of what’s no more. A song like “Sentimental Journey” is not a way back when song, it doesn’t emulate the past, it’s attainable and down to earth, it’s in the here and now.”[375] The album was awarded a score of 84 on critical aggregator website Metacritic, signifying “universal acclaim”. Critics praised the thoroughness of Dylan’s exploration of the great American songbook, though, in the opinion of Uncut: “For all its easy charms, Triplicate labours its point to the brink of overkill. After five albums’ worth of croon toons, this feels like a fat full stop on a fascinating chapter.”[376]

The next edition of Dylan’s Bootleg Series revisited Dylan’s “Born Again” Christian period of 1979 to 1981, which was described by Rolling Stone as “an intense, wildly controversial time that produced three albums and some of the most confrontational concerts of his long career”.[377] Reviewing the box set, The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981, comprising 8 CDs and 1 DVD.[377] in The New York Times, Jon Pareles wrote, “Decades later, what comes through these recordings above all is Mr. Dylan’s unmistakable fervor, his sense of mission. The studio albums are subdued, even tentative, compared with what the songs became on the road. Mr. Dylan’s voice is clear, cutting and ever improvisational; working the crowds, he was emphatic, committed, sometimes teasingly combative. And the band tears into the music.”[378] Trouble No More includes a DVD of a film directed by Jennifer Lebeau consisting of live footage of Dylan’s gospel performances interspersed with sermons delivered by actor Michael Shannon. The box set album received an aggregate score of 84 on the critical website Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”.[379]

Dylan made a contribution to the compilation EP Universal Love, a collection of reimagined wedding songs for the LGBT community in April 2018.[380] The album was funded by MGM Resorts International and the songs are intended to function as “wedding anthems for same-sex couples”.[381] Dylan recorded the 1929 song “She’s Funny That Way”, changing the gender pronoun to “He’s Funny That Way”. The song has previously been recorded by Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra.[381][382]

Also in April 2018, The New York Times announced that Dylan was launching Heaven’s Door, a range of three whiskeys: a straight rye, a straight bourbon and a “double-barreled” whiskey. Dylan has been involved in both the creation and the marketing of the range. The Times described the venture as “Mr. Dylan’s entry into the booming celebrity-branded spirits market, the latest career twist for an artist who has spent five decades confounding expectations.”[383]

On November 2, 2018, Dylan released More Blood, More Tracks as Volume 14 in the Bootleg Series. The set comprises all Dylan’s recordings for his 1975 album Blood On the Tracks, and was issued as a single CD and also as a six-CD Deluxe Edition.[384] The box set album received an aggregate score of 93 on the critical website Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”.[385]

Netflix released the movie Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese on June 12, 2019, describing the film as “Part documentary, part concert film, part fever dream”.[386][187] The Scorsese film received an aggregate score of 88 on critical website Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”.[387] The film sparked controversy because of the way it deliberately mixed documentary footage filmed during the Rolling Thunder Revue in the fall of 1975 with fictitious characters and invented stories.[388]

Coinciding with the film release, a box set of 14 CDs, The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, was released by Columbia Records. The set comprises five full Dylan performances from the tour and recently discovered tapes from Dylan’s tour rehearsals.[389] The box set received an aggregate score of 89 on the critical website Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”.[390]

The next instalment of Dylan’s Bootleg Series, Bob Dylan (featuring Johnny Cash) – Travelin’ Thru, 1967 – 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 15, was released on November 1. The 3-CD set comprises outtakes from Dylan’s albums John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, and songs that Dylan recorded with Johnny Cash in Nashville in 1969 and with Earl Scruggs in 1970.[391][392] Travelin’ Thru received an aggregate score of 88 on the critical website Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”.

2020s

Rough and Rowdy Ways

On March 26, 2020, Dylan released a seventeen-minute track “Murder Most Foul” on his YouTube channel, revolving around the a*sassination of President Kennedy.[394] Dylan posted a statement: “This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you.”[395] Billboard reported on April 8 that “Murder Most Foul” had topped the Billboard Rock Digital Song Sales Chart. This was the first time that Dylan had scored a number one song on a pop chart under his own name.[396] Three weeks later, on April 17, 2020, Dylan released another new song, “I Contain Multitudes”.[397][398] The title is a quote from Section 51 of Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself”.[399] On May 7, Dylan released a third single, “False Prophet”, accompanied by the news that “Murder Most Foul”, “I Contain Multitudes” and “False Prophet” would all appear on a forthcoming double album.

Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan’s 39th studio album and his first album of original material since 2012, was released on June 19 to favorable reviews.[400] Alexis Petridis wrote in The Guardian, “For all its bleakness, Rough and Rowdy Ways might well be Bob Dylan’s most consistently brilliant set of songs in years: the die-hards can spend months unravelling the knottier lyrics, but you don’t need a PhD in Dylanology to appreciate its singular quality and power.”[401] Rolling Stone critic Rob Sheffield wrote: “While the world keeps trying to celebrate him as an institution, pin him down, cast him in the Nobel Prize canon, embalm his past, this drifter always keeps on making his next escape. On Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan is exploring terrain nobody else has reached before—yet he just keeps pushing on into the future.”[402] Critical aggregator Metacritic gave the album a score of 95, indicating “universal acclaim”.[400] In its first week of release Rough and Rowdy Ways reached number one on the U.K. album chart, making Dylan “the oldest artist to score a No. 1 of new, original material”.[403]

To accompany the album, Dylan gave a rare interview to historian Douglas Brinkley, published in The New York Times on June 12. Dylan commented on the killing of George Floyd: “It was beyond ugly. Let’s hope that justice comes swift for the Floyd family and for the nation.” He said of the COVID-19 pandemic, “Maybe we are on the eve of destruction. There are numerous ways you can think about this virus. I think you just have to let it run its course.”

Never Ending Tour

The Never Ending Tour commenced on June 7, 1988,[405] and Dylan has played roughly 100 dates a year for the entirety of the 1990s and 2000s—a heavier schedule than most performers who started out in the 1960s.[406] By April 2019, Dylan and his band had played more than 3,000 shows,[407] anchored by long-time bassist Tony Garnier, multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron and guitarist Charlie Sexton.[408] In October 2019, drummer Matt Chamberlain joined the band.[408] To the dismay of some of his audience,[409] Dylan’s performances remain unpredictable as he alters his arrangements and changes his vocal approach night after night.[410] Critical opinion about Dylan’s shows remains divided. Critics such as Richard Williams and Andy Gill have argued that Dylan has found a successful way to present his rich legacy of material.[411][412] Others have criticized his live performances for mangling and spitting out “the greatest lyrics ever written so that they are effectively unrecognisable”, and giving so little to the audience that “it is difficult to understand what he is doing on stage at all.”[413]

Dylan’s performances in China in April 2011 generated controversy. Some criticised him for not making any explicit comment on the political situation in China, and for, allegedly, allowing the Chinese authorities to censor his set list.[414][415] Others defended Dylan’s performances, arguing that such criticism represented a misunderstanding of Dylan’s art, and that no evidence for the censorship of Dylan’s set list existed.[416][417] In response to these allegations, Dylan posted a statement on his website: “As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There’s no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous 3 months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play.”[418]

In 2019, Dylan undertook two tours in Europe. The first commenced in Düsseldorf, Germany, on March 31, and ended in Valencia, Spain, on May 7. He played his 3000th show of the Never Ending Tour on April 19, 2019, in Innsbruck, Austria.[419] Dylan’s second tour began in Bergen, Norway, on June 21, and ended in Kilkenny, Ireland, on July 14.[420][421] In the fall of 2019 Dylan toured the USA, commencing in Irvine, California on October 11 and ending in Washington D.C. on December 8.[422]

In October 2019, Dylan’s touring company indicated that he would play 14 concerts in Japan in April 2020.[423] However, on March 12, 2020, it was announced that these scheduled shows had been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Visual art

The cover of Dylan’s album Self Portrait (1970) is a reproduction of a painting of a face by Dylan.[425] Another of his paintings is reproduced on the cover of the 1974 album Planet Waves. In 1994 Random House published Drawn Blank, a book of Dylan’s drawings.[426] In 2007, the first public exhibition of Dylan’s paintings, The Drawn Blank Series, opened at the Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz, Germany;[427] it showcased more than 200 watercolors and gouaches made from the original drawings. The exhibition coincided with the publication of Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series, which includes 170 reproductions from the series.[427][428] From September 2010 until April 2011, the National Gallery of Denmark exhibited 40 large-scale acrylic paintings by Dylan, The Brazil Series.[429]

In July 2011, a leading contemporary art gallery, Gagosian Gallery, announced their representation of Dylan’s paintings.[430] An exhibition of Dylan’s art, The Asia Series, opened at the Gagosian Madison Avenue Gallery on September 20, displaying Dylan’s paintings of scenes in China and the Far East.[431] The New York Times reported that “some fans and Dylanologists have raised questions about whether some of these paintings are based on the singer’s own experiences and observations, or on photographs that are widely available and were not taken by Mr. Dylan.” The Times pointed to close resemblances between Dylan’s paintings and historic photos of Japan and China, and photos taken by Dmitri Kessel and Henri Cartier-Bresson.[432] Art critic Blake Gopnik has defended Dylan’s artistic practice, arguing: “Ever since the birth of photography, painters have used it as the basis for their works: Edgar Degas and Edouard Vuillard and other favorite artists—even Edvard Munch—all took or used photos as sources for their art, sometimes barely altering them.”[433] The Magnum photo agency confirmed that Dylan had licensed the reproduction rights of these photographs.[434]

Dylan’s second show at the Gagosian Gallery, Revisionist Art, opened in November 2012. The show consisted of thirty paintings, transforming and satirizing popular magazines, including Playboy and Babytalk.[435][436] In February 2013, Dylan exhibited the New Orleans Series of paintings at the Palazzo Reale in Milan.[437] In August 2013, Britain’s National Portrait Gallery in London hosted Dylan’s first major UK exhibition, Face Value, featuring twelve pastel portraits.[438]

In November 2013, the Halcyon Gallery in London mounted Mood Swings, an exhibition in which Dylan displayed seven wrought iron gates he had made. In a statement released by the gallery, Dylan said, “I’ve been around iron all my life ever since I was a kid. I was born and raised in iron ore country, where you could breathe it and smell it every day. Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference.”[439][440]

In November 2016, the Halcyon Gallery featured a collection of drawings, watercolors and acrylic works by Dylan. The exhibition, The Beaten Path, depicted American landscapes and urban scenes, inspired by Dylan’s travels across the USA.[441] The show was reviewed by Vanity Fair and Asia Times Online.[442][443][444] In October 2018, the Halcyon Gallery mounted an exhibition of Dylan’s drawings, Mondo Scripto. The works consisted of Dylan hand-written lyrics of his songs, with each song illustrated by a drawing.[445]

Since 1994, Dylan has published eight books of paintings and drawings.

Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), also known simply as Elvis, was an American singer, musician and actor. He is regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century and is often referred to as the “King of Rock and Roll” or simply “the King”. His energized interpretations of songs and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines during a transformative era in race relations, led him to great success—and initial controversy.

Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family when he was 13 years old. His music career began there in 1954, recording at Sun Records with producer Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African-American music to a wider audience. Presley, on rhythm acoustic guitar, and accompanied by lead guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, was a pioneer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues. In 1955, drummer D. J. Fontana joined to complete the lineup of Presley’s classic quartet and RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage him for more than two decades. Presley’s first RCA single, “Heartbreak Hotel”, was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States. With a series of successful network television appearances and chart-topping records, he became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll.

In November 1956, Presley made his film debut in Love Me Tender. Drafted into military service in 1958, Presley relaunched his recording career two years later with some of his most commercially successful work. He held few concerts, however, and guided by Parker, proceeded to devote much of the 1960s to making Hollywood films and soundtrack albums, most of them critically derided. In 1968, following a seven-year break from live performances, he returned to the stage in the acclaimed television comeback special Elvis, which led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of highly profitable tours. In 1973, Presley gave the first concert by a solo artist to be broadcast around the world, Aloha from Hawaii. Years of prescription drug abuse severely compromised his health, and he died suddenly in 1977 at his Graceland estate at the age of 42.

With his rise from poverty to significant fame, Presley’s success seemed to epitomize the American Dream. He is the best-selling solo music artist of all time, and was commercially successful in many genres, including pop, country, R&B, adult contemporary, and gospel. He won three Grammy Awards, received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36, and has been inducted into multiple music halls of fame. Presley holds several records; the most RIAA certified gold and platinum albums, the most albums charted on the Billboard 200, and the most number-one albums by a solo artist on the UK Albums Chart and the most number-one singles by any act on the UK Singles Chart. In 2018, Presley was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Life and career

1935–1953: Early years

Childhood in Tupelo

Elvis Aaron Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi to Vernon Elvis (April 10, 1916 – June 26, 1979) and Gladys Love (née Smith; April 25, 1912 – August 14, 1958) Presley in a two-room shotgun house that his father built for the occasion. Elvis’s identical twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley, was delivered 35 minutes before him, stillborn. Presley became close to both parents and formed an especially close bond with his mother. The family attended an Assembly of God church, where he found his initial musical inspiration.

Presley’s father, Vernon, was of German[8] or Scottish origin.[9] Through his mother, Presley was Scots-Irish, with some French Norman.[10] His mother, Gladys, and the rest of the family, apparently believed that her great-great-grandmother, Morning Dove White, was Cherokee; this was confirmed by Elvis’s granddaughter Riley Keough in 2017. Elaine Dundy, in her biography, supports the belief – although one genealogy researcher has contested it on multiple grounds. Gladys was regarded by relatives and friends as the dominant member of the small family.

Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, evincing little ambition. The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food a*sistance. In 1938, they lost their home after Vernon was found guilty of altering a check written by his landowner and sometime-employer. He was jailed for eight months, while Gladys and Elvis moved in with relatives.

In September 1941, Presley entered first grade at East Tupelo Consolidated, where his teachers regarded him as “average”. He was encouraged to enter a singing contest after impressing his schoolteacher with a rendition of Red Foley’s country song “Old Shep” during morning prayers. The contest, held at the Mississippi–Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on October 3, 1945, was his first public performance. The ten-year-old Presley was dressed as a cowboy; he stood on a chair to reach the microphone and sang “Old Shep”. He recalled placing fifth. A few months later, Presley received his first guitar for his birthday; he had hoped for something else—by different accounts, either a bicycle or a rifle. Over the following year, he received basic guitar lessons from two of his uncles and the new pastor at the family’s church. Presley recalled, “I took the guitar, and I watched people, and I learned to play a little bit. But I would never sing in public. I was very shy about it.”

In September 1946, Presley entered a new school, Milam, for sixth grade; he was regarded as a loner. The following year, he began bringing his guitar to school on a daily basis. He played and sang during lunchtime, and was often teased as a “trashy” kid who played hillbilly music. By then, the family was living in a largely black neighborhood. Presley was a devotee of Mississippi Slim’s show on the Tupelo radio station WELO. He was described as “crazy about music” by Slim’s younger brother, who was one of Presley’s classmates and often took him into the station. Slim supplemented Presley’s guitar instruction by demonstrating chord techniques. When his protégé was twelve years old, Slim scheduled him for two on-air performances. Presley was overcome by stage fright the first time, but succeeded in performing the following week.
Teenage life in Memphis

In November 1948, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. After residing for nearly a year in rooming houses, they were granted a two-bedroom apartment in the public housing complex known as the Lauderdale Courts. Enrolled at L. C. Humes High School, Presley received only a C in music in eighth grade. When his music teacher told him that he had no aptitude for singing, he brought in his guitar the next day and sang a recent hit, “Keep Them Cold Icy Fingers Off Me”, to prove otherwise. A classmate later recalled that the teacher “agreed that Elvis was right when he said that she didn’t appreciate his kind of singing”. He was usually too shy to perform openly, and was occasionally bullied by classmates who viewed him as a “mama’s boy”. In 1950, he began practicing guitar regularly under the tutelage of Lee Denson, a neighbor two and a half years his senior. They and three other boys—including two future rockabilly pioneers, brothers Dorsey and Johnny Burnette—formed a loose musical collective that played frequently around the Courts. That September, he began working as an usher at Loew’s State Theater. Other jobs followed: Precision Tool, Loew’s again, and MARL Metal Products.

During his junior year, Presley began to stand out more among his classmates, largely because of his appearance: he grew his sideburns and styled his hair with rose oil and Vaseline. In his free time, he would head down to Beale Street, the heart of Memphis’s thriving blues scene, and gaze longingly at the wild, flashy clothes in the windows of Lansky Brothers. By his senior year, he was wearing those clothes. Overcoming his reticence about performing outside the Lauderdale Courts, he competed in Humes’ Annual “Minstrel” show in April 1953. Singing and playing guitar, he opened with “Till I Waltz Again with You”, a recent hit for Teresa Brewer. Presley recalled that the performance did much for his reputation: “I wasn’t popular in school … I failed music—only thing I ever failed. And then they entered me in this talent show … when I came onstage I heard people kind of rumbling and whispering and so forth, ’cause nobody knew I even sang. It was amazing how popular I became in school after that.”

Presley, who received no formal music training and could not read music, studied and played by ear. He also frequented record stores that provided jukeboxes and listening booths to customers. He knew all of Hank Snow’s songs, and he loved records by other country singers such as Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Ted Daffan, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Davis, and Bob Wills.[38] The Southern gospel singer Jake Hess, one of his favorite performers, was a significant influence on his ballad-singing style. He was a regular audience member at the monthly All-Night Singings downtown, where many of the white gospel groups that performed reflected the influence of African-American spiritual music. He adored the music of black gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe.[38] Like some of his peers, he may have attended blues venues—of necessity, in the segregated South, only on nights designated for exclusively white audiences. He certainly listened to the regional radio stations, such as WDIA-AM, that played “race records”: spirituals, blues, and the modern, backbeat-heavy sound of rhythm and blues. Many of his future recordings were inspired by local African-American musicians such as Arthur Crudup and Rufus Thomas. B.B. King recalled that he had known Presley before he was popular when they both used to frequent Beale Street. By the time he graduated from high school in June 1953, Presley had already singled out music as his future.

1953–1956: First recordings

Sam Phillips and Sun Records

In August 1953, Presley checked into the offices of Sun Records. He aimed to pay for a few minutes of studio time to record a two-sided acetate disc: “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”. He later claimed that he intended the record as a birthday gift for his mother, or that he was merely interested in what he “sounded like”, although there was a much cheaper, amateur record-making service at a nearby general store. Biographer Peter Guralnick argued that he chose Sun in the hope of being discovered. Asked by receptionist Marion Keisker what kind of singer he was, Presley responded, “I sing all kinds.” When she pressed him on who he sounded like, he repeatedly answered, “I don’t sound like nobody.” After he recorded, Sun boss Sam Phillips asked Keisker to note down the young man’s name, which she did along with her own commentary: “Good ballad singer. Hold.”

In January 1954, Presley cut a second acetate at Sun Records—”I’ll Never Stand in Your Way” and “It Wouldn’t Be the Same Without You”—but again nothing came of it. Not long after, he failed an audition for a local vocal quartet, the Songfellows. He explained to his father, “They told me I couldn’t sing.” Songfellow Jim Hamill later claimed that he was turned down because he did not demonstrate an ear for harmony at the time. In April, Presley began working for the Crown Electric company as a truck driver.[ His friend Ronnie Smith, after playing a few local gigs with him, suggested he contact Eddie Bond, leader of Smith’s professional band, which had an opening for a vocalist. Bond rejected him after a tryout, advising Presley to stick to truck driving “because you’re never going to make it as a singer”.

Phillips, meanwhile, was always on the lookout for someone who could bring to a broader audience the sound of the black musicians on whom Sun focused. As Keisker reported, “Over and over I remember Sam saying, ‘If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.’” In June, he acquired a demo recording by Jimmy Sweeney of a ballad, “Without You”, that he thought might suit the teenage singer. Presley came by the studio but was unable to do it justice. Despite this, Phillips asked Presley to sing as many numbers as he knew. He was sufficiently affected by what he heard to invite two local musicians, guitarist Winfield “Scotty” Moore and upright bass player Bill Black, to work something up with Presley for a recording session.

The session held the evening of July 5, proved entirely unfruitful until late in the night. As they were about to abort and go home, Presley took his guitar and launched into a 1946 blues number, Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right”. Moore recalled, “All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them. Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open … he stuck his head out and said, ‘What are you doing?’ And we said, ‘We don’t know.’ ‘Well, back up,’ he said, ‘try to find a place to start, and do it again.’” Phillips quickly began taping; this was the sound he had been looking for. Three days later, popular Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips played “That’s All Right” on his Red, Hot, and Blue show. Listeners began phoning in, eager to find out who the singer was. The interest was such that Phillips played the record repeatedly during the remaining two hours of his show. Interviewing Presley on-air, Phillips asked him what high school he attended to clarify his color for the many callers who had a*sumed that he was black. During the next few days, the trio recorded a bluegrass number, Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky”, again in a distinctive style and employing a jury rigged echo effect that Sam Phillips dubbed “slapback”. A single was pressed with “That’s All Right” on the A-side and “Blue Moon of Kentucky” on the reverse.

Early live performances and RCA Victor contract

The trio played publicly for the first time on July 17 at the Bon Air club—Presley still sporting his child-size guitar. At the end of the month, they appeared at the Overton Park Shell, with Slim Whitman headlining. A combination of his strong response to rhythm and nervousness at playing before a large crowd led Presley to shake his legs as he performed: his wide-cut pants emphasized his movements, causing young women in the audience to start screaming.[63] Moore recalled, “During the instrumental parts, he would back off from the mike and be playing and shaking, and the crowd would just go wild”. Black, a natural showman, whooped and rode his bass, hitting double licks that Presley would later remember as “really a wild sound, like a jungle drum or something”. Soon after, Moore and Black left their old band, the Starlite Wranglers, to play with Presley regularly, and DJ/promoter Bob Neal became the trio’s manager. From August through October, they played frequently at the Eagle’s Nest club and returned to Sun Studio for more recording sessions, and Presley quickly grew more confident on stage. According to Moore, “His movement was a natural thing, but he was also very conscious of what got a reaction. He’d do something one time and then he would expand on it real quick.” Presley made what would be his only appearance on Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry stage on October 2; after a polite audience response, Opry manager Jim Denny told Phillips that his singer was “not bad” but did not suit the program.

Louisiana Hayride, radio commercial, and first television performances

In November 1954, Presley performed on Louisiana Hayride—the Opry’s chief, and more adventurous, rival. The Shreveport-based show was broadcast to 198 radio stations in 28 states. Presley had another attack of nerves during the first set, which drew a muted reaction. A more composed and energetic second set inspired an enthusiastic response. House drummer D. J. Fontana brought a new element, complementing Presley’s movements with accented beats that he had mastered playing in strip clubs. Soon after the show, the Hayride engaged Presley for a year’s worth of Saturday-night appearances. Trading in his old guitar for $8 (and seeing it promptly dispatched to the garbage), he purchased a Martin instrument for $175, and his trio began playing in new locales, including Houston, Texas and Texarkana, Arkansas.

Many fledgling performers, like Minnie Pearl, Johnny Horton, and Johnny Cash, sang the praises of Louisiana Hayride sponsor, The Southern Maid Donut Flour Company (Texas), including Elvis Presley, who developed a lifelong love of doughnuts. Presley made his singular product endorsement commercial for the doughnut company, which was never released, recording a radio jingle, “in exchange for a box of hot glazed doughnuts.”

Elvis made his first television appearance on the KSLA-TV television broadcast of Louisiana Hayride. Soon after, he failed an audition for Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts on the CBS television network. By early 1955, Presley’s regular Hayride appearances, constant touring, and well-received record releases had made him a regional star, from Tennessee to West Texas. In January, Neal signed a formal management contract with Presley and brought him to the attention of Colonel Tom Parker, whom he considered the best promoter in the music business. Parker—who claimed to be from West Virginia (he was actually Dutch)—had acquired an honorary colonel’s commission from country singer turned Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis. Having successfully managed top country star Eddy Arnold, Parker was working with the new number-one country singer, Hank Snow. Parker booked Presley on Snow’s February tour. When the tour reached Odessa, Texas, a 19-year-old Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time: “His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing. … I just didn’t know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it.” By August, Sun had released ten sides credited to “Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill”; on the latest recordings, the trio were joined by a drummer. Some of the songs, like “That’s All Right”, were in what one Memphis journalist described as the “R&B idiom of negro field jazz”; others, like “Blue Moon of Kentucky”, were “more in the country field”, “but there was a curious blending of the two different musics in both”. This blend of styles made it difficult for Presley’s music to find radio airplay. According to Neal, many country-music disc jockeys would not play it because he sounded too much like a black artist and none of the rhythm-and-blues stations would touch him because “he sounded too much like a hillbilly.” The blend came to be known as rockabilly. At the time, Presley was variously billed as “The King of Western Bop”, “The Hillbilly Cat”, and “The Memphis Flash”.

Presley renewed Neal’s management contract in August 1955, simultaneously appointing Parker as his special adviser. The group maintained an extensive touring schedule throughout the second half of the year. Neal recalled, “It was almost frightening, the reaction that came to Elvis from the teenaged boys. So many of them, through some sort of jealousy, would practically hate him. There were occasions in some towns in Texas when we’d have to be sure to have a police guard because somebody’d always try to take a crack at him. They’d get a gang and try to waylay him or something.” The trio became a quartet when Hayride drummer Fontana joined as a full member. In mid-October, they played a few shows in support of Bill Haley, whose “Rock Around the Clock” track had been a number-one hit the previous year. Haley observed that Presley had a natural feel for rhythm, and advised him to sing fewer ballads.

At the Country Disc Jockey Convention in early November, Presley was voted the year’s most promising male artist. Several record companies had by now shown interest in signing him. After three major labels made offers of up to $25,000, Parker and Phillips struck a deal with RCA Victor on November 21 to acquire Presley’s Sun contract for an unprecedented $40,000. Presley, at 20, was still a minor, so his father signed the contract.[86] Parker arranged with the owners of Hill & Range Publishing, Jean and Julian Aberbach, to create two entities, Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music, to handle all the new material recorded by Presley. Songwriters were obliged to forgo one-third of their customary royalties in exchange for having him perform their compositions. By December, RCA had begun to heavily promote its new singer, and before month’s end had reissued many of his Sun recordings.

1956–1958: Commercial breakout and controversy

First national TV appearances and debut album

On January 10, 1956, Presley made his first recordings for RCA in Nashville. Extending Presley’s by-now customary backup of Moore, Black, Fontana, and Hayride pianist Floyd Cramer—who had been performing at live club dates with Presley—RCA enlisted guitarist Chet Atkins and three background singers, including Gordon Stoker of the popular Jordanaires quartet, to fill in the sound.[94] The session produced the moody, unusual “Heartbreak Hotel”, released as a single on January 27. Parker finally brought Presley to national television, booking him on CBS’s Stage Show for six appearances over two months. The program, produced in New York, was hosted on alternate weeks by big band leaders and brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. After his first appearance, on January 28, Presley stayed in town to record at RCA’s New York studio. The sessions yielded eight songs, including a cover of Carl Perkins’ rockabilly anthem “Blue Suede Shoes”. In February, Presley’s “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”, a Sun recording initially released the previous August, reached the top of the Billboard country chart. Neal’s contract was terminated, and, on March 2, Parker became Presley’s manager.

RCA released Presley’s self-titled debut album on March 23. Joined by five previously unreleased Sun recordings, its seven recently recorded tracks were of a broad variety. There were two country songs and a bouncy pop tune. The others would centrally define the evolving sound of rock and roll: “Blue Suede Shoes”—”an improvement over Perkins’ in almost every way”, according to critic Robert Hilburn—and three R&B numbers that had been part of Presley’s stage repertoire for some time, covers of Little Richard, Ray Charles, and The Drifters. As described by Hilburn, these “were the most revealing of all. Unlike many white artists … who watered down the gritty edges of the original R&B versions of songs in the ’50s, Presley reshaped them. He not only injected the tunes with his own vocal character but also made guitar, not piano, the lead instrument in all three cases.” It became the first rock and roll album to top the Billboard chart, a position it held for 10 weeks. While Presley was not an innovative guitarist like Moore or contemporary African-American rockers Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, cultural historian Gilbert B. Rodman argued that the album’s cover image, “of Elvis having the time of his life on stage with a guitar in his hands played a crucial role in positioning the guitar … as the instrument that best captured the style and spirit of this new music.

Milton Berle Show and “Hound Dog”

On April 3, Presley made the first of two appearances on NBC’s Milton Berle Show. His performance, on the deck of the USS Hancock in San Diego, California, prompted cheers and screams from an audience of sailors and their dates. A few days later, a flight taking Presley and his band to Nashville for a recording session left all three badly shaken when an engine died and the plane almost went down over Arkansas. Twelve weeks after its original release, “Heartbreak Hotel” became Presley’s first number-one pop hit. In late April, Presley began a two-week residency at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The shows were poorly received by the conservative, middle-aged hotel guests—”like a jug of corn liquor at a champagne party”, wrote a critic for Newsweek. Amid his Vegas tenure, Presley, who had serious acting ambitions, signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures. He began a tour of the Midwest in mid-May, taking in 15 cities in as many days. He had attended several shows by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys in Vegas and was struck by their cover of “Hound Dog”, a hit in 1953 for blues singer Big Mama Thornton by songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It became the new closing number of his act. After a show in La Crosse, Wisconsin, an urgent message on the letterhead of the local Catholic diocese’s newspaper was sent to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. It warned that “Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States. … [His] actions and motions were such as to rouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. … After the show, more than 1,000 teenagers tried to gang into Presley’s room at the auditorium. … Indications of the harm Presley did just in La Crosse were the two high school girls … whose abdomen and thigh had Presley’s autograph.”

The second Milton Berle Show appearance came on June 5 at NBC’s Hollywood studio, amid another hectic tour. Berle persuaded Presley to leave his guitar backstage, advising, “Let ’em see you, son.” During the performance, Presley abruptly halted an uptempo rendition of “Hound Dog” with a wave of his arm and launched into a slow, grinding version accentuated with energetic, exaggerated body movements. Presley’s gyrations created a storm of controversy. Television critics were outraged: Jack Gould of The New York Times wrote, “Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. … His phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner’s aria in a bathtub. … His one specialty is an accented movement of the body … primarily identified with the repertoire of the blond bombshells of the burlesque runway.” Ben Gross of the New York Daily News opined that popular music “has reached its lowest depths in the ‘grunt and groin’ antics of one Elvis Presley. … Elvis, who rotates his pelvis … gave an exhibition that was suggestive and vulgar, tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos”. Ed Sullivan, whose own variety show was the nation’s most popular, declared him “unfit for family viewing”. To Presley’s displeasure, he soon found himself being referred to as “Elvis the Pelvis”, which he called “one of the most childish expressions I ever heard, comin’ from an adult.”

Steve Allen Show and first Sullivan appearance

The Berle shows drew such high ratings that Presley was booked for a July 1 appearance on NBC’s Steve Allen Show in New York. Allen, no fan of rock and roll, introduced a “new Elvis” in a white bow tie and black tails. Presley sang “Hound Dog” for less than a minute to a basset hound wearing a top hat and bow tie. As described by television historian Jake Austen, “Allen thought Presley was talentless and absurd … [he] set things up so that Presley would show his contrition”. Allen later wrote that he found Presley’s “strange, gangly, country-boy charisma, his hard-to-define cuteness, and his charming eccentricity intriguing” and simply worked him into the customary “comedy fabric” of his program.[113] Just before the final rehearsal for the show, Presley told a reporter, “I’m holding down on this show. I don’t want to do anything to make people dislike me. I think TV is important so I’m going to go along, but I won’t be able to give the kind of show I do in a personal appearance.” Presley would refer back to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career. Later that night, he appeared on Hy Gardner Calling, a popular local TV show. Pressed on whether he had learned anything from the criticism to which he was being subjected, Presley responded, “No, I haven’t, I don’t feel like I’m doing anything wrong. … I don’t see how any type of music would have any bad influence on people when it’s only music. … I mean, how would rock ‘n’ roll music make anyone rebel against their parents?”

The next day, Presley recorded “Hound Dog”, along with “Any Way You Want Me” and “Don’t Be Cruel”. The Jordanaires sang harmony, as they had on The Steve Allen Show; they would work with Presley through the 1960s. A few days later, Presley made an outdoor concert appearance in Memphis, at which he announced, “You know, those people in New York are not gonna change me none. I’m gonna show you what the real Elvis is like tonight.”[116] In August, a judge in Jacksonville, Florida, ordered Presley to tame his act. Throughout the following performance, he largely kept still, except for wiggling his little finger suggestively in mockery of the order.[117] The single pairing “Don’t Be Cruel” with “Hound Dog” ruled the top of the charts for 11 weeks—a mark that would not be surpassed for 36 years. Recording sessions for Presley’s second album took place in Hollywood during the first week of September. Leiber and Stoller, the writers of “Hound Dog”, contributed “Love Me”.

Allen’s show with Presley had, for the first time, beaten CBS’s Ed Sullivan Show in the ratings. Sullivan, despite his June pronouncement, booked Presley for three appearances for an unprecedented $50,000. The first, on September 9, 1956, was seen by approximately 60 million viewers—a record 82.6 percent of the television audience. Actor Charles Laughton hosted the show, filling in while Sullivan was recovering from a car accident. Presley appeared in two segments that night from CBS Television City in Los Angeles. According to Elvis legend, Presley was shot only from the waist up. Watching clips of the Allen and Berle shows with his producer, Sullivan had opined that Presley “got some kind of device hanging down below the crotch of his pants—so when he moves his legs back and forth you can see the outline of his cock. … I think it’s a Coke bottle. … We just can’t have this on a Sunday night. This is a family show!” Sullivan publicly told TV Guide, “As for his gyrations, the whole thing can be controlled with camera shots.” In fact, Presley was shown head-to-toe in the first and second shows. Though the camerawork was relatively discreet during his debut, with leg-concealing closeups when he danced, the studio audience reacted in customary style: screaming.[ Presley’s performance of his forthcoming single, the ballad “Love Me Tender”, prompted a record-shattering million advance orders. More than any other single event, it was this first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show that made Presley a national celebrity of barely precedented proportions.

Accompanying Presley’s rise to fame, a cultural shift was taking place that he both helped inspire and came to symbolize. Igniting the “biggest pop craze since Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra … Presley brought rock’n’roll into the mainstream of popular culture”, writes historian Marty Jezer. “As Presley set the artistic pace, other artists followed. … Presley, more than anyone else, gave the young a belief in themselves as a distinct and somehow unified generation—the first in America ever to feel the power of an integrated youth culture.”

Crazed crowds and film debut

The audience response at Presley’s live shows became increasingly fevered. Moore recalled, “He’d start out, ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a Hound Dog,’ and they’d just go to pieces. They’d always react the same way. There’d be a riot every time.” At the two concerts he performed in September at the Mississippi–Alabama Fair and Dairy Show, 50 National Guardsmen were added to the police security to ensure that the crowd would not cause a ruckus. Elvis, Presley’s second album, was released in October and quickly rose to number one on the billboard. The album includes “Old Shep”, which he sang at the talent show in 1945, and which now marked the first time he played piano on an RCA session. According to Guralnick, one can hear “in the halting chords and the somewhat stumbling rhythm both the unmistakable emotion and the equally unmistakable valuing of emotion over technique.” Assessing the musical and cultural impact of Presley’s recordings from “That’s All Right” through Elvis, rock critic Dave Marsh wrote that “these records, more than any others, contain the seeds of what rock & roll was, has been and most likely what it may foreseeably become.”

Presley returned to the Sullivan show at its main studio in New York, hosted this time by its namesake, on October 28. After the performance, crowds in Nashville and St. Louis burned him in effigy. His first motion picture, Love Me Tender, was released on November 21. Though he was not top-billed, the film’s original title—The Reno Brothers—was changed to capitalize on his latest number-one record: “Love Me Tender” had hit the top of the charts earlier that month. To further take advantage of Presley’s popularity, four musical numbers were added to what was originally a straight acting role. The film was panned by the critics but did very well at the box office. Presley would receive top billing on every subsequent film he made.

On December 4, Presley dropped into Sun Records where Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis were recording and had an impromptu jam session, along with Johnny Cash. Though Phillips no longer had the right to release any Presley material, he made sure that the session was captured on tape. The results, none officially released for 25 years, became known as the “Million Dollar Quartet” recordings. The year ended with a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal reporting that Presley merchandise had brought in $22 million on top of his record sales, and Billboard’s declaration that he had placed more songs in the top 100 than any other artist since records were first charted.[134] In his first full year at RCA, one of the music industry’s largest companies, Presley had accounted for over 50 percent of the label’s singles sales.

Leiber and Stoller collaboration and draft notice

Presley made his third and final Ed Sullivan Show appearance on January 6, 1957—on this occasion indeed shot only down to the waist. Some commentators have claimed that Parker orchestrated an appearance of censorship to generate publicity. In any event, as critic Greil Marcus describes, Presley “did not tie himself down. Leaving behind the bland clothes he had worn on the first two shows, he stepped out in the outlandish costume of a pasha, if not a harem girl. From the make-up over his eyes, the hair falling in his face, the overwhelmingly sexual cast of his mouth, he was playing Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik, with all stops out.” To close, displaying his range and defying Sullivan’s wishes, Presley sang a gentle black spiritual, “Peace in the Valley”. At the end of the show, Sullivan declared Presley “a real decent, fine boy”.[136] Two days later, the Memphis draft board announced that Presley would be classified 1-A and would probably be drafted sometime that year.

Each of the three Presley singles released in the first half of 1957 went to number one: “Too Much”, “All Shook Up”, and “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear”. Already an international star, he was attracting fans even where his music was not officially released. Under the headline “Presley Records a Craze in Soviet”, The New York Times reported that pressings of his music on discarded X-ray plates were commanding high prices in Leningrad. Between film shoots and recording sessions, Presley also found time to purchase an 18-room mansion eight miles (13 km) south of downtown Memphis for himself and his parents: Graceland. Loving You—the soundtrack to his second film, released in July—was Presley’s third straight number-one album. The title track was written by Leiber and Stoller, who were then retained to write four of the six songs recorded at the sessions for Jailhouse Rock, Presley’s next film. The songwriting team effectively produced the Jailhouse sessions and developed a close working relationship with Presley, who came to regard them as his “good-luck charm”. “He was fast,” said Leiber. “Any demo you gave him he knew by heart in ten minutes.” The title track was yet another number-one hit, as was the Jailhouse Rock EP.

Presley undertook three brief tours during the year, continuing to generate a crazed audience response. A Detroit newspaper suggested that “the trouble with going to see Elvis Presley is that you’re liable to get killed.” Villanova students pelted him with eggs in Philadelphia,[143] and in Vancouver the crowd rioted after the end of the show, destroying the stage. Frank Sinatra, who had inspired the swooning of teenage girls in the 1940s, condemned the new musical phenomenon. In a magazine article, he decried rock and roll as “brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious. … It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phoney and false. It is sung, played and written, for the most part, by cretinous goons. … This rancid-smelling aphrodisiac I deplore.” Asked for a response, Presley said, “I admire the man. He has a right to say what he wants to say. He is a great success and a fine actor, but I think he shouldn’t have said it. … This is a trend, just the same as he faced when he started years ago.”

Leiber and Stoller were again in the studio for the recording of Elvis’ Christmas Album. Toward the end of the session, they wrote a song on the spot at Presley’s request: “Santa Claus Is Back in Town”, an innuendo-laden blues. The holiday release stretched Presley’s string of number-one albums to four and would become the best-selling Christmas album ever in the United States, with eventual sales of over 20 million worldwide. After the session, Moore and Black—drawing only modest weekly salaries, sharing in none of Presley’s massive financial success—resigned. Though they were brought back on a per diem basis a few weeks later, it was clear that they had not been part of Presley’s inner circle for some time. On December 20, Presley received his draft notice. He was granted a deferment to finish the forthcoming King Creole, in which $350,000 had already been invested by Paramount and producer Hal Wallis. A couple of weeks into the new year, “Don’t”, another Leiber and Stoller tune, became Presley’s tenth number-one seller. It had been only 21 months since “Heartbreak Hotel” had brought him to the top for the first time. Recording sessions for the King Creole soundtrack were held in Hollywood in mid-January 1958. Leiber and Stoller provided three songs and were again on hand, but it would be the last time they and Presley worked closely together. As Stoller recalled, Presley’s manager and entourage sought to wall him off: “He was removed. … They kept him separate.” A brief soundtrack session on February 11 marked another ending—it was the final occasion on which Black was to perform with Presley. He died in 1965.

1958–1960: Military service and mother’s death

On March 24, 1958, Presley was drafted into the U.S. Army as a private at Fort Chaffee, near Fort Smith, Arkansas. His arrival was a major media event. Hundreds of people descended on Presley as he stepped from the bus; photographers then accompanied him into the fort. Presley announced that he was looking forward to his military stint, saying that he did not want to be treated any differently from anyone else: “The Army can do anything it wants with me.”

Presley commenced basic training at Fort Hood, Texas. During a two-week leave in early June, he recorded five songs in Nashville. In early August, his mother was diagnosed with hepatitis, and her condition rapidly worsened. Presley was granted emergency leave to visit her and arrived in Memphis on August 12. Two days later, she died of heart failure at the age of 46. Presley was devastated and never the same; their relationship had remained extremely close—even into his adulthood, they would use baby talk with each other and Presley would address her with pet names.

After training, Presley joined the 3rd Armored Division in Friedberg, Germany, on October 1.[161] While on maneuvers, Presley was introduced to amphetamines by a sergeant. He became “practically evangelical about their benefits”, not only for energy but for “strength” and weight loss as well, and many of his friends in the outfit joined him in indulging. The Army also introduced Presley to karate, which he studied seriously, training with Jürgen Seydel. It became a lifelong interest, which he later included in his live performances. Fellow soldiers have attested to Presley’s wish to be seen as an able, ordinary soldier, despite his fame, and to his generosity. He donated his Army pay to charity, purchased TV sets for the base, and bought an extra set of fatigues for everyone in his outfit.

While in Friedberg, Presley met 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu. They would eventually marry after a seven-and-a-half-year courtship. In her autobiography, Priscilla said that Presley was concerned that his 24-month spell as a GI would ruin his career. In Special Services, he would have been able to give musical performances and remain in touch with the public, but Parker had convinced him that to gain popular respect, he should serve his country as a regular soldier. Media reports echoed Presley’s concerns about his career, but RCA producer Steve Sholes and Freddy Bienstock of Hill and Range had carefully prepared for his two-year hiatus. Armed with a substantial amount of unreleased material, they kept up a regular stream of successful releases. Between his induction and discharge, Presley had ten top 40 hits, including “Wear My Ring Around Your Neck”, the best-selling “Hard Headed Woman”, and “One Night” in 1958, and “(Now and Then There’s) A Fool Such as I” and the number-one “A Big Hunk o’ Love” in 1959. RCA also generated four albums compiling old material during this period, most successfully Elvis’ Golden Records (1958), which hit number three on the LP chart.

1960–1968: Focus on films

Elvis Is Back

Presley returned to the United States on March 2, 1960, and was honorably discharged three days later with the rank of sergeant. The train that carried him from New Jersey to Tennessee was mobbed all the way, and Presley was called upon to appear at scheduled stops to please his fans. On the night of March 20, he entered RCA’s Nashville studio to cut tracks for a new album along with a single, “Stuck on You”, which was rushed into release and swiftly became a number-one hit. Another Nashville session two weeks later yielded a pair of his best-selling singles, the ballads “It’s Now or Never” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”, along with the rest of Elvis Is Back! The album features several songs described by Greil Marcus as full of Chicago blues “menace, driven by Presley’s own super-miked acoustic guitar, brilliant playing by Scotty Moore, and demonic sax work from Boots Randolph. Elvis’ singing wasn’t sexy, it was pornographic.” As a whole, the record “conjured up the vision of a performer who could be all things”, according to music historian John Robertson: “a flirtatious teenage idol with a heart of gold; a tempestuous, dangerous lover; a gutbucket blues singer; a sophisticated nightclub entertainer;  raucous rocker”. Released only days after recording was complete, it reached number two on the album chart.

Presley returned to television on May 12 as a guest on The Frank Sinatra Timex Special—ironic for both stars, given Sinatra’s earlier excoriation of rock and roll. Also known as Welcome Home Elvis, the show had been taped in late March, the only time all year Presley performed in front of an audience. Parker secured an unheard-of $125,000 fee for eight minutes of singing. The broadcast drew an enormous viewership.

G.I. Blues, the soundtrack to Presley’s first film since his return, was a number-one album in October. His first LP of sacred material, His Hand in Mine, followed two months later. It reached number 13 on the U.S. pop chart and number 3 in the UK, remarkable figures for a gospel album. In February 1961, Presley performed two shows for a benefit event in Memphis, on behalf of 24 local charities. During a luncheon preceding the event, RCA presented him with a plaque certifying worldwide sales of over 75 million records.[181] A 12-hour Nashville session in mid-March yielded nearly all of Presley’s next studio album, Something for Everybody. As described by John Robertson, it exemplifies the Nashville sound, the restrained, cosmopolitan style that would define country music in the 1960s. Presaging much of what was to come from Presley himself over the next half-decade, the album is largely “a pleasant, unthreatening pastiche of the music that had once been Elvis’ birthright”. It would be his sixt

h number-one LP. Another benefit concert, raising money for a Pearl Harbor memorial, was staged on March 25, in Hawaii. It was to be Presley’s last public performance for seven years.

Lost in Hollywood

Parker had by now pushed Presley into a heavy film making schedule, focused on formulaic, modestly budgeted musical comedies. Presley, at first, insisted on pursuing higher roles, but when two films in a more dramatic vein—Flaming Star (1960) and Wild in the Country (1961)—were less commercially successful, he reverted to the formula. Among the 27 films he made during the 1960s, there were a few further exceptions. His films were almost universally panned; critic Andrew Caine dismissed them as a “pantheon of bad taste”. Nonetheless, they were virtually all profitable. Hal Wallis, who produced nine of them, declared, “A Presley picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood.”[

Of Presley’s films in the 1960s, 15 were accompanied by soundtrack albums and another 5 by soundtrack EPs. The films’ rapid production and release schedules—he frequently starred in three a year—affected his music. According to Jerry Leiber, the soundtrack formula was already evident before Presley left for the Army: “three ballads, one medium-tempo [number], one up-tempo, and one break blues boogie”. As the decade wore on, the quality of the soundtrack songs grew “progressively worse”.[189] Julie Parrish, who appeared in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966), says that he disliked many of the songs chosen for his films. The Jordanaires’ Gordon Stoker describes how Presley would retreat from the studio microphone: “The material was so bad that he felt like he couldn’t sing it.” Most of the film albums featured a song or two from respected writers such as the team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. But by and large, according to biographer Jerry Hopkins, the numbers seemed to be “written on order by men who never really understood Elvis or rock and roll”. Regardless of the songs’ quality, it has been argued that Presley generally sang them well, with commitment. Critic Dave Marsh heard the opposite: “Presley isn’t trying, probably the wisest course in the face of material like ‘No Room to Rumba in a Sports Car’ and ‘Rock-A-Hula Baby’.”

In the first half of the decade, three of Presley’s soundtrack albums were ranked number one on the pop charts, and a few of his most popular songs came from his films, such as “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (1961) and “Return to Sender” (1962). (“Viva Las Vegas”, the title track to the 1964 film, was a minor hit as a B-side, and became truly popular only later.) But, as with artistic merit, the commercial returns steadily diminished. During a five-year span—1964 through 1968—Presley had only one top-ten hit: “Crying in the Chapel” (1965), a gospel number recorded back in 1960. As for non-film albums, between the June 1962 release of Pot Luck and the November 1968 release of the soundtrack to the television special that signaled his comeback, only one LP of new material by Presley was issued: the gospel album How Great Thou Art (1967). It won him his first Grammy Award, for Best Sacred Performance. As Marsh described, Presley was “arguably the greatest white gospel singer of his time [and] really the last rock & roll artist to make gospel as vital a component of his musical personality as his secular songs”.

Shortly before Christmas 1966, more than seven years since they first met, Presley proposed to Priscilla Beaulieu. They were married on May 1, 1967, in a brief ceremony in their suite at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The flow of formulaic films and a*sembly-line soundtracks rolled on. It was not until October 1967, when the Clambake soundtrack LP registered record low sales for a new Presley album, that RCA executives recognized a problem. “By then, of course, the damage had been done”, as historians Connie Kirchberg and Marc Hendrickx put it. “Elvis was viewed as a joke by serious music lovers and a has-been to all but his most loyal fans.

1968–1973: Comeback

Elvis: the ’68 Comeback Special

Presley’s only child, Lisa Marie, was born on February 1, 1968, during a period when he had grown deeply unhappy with his career. Of the eight Presley singles released between January 1967 and May 1968, only two charted in the top 40, and none higher than number 28. His forthcoming soundtrack album, Speedway, would rank at number 82 on the Billboard chart. Parker had already shifted his plans to television, where Presley had not appeared since the Sinatra Timex show in 1960. He maneuvered a deal with NBC that committed the network to both finance a theatrical feature and broadcast a Christmas special.

Recorded in late June in Burbank, California, the special, simply called Elvis, aired on December 3, 1968. Later known as the ’68 Comeback Special, the show featured lavishly staged studio productions as well as songs performed with a band in front of a small audience—Presley’s first live performances since 1961. The live segments saw Presley dressed in tight black leather, singing and playing guitar in an uninhibited style reminiscent of his early rock and roll days. Director and co-producer Steve Binder had worked hard to produce a show that was far from the hour of Christmas songs Parker had originally planned. The show, NBC’s highest-rated that season, captured 42 percent of the total viewing audience. Jon Landau of Eye magazine remarked, “There is something magical about watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home. He sang with the kind of power people no longer expect of rock ‘n’ roll singers. He moved his body with a lack of pretension and effort that must have made Jim Morrison green with envy.” Dave Marsh calls the performance one of “emotional grandeur and historical resonance”.

By January 1969, the single “If I Can Dream”, written for the special, reached number 12. The soundtrack album rose into the top ten. According to friend Jerry Schilling, the special reminded Presley of what “he had not been able to do for years, being able to choose the people; being able to choose what songs and not being told what had to be on the soundtrack. … He was out of prison, man.” Binder said of Presley’s reaction, “I played Elvis the 60-minute show, and he told me in the screening room, ‘Steve, it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I give you my word I will never sing a song I don’t believe in.’”

From Elvis in Memphis and the International

Buoyed by the experience of the Comeback Special, Presley engaged in a prolific series of recording sessions at American Sound Studio, which led to the acclaimed From Elvis in Memphis. Released in June 1969, it was his first secular, non-soundtrack album from a dedicated period in the studio in eight years. As described by Dave Marsh, it is “a masterpiece in which Presley immediately catches up with pop music trends that had seemed to pass him by during the movie years. He sings country songs, soul songs and rockers with real conviction, a stunning achievement.” The album featured the hit single “In the Ghetto”, issued in April, which reached number three on the pop chart—Presley’s first non-gospel top ten hit since “Bossa Nova Baby” in 1963. Further hit singles were culled from the American Sound sessions: “Suspicious Minds”, “Don’t Cry Daddy”, and “Kentucky Rain”.[208]

Presley was keen to resume regular live performing. Following the success of the Comeback Special, offers came in from around the world. The London Palladium offered Parker $28,000 for a one-week engagement. He responded, “That’s fine for me, now how much can you get for Elvis?” In May, the brand new International Hotel in Las Vegas, boasting the largest showroom in the city, announced that it had booked Presley. He was scheduled to perform 57 shows over four weeks beginning July 31. Moore, Fontana, and the Jordanaires declined to participate, afraid of losing the lucrative session work they had in Nashville. Presley a*sembled new, top-notch accompaniment, led by guitarist James Burton and including two gospel groups, The Imperials and Sweet Inspirations. Costume designer Bill Belew, responsible for the intense leather styling of the Comeback Special, created a new stage look for Presley, inspired by Presley’s passion for karate. Nonetheless, he was nervous: his only previous Las Vegas engagement, in 1956, had been dismal. Parker, who intended to make Presley’s return the show business event of the year, oversaw a major promotional push. For his part, hotel owner Kirk Kerkorian arranged to send his own plane to New York to fly in rock journalists for the debut performance.[

Presley took to the stage without introduction. The audience of 2,200, including many celebrities, gave him a standing ovation before he sang a note and another after his performance. A third followed his encore, “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (a song that would be his closing number for much of the 1970s).[ At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to him as “The King”, Presley gestured toward Fats Domino, who was taking in the scene. “No,” Presley said, “that’s the real king of rock and roll.” The next day, Parker’s negotiations with the hotel resulted in a five-year contract for Presley to play each February and August, at an annual salary of $1 million. Newsweek commented, “There are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars.” Rolling Stone called Presley “supernatural, his own resurrection.” In November, Presley’s final non-concert film, Change of Habit, opened. The double album From Memphis to Vegas/From Vegas to Memphis came out the same month; the first LP consisted of live performances from the International, the second of more cuts from the American Sound sessions. “Suspicious Minds” reached the top of the charts—Presley’s first U.S. pop number-one in over seven years, and his last.

Cassandra Peterson, later television’s Elvira, met Presley during this period in Las Vegas, where she was working as a showgirl. She recalled of their encounter, “He was so anti-drug when I met him. I mentioned to him that I smoked marijuana, and he was just appalled. He said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’” Presley was not only deeply opposed to recreational drugs, he also rarely drank. Several of his family members had been alcoholics, a fate he intended to avoid.

Back on tour and meeting Nixon

Presley returned to the International early in 1970 for the first of the year’s two-month-long engagements, performing two shows a night. Recordings from these shows were issued on the album On Stage. In late February, Presley performed six attendance-record–breaking shows at the Houston Astrodome. In April, the single “The Wonder of You” was issued—a number one hit in the UK, it topped the U.S. adult contemporary chart, as well. MGM filmed rehearsal and concert footage at the International during August for the documentary Elvis: That’s the Way It Is. Presley was performing in a jumpsuit, which would become a trademark of his live act. During this engagement, he was threatened with murder unless $50,000 was paid. Presley had been the target of many threats since the 1950s, often without his knowledge. The FBI took the threat seriously and security was stepped up for the next two shows. Presley went onstage with a Derringer in his right boot and a .45 pistol in his waistband, but the concerts succeeded without any incidents.

The album, That’s the Way It Is, produced to accompany the documentary and featuring both studio and live recordings, marked a stylistic shift. As music historian John Robertson noted, “The authority of Presley’s singing helped disguise the fact that the album stepped decisively away from the American-roots inspiration of the Memphis sessions towards a more middle-of-the-road sound. With country put on the back burner, and soul and R&B left in Memphis, what was left was very classy, very clean white pop—perfect for the Las Vegas crowd, but a definite retrograde step for Elvis.” After the end of his International engagement on September 7, Presley embarked on a week-long concert tour, largely of the South, his first since 1958. Another week-long tour, of the West Coast, followed in November.

On December 21, 1970, Presley engineered a meeting with President Richard Nixon at the White House, where he expressed his patriotism and explained how he believed he could reach out to the hippies to help combat the drug culture he and the president abhorred. He asked Nixon for a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge, to add to similar items he had begun collecting and to signify official sanction of his patriotic efforts. Nixon, who apparently found the encounter awkward, expressed a belief that Presley could send a positive message to young people and that it was, therefore, important that he “retain his credibility”. Presley told Nixon that The Beatles, whose songs he regularly performed in concert during the era, exemplified what he saw as a trend of anti-Americanism. Presley and his friends previously had a four-hour get-together with The Beatles at his home in Bel Air, California in August 1965. On hearing reports of the meeting, Paul McCartney later said that he “felt a bit betrayed. … The great joke was that we were taking [illegal] drugs, and look what happened to him”, a reference to Presley’s early death, linked to prescription drug abuse.

The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named Presley one of its annual Ten Most Outstanding Young Men of the Nation on January 16, 1971. Not long after, the City of Memphis named the stretch of Highway 51 South on which Graceland is located “Elvis Presley Boulevard”. The same year, Presley became the first rock and roll singer to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (then known as the Bing Crosby Award) by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammy Award organization. Three new, non-film Presley studio albums were released in 1971, as many as had come out over the previous eight years. Best received by critics was Elvis Country, a concept record that focused on genre standards. The biggest seller was Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas, “the truest statement of all”, according to Greil Marcus. “In the midst of ten painfully genteel Christmas songs, every one sung with appalling sincerity and humility, one could find Elvis tom-catting his way through six blazing minutes of ‘Merry Christmas Baby,’ a raunchy old Charles Brown blues. … If [Presley’s] sin was his lifelessness, it was his sinfulness that brought him to life”.

Marriage breakdown and Aloha from Hawaii

MGM again filmed Presley in April 1972, this time for Elvis on Tour, which went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary Film that year. His gospel album He Touched Me, released that month, would earn him his second competitive Grammy Award, for Best Inspirational Performance. A 14-date tour commenced with an unprecedented four consecutive sold-out shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The evening concert on July 10 was recorded and issued in an LP form a week later. Elvis: As Recorded at Madison Square Garden became one of Presley’s biggest-selling albums. After the tour, the single “Burning Love” was released—Presley’s last top ten hit on the U.S. pop chart. “The most exciting single Elvis has made since ‘All Shook Up’,” wrote rock critic Robert Christgau. “Who else could make ‘It’s coming closer, the flames are now licking my body’ sound like an a*signation with James Brown’s backup band?”
High-collared white jumpsuit resplendent with red, blue, and gold eagle motif in sequins
Presley came up with his outfit’s eagle motif, as “something that would say ‘America’ to the world”.

Presley and his wife, meanwhile, had become increasingly distant, barely cohabiting. In 1971, an affair he had with Joyce Bova resulted—unbeknownst to him—in her pregnancy and an abortion. He often raised the possibility of her moving into Graceland, saying that he was likely to leave Priscilla. The Presleys separated on February 23, 1972, after Priscilla disclosed her relationship with Mike Stone, a karate instructor Presley had recommended to her. Priscilla related that when she told him, Presley “grabbed … and forcefully made love to” her, declaring, “This is how a real man makes love to his woman.” She later stated in an interview that she regretted her choice of words in describing the incident, and said it had been an overstatement. Five months later, Presley’s new girlfriend, Linda Thompson, a songwriter and one-time Memphis beauty queen, moved in with him. Presley and his wife filed for divorce on August 18. According to Joe Moscheo of the Imperials, the failure of Presley’s marriage “was a blow from which he never recovered.” At a rare press conference that June, a reporter had asked Presley whether he was satisfied with his image. Presley replied, “Well, the image is one thing and the human being another … it’s very hard to live up to an image.”

In January 1973, Presley performed two benefit concerts for the Kui Lee Cancer Fund in connection with a groundbreaking TV special, Aloha from Hawaii, which would be the first concert by a solo artist to be aired globally. The first show served as a practice run and backup should technical problems affect the live broadcast two days later. On January 14, Aloha from Hawaii aired live via satellite to prime-time audiences in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as to U.S. servicemen based across Southeast Asia. In Japan, where it capped a nationwide Elvis Presley Week, it smashed viewing records. The next night, it was simulcast to 28 European countries, and in April an extended version finally aired in the U.S., where it won a 57 percent share of the TV audience.[248] Over time, Parker’s claim that it was seen by one billion or more people would be broadly accepted, but that figure appeared to have been sheer invention. Presley’s stage costume became the most recognized example of the elaborate concert garb with which his latter-day persona became closely a*sociated. As described by Bobbie Ann Mason, “At the end of the show, when he spreads out his American Eagle cape, with the full stretched wings of the eagle studded on the back, he becomes a god figure.”[254] The accompanying double album, released in February, went to number one and eventually sold over 5 million copies in the United States. It proved to be Presley’s last U.S. number-one pop album during his lifetime.

At a midnight show the same month, four men rushed onto the stage in an apparent attack. Security men came to Presley’s defense, and he ejected one invader from the stage himself. Following the show, he became obsessed with the idea that the men had been sent by Mike Stone to kill him. Though they were shown to have been only overexuberant fans, he raged, “There’s too much pain in me … Stone [must] die.” His outbursts continued with such intensity that a physician was unable to calm him, despite administering large doses of medication. After another two full days of raging, Red West, his friend and bodyguard, felt compelled to get a price for a contract killing and was relieved when Presley decided, “Aw hell, let’s just leave it for now. Maybe it’s a bit heavy.”

1973–1977: Health deterioration and death

Medical crises and last studio sessions

Presley’s divorce was finalized on October 9, 1973. By then, his health was in major and serious decline. Twice during the year, he overdosed on barbiturates, spending three days in a coma in his hotel suite after the first incident. Towards the end of 1973, he was hospitalized, semi-comatose from the effects of a pethidine addiction. According to his primary care physician, Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, Presley “felt that by getting drugs from a doctor, he wasn’t the common everyday junkie getting something off the street”. Since his comeback, he had staged more live shows with each passing year, and 1973 saw 168 concerts, his busiest schedule ever. Despite his failing health, in 1974, he undertook another intensive touring schedule.

Presley’s condition declined precipitously in September. Keyboardist Tony Brown remembered Presley’s arrival at a University of Maryland concert: “He fell out of the limousine, to his knees. People jumped to help, and he pushed them away like, ‘Don’t help me.’ He walked on stage and held onto the mic for the first thirty minutes like it was a post. Everybody’s looking at each other like, ‘Is the tour gonna happen’?” Guitarist John Wilkinson recalled, “He was all gut. He was slurring. He was so f*cked up. … It was obvious he was drugged. It was obvious there was something terribly wrong with his body. It was so bad the words to the songs were barely intelligible. … I remember crying. He could barely get through the introductions.” Wilkinson recounted that a few nights later in Detroit, “I watched him in his dressing room, just draped over a chair, unable to move. So often I thought, ‘Boss, why don’t you just cancel this tour and take a year off …?’ I mentioned something once in a guarded moment. He patted me on the back and said, ‘It’ll be all right. Don’t you worry about it.’” Presley continued to play to sellout crowds. Cultural critic Marjorie Garber wrote that he was now widely seen as a garish pop crooner: “In effect, he had become Liberace. Even his fans were now middle-aged matrons and blue-haired grandmothers.”

On July 13, 1976, Vernon Presley—who had become deeply involved in his son’s financial affairs—fired “Memphis Mafia” bodyguards Red West (Presley’s friend since the 1950s), Sonny West, and David Hebler, citing the need to “cut back on expenses”. Presley was in Palm Springs at the time, and some suggested that he was too cowardly to face the three himself. Another a*sociate of Presley’s, John O’Grady, argued that the bodyguards were dropped because their rough treatment of fans had prompted too many lawsuits.[268] However, Presley’s stepbrother, David Stanley, claimed that the bodyguards were fired because they were becoming more outspoken about Presley’s drug dependency.

RCA, which had enjoyed a steady stream of product from Presley for over a decade, grew anxious as his interest in spending time in the studio waned. After a December 1973 session that produced 18 songs, enough for almost two albums, he did not enter the studio in 1974. Parker sold RCA yet another concert record, Elvis Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis. Recorded on March 20, it included a version of “How Great Thou Art” that would win Presley his third and final competitive Grammy Award. (All three of his competitive Grammy wins—out of 14 total nominations—were for gospel recordings.) Presley returned to the studio in Hollywood in March 1975, but Parker’s attempts to arrange another session toward the end of the year were unsuccessful. In 1976, RCA sent a mobile studio to Graceland that made possible two full-scale recording sessions at Presley’s home. Even in that comfortable context, the recording process became a struggle for him.

Despite concerns from his label and manager, between July 1973 and October 1976 Presley recorded virtually the entire contents of six albums. Though he was no longer a major presence on the pop charts, five of those albums entered the top five of the country chart, and three went to number one: Promised Land (1975), From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee (1976), and Moody Blue (1977).[278] Similarly, his singles in this era did not prove to be major pop hits, but Presley remained a significant force in the country and adult contemporary markets. Eight studio singles from this period released during his lifetime were top ten hits on one or both charts, four in 1974 alone. “My Boy” was a number-one adult contemporary hit in 1975, and “Moody Blue” topped the country chart and reached the second spot on the adult contemporary chart in 1976. Perhaps his most critically acclaimed recording of the era came that year, with what Greil Marcus described as his “apocalyptic attack” on the soul classic “Hurt”. “If he felt the way he sounded”, Dave Marsh wrote of Presley’s performance, “the wonder isn’t that he had only a year left to live but that he managed to survive that long.”

Final months and death

Presley and Linda Thompson split in November 1976, and he took up with a new girlfriend, Ginger Alden.[282] He proposed to Alden and gave her an engagement ring two months later, though several of his friends later claimed that he had no serious intention of marrying again. Journalist Tony Scherman wrote that by early 1977, “Presley had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek, energetic former self. Hugely overweight, his mind dulled by the pharmacopia he daily ingested, he was barely able to pull himself through his abbreviated concerts.”[284] In Alexandria, Louisiana, he was on stage for less than an hour, and “was impossible to understand”.[ On March 31, Presley failed to perform in Baton Rouge, unable to get out of his hotel bed; a total of four shows had to be canceled and rescheduled. Despite the accelerating deterioration of his health, he stuck to most touring commitments. According to Guralnick, fans “were becoming increasingly voluble about their disappointment, but it all seemed to go right past Presley, whose world was now confined almost entirely to his room and his spiritualism books.” A cousin, Billy Smith, recalled how Presley would sit in his room and chat for hours, sometimes recounting favorite Monty Python sketches and his own past escapades, but more often gripped by paranoid obsessions that reminded Smith of Howard Hughes.

“Way Down”, Presley’s last single issued during his career, was released on June 6. That month, CBS filmed two concerts for a TV special, Elvis in Concert, to be aired in October. In the first, shot in Omaha on June 19, Presley’s voice, Guralnick writes, “is almost unrecognizable, a small, childlike instrument in which he talks more than sings most of the songs, casts about uncertainly for the melody in others, and is virtually unable to articulate or project”. Two days later, in Rapid City, South Dakota, “he looked healthier, seemed to have lost a little weight, and sounded better, too”, though, by the conclusion of the performance, his face was “framed in a helmet of blue-black hair from which sweat sheets down over pale, swollen cheeks”. His final concert was held in Indianapolis at Market Square Arena, on June 26.

he book Elvis: What Happened?, co-written by the three bodyguards fired the previous year, was published on August 1. It was the first exposé to detail Presley’s years of drug misuse. He was devastated by the book and tried unsuccessfully to halt its release by offering money to the publishers. By this point, he suffered from multiple ailments: glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, each magnified—and possibly caused—by drug abuse.

On the evening of Tuesday, August 16, 1977, Presley was scheduled to fly out of Memphis to begin another tour. That afternoon, Ginger Alden discovered him in an unresponsive state on a bathroom floor. According to her eyewitness account, “Elvis looked as if his entire body had completely frozen in a seated position while using the commode and then had fallen forward, in that fixed position, directly in front of it. … It was clear that, from the time whatever hit him to the moment he had landed on the floor, Elvis hadn’t moved.” Attempts to revive him failed, and his death was officially pronounced the next day at 3:30 p.m. at the Baptist Memorial Hospital.

President Jimmy Carter issued a statement that credited Presley with having “permanently changed the face of American popular culture”. Thousands of people gathered outside Graceland to view the open casket. One of Presley’s cousins, Billy Mann, accepted $18,000 to secretly photograph the corpse; the picture appeared on the cover of the National Enquirer’s biggest-selling issue ever. Alden struck a $105,000 deal with the Enquirer for her story, but settled for less when she broke her exclusivity agreement. Presley left her nothing in his will.

Presley’s funeral was held at Graceland on Thursday, August 18. Outside the gates, a car plowed into a group of fans, killing two women and critically injuring a third. About 80,000 people lined the processional route to Forest Hill Cemetery, where Presley was buried next to his mother. Within a few weeks, “Way Down” topped the country and UK pop charts. Following an attempt to steal Presley’s body in late August, the remains of both Presley and his mother were reburied in Graceland’s Meditation Garden on October 2.

Cause of death

While an autopsy, undertaken the same day Presley died, was still in progress, Memphis medical examiner Dr. Jerry Francisco announced that the immediate cause of death was cardiac arrest. Asked if drugs were involved, he declared that “drugs played no role in Presley’s death”.[301] In fact, “drug use was heavily implicated” in Presley’s death, writes Guralnick. The pathologists conducting the autopsy thought it possible, for instance, that he had suffered “anaphylactic shock brought on by the codeine pills he had gotten from his dentist, to which he was known to have had a mild allergy”. A pair of lab reports filed two months later strongly suggested that polypharmacy was the primary cause of death; one reported “fourteen drugs in Elvis’ system, ten in significant quantity”. In 1979, forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht conducted a review of the reports and concluded that a combination of central nervous system depressants had resulted in Presley’s accidental death.[301] Forensic historian and pathologist Michael Baden viewed the situation as complicated: “Elvis had had an enlarged heart for a long time. That, together with his drug habit, caused his death. But he was difficult to diagnose; it was a judgment call.”

The competence and ethics of two of the centrally involved medical professionals were seriously questioned. Dr. Francisco had offered a cause of death before the autopsy was complete; claimed the underlying ailment was cardiac arrhythmia, a condition that can be determined only in someone who is still alive; and denied drugs played any part in Presley’s death before the toxicology results were known. Allegations of a cover-up were widespread.[303] While a 1981 trial of Presley’s main physician, Dr. George Nichopoulos, exonerated him of criminal liability for his death, the facts were startling: “In the first eight months of 1977 alone, he had [prescribed] more than 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines, and narcotics: all in Elvis’ name.” His license was suspended for three months. It was permanently revoked in the 1990s after the Tennessee Medical Board brought new charges of over-prescription.

In 1994, the Presley autopsy report was reopened. Dr. Joseph Davis, who had conducted thousands of autopsies as Miami-Dade County coroner, declared at its completion, “There is nothing in any of the data that supports a death from drugs. In fact, everything points to a sudden, violent heart attack.” More recent research has revealed that Dr. Francisco did not speak for the entire pathology team. Other staff “could say nothing with confidence until they got the results back from the laboratories, if then. That would be a matter of weeks.” One of the examiners, Dr. E. Eric Muirhead “could not believe his ears. Francisco had not only presumed to speak for the hospital’s team of pathologists, he had announced a conclusion that they had not reached. … Early on, a meticulous dissection of the body … confirmed [that] Elvis was chronically ill with diabetes, glaucoma, and constipation. As they proceeded, the doctors saw evidence that his body had been wracked over a span of years by a large and constant stream of drugs. They had also studied his hospital records, which included two admissions for drug detoxification and methadone treatments.” Writer Frank Coffey thought Elvis’s death was due to “a phenomenon called the Valsalva maneuver (essentially straining on the toilet leading to heart stoppage—plausible because Elvis suffered constipation, a common reaction to drug use)”. In similar terms, Dr. Dan Warlick, who was present at the autopsy, “believes Presley’s chronic constipation—the result of years of prescription drug abuse and high-fat, high-cholesterol gorging—brought on what’s known as Valsalva’s maneuver. Put simply, the strain of attempting to defecate compressed the singer’s abdominal aorta, shutting down his heart.”

However, in 2013, Dr. Forest Tennant, who had testified as a defense witness in Nichopoulos’ trial, described his own analysis of Presley’s available medical records. He concluded that Presley’s “drug abuse had led to falls, head trauma, and overdoses that damaged his brain”, and that his death was due in part to a toxic reaction to codeine—exacerbated by an undetected liver enzyme defect—which can cause sudden cardiac arrhythmia. DNA analysis in 2014 of a hair sample purported to be Presley’s found evidence of genetic variants that can lead to glaucoma, migraines, and obesity; a crucial variant a*sociated with the heart-muscle disease hypertrophic cardiomyopathy was also identified.

Later developments

Between 1977 and 1981, six of Presley’s posthumously released singles were top-ten country hits.

Graceland was opened to the public in 1982. Attracting over half a million visitors annually, it became the second most-visited home in the United States, after the White House.[310] It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

Presley has been inducted into five music halls of fame: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1986), the Country Music Hall of Fame (1998), the Gospel Music Hall of Fame (2001), the Rockabilly Hall of Fame (2007), and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame (2012). In 1984, he received the W. C. Handy Award from the Blues Foundation and the Academy of Country Music’s first Golden Hat Award. In 1987, he received the American Music Awards’ Award of Merit.

A Junkie XL remix of Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation” (credited as “Elvis Vs JXL”) was used in a Nike advertising campaign during the 2002 FIFA World Cup. It topped the charts in over 20 countries and was included in a compilation of Presley’s number-one hits, ELV1S, which was also an international success. The album returned Presley to the Billboard summit for the first time in almost three decades.

In 2003, a remix of “Rubberneckin’”, a 1969 recording of Presley’s, topped the U.S. sales chart, as did a 50th-anniversary re-release of “That’s All Right” the following year. The latter was an outright hit in Britain, debuting at number three on the pop chart; it also made the top ten in Canada. In 2005, another three reissued singles, “Jailhouse Rock”, “One Night”/”I Got Stung”, and “It’s Now or Never”, went to number one in the United Kingdom. They were part of a campaign that saw the re-release of all 18 of Presley’s previous chart-topping UK singles. The first, “All Shook Up”, came with a collectors’ box that made it ineligible to chart again; each of the other 17 reissues hit the British top five.

In 2005, Forbes named Presley the top-earning deceased celebrity for the fifth straight year, with a gross income of $45 million. He was placed second in 2006, returned to the top spot the next two years, and ranked fourth in 2009. The following year, he was ranked second, with his highest annual income ever—$60 million—spurred by the celebration of his 75th birthday and the launch of Cirque du Soleil’s Viva Elvis show in Las Vegas. In November 2010, Viva Elvis: The Album was released, setting his voice to newly recorded instrumental tracks. As of mid-2011, there were an estimated 15,000 licensed Presley products, and he was again the second-highest-earning deceased celebrity. Six years later, he ranked fourth with earnings of $35 million, up $8 million from 2016 due in part to the opening of a new entertainment complex, Elvis Presley’s Memphis, and hotel, The Guest House at Graceland.

For much of his adult life, Presley, with his rise from poverty to riches and massive fame, had seemed to epitomize the American Dream. In his final years and even more so after his death, and the revelations about its circumstances, he became a symbol of excess and gluttony. Increasing attention, for instance, was paid to his appetite for the rich, heavy Southern cooking of his upbringing, foods such as chicken-fried steak and biscuits and gravy. In particular, his love of calorie-laden fried peanut butter, banana, and (sometimes) bacon sandwiches, now known as “Elvis sandwiches”, came to stand for this aspect of his persona. But the Elvis sandwich represents more than just unhealthy overindulgence—as media and culture scholar Robert Thompson describes, the unsophisticated treat also signifies Presley’s enduring all-American appeal: “He wasn’t only the king, he was one of us.”

Since 1977, there have been numerous alleged sightings of Presley. A long-standing conspiracy theory among some fans is that he faked his death. Adherents cite alleged discrepancies in the death certificate, reports of a wax dummy in his original coffin, and accounts of Presley planning a diversion so he could retire in peace.An unusually large number of fans have domestic shrines devoted to Presley and journey to sites with which he is connected, however faintly. Every August 16, the anniversary of his death, thousands of people gather outside Graceland and celebrate his memory with a candlelight ritual. “With Elvis, it is not just his music that has survived death”, writes Ted Harrison. “He himself has been raised, like a medieval saint, to a figure of cultic status. It is as if he has been canonized by acclamation.”

Artistry

Influences

Presley’s earliest musical influence came from gospel. His mother recalled that from the age of two, at the Assembly of God church in Tupelo attended by the family, “he would slide down off my lap, run into the aisle and scramble up to the platform. There he would stand looking at the choir and trying to sing with them.” In Memphis, Presley frequently attended all-night gospel singings at the Ellis Auditorium, where groups such as the Statesmen Quartet led the music in a style that, Guralnick suggests, sowed the seeds of Presley’s future stage act:

The Statesmen were an electric combination … featuring some of the most thrillingly emotive singing and daringly unconventional showmanship in the entertainment world … dressed in suits that might have come out of the window of Lansky’s. … Bass singer Jim Wetherington, known universally as the Big Chief, maintained a steady bottom, ceaselessly jiggling first his left leg, then his right, with the material of the pants leg ballooning out and shimmering. “He went about as far as you could go in gospel music,” said Jake Hess. “The women would jump up, just like they do for the pop shows.” Preachers frequently objected to the lewd movements … but audiences reacted with screams and swoons.

As a teenager, Presley’s musical interests were wide-ranging, and he was deeply informed about both white and African-American musical idioms. Though he never had any formal training, he had a remarkable memory, and his musical knowledge was already considerable by the time he made his first professional recordings aged 19 in 1954. When Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller met him two years later, they were astonished at his encyclopedic understanding of the blues, and, as Stoller put it, “He certainly knew a lot more than we did about country music and gospel music.” At a press conference the following year, he proudly declared, “I know practically every religious song that’s ever been written.”

Musicianship

Presley received his first guitar when he was 11 years old. He learned to play and sing; he gained no formal musical training but had an innate natural talent and could easily pick up music. Presley played guitar, bass, and piano. While he couldn’t read or write music and had no formal lessons, he was a natural musician and played everything by ear. Presley often played an instrument on his recordings and produced his own music. Presley played rhythm acoustic guitar on most of his Sun recordings and his 1950s RCA albums. He played electric bass guitar on “(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care” after his bassist Bill Black had trouble with the instrument.[348] Presley played the bass line including the intro. Presley played piano on songs such as “Old Shep” and “First in Line” from his 1956 album Elvis.[349] He is credited with playing piano on later albums such as From Elvis in Memphis and Moody Blue, and on “Unchained Melody” which was one of the last songs that he recorded.[350] Presley played lead guitar on one of his successful singles called “One Night”. Presley also played guitar on one of his successful singles called “Are You Lonesome Tonight”. In the 68 Comeback Special, Elvis took over on lead electric guitar, the first time he had ever been seen with the instrument in public, playing it on songs such as “Baby What You Want Me to Do” and “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”. Elvis played the back of his guitar on some of his hits such as “All Shook Up”, “Don’t Be Cruel”, and “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear”, providing percussion by slapping the instrument to create a beat. The album Elvis is Back! features Presley playing a lot of acoustic guitar on songs such as “I Will Be Home Again” and “Like a Baby”.

Musical styles and genres

Presley was a central figure in the development of rockabilly, according to music historians. “Rockabilly crystallized into a recognizable style in 1954 with Elvis Presley’s first release, on the Sun label”, writes Craig Morrison. Paul Friedlander describes the defining elements of rockabilly, which he similarly characterizes as “essentially … an Elvis Presley construction”: “the raw, emotive, and slurred vocal style and emphasis on rhythmic feeling [of] the blues with the string band and strummed rhythm guitar [of] country”. In “That’s All Right”, the Presley trio’s first record, Scotty Moore’s guitar solo, “a combination of Merle Travis–style country finger-picking, double-stop slides from acoustic boogie, and blues-based bent-note, single-string work, is a microcosm of this fusion.” While Katherine Charlton likewise calls Presley “rockabilly’s originator”, Carl Perkins has explicitly stated that “[Sam] Phillips, Elvis, and I didn’t create rockabilly” and, according to Michael Campbell, “Bill Haley recorded the first big rockabilly hit.” In Moore’s view, too, “It had been there for quite a while, really. Carl Perkins was doing basically the same sort of thing up around Jackson, and I know for a fact Jerry Lee Lewis had been playing that kind of music ever since he was ten years old.”

At RCA, Presley’s rock and roll sound grew distinct from rockabilly with group chorus vocals, more heavily amplified electric guitars and a tougher, more intense manner. While he was known for taking songs from various sources and giving them a rockabilly/rock and roll treatment, he also recorded songs in other genres from early in his career, from the pop standard “Blue Moon” at Sun to the country ballad “How’s the World Treating You?” on his second LP to the blues of “Santa Claus Is Back in Town”. In 1957, his first gospel record was released, the four-song EP Peace in the Valley. Certified as a million-seller, it became the top-selling gospel EP in recording history. Presley would record gospel periodically for the rest of his life.

After his return from military service in 1960, Presley continued to perform rock and roll, but the characteristic style was substantially toned down. His first post-Army single, the number-one hit “Stuck on You”, is typical of this shift. RCA publicity materials referred to its “mild rock beat”; discographer Ernst Jorgensen calls it “upbeat pop”. The number five “She’s Not You” (1962) “integrates the Jordanaires so completely, it’s practically doo-wop”. The modern blues/R&B sound captured with success on Elvis Is Back! was essentially abandoned for six years until such 1966–67 recordings as “Down in the Alley” and “Hi-Heel Sneakers”. Presley’s output during most of the 1960s emphasized pop music, often in the form of ballads such as “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”, a number-one in 1960. “It’s Now or Never”, which also topped the chart that year, was a classically influenced variation of pop based on the Neapolitan “‘O sole mio” and concluding with a “full-voiced operatic cadence”. These were both dramatic numbers, but most of what Presley recorded for his many film soundtracks was in a much lighter vein.

While Presley performed several of his classic ballads for the ’68 Comeback Special, the sound of the show was dominated by aggressive rock and roll. He would record few new straight-ahead rock and roll songs thereafter; as he explained, they were “hard to find”. A significant exception was “Burning Love”, his last major hit on the pop charts. Like his work of the 1950s, Presley’s subsequent recordings reworked pop and country songs, but in markedly different permutations. His stylistic range now began to embrace a more contemporary rock sound as well as soul and funk. Much of Elvis in Memphis, as well as “Suspicious Minds”, cut at the same sessions, reflected his new rock and soul fusion. In the mid-1970s, many of his singles found a home on country radio, the field where he first became a star.

Vocal style and range

The developmental arc of Presley’s singing voice, as described by critic Dave Marsh, goes from “high and thrilled in the early days, [to] lower and perplexed in the final months.” Marsh credits Presley with the introduction of the “vocal stutter” on 1955’s “Baby Let’s Play House”. When on “Don’t Be Cruel”, Presley “slides into a ‘mmmmm’ that marks the transition between the first two verses,” he shows “how masterful his relaxed style really is.” Marsh describes the vocal performance on “Can’t Help Falling in Love” as one of “gentle insistence and delicacy of phrasing”, with the line “‘Shall I stay’ pronounced as if the words are fragile as crystal”.

Jorgensen calls the 1966 recording of “How Great Thou Art” “an extraordinary fulfillment of his vocal ambitions”, as Presley “crafted for himself an ad-hoc arrangement in which he took every part of the four-part vocal, from [the] bass intro to the soaring heights of the song’s operatic climax”, becoming “a kind of one-man quartet”. Guralnick finds “Stand By Me” from the same gospel sessions “a beautifully articulated, almost nakedly yearning performance,” but, by contrast, feels that Presley reaches beyond his powers on “Where No One Stands Alone”, resorting “to a kind of inelegant bellowing to push out a sound” that Jake Hess of the Statesmen Quartet had in his command. Hess himself thought that while others might have voices the equal of Presley’s, “he had that certain something that everyone searches for all during their lifetime.” Guralnick attempts to pinpoint that something: “The warmth of his voice, his controlled use of both vibrato technique and natural falsetto range, the subtlety and deeply felt conviction of his singing were all qualities recognizably belonging to his talent but just as recognizably not to be achieved without sustained dedication and effort.”

Marsh praises his 1968 reading of “U.S. Male”, “bearing down on the hard guy lyrics, not sending them up or overplaying them but tossing them around with that astonishingly tough yet gentle a*surance that he brought to his Sun records.” The performance on “In the Ghetto” is, according to Jorgensen, “devoid of any of his characteristic vocal tricks or mannerisms”, instead relying on the exceptional “clarity and sensitivity of his voice”. Guralnick describes the song’s delivery as of “almost translucent eloquence … so quietly confident in its simplicity”. On “Suspicious Minds”, Guralnick hears essentially the same “remarkable mixture of tenderness and poise”, but supplemented with “an expressive quality somewhere between stoicism (at suspected infidelity) and anguish (over impending loss)”.

Music critic Henry Pleasants observes that “Presley has been described variously as a baritone and a tenor. An extraordinary compass … and a very wide range of vocal color have something to do with this divergence of opinion.” He identifies Presley as a high baritone, calculating his range as two octaves and a third, “from the baritone low G to the tenor high B, with an upward extension in falsetto to at least a D-flat. Presley’s best octave is in the middle, D-flat to D-flat, granting an extra full step up or down.” In Pleasants’ view, his voice was “variable and unpredictable” at the bottom, “often brilliant” at the top, with the capacity for “full-voiced high Gs and As that an opera baritone might envy”. Scholar Lindsay Waters, who figures Presley’s range as two-and-a-quarter octaves, emphasizes that “his voice had an emotional range from tender whispers to sighs down to shouts, grunts, grumbles, and sheer gruffness that could move the listener from calmness and surrender, to fear. His voice can not be measured in octaves, but in decibels; even that misses the problem of how to measure delicate whispers that are hardly audible at all.” Presley was always “able to duplicate the open, hoarse, ecstatic, screaming, shouting, wailing, reckless sound of the black rhythm-and-blues and gospel singers”, writes Pleasants, and also demonstrated a remarkable ability to a*similate many other vocal styles.

-10 -10 -10 -10 -10 -10 10 -10
All this energy—– callin’ me
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Back where it comes from
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It’s such a crude attitude–
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It’s back where it belongs

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All the little chicks with the chrimson lips
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Go “Cleveland rocks!”, “Cleveland rocks!”
7 -10 -10 9 -9 7 7 -10 9 -9
She’s livin’- in sin with a safety pin
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Goin’ “Cleveland rocks!”, “Cleveland rocks!”
10 10 10
“Cleveland rocks!” (Ohio)

Herb Alpert did this as an instrumental I`ve
added the words to help with the timeing
Intro
6 -8 -8 -4 -8 -8 6 -8 -4 -4 -8 6 -8 -8 -4
-8 -8 6
1.
-3 4 b-4 -4 -7 -7 -6 b-6
The biggest circus came to town
5 b5 -4b-4 -6 -6 6 b6
`Twas headed by the greatest clown
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And there were tigers and elephants, lions and
6 -7 7 -8~~~~~~~ -8 -8 8 -8 b-7 -6 6
kangaroos too~~~~~~ And A Little Spanish Flea
2.
-7 -7 -6 b-6 5 b5 -4 b-4 -6 -6 6
No one could stop for he had vowed to reach the
-5 -4 b-4 4-3-4 6 5 6-6 -4 -5 b-7 6 b-7 7
top. He had ability, energy and a star quality
-8~~~~~~~ -8 -8 8 -8 b-7 -6 6
too~~~~~~~~ For A Little Spanish Flea (Repeat
Intro)
CHORUS
6 -6 -7 7 7 -8 7 8 -8 7 b-7 -6
Why he could do the most amazing tricks no flea
6 -5-5 6 b-6 -6
had ever done before
-7 b-7 b-7 7 b-7 -8 7 b-7 b-6
He knew that if they got their kicks then
6 -5 b-5 b-5 -5 6 b6 6 -6~~~~~
every one would stand and shout for more~~~~~
3.
It seems that if you come from Spain
Show business runs right through your veins
And so our Spanish Flea climbed the heights
Had his name up in lights too
He`s the greatest Spanish Flea(6 -8 -8 -4 -8 -8 6)
Coda
-8 -8 8 -8 b-7 -6 6
He`s The Greatest Spanish Flea (-8 -8 -4 -8 -8 6)
-8 -8 8 -8 b-7 -6 6
He`s The Greatest Spanish Flea (-8 -8 -4 -8 -8 6
3 3 )

19th C. Irish folk song
Sinead O’Connor, The Wolfe Tones
Key: D

1 -12 2 2 -11 3 2 3
4 -45 5 5 -44 6 5 6
Oh, Fa-ther dear, I oft times hear

-3” 3 3 3 2 1 -1
-6 6 6 6 5 4 -4
you speak of Er-in’s Isle,

1 -1 2 2 2 -11 3 2 3
4 -4 5 5 5 -44 6 5 6
Her loft-y scene, and val-leys green,

-3” 3 2 -1 2 1 1 1
-6 6 5 -4 5 4 4 4
her moun-tains rude and wild

3 4 -4 4 3 -3” 3 -3”
6 7 -8 7 6 -6 6 -6
They say she is a pret-ty place

4 -3”3 3 2 1 -1
7 -6 6 6 5 4 -4
Where-in a prince might dwell,

1 -1 2 2 2 -1 1 3 2 3
4 -4 5 5 5 -4 4 6 5 6
Oh, why did you a-ban-don her,

-3” 3 2 -1 2 1 1 1
-6 6 5 -4 5 4 4 4
the rea-son to me tell?

Oh, son I loved my native land
with energy and pride
‘Til a blight came over on my crops,
my sheep and cattle died,
The rent and taxes were so high,
I could not them redeem,
And that’s the cruel reason why
I left old Skibbereen.

Oh, It’s well I do remember
that bleak December day,
The landlord and the sheriff came
to drive us all away
They set my roof on fire with their
demon yellow spleen
And that’s another reason why
I left old Skibbereen.

Your mother too, God rest her soul,
fell on the snowy ground,
She fainted in her anguish seeing
the desolation round.
She never rose but passed away
from life to mortal dream,
She found a quiet grave, my boy
in dear old Skibbereen.

And you were only two years old
and feeble was your frame,
I could not leave you with your friends,
you bore your father’s name,
I wrapped you in my cóta mór
in the dead of night unseen
I heaved a sigh and said goodbye
to dear old Skibbereen

19th C. Irish folk song
Sinead O’Connor, The Wolfe Tones
Key: D

-1 2-2* -2* -2* 2-1 -3 -2* -3
Oh, Fa-ther dear, I oft times hear
-4 -3 -3 -3 -2*-1 2
you speak of Er-in’s Isle,
-1 2 -2* -2* -2* 2-1 -3 -2* -3
Her loft-y scene, and val-leys green,
-4 -3 -2*2-2* -1 -1 -1
her moun-tains rude and wild
-3 -5 6 -5 -3 -4 -3 -4
They say she is a pret-ty place
-5 -4 -3 -3 -2*-1 2
Where-in a prince might dwell,
-1 2-2* -2* -2* 2-1-3 -2* -3
Oh, why did you a-ban-don her,
-4 -3-2* 2-2*-1 -1 -1
the rea-son to me tell?

Oh, son I loved my native land
with energy and pride
‘Til a blight came over on my crops,
my sheep and cattle died,
The rent and taxes were so high,
I could not them redeem,
And that’s the cruel reason why
I left old Skibbereen.

Oh, It’s well I do remember
that bleak December day,
The landlord and the sheriff came
to drive us all away
They set my roof on fire with their
demon yellow spleen
And that’s another reason why
I left old Skibbereen.

Your mother too, God rest her soul,
fell on the snowy ground,
She fainted in her anguish seeing
the desolation round.
She never rose but passed away
from life to mortal dream,
She found a quiet grave, my boy
in dear old Skibbereen.

And you were only two years old
and feeble was your frame,
I could not leave you with your friends,
you bore your father’s name,
I wrapped you in my cóta mór
in the dead of night unseen
I heaved a sigh and said goodbye
to dear old Skibbereen

Sax intro and finale:
For the first part of that sax part, play
-6 and jump VERY quickly to -8, then hold the -7.
Then the second half of that first part is
6 -4 5.

Play that again, then kinda trail off with
4 -3 3 -1 2.

So all together, it looks sumthin’ like this:

-6_-8_-7_________6_____-4___5________________

-6_-8_-7_________6_____-4___5________________

4___-3___3___-1___2___________.

Verse
5 6 -7 -7 -7 -6 -7 5
On a long and lone-some hig-hway

-7 -7 -6 6 -7
East of O- ma-ha.

5 6 -6 -6 -6 -6 -6 6
You can lis-ten to the en-gine

-5 6 -6 -6 6 -5 -6
moan-ing out its one lone song

5 6 -6 -6 -6 6 -6 6
You can think a-bout the wo-man

5 6 -6 -6 -6
Or the girl you knew

6 -6 6 -6 6 5
The night be- fore

Verse:
But your thoughts will soon be wandering, the way they always do.
When your riding sixteen hours and theres nothing much to do
And you dont feel much like riding, you just wish the trip was
through.

Chorus:
5 6 -6 -6 -6 -7 -7 6 5
Here I am, on the road a-gain

-7 -7 -6 -6 -6 -6 -7
There I am, up on the stage.

5 6 -6 -7 -7 -7 -7 -6 6 5
Here I go, play-ing star a- gain.

-7 -7 -6 6 5 5 -4 5
There I go, turn the page.

Verse
Well you walk into a restaurant, strung out from the road,
You can feel the eyes upon you as your shaking off the cold
You pretend it doesnt bother you, but you just want to explode.
Most times you cant hear em talk, other times you can.
Oh the same old cliche, as that woman on her a man
You always see my number, you dont dare make a stand.

Chorus

Verse
Out there in the spotlight your a million miles away,
Every ounce of energy, you try and give away,
As the sweat pours out your body like the music that you play.
Later in the evening as you lie awake in bed,
With the echo from the amplifiers ringing in your head,
You smoke the days last cigarette, remembering what she said.

Chorus

Last Chorus
8 8 8 -8 8 8 -10 -10
Here I am, on the road a- gain

-10 9 9 8 8 8 9′
There I am, up on the stage

8 8 9 9 9′ 9 8 8
Here I go, play-ing star a-gain.

8 8 -8 9′ 9 9′ 9
There I go, there I go.