title: Denmark in World War II

text: The country, at least certain sections of it, did so well that it has been open to the accusation of profiteering from the war. After the war there was some effort to find and punish profiteers, but the consequences and scope of these trials were far less severe than in many other countries, largely a reflection of the general acceptance of the realistic need for cooperation with Germany. On the whole, though the country fared relatively well, this is only a relative measure. Phil Giltner has worked out that Germany had a "debt" of roughly 6.9 billion kroner to Denmark as a whole. This means that they had taken far more out of the Danish economy than they had put in, aside from the negative side effects of the war on trade. The German debt had accumulated due to an arrangement with the Danish central bank, in which the German occupation forces could draw on a special account there to pay their bills from Danish suppliers. Exports to Germany were also largely settled this way. The arrangement was agreed to for fear of German soldiers helping themselves without paying, and the conflicts that might follow. It also meant that the Danish central bank was picking up a large part of the tab for the German occupation, and that the money supply rose drastically as a result.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: The Danish National Bank estimates that the occupation had resulted in the printing press increasing the currency supply from the pre-war figure of 400 million kroner to 1,600 million, much of which ended up in the hands of war profiteers. In July 1945, two months after the liberation of Denmark, the Danish Parliament passed an emergency law initiating a currency reform, making all old banknotes void. A small number of employees at the National Bank had clandestinely begun the production of new banknotes in late 1943. The production of new notes happened without the knowledge of the German forces located at the bank, and by the spring of 1945 the bank's stock of notes was sufficient to initiate the exchange. The law required was passed hastily on Friday 20 July and published the same day; it also closed all shops for the weekend. By Monday 23 July, all old notes were officially outlawed as legal tender and any note not declared in a bank by 30 July would lose its value. This law allowed any Dane to exchange a total of 100 kroner to new notes, no questions asked. An amount up to 500 kroner would be exchanged, provided the owner signed a written statement explaining its origins. Any amount above this level would be deposited in an escrow account and only released or exchanged following scrutiny by tax officials examining the validity of the person's statement about the origins of this wealth. All existing bank accounts were also scrutinized. Multiple exchanges of cash by the same person were avoided by the requirement that currency would only be exchanged to anybody also handing in a specified ration stamp, previously issued in a different context, which had not yet been authorized for use. The exchange resulted in a significant drop in the currency supply, and around 20% of the 3,000 million kroner property declared had not previously been registered by the tax authorities. Estimates vary for the amounts of currency simply destroyed by its owners. All banknotes issued since the changeover date remain valid indefinitely; earlier ones are not valid.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: Most of Denmark was liberated from German rule in May 1945 by British forces commanded by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery; the easternmost island of Bornholm was liberated by Soviet forces, who remained there for almost a year.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: Although Denmark was spared many of the difficulties other areas of Europe suffered, its population still experienced hardships, particularly after the Germans took charge in 1943. Yet on the whole, Denmark can be said to have suffered the least of all the European combatants from the war. Many were killed and imprisoned because of their work resisting the German authorities. There were small bombing raids on select targets in the country, but nothing comparable to that suffered by, for instance, neighbouring Norway or the Netherlands. One area that was badly damaged was the island of Bornholm, largely due to Soviet bombardment of the German garrison there in the very last days of the war.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: About 380 members of the resistance were killed during the war: they are commemorated in Ryvangen Memorial Park. Roughly 900 Danish civilians were killed in a variety of ways: either by being caught in air raids, killed during civil disturbances, or in reprisal killings, the so-called "clearing" murders. Thirty-nine Danish soldiers were killed or injured during the invasion, and four were killed on 29 August 1943 when the Germans dissolved the Danish government. Some sources estimate that about 360 Danes died in concentration camps. The largest groups of fatalities were amongst Danish merchant sailors, who continued to operate throughout the war, most falling victim to submarines. Some 1,850 sailors died. Just over 100 soldiers died as part of Allied forces.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: Approximately 6,000 Danes were sent to concentration camps during World War II, of whom about 600 (10%) died. In comparison with other countries this is a relatively low mortality rate in the concentration camps.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: After the war, 40,000 people were arrested on suspicion of collaboration. Of these, 13,500 were punished in some way. 78 received death sentences, of which 46 were carried out. Most received prison sentences of under four years. Many people criticized the process for victimizing "small" people disproportionately, while many politicians and businesses were left untouched. One difficult issue was deciding what to do with collaborators who were essentially "following orders" that their own government had given them, such as business executives who had been encouraged to work with the Germans.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: Although some members of the resistance tried to organize new political parties after the war to reshape the political order in Denmark, they were unable to do so. The only party that appeared to receive a significant boost from resistance was the Communist Party. The Communists received about one-eighth of the popular vote in the October 1945 elections.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: On 5 May 1945, Denmark was officially free of German control. Citizens all over the country took down the black shades that had been used to cover their windows during bombing raids and made bonfires of them in the streets. Allied troops (mostly Soviet soldiers) were released from prisons all over the country and paraded down streets in Copenhagen, Aarhus, and other cities. In Aarhus, young women known or believed to have had relationships with German soldiers were dragged through the streets before crowds of people and had most of their hair cut off. They would then be forced to march down the street to be humiliated.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: After the end of hostilities, over two thousand German prisoners of war were made to clear the vast minefields that had been laid on the west coast of Jutland, nearly half of them being either killed or wounded in the process. As part of a controversial agreement reached by the German Commander General Georg Lindemann, the Danish Government and the British Armed Forces, German soldiers with experience in defusing mines would be in charge of clearing the mine fields.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: In the final weeks of the war, between 9 February and 9 May, several hundred thousand German refugees fled across the Baltic Sea, fleeing the advancing Soviet Army. For the most part, the refugees were from East Prussia and Pomerania. Many of the refugees were women, children, or elderly. Many were malnourished, exhausted, or seriously ill. A third of the refugees were younger than 15 years old.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: The German authorities gave the refugees a privileged status, seizing Danish schools, church houses, hotels, factories, and sports facilities for refugee housing. At the same time, thousands of Danes were deported to German prisons and concentration camps. German terror against Danish resistance fighters and civilians increased in these final months. The general sentiment among Danes saw the arrival of refugees as a new, violent German occupation.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: At the time of the German capitulation there were about 250,000 German refugees in Denmark. Already at the end of April, the German military authorities seemed to have lost control of the situation; many refugees had no food, the sick were not treated, mortality was high, and unburied dead bodies were stored in warehouses and cellars—although this was the result of different priorities in negotiations on aid between German and Danish authorities. The Danish negotiators, led by secretary of state , would only agree provided that approximately 4,000 Danish citizens, mainly policemen, who were being detained in German concentration camps, were liberated. German authorities, on the other hand, would only agree if those policemen would take an active part in defeating the Danish resistance.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: At the capitulation, the refugee administration was handed over to Danish authorities. Refugees were gradually moved from over 1,000 smaller locations to new-built camps or previous German military barracks, some of which held over 20,000 refugees. The largest of the camps, Oksbøl Refugee Camp, in Oksbøl on the west coast of Jutland, held 37,000 refugees. Camps were placed behind barbed wire and guarded by military personnel to avoid contact with the Danish population.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: In some of the camps, food rations were scarce and medical care was inadequate. In 1945 alone, more than 13,000 people died, among them some 7,000 children under the age of five. The situation was worst in the months right before and after the capitulation when Danish hospitals and doctors were reluctant to treat German refugees. The reason for this was not only anti-German resentment, but also lack of resources, the time needed to rebuild administrative structures, and the fear of epidemic diseases which were highly prevalent among the refugees. Instead, Danish authorities established a camp-internal medical system with German medical personnel which took some time to work adequately. In the camps, there was school education for children up to the upper secondary level, work duty for adults, study circles, theatre, music, and self-issued German newspapers. After initial inadequacy, food rations became more sufficient.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: On 24 July 1945, the British occupation force, contrary to Danish expectations, decided that the refugees must stay in Denmark until the situation in Germany had stabilized. The first refugees were returned to Germany in November 1946 and the last ones in February 1949. Very few stayed in Denmark for good.


title: Denmark in World War II

text: The policy of the government, called "samarbejdspolitikken" (cooperation policy) is one of the most controversial issues in Danish history. Some historians argue that the relatively accommodating policy which did not actively resist the occupation was the only realistic way of safeguarding Danish democracy and people. However, others argue that accommodation was taken too far, was uniquely compliant when compared to other democratic governments in Europe, and cannot be seen as part of a coherent long-term strategy to protect democracy in Denmark or Europe. In 2003 Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen characterized the cooperation as "morally unjustifiable," the only time a Danish leader had condemned the war-era leadership, even though Anders Fogh Rasmussen's opponents construed it as a justification for his own ambitions, in connection with the invasion of Iraq in 2003.


title: Languages of Italy

text: The languages of Italy include Italian, which serves as the country's national language, in its standard and regional forms, as well as numerous local and regional languages, most of which, like Italian, belong to the broader Romance group. The majority of languages often labeled as regional are distributed in a continuum across the regions' administrative boundaries, with speakers from one locale within a single region being typically aware of the features distinguishing their own variety from one of the other places nearby.


title: Languages of Italy

text: The official and most widely spoken language across the country is Italian, which started off as the medieval Tuscan of Florence. In parallel, many Italians also communicate in one of the local languages, most of which, like Tuscan, are indigenous evolutions of Vulgar Latin. Some local languages do not stem from Latin, however, but belong to other Indo-European branches, such as Cimbrian (Germanic), Arbëresh (Albanian), Slavomolisano (Slavic) and Griko (Greek). Other non-indigenous languages are spoken by a substantial percentage of the population due to immigration.


title: Languages of Italy

text: Of the indigenous languages, twelve are officially recognized as spoken by linguistic minorities: Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian; at the present moment, Sardinian is regarded as the largest of such groups, with approximately one million speakers, even though the Sardophone community is overall declining. However, full bilingualism ("bilinguismo perfetto") is legally granted only to the three national minorities whose mother tongue is German, Slovene or French, and enacted in the regions of Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli Venezia Giulia and the Aosta Valley, respectively.


title: Languages of Italy

text: Almost all of the Romance languages spoken in Italy are native to the area in which they are spoken. Apart from Standard Italian, these languages are often referred to as "dialetti" "dialects", both colloquially and in scholarly usage; however, the term may coexist with other labels like "minority languages" or "vernaculars" for some of them. The label "dialect" may be understood erroneously to imply that the native languages spoken in Italy are "dialects" of Standard Italian in the prevailing English-language sense of "varieties or variations of a language". This is not the case in Italy, as the country's long-standing linguistic diversity does not actually stem from Standard Italian. Most of Italy's variety of Romance languages predate Italian and evolved locally from Vulgar Latin, independently of what would become the standard national language, long before the fairly recent spread of Standard Italian throughout Italy. In fact, Standard Italian itself can be thought of as either a continuation of, or a dialect heavily based on, the Florentine dialect of Tuscan.


title: Languages of Italy

text: The indigenous Romance languages of Italy are therefore classified as separate languages that evolved from Latin just like Standard Italian, rather than "dialects" or variations of the latter. Conversely, with the spread of Standard Italian throughout Italy in the 20th century, local varieties of Standard Italian have also developed throughout the peninsula, influenced to varying extents by the underlying local languages, most noticeably at the phonological level; though regional boundaries seldom correspond to isoglosses distinguishing these varieties, these variations of Standard Italian are commonly referred to as Regional Italian ("italiano regionale").


title: Languages of Italy

text: Twelve languages have been legally granted official recognition as of 1999, but their selection to the exclusion of others is a matter of some controversy. Daniele Bonamore argues that many regional languages were not recognized in light of their communities' historical participation in the construction of the Standard Italian language: Giacomo da Lentini's and Cielo d'Alcamo's Sicilian, Guido Guinizelli's Bolognese, Jacopone da Todi's Umbrian, Neapolitan, Carlo Goldoni's Venetian and Dante's Tuscan are considered to be historical founders of the Standard Italian linguistic majority; outside of such epicenters are, on the other hand, Friulian, Ladin, Sardinian, Franco-Provençal and Occitan, which are recognized as distinct languages. Michele Salazar found Bonamore's explanation "new and convincing".


title: Languages of Italy

text: Italian was first declared to be Italy's official language during the Fascist period, more specifically through the R.D.l., adopted on 15 October 1925, with the name of" Sull'Obbligo della lingua italiana in tutti gli uffici giudiziari del Regno, salvo le eccezioni stabilite nei trattati internazionali per la città di Fiume".


title: Languages of Italy

text: The original Italian constitution does not explicitly express that Italian is the official national language. Since the constitution was penned, there have been some laws and articles written on the procedures of criminal cases passed that explicitly state that Italian should be used:


title: Languages of Italy

text: Art. 6 of the Italian Constitution was drafted by the Founding Fathers to show sympathy for the country's historical linguistic minorities, in a way for the newly founded Republic to let them become part of the national fabric and distance itself from the Italianization policies promoted earlier because of nationalism, especially during Fascism. Since 1934, Minister Francesco Ercole had excluded in fact from the school curriculum any language other than Italian, in accordance with the policy of linguistic nationalism.


title: Languages of Italy

text: For the Constitutional Court of the Italian Republic, Article 6 of the Constitution represents "the overcoming of the closed notion of the 19th-century national State and a reversal of great political and cultural significance, compared to the nationalistic attitude manifested by Fascism" as well as being "one of the fundamental principles of the current constitutional system".


title: Languages of Italy

text: However, more than a half century passed before the Art. 6 was followed by any of the above-mentioned "appropriate measures". Italy applied in fact the Article for the first time in 1999, by means of the national law N.482/99. According to the linguist Tullio De Mauro, the Italian delay of over 50 years in implementing Article 6 was caused by "decades of hostility to multilingualism" and "opaque ignorance".


title: Languages of Italy

text: Before said legal framework entered into force, only four linguistic minorities (the French-speaking community in the Aosta Valley; the German-speaking community and, to a limited extent, the Ladin one in the Province of Bolzano; the Slovene-speaking community in the Province of Trieste and, with less rights, the Province of Gorizia) enjoyed some kind of acknowledgment and protection, stemming from specific clauses within international treaties. The other eight linguistic minorities were to be recognized only in 1999, including the Slovene-speaking minority in the Province of Udine and the Germanic populations (Walser, Mocheni and Cimbri) residing in provinces different from Bolzano. Some now-recognized minority groups, namely in Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Sardinia, already provided themselves with regional laws of their own. It has been estimated that less than 400.000 people, out of the two million people belonging to the twelve historical minorities (with Sardinian being the numerically biggest one), enjoyed state-wide protection.


title: Languages of Italy

text: Around the 1960s, the Italian Parliament eventually resolved to apply the previously neglected article of the country's fundamental Charter. The Parliament thus appointed a "Committee of three Sages" to single out the groups that were to be recognized as linguistic minorities, and further elaborate the reason for their inclusion. The nominated people were Tullio de Mauro, Giovan Battista Pellegrini and Alessandro Pizzorusso, three notable figures who distinguished themselves with their life-long activity of research in the field of both linguistics and legal theory. Based on linguistic, historical as well as anthropological considerations, the experts eventually selected thirteen groups, corresponding to the currently recognized twelve with the further addition of the Sinti and Romani-speaking populations. The original list was approved, with the only exception of the nomadic peoples, who lacked the territoriality requisite and therefore needed a separate law. However, the draft was presented to the law-making bodies when the legislature was about to run its course, and had to be passed another time. The bill was met with resistance by all the subsequent legislatures, being reluctant to challenge the widely-held myth of "Italian linguistic homogeneity", and only in 1999 did it eventually pass, becoming a law. In the end, the historical linguistic minorities have been recognized by the Law no. 482/1999 ("Legge 15 Dicembre 1999, n. 482, Art. 2, comma 1").


title: Languages of Italy

text: Some interpretations of said law seem to divide the twelve minority languages into two groups, with the first including the non-Latin speaking populations (with the exception of the Catalan-speaking one) and the second including only the Romance-speaking populations. Some other interpretations state that a further distinction is implied, considering only some groups to be "national minorities". Regardless of the ambiguous phrasing, all the twelve groups are technically supposed to be allowed the same measures of protection; furthermore, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, signed and ratified by Italy in 1997, applies to all the twelve groups mentioned by the 1999 national law, therefore including the Friulians, the Sardinians, the Occitans, the Ladins etc., with the addition of the Romani.


title: Languages of Italy

text: In actual practice, not each of the twelve historical linguistic minorities is given the same consideration. All of them still bear strong social pressure to assimilate to Italian, and some of them do not even have a widely acknowledged standard to be used for official purposes. In fact, the discrimination lay in the urgent need to award the highest degree of protection only to the French-speaking minority in the Aosta Valley and the German one in South Tyrol, owing to international treaties. For example, the institutional websites are only in Italian with a few exceptions, like a French version of the Italian Chamber of Deputies. A bill proposed by former prime minister Mario Monti's cabinet formally introduced a differential treatment between the twelve historical linguistic minorities, distinguishing between those with a "foreign mother tongue" (the groups protected by agreements with Austria, France and Slovenia) and those with a "peculiar dialect" (all the others). The bill was later implemented, but deemed unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court.


title: Languages of Italy

text: Italy is a signatory of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, but has not ratified the treaty, and therefore its provisions protecting regional languages do not apply in the country.


title: Languages of Italy

text: The Charter does not, however, establish at what point differences in expression result in a separate language, deeming it an "often controversial issue", and citing the necessity to take into account, other than purely linguistic criteria, also "psychological, sociological and political considerations".


title: Languages of Italy

text: According to the UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, there are 31 endangered languages in Italy. The degree of endangerment is classified in different categories ranging from 'safe' (safe languages are not included in the atlas) to 'extinct' (when there are no speakers left).


title: Languages of Italy

text: The source for the languages' distribution is the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger unless otherwise stated, and refers to Italy exclusively.


title: Languages of Italy

text: They can be divided into Romance languages and non-Romance languages. The classification of the Romance languages of Italy is controversial, and listed here are two of the generally accepted classification systems.


title: Languages of Italy

text: proposes a classification of Romance languages of Italy based on , who groups different Romance languages according to areal and some typological features. The following five linguistic areas can be identified:


title: Languages of Italy

text: The Northern Italian languages are conventionally defined as those Romance languages spoken north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line, which runs through the northern Apennine Mountains just to the north of Tuscany; however, the dialects of Occitan and Franco-Provençal spoken in the extreme northwest of Italy (e.g. the Valdôtain in the Aosta Valley) are generally excluded. The classification of these languages is difficult and not agreed-upon, due both to the variations among the languages and to the fact that they share isoglosses of various sorts with both the Italo-Romance languages to the south and the Gallo-Romance languages to the northwest.


title: Languages of Italy

text: Any such classification runs into the basic problem that there is a dialect continuum throughout northern Italy, with a continuous transition of spoken dialects between e.g. Venetian and Ladin, or Venetian and Emilio-Romagnolo (usually considered Gallo-Italian).


title: Languages of Italy

text: All of these languages are considered innovative relative to the Romance languages as a whole, with some of the Gallo-Italian languages having phonological changes nearly as extreme as standard French (usually considered the most phonologically innovative of the Romance languages). This distinguishes them significantly from standard Italian, which is extremely conservative in its phonology (and notably conservative in its morphology).


title: Languages of Italy

text: Approximate distribution of the regional languages of Sardinia and Southern Italy according to the UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger:


title: Languages of Italy

text: All of these languages are considered conservative relative to the Romance languages as a whole, with Sardinian being the most conservative of them all.


title: Languages of Italy

text: Although "[al]most all Italian dialects were being written in the Middle Ages, for administrative, religious, and often artistic purposes," use of local language gave way to stylized Tuscan, eventually labeled Italian. Local languages are still occasionally written, but only the following regional languages of Italy have a standardised written form. This may be widely accepted or used alongside more traditional written forms:


title: There Is Nothing Left to Lose

text: There Is Nothing Left to Lose is the third studio album by American rock band Foo Fighters, released on November 2, 1999, through Roswell and RCA Records. It marked the first appearance of drummer Taylor Hawkins, and is often seen as a departure from the band's previous work, showcasing a softer, more experimental sound. Dave Grohl has stated that the album was "totally based on melody" and that it might be "[his] favorite album that [they've] ever done."


title: There Is Nothing Left to Lose

text: "There Is Nothing Left to Lose" won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album in 2001, marking the band's first ever Grammy win. The band would go on to win the Grammy for Best Rock Album for three of their next four studio releases ("One by One"; "Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace"; and "Wasting Light").


title: There Is Nothing Left to Lose

text: "There Is Nothing Left to Lose" is Foo Fighters's first album to be entirely released and marketed by RCA Records since their departure from Capitol Records after release of "The Colour and the Shape" two years earlier. Their two previous studio albums, originally distributed by Capitol, were since then distributed by RCA.


title: There Is Nothing Left to Lose

text: Prior to recording, guitarist Franz Stahl was fired, as frontman Dave Grohl felt the guitarist had not found his place in the band. At that point, Grohl decided that the band would just be a three-piece for the record, along with bassist Nate Mendel and drummer Taylor Hawkins. Having just slaved themselves in the studio making the last record "The Colour and the Shape" and losing two band members in the process, he decided to buy a house in Alexandria, Virginia and make the record in its basement without any record company presence during production. This was helped by the Foo Fighters' leaving Capitol Records after president Gary Gersh left the label. Grohl named his home facility Studio 606, at first saying, "It's just one of those numbers that's everywhere. Like when you wake up in the middle of the night and it's 6:06, or you see a license plate that says 606." He later told the full story of the number's significance in a July 20, 2020, Instagram post: spending the evening with his father in 1985, he received a particularly searing "what do you want to do with your life" lecture that defines the bittersweet moment he finally communicated to his father the depth of his commitment to becoming a professional musician, before sneaking out. "606" was his father's apartment number.


title: There Is Nothing Left to Lose

text: Grohl set up the studio with the help of Adam Kasper, who eventually co-produced the album. The biggest challenge, according to Grohl, was making the record sound good without computer programs such as Pro Tools or AutoTune. Dave Grohl notes that he had: "[...] been living in Los Angeles for about a year and a half, just being a drunk, getting fucked up every night and doing horrible shit, and I'd finally gotten sick of that new car smell. So I bought this great house in Virginia and told everyone I was building a studio in the basement. It was literally a basement with sleeping bags on the walls!"


title: There Is Nothing Left to Lose

text: In 2006, Grohl stated that: "It was all about just settling into the next phase of your life, that place where you can sit back and relax because there had been so much crazy shit in the past three years. At that point it was me, Taylor and Nate and we were best friends. It was one of the most relaxing times of my whole life. All we did was eat chili, drink beer and whiskey and record whenever we felt like it. When I listen to that record it totally brings me back to that basement. I remember how it smelled and how it was in the Spring so the windows were open and we'd do vocals until you could hear the birds through the microphone. And more than any other record I've ever done, that album does that to me."


title: There Is Nothing Left to Lose

text: The title emerged to Grohl as he talked to a friend "about when you experience these emotions after you've been through a long, difficult period and you finally give into this feeling that, quite simply, there is nothing left to lose. It can seem... positive, desperate and reckless." The frontman also said that it represented the band's mood during production: "we just wrote off and played like all bets were off. No one was forcing us to be there, so it had to be fun—and the songs had to be the best we could possibly come up with at the time."


title: There Is Nothing Left to Lose

text: After the album was ready, the band signed with RCA Records to distribute the album. For promotion, the label focused on "getting the Foo Fighters brand out there", setting up the band's official website, and arranging appearances on broadcast television and events such as the Gravity Games. "There Is Nothing Left to Lose" was released in an Enhanced CD featuring the music video for the first single, "Learn to Fly", along with song lyrics and photographs.


title: There Is Nothing Left to Lose

text: While the album was recorded as a three-piece, Grohl decided that he still needed a second guitarist for the live performances. After open auditions in which 35 musicians were tested, the band hired Chris Shiflett, whom Grohl considered the best guitarist and singer who auditioned, and "he fit in with the rest of us so well", particularly for his background in punk rock bands. In September 1999, the band performed club dates in New York and Los Angeles, to both showcase the new songs and test Shiflett's performance with the group. The There Is Nothing Left To Lose tour started in 2000. The North American leg was overlapped with the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication Tour.


title: There Is Nothing Left to Lose

text: Early pressings of the disc included a temporary tattoo, similar to the one featured on the album cover. The album was also re-released in 2001 in Australia as a two-CD edition which offers a second VCD disc of four videos and one bonus track, "Fraternity."


title: There Is Nothing Left to Lose

text: Reviews for "There Is Nothing Left to Lose" were generally positive. "Rolling Stone"s Greg Kot rated the album three-and-a-half out of five stars. He started by explaining that "the first thirty seconds [...] are a bridge to singer Dave Grohl's past." He stated further, comparing the album to the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris", that "[Grohl's] punk background makes him allergic to string sections." However, he said that it "nonetheless marks a departure, with greater emphasis on melody and actual singing." In a retrospective review, AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine rated the album four out of five stars, explaining that "it is the first Foo Fighters album that sounds like the work of a unified, muscular band, and the first one that rocks "really" hard." Furthermore, he stated that it "has a stripped-down sound and an immediate attack that makes even the poppier numbers rock hard." He concluded that "[Foo Fighters] make it sound easy and fun [...] they're getting better as they're losing members and growing older, which is certainly a rarity in rock & roll." In another retrospective review, a reviewer for Sputnikmusic rated it 3.5 out of 5 points. He explained that it was "consistent and includes sufficient highlights" overall. He went on to state that "Stacked Actors" "successfully utilizes some cool guitar effects as well as the quiet/loud formula that the band has become known for." He further stated that "Breakout" "is a really satisfying mix of melody and rock that ends up a genuinely memorable tune." However, he stated that ""Headwires" [...] musically begins like a mediocre mid-80's radio-rock effort and then simply lacks the necessary grunt to salvage it later on." Comparing the album to "The Colour and the Shape", he stated that while the newer album is "more consistent", "a number of tracks ... [are] rather straight-forward and lacking that certain memorable factor which so helped its predecessor."


title: There Is Nothing Left to Lose

text: "When we won for best rock album, which we made in my basement, I was so proud – because we made it in my basement in a crappy makeshift studio that we put together ourselves. I stood there looking out at everybody in tuxedos and diamonds and fur coats, and I thought we were probably the only band that won a Grammy for an album made for free in a basement that year." – Dave Grohl, 2012


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Stephen Boyd (born William Millar; 4 July 1931 – 2 June 1977) was a Northern Irish actor. He appeared in some 60 films, most notably as the villainous Messala in "Ben-Hur" (1959), a role that earned him the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. He received his second Golden Globe Award nomination for "Billy Rose's Jumbo" (1962). He also appeared, sometimes as a hero and sometimes as a malefactor, in the major big-screen productions "Les bijoutiers du clair de lune" (1958), "The Bravados" (1958), "Imperial Venus" (1962), "The Fall of the Roman Empire" (1964), "Genghis Khan" (1965), "Fantastic Voyage" (1966) and "Shalako" (1968).


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Stephen Boyd was born on 4 July 1931 in Glengormley, County Antrim, in a house on the Doagh Road, Whitehouse. He was the youngest of nine siblings born to Irish-Canadian parents, James Alexander Millar and his wife Martha Boyd. At a very early age, William, or Billy as he was known, moved with the family to live in Glengormley. Boyd attended the local Public Elementary School and Ballyclare High School.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: At the age of 14 Boyd quit school to work and earn money to help support his family. He eventually joined the Ulster Group Theatre where he learned the behind-the-scenes tasks of the theatre. He became well known in Belfast for his contributions as a gravel-voiced policeman on the Ulster Radio programme "The McCooeys", the story of a Belfast family written by Joseph Tomelty.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Boyd eventually worked his way up to character parts and then starring roles. By nineteen he had toured Canada with summer stock companies. In 1950, he made a coast-to-coast tour of America with the Clare Tree Major Company, performing "A Streetcar Named Desire" in the lead role as Stanley Kowalski. Boyd later recalled this as "the best performance I ever gave in my life".


title: Stephen Boyd

text: By the time he was 20, Boyd had a wide range of theatre experience, but he longed for the big stage. In 1952, he moved to London and worked in a cafeteria and busked outside a cinema in Leicester Square to get money as he was literally close to starvation. Boyd caught his first break as a doorman at the Odeon Theatre.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: The Leicester Square Cinema across the street recruited him to usher attendees during the British Academy Awards in the early 1950s. During the awards ceremony he was noticed by actor Sir Michael Redgrave, who used his connections to introduce Boyd to the director of the Windsor Repertory Group. At this point Boyd's stage career in the U.K. began to flourish with performances in "The Deep Blue Sea" and "Barnett's Folly"


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Boyd's first role which brought him acclaim was as a pro-Nazi Irish spy in the movie "The Man Who Never Was", based on the book by Ewen Montagu. The movie was released in April 1956.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Shortly thereafter he signed a ten-year contract with 20th Century Fox studios, who began prepping him for Hollywood. But it was a while until Boyd actually set foot on a Hollywood back-lot. Boyd's next stop was Portugal to make "A Hill in Korea", which also featured future stars Michael Caine and Robert Shaw. In June 1956, Boyd was cast in the nautical, ship-wreck adventure "Abandon Ship!" for Columbia Studios starring Tyrone Power. This was filmed in the summer of 1956 in London where the British Navy built a huge 35,000 gallon water tank for the movie.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: In November 1956, for Twentieth Century Fox, Boyd traveled to the British West Indies as part of a large ensemble cast in Darryl Zanuck's racially provocative film "Island in the Sun" starring Dorothy Dandridge, based on the Alec Waugh novel. Boyd portrayed a young English aristocrat who becomes the lover of Joan Collins. Boyd was loaned out to the J. Arthur Rank production of "Seven Thunders (Beast of Marseilles)", a World War II romance set in Nazi-occupied Marseilles. This movie was filmed on location in Marseilles and at Pinewood Studios in London in the spring of 1957 and featured Boyd in his most prominent starring film role yet.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Around the same time French actress Brigitte Bardot was given the opportunity to cast her own leading man in her next movie after her success in Roger Vadim's "And God Created Woman", and she chose Boyd. From August to October 1957, Bardot, Boyd and Alida Valli filmed the lusty romance "The Night Heaven Fell", directed by Roger Vadim in Paris and in the region of Málaga, Spain, specifically the small, white-washed town of Mijas. Being in the Bardot spotlight added much to Boyd's film credit, in addition to bringing him notice in Hollywood.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Boyd finally arrived in Hollywood in January 1958 to take on his first true Hollywood role as the leader of a quartet of renegade outlaws in the Twentieth Century Fox western "The Bravados", which starred Gregory Peck and Joan Collins. Even though this was a Hollywood production, the actual filming took place in Morelia, Mexico.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: After the filming of "The Bravados" was complete in late March 1958, Stephen Boyd returned to Hollywood to audition for the coveted role of Messala in MGM's upcoming epic "Ben-Hur". Many other actors, including Victor Mature, Kirk Douglas, Leslie Nielsen and Stewart Granger had been considered for the part, but Boyd's screen test convinced director William Wyler that he had found the perfect villain for his epic, as Wyler had also admired Boyd's performance in "The Man Who Never Was" the previous year. Boyd was hurried off to join actor Charlton Heston in Rome in May 1958 to learn the chariot racing aspect of his role. Heston had already been practicing behind the chariot for weeks, so Boyd needed to learn quickly. Boyd was also required to wear brown contact lenses as Messala, which irritated his eyes and caused vision problems for a few months after the movie was completed. Despite this, Boyd described the filming experience of "Ben-Hur" (which took place in Cinecittà Studios in Rome), as the most exciting experience of his life.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Years after the movie was released, interim "Ben-Hur" screenwriter and novelist Gore Vidal revealed that Boyd had portrayed his famous character Messala in "Ben-Hur" with an underlying homosexual energy, as instructed to by Vidal when he greets Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) in the opening sequence. In Gore Vidal's autobiography "Palimpsest: A Memoir" Vidal describes his discussion first with director Wyler, concerning Messala's underlying motivation, namely that Messala and Judah Ben-Hur had previously been lovers. This was based on an idea by Vidal to enhance the tension between the two main antagonists. Wyler specifically told Vidal, "You talk to Boyd. But don't "you" say a word to Chuck or he'll fall apart." In "Palimpsest", Vidal said, "Over the next few years, whenever we met (William Wyler), we quarreled amiably over what I had put in the scene and what Steven Boyd is clearly playing." Vidal later came into conflict with actor Charlton Heston about his version of the Messala/Ben-Hur relationship and the implications surrounding "Ben-Hur".


title: Stephen Boyd

text: After the filming of "Ben-Hur" was completed Boyd returned to Hollywood in early 1959 to star with Academy Award winner Susan Hayward in the Canadian-based drama "Woman Obsessed". Some advertisements for this movie labeled Boyd as "The Young New Clark Gable." He was then part of another excellent ensemble cast in the adaptation of Rona Jaffe's novel "The Best of Everything", filmed in May and June 1959 at Fox Studios in Hollywood and on location in New York City.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: "Ben-Hur" was released in November 1959 and immediately made Boyd an international star. His portrayal of the Roman tribune Messala brought in rave reviews. Press columnist Erskine Johnson wrote, "A brass hat and the armor of a Roman warrior in "Ben-Hur" does for Stephen Boyd what a tight dress does for Marilyn Monroe." Ruth Waterbury, in her Boyd feature in the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette", described Boyd's character as "the dangerously masculine and quite magnificent Messala." "Modern Screen" magazine in 1960 stated that Boyd's ruthless Messala had "lost the chariot race but captured the sympathy and sex appeal of "Ben-Hur"."


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Boyd was featured in the popular TV program "This Is Your Life" on 3 February 1960, which featured many of Boyd's family members and acquaintances (including Michael Redgrave) telling stories about his early life and film career. This should be some indication of how "Stephen Boyd fever" was catching. Newspaper columnists were getting swarmed with letters from female fans of all ages wanting to know more about Boyd. He was being sent dozens of starring roles, most of which he had to turn down due to other obligations. He opted out of the biblical epic "The Story of Ruth", which didn't please Fox studios, and he was one of the front-runners to star with Marilyn Monroe in her picture "Let's Make Love".


title: Stephen Boyd

text: In early 1960, Boyd won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for his performance in "Ben-Hur". In January 1960, Boyd made a guest appearance alongside the silent-era "Ben-Hur" stars Ramon Novarro and Francis X. Bushman on Hedda Hopper's special television programme "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood". In February 1960, he starred in the Playhouse 90 television performance called "The Sound of Trumpets" with Dolores Hart, which garnered good reviews. He also appeared as a singing guest on The Dinah Shore Chevy Show on 13 March 1960 where he performed two Irish folk songs with Dinah Shore, "The Leprechaun Song" and "Molly Malone", and an Irish step dance.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Boyd chose to do roles which he felt comfortable in. His next choice was "The Big Gamble", which featured Darryl F. Zanuck's current paramour and French icon Juliette Gréco. It was filmed on the Ivory Coast of West Africa, Dublin and the southern part of France in the spring and summer of 1961. The adventure of making this film almost outdid the adventure in the film itself as the crew slept in tents in the jungle that were guarded by natives on parole for cannibalism. Boyd nearly drowned in the Ardèche river during the making of the film. Luckily he was saved by his co-star and excellent swimmer David Wayne. Boyd spoke about this incident during his appearance on the popular TV programme "What's My Line?" which aired on 11 December 1960.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Boyd was originally chosen to play Mark Antony opposite Elizabeth Taylor in 20th Century Fox's epic production of "Cleopatra" (1963) under the direction of Rouben Mamoulian. He began film work in September 1960 but eventually withdrew from the problem-plagued production after Elizabeth Taylor's severe illness postponed the film for months. ("Cleopatra" was later directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and the role of Mark Antony went to Richard Burton.) During this period of waiting in April 1961 Stephen Boyd was sent to Cairo, Egypt on a publicity tour by Twentieth Century Fox along with fellow actors Julie Newmar and Barbara Eden to attend the inaugural ceremony of the sound and light show at the pyramids of Giza.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: After several months without active work, Boyd was thrilled to finally get his first post-Cleopatra role. The film was "The Inspector", renamed "Lisa" for the American release. It was based on the novel by Jan de Hartog and co- starred actress Dolores Hart. The film was made in Amsterdam, London and Wales during the summer of 1961. On 9 January 1962, Boyd was featured in a television film from General Electric Theater called "The Wall Between", co-starring Ronald Reagan and Gloria Talbott. Next, Boyd was again loaned out to MGM Studios to star with Doris Day in the circus musical "Billy Rose's Jumbo", filmed during the early part of 1962; the role earned Boyd a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Boyd flew to Rome in the summer of 1962 to act with Italian superstar Gina Lollobrigida in her long-time pet project "Imperial Venus", a romantic epic about the many loves of Pauline Bonaparte, the sister of Napoleon. This film was the first film to be banned by the Motion Picture Association of America for male nudity. Boyd appeared in a humorous bedroom scene, naked with only his lower half covered by a bed-sheet. The suggestion of nudity was too much for the censors and the movie was never released in the United States. Boyd returned to the States briefly after finishing "Imperial Venus", where he appeared for the second time on The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, which aired on 11 November 1962. For this program Boyd was a last-minute replacement for actor James Garner and joined Shore and entertainer Dean Martin for a few musical numbers.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Boyd arrived in Spain in early 1963 to begin work on Samuel Bronston's massive production of the"The Fall of the Roman Empire", directed by Anthony Mann. This was filmed during a severely cold winter in Europe and the production in the Sierra de Guadarrama of Spain encountered several challenges with the snow. Boyd's co-star was another Italian legend, Sophia Loren. Boyd also had the opportunity to ride another chariot in this film. Although the movie did well internationally when it was released in April 1964, it was a box office failure in the United States and signaled the end of Roman epics in the 1960s. More appreciated with the passing of time, "The Fall of the Roman Empire" was also recognized by critics as being a major inspiration for Ridley Scott's Academy Award-winning movie "Gladiator."|


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Boyd flew back to Hollywood in the summer to star in a "Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre" episode with Louis Jourdan called "War of Nerves", which aired on 3 January 1964. He then returned to Europe to film the suspenseful "The Third Secret" starring Pamela Franklin, Richard Attenborough, Jack Hawkins


title: Stephen Boyd

text: On 23 December 1963, Stephen Boyd became a naturalized U.S. citizen during a ceremony at the Federal Building in Los Angeles, California.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Stephen Boyd was originally cast as the lead in Anthony Mann's World War II drama "The Unknown Battle", which was set to film in early 1964 with co-stars Elke Sommer and Anthony Perkins in Norway. After several weeks of waiting, studio funding for the project fell through. Boyd sued Mann for $500,000 for a breach of contract, missed time and other lost film opportunities. The project was completed by Mann a year later and released as "Heroes of Telemark" with Kirk Douglas replacing Boyd as the lead.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: In 1964, Boyd continued to make films in Europe, traveling to Yugoslavia to star as the villain Jamuga in the epic "Genghis Khan". Boyd was the top billed and therefore the top paid star in the epic, and this apparently caused friction with up-and-coming star Omar Sharif. After completing "Genghis Khan", Boyd trekked to Cairo, Egypt for a brief appearance as the regal King Nimrod at The Tower of Babel in Dino de Laurentiis's production of "", directed by John Huston.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: After all this globe-trotting, the travel-weary Boyd was very happy to return to the United States to start work on the Twentieth Century Fox science fiction adventure "Fantastic Voyage", co-starring with soon-to-be icon Raquel Welch. This was filmed in the early part of 1965. In the summer of 1965, Boyd joined German star Elke Sommer and music legend Tony Bennett to film the Hollywood drama "The Oscar", based on the eponymous Richard Sale novel. The movie was a popular success, but maligned by film critics. Boyd made a 10-day visit to Iran in December 1965 to film his scenes for the United Nations film project "The Poppy Is Also a Flower", written by James Bond creator Ian Fleming.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: In 1966, the producer of "The Oscar", Joseph Levine, hired Boyd for his next film project, "The Caper of the Golden Bulls", based on a William McGivern novel. This movie was partly filmed on location in Spain in the summer of 1966. The actors, including Boyd, took part in the famous Feria del Toro de San Fermin festival in Pamplona (known as the Running of the Bulls).


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Also in 1966, Boyd appeared as Nimrod in John Huston's biblical epic "" (which became the year's second highest-grossing film but lost 20th Century Fox $1.5 million) and also as Charles Grant in the cult classic "Fantastic Voyage" (which is also notable for launching the career of Raquel Welch).


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Next, Boyd starred in a spy thriller "Assignment K" with Swedish model/actress Camilla Sparv, which was filmed in Germany, Austria and London during February and March 1967. Boyd grew a full beard for his next role as the iconic Irish playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw in the Off-Broadway play called "The Bashful Genius" written by Harold Callen. This was Boyd's first return to the stage since the mid-1950s, and the experience for Boyd was immensely rewarding on a personal level. He received excellent reviews for his nuanced performance of the multi-faceted Shaw. The play had a very brief run during the summer of 1967 in Denver, Philadelphia and Falmouth, Massachusetts.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: In early 1968, Boyd was cast as the heavy opposite Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot in the western adventure ""Shalako"", based on the Louis L'Amour novel. "Shalako" was filmed in the early part of 1968 in Almería, Spain. After returning to the United States, Boyd took the role of the cruel slave master Nathan MacKay in the Southern "slavesploitation" drama "Slaves", also starring Ossie Davis and songstress Dionne Warwick. The film was loosely based on the famous Harriet Beecher Stowe novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin". It was filmed during the summer of 1968 at the supposedly haunted Buena Vista plantation near Shreveport, Louisiana. The film was released during the volatile civil rights era and in May 1969 Boyd attended the premiere alongside Dionne Warwick in Baltimore Closely following "Slaves", Boyd starred in another story about racial tension, this time a World War II made-for-television drama called "Carter's Army" (or "Black Brigade") which aired in August 1970, featuring a young Richard Pryor.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: It was around this time that Boyd began his interest in L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology, which made him one of the first Hollywood stars to be involved in it. Boyd had always expressed an interest in esoteric religions. In an interview in August 1969 with the "Detroit Free Press", Boyd explained that Scientology had helped him through the filming of "Slaves", and that to him Scientology was "a process used to make you capable of learning. Scientology is nothing. It means only what you want it to. It is not a church you go to pray, but a church that you go to learn. It is no good unless you apply it. It is the application." Boyd apparently had been elevated to a Scientology Status of OT 6, a position above that of Clear. Boyd starred in and narrated a Scientology recruiting movie titled "Freedom" in 1970. A copy of this film can be found at the Library of Congress, but it is not available online via any Scientology resource, which may indicate a falling out Boyd had with Scientology using his name for recruiting purposes. There is no documentation of his later involvement with Scientology after the early 1970s.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: During the 1970s, the demand for Boyd in Hollywood diminished, so he focused his attention on European films and several television pilots and shows. He made three films in Spain with director José Antonio Nieves Conde, including "Marta" in 1970, "The Great Swindle" in 1971, and "Casa Manchada" in 1975. He worked with cult director Romain Gary in the drug thriller "Kill!" in 1971. He also made several Westerns, including "Hannie Caulder" with Raquel Welch in 1971, "The Man Called Noon" in 1973, "Those Dirty Dogs" in 1973, and "" in 1976. Boyd continued to travel to a wide variety of locations to work, including Australia for "The Hands of Cormac Joyce" in 1972, South Africa for "Control Factor" and "The Manipulator" in 1972–1973, Jamaica for the scuba diving adventure "The Treasure of Jamaica Reef" in 1972, Florida for the television pilot "Key West" in 1973, and Hawaii in his last acting stint as a guest star on the popular television show "Hawaii Five-O" in 1977. The episode "Up the Rebels" was the premiere episode of "Hawaii Five-O"s tenth season, and it aired after Boyd's death on 15 September 1977. His most critically acclaimed role during the 1970s was as a colourful Irish gangster in the UK crime thriller "The Squeeze" in 1977.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: A letter from film producer Euan Lloyd (who produced such films as "Shalako", "The Man Called Noon" and "The Wild Geese"), states that "Stephen Boyd was one of the nicest, kindest people I have met in my lifetime, rare in this profession."


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Although Boyd spent most of his adult life traveling abroad for film work, he made his permanent home in southern California. At one point in the 1960s, he had three homes there — one above the Sunset Strip, one in Tarzana and another in Palm Springs, where he enjoyed his favorite pastime, golf. He made frequent trips back to his hometown of Belfast in Northern Ireland. to visit his family. On one particular visit to Belfast in 1971, Boyd exclaimed his dismay about the situation in Northern Ireland at that time: "Because of the divisiveness, the potential for displaying to the world all that is good in that lovely land is lost, perhaps even destroyed." Boyd was valued so highly by his native city of Belfast that during his visits he was always given a military escort from the airport to his home for security reasons during The Troubles.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Journalist Florabel Muir described Boyd's appeal in a feature from 1966. "I would think it has to be his ruggedly masculine good looks. Strong, even craggy features, a wide sympathetic mouth, firm chin, athletic build, wavy dark brown hair, roving 185-lb. frame – all that plus a musical voice and the savoir faire of a much-traveled fellow – his films have taken him to many places in the world, and a rolling stone acquires a high polish."


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Boyd was popular with Hollywood columnists, including his friend Hedda Hopper, as well as fellow actors and other members of the entertainment industry because of his charm and sense of humor. "Boyd is the kind of a man who was born to make friends and he has been doing it most of his life...Boyd is a blue-eyed, curly-haired chunk of masculinity, who makes no attempt to hide the fact that he just plain likes people. On the set of "Ben-Hur" he rarely occupied the fancy portable dressing room set aside for his use. Instead, he spent his time between scenes sitting around and chatting with electricians, carpenters and his fellow actors. He will discuss any subject and enjoys a good argument. He can, like most Irishmen, sprinkle his talk with wit as well as sagacity."


title: Stephen Boyd

text: He was first married in 1958 to Italian-born MCA executive Mariella Di Sarzana during the filming of "Ben-Hur". They separated after just three weeks. Concerning his short-lived marriage to Sarzana, Boyd explained: "It was my fault. I'm an Irish so-and-so when I'm working. I hadn't been married a week when we both knew we had made a mistake. She is a nice girl but we were just not meant for each other. I suppose I wasn't ready for marriage. Maybe I was still too much of an adolescent." They officially divorced in early 1959. After his divorce Boyd lived as a bachelor for most of his life, dating several prominent Hollywood starlets throughout the 1960s. His secretary Elizabeth Mills was a permanent resident at his Tarzana home during these years, though the two did not marry until 1974.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: He had a deep and lasting friendship with actress and French icon Brigitte Bardot with whom he starred in two movies – "The Night Heaven Fell" in 1958 and "Shalako" in 1968. During the filming of "Shakalo" in Almería, Spain, Bardot and Boyd's close relationship and open affection for each other sparked numerous rumors of a possible affair. It even caused Brigitte's husband at the time, Gunter Sachs, to ask for a divorce. In Bardot's autobiography, she described the events and states that Boyd "was never her lover, but a tender and attentive friend." In an interview with "Photoplay Film" in 1968, Boyd said, "Bardot is always Bardot. She's marvelous. She's an enormous star and she's a unique, marvelous woman. I adore her." Even though both actors denied the affair, the press was "convinced there was a romance afoot, that Brigitte and Boyd openly displayed their affection for each other, but that publication of the report on their romance cooled it."


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Boyd also had a close relationship with actress Dolores Hart who describes what was her only romance with a co-star in her autobiography "The Ear of the Heart". Boyd eventually rejected her advances, but they remained close friends even after she turned to the cloistered life of a nun in 1963. He visited her in 1966 at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut and remained in communication with her until the early 1970s.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Stephen Boyd's most passionate affair seems to have been with Austrian actress Marisa Mell. They met while filming the movie "Marta" in 1970. Boyd initially dodged Marisa Mell's amorous advances, but during the second film they made together, "The Great Swindle", the two became inseparable lovers. They married in a gypsy camp on the outskirts of Madrid in late 1971. The ceremony included a wrist cutting exchange of blood to seal their bond. The marriage was not considered legal, but Marisa Mell said, "Who cares? In our minds it will be real." According to Marisa Mell, their affair was so intense that while living in Rome they made a trip to the Italian town of Sarsina for a ritual exorcism at the Cathedral of St. Vicinius. Boyd abruptly broke off the affair after the intensity apparently became too much to bear. In early 1972, after Boyd's departure, Mell had this to say about the break-up of their relationship: "We both believe in reincarnation, and we realized we've already been lovers in three different lifetimes, and in each one I made him suffer terribly." For her part, Mell fondly remembered Boyd many years later in her autobiography "Cover Love" from 1990, dedicating a chapter to their affair.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Boyd's last marriage took place in 1974 to Elizabeth Mills, a secretary at the British Arts Council, whom he had known since 1953. Mills followed Boyd to the United States in the late 1950s and was his personal assistant, friend and confidante for many years before marrying him in the mid-1970s.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: Boyd died of a massive heart attack on 2 June 1977 at the age of 45 while playing golf with his wife, Elizabeth Mills, at the Porter Valley Country Club in Northridge, California. He was in talks to play the role of the Regimental Sergeant Major in Euan Lloyd's "The Wild Geese" before his death. (The role was eventually filled by Jack Watson).


title: Stephen Boyd

text: He was cremated and his ashes were interred in Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California. His wife Elizabeth Mills Boyd was interred with him at the time of her death in 2007. He is also remembered on his parents' grave in the Clandeboye Cemetery, Bangor, Northern Ireland.


title: Stephen Boyd

text: On 4 July 2018, the Ulster History Circle, a voluntary organisation which erects plaques across the province of Ulster to celebrate people of achievement, commemorated Stephen Boyd with a blue plaque close to his birthplace at 'Moygara', Shore Road, Whitehouse (Belfast, Northern Ireland).


title: Melinoë

text: Melinoë (; ) is a chthonic nymph or goddess invoked in one of the Orphic Hymns and represented as a bringer of nightmares and madness. The name also appears on a metal tablet in association with Persephone. The hymns are of uncertain date but were probably composed in the 2nd or 3rd century AD. In the hymn, Melinoë has characteristics that seem similar to Hecate and the Erinyes, and the name is sometimes thought to be an epithet of Hecate. The terms in which Melinoë is described are typical of moon goddesses in Greek poetry.


title: Melinoë

text: "Melinoë" may derive from Greek "mēlinos" (μήλινος), "having the colour of quince", from "mēlon" (μῆλον), "tree fruit". The fruit's yellowish-green colour evoked the pallor of illness or death for the Greeks. A name derived from "melas," "black", would be "melan-", not "mēlin-".


title: Melinoë

text: Following is the translation by Apostolos Athanassakis and Benjamin M. Wolkow, of the hymn to Melinoe:


title: Melinoë

text:
I call upon Melinoe, saffron-cloaked nymph of the earth,
whom revered Persephone bore by the mouth of the Kokytos river
upon the sacred bed of Kronian Zeus.
In the guise of Plouton Zeus tricked Persephone and through wiley plots bedded her;
a two-bodied specter sprang forth from Persephone's fury.
This specter drives mortals to madness with her airy apparitions
as she appears in weird shapes and strange forms,
now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness—
all this in unnerving attacks in the gloom of night.
O goddess, O queen of those below, I beseech you
to banish the soul's frenzy to the ends of the earth,
show to the initiates a kindly and holy face.


title: Melinoë

text: Melinoë is the daughter of Persephone and was fathered by Zeus, whom he tricked by taking the form of Hades via "wily plots", indicating that in the hymn Persephone is already married to Hades. This is paralleled with another Orphic myth, the birth of Melinoë's brother Zagreus, who was conceived when Zeus, disguised as a serpent, deceived and mated with Persephone.


title: Melinoë

text: A major contributory factor surrounding Melinoe's birth is the fact that Hades and Zeus were, at times, syncretised with each other. The Orphics in particular believed that Zeus and Hades were the same deity and portrayed them as such. Zeus was portrayed as having an incarnation in the underworld identifying him as literally being Hades and leading to Zeus and Hades essentially being two representations and different facets of the same god and extended divine power. The Orphic Hymn to Melinoë also references this by mentioning that Persephone was impregnated upon the bed of Zeus Kronion in the Underworld by the River Cocytus. The hymn regarding Zeus taking on the form of Plouton before impregnating Persephone was very much related to the very nature of the way the gods were portrayed and worshiped in the Orphic Religion, as well as be the explanation for why both Hades and Zeus are considered to be the father of Melinoë; moreover it is believed that Persephone's resulting anger is derived from several things: the separation from her mother, the loss of her virginity, and the fact she had been impregnated, thus bearing children from that union.


title: Melinoë

text: Melinoë is born at the mouth of the Cocytus, one of the rivers of the underworld, where Hermes in his underworld aspect as psychopomp was stationed. In the Orphic tradition, the Cocytus is one of four underworld rivers.


title: Melinoë

text: Although some Greek myths deal with themes of incest, in Orphic genealogies lines of kinship express theological and cosmogonical concepts, not the realities of human family relations. The ancient Greek "nymphē" in the first line can mean "nymph", but also "bride" or "young woman". Thus Melinoë is described as such not in order to be designated as a divinity of lower status, but rather as a young woman of marriageable age; the same word is applied to Hecate and Tethys (a Titaness) in their own Orphic hymns. As an underworld "queen" "(Basileia)", Melinoë is at least partially syncretized with Persephone herself.


title: Melinoë

text: Melinoë is described in the invocation of the Orphic Hymn as "κροκόπεπλος (krokopeplos)," "clad in saffron" (see "peplos"), an epithet in ancient Greek poetry for moon goddesses. In the hymns, only two goddesses are described as "krokopeplos," Melinoë and Hecate.


title: Melinoë

text: Melinoë's connections to Hecate and Hermes suggest that she exercised her power in the realm of the soul's passage, and in that function may be compared to the torchbearer Eubouleos in the mysteries.


title: Melinoë

text: According to the hymn, she brings night terrors to mortals by manifesting in strange forms, "now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness", and can drive mortals insane. The purpose of the hymn is to placate her by showing that the Orphic initiate understands and respects her nature, thereby averting the harm she has the capacity for causing.


title: Melinoë

text: The translation of Thomas Taylor (1887) has given rise to a conception of Melinoe as half-black, half-white, representing the duality of the heavenly Zeus and the infernal Hades. This had been the interpretation of Gottfried Hermann in his annotated text of the hymns in 1805. This duality may be implicit, like the explanation offered by Servius for why the poplar leaf has a light and dark side to represent Leuke ("White"), a nymph loved by Hades. The Orphic text poses interpretational challenges for translators in this passage.


title: Melinoë

text: Melinoë appears on a bronze tablet for use in the kind of private ritual usually known as "magic". The style of Greek letters on the tablet, which was discovered at Pergamon, dates it to the first half of the 3rd century AD. The use of bronze was probably intended to drive away malevolent spirits and to protect the practitioner. The construction of the tablet suggests that it was used for divination. It is triangular in shape, with a hole in the center, presumably for suspending it over a surface.


title: Melinoë

text: The content of the triangular tablet reiterates triplicity. It depicts three crowned goddesses, each with her head pointing at an angle and her feet pointing toward the center. The name of the goddess appears above her head: Dione (ΔΙⲰΝΗ), Phoebe (ΦΟΙΒΙΗ), and the obscure Nyche (ΝΥΧΙΗ). "Amibousa," a word referring to the phases of the moon, is written under each goddess's feet. Densely inscribed spells frame each goddess: the inscriptions around Dione and Nyche are "voces magicae", incantatory syllables ("magic words") that are mostly untranslatable. Melinoë appears in a triple invocation that is part of the inscription around Phoebe: "O Persephone, O Melinoë, O Leucophryne". Esoteric symbols are inscribed on the edges of the triangle. Both Leucophryne and Phoebe were used as epithets of Artemis, another goddess associated with the Moon and Hecate.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) is an acronym denoting one of the most common software stacks for many of the web's most popular applications. However, LAMP now refers to a generic software stack model and its components are largely interchangeable.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: The components of the LAMP stack are present in the software repositories of most Linux distributions. Now e-commerce, e-learning, SAAS, real estate, infotainment, and social media applications are developed using LAMP stack development processes.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: The acronym LAMP was coined by Michael Kunze in the December 1998 issue of "Computertechnik", a German computing magazine, as he demonstrated that a bundle of free and open-source software "could be a feasible alternative to expensive commercial packages". Since then, O'Reilly Media and MySQL teamed up to popularize the acronym and evangelize its use. The term and the concept became popular because it was one of the first open-source software stacks for the web, with sufficient capabilities to host a variety of web frameworks, such as Joomla, WordPress and Drupal.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: The LAMP model has been adapted to other componentry, though typically consisting of free and open-source software. With the growing use of the archetypal LAMP, variations and retronyms appeared for other combinations of operating system, web server, database, and software language. For example, an equivalent installation on the Microsoft Windows operating system family is known as WAMP. An alternative running IIS in place of Apache is called WIMP. Variants involving other operating systems include MAMP (macOS), SAMP (Solaris), FAMP (FreeBSD), iAMP (IBM i) and XAMPP (cross-platform).


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: The web server or database management system also varies. LEMP is a version where Apache has been replaced with the more lightweight web server Nginx. A version where MySQL has been replaced by PostgreSQL is called LAPP, or sometimes by keeping the original acronym, LAMP (Linux / Apache / Middleware (Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby) / PostgreSQL).


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: As another example, the software which Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects use for their is a customized LAMP stack with additions such as Linux Virtual Server (LVS) for load balancing and Ceph and Swift for distributed object storages.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open-source software development and distribution. Most Linux distributions, as collections of software based around the Linux kernel and often around a package management system, provide complete LAMP setups through their packages. According to W3Techs in October 2013, 58.5% of web server market share is shared between Debian and Ubuntu, while RHEL, Fedora and CentOS together shared 37.3%.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: The role of LAMP's web server has been traditionally supplied by Apache, and has since included other web servers such as Nginx.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: Until 2022, Apache HTTP Server was the most popular on the public Internet. In June 2013, Netcraft estimated that Apache served 54.2% of all active websites and 53.3% of the top servers across all domains. According to W3Tech's web server count, only in June 2022 did Nginx bypass Apache in popularity, with a share of 33.6% versus Apache at 31.4%.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation. Released under the Apache License, Apache is open-source software. A wide variety of features are supported, and many of them are implemented as compiled modules which extend the core functionality of Apache. These can range from server-side programming language support to authentication.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: MySQL's original role as the LAMP's relational database management system has since been alternately provisioned by others like PostgreSQL, MariaDB (a community-developed fork of MySQL developed by its original developers), and even NoSQL databases like MongoDB.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: MySQL is a multithreaded, multi-user, SQL database management system, acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008, which was then acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2010. Since its early years, the MySQL team has made its source code available under the terms of the GNU General Public License, as well as under a variety of proprietary agreements.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: PostgreSQL is also an ACID-compliant object-relational database management system developed by PostgreSQL Global Development Group.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: MongoDB is a NoSQL database that eschews the traditional relational database structure in favor of JSON-like documents with dynamic schemas (calling the format BSON), making the integration of data in certain types of applications easier and faster.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: PHP's role as the LAMP's application programming language has also been performed by other languages such as Perl and Python.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language. PHP code is interpreted by a web server via a PHP processor module, which generates the resulting web page. PHP commands can optionally be embedded directly into an HTML source document rather than calling an external file to process data. It has also evolved to include a command-line interface capability and can be used in standalone graphical applications. PHP is free software released under the terms of PHP License, which is incompatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL) due to the restrictions PHP License places on the usage of the term "PHP".


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: Perl is a family of high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. The languages in this family include Perl 5 and Raku. They provide advanced text processing facilities without the arbitrary data-length limits of many contemporary Unix command line tools, facilitating manipulation of text files. Perl 5 gained widespread popularity in the late 1990s as a CGI scripting language for the Web, in part due to its parsing abilities.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: Python is a widely used general-purpose, high-level, interpreted, programming language. Python supports multiple programming paradigms, including object-oriented, imperative, functional and procedural paradigms. It features a dynamic type system, automatic memory management, a standard library, and strict use of whitespace. Like other dynamic languages, Python is often used as a scripting language, but is also used in a wide range of non-scripting contexts.


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: Specific approaches are required for websites that serve large numbers of requests, or provide services that demand high uptime. High-availability approaches for the LAMP stack may involve multiple web and database servers, combined with additional components that perform logical aggregation of resources provided by each of the servers, as well as distribution of the workload across multiple servers. The aggregation of web servers may be provided by placing a load balancer in front of them, for example by using Linux Virtual Server (LVS). For the aggregation of database servers, MySQL provides internal replication mechanisms that implement a master/slave relationship between the original database (master) and its copies (slaves).


title: LAMP (software bundle)

text: Such high-availability setups may also improve the availability of LAMP instances by providing various forms of redundancy, making it possible for a certain number of components (separate servers) to experience downtime without interrupting the users of services provided as a whole. Such redundant setups may also handle hardware failures resulting in data loss on individual servers in a way that prevents collectively stored data from actually becoming lost. Beside higher availability, such LAMP setups are capable of providing almost linear improvements in performance for services having the number of internal database read operations much higher than the number of write/update operations.


title: Jamie Harris (actor)

text: Jamie Harris (born 15 May 1963) is a British actor. He is best known for his role as The Hook-Handed Man in "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events", Rodney in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and Gordon in Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.".


title: Jamie Harris (actor)

text: Harris was born on 15 May 1963 in Whitechapel, London as Tudor St. John Harris and is the third and youngest of three boys to Irish actor Richard Harris and Welsh socialite Elizabeth Rees-Williams. His older brothers are director Damian Harris and actor Jared Harris.


title: Jamie Harris (actor)

text: Harris was educated at "Ladycross", a former preparatory boarding independent school in the coastal town of Seaford in East Sussex, as were his brothers Jared and Damian, followed by Downside School, a Catholic boarding independent school in the village of Stratton-on-the-Fosse (near the market town of Shepton Mallet) in Somerset, in South West England.


title: Lowell George

text: Lowell Thomas George (April 13, 1945 – June 29, 1979) was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer, who was the primary guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and founder/leader for the rock band Little Feat.


title: Lowell George

text: Lowell George was born in Hollywood, California, the son of Willard H. George, a furrier who raised chinchillas and supplied furs to the movie studios.


title: Lowell George

text: George's first instrument was the harmonica. At the age of six he appeared on "Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour" performing a duet with his older brother, Hampton. As a student at Hollywood High School (where he first befriended future bandmate Paul Barrere and second wife Elizabeth Levy), he took up the flute in the school marching band and orchestra. He had already started to play Hampton's acoustic guitar at age 11, progressed to the electric guitar by his high school years, and later learned to play the saxophone, shakuhachi and sitar. During this period, George viewed the teen idol-oriented rock and roll of the era with contempt, instead favoring West Coast jazz and the soul jazz of Les McCann and Mose Allison. Following graduation in 1963, he briefly worked at a gas station (an experience that inspired such later songs as "Willin'") to support himself while studying art and art history at Los Angeles Valley College for two years.


title: Lowell George

text: Initially funded by the sale of his grandfather's stock, George's first band, The Factory, formed in 1965 and released at least one single on the Uni Records label, "Smile, Let Your Life Begin" (co-written by George). Members included future Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward (who replaced Dallas Taylor in September 1966); Martin Kibbee (a.k.a. Fred Martin), who would later co-write several Little Feat songs with George (including "Dixie Chicken" and "Rock and Roll Doctor"); and Warren Klein on guitar. Frank Zappa produced two tracks for the band, but they were not released until 1993 on the album "Lightning-Rod Man", credited to Lowell George and The Factory. The band made an appearance on the 1960s sitcom "F Troop" as "The Bedbugs". They were also featured in an episode of "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.", "Lost, the Colonel's Daughter" (season 3, episode 27). They appeared in the scene inside the A-Go-Go club, with their music playing loudly. They received credit at the end of the episode as The Factory' Lowell-Warren-Martin-Rich, Courtesy of Universal Records". Following the disbanding of The Factory, George briefly joined The Standells.


title: Lowell George

text: In November 1968, George joined Zappa's Mothers of Invention as rhythm guitarist and nominal lead vocalist; he can be heard on "Weasels Ripped My Flesh", "Burnt Weeny Sandwich", "You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 1", "You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 4" and the first disc of "You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 5". During this period, he absorbed Zappa's autocratic leadership style and avant garde-influenced conceptual/procedural-oriented compositional methods. He earned his first production credit (in conjunction with Zappa and Russ Titelman) on "Permanent Damage", an album recorded by "groupie group" The GTOs. George later asserted that "he performed no real function in the band" and left the group in May 1969 under nebulous circumstances. GTOs member Pamela Des Barres has claimed that George was fired by Zappa for smoking marijuana, while George claimed at a 1975 Little Feat concert that he was fired because he "wrote a song ["Willin] about dope." On the other hand, biographer Mark Brend asserts that Zappa liked the song but thought there was no place for it in the Mothers' set; George himself alternatively claimed that "it was decided that I should leave and form a band" by mutual agreement. George also claimed to have played uncredited guitar on "Hot Rats".


title: Lowell George

text: After leaving the Mothers of Invention, George invited a contingent of fellow musicians (including former Zappa bassist Roy Estrada, keyboardist Bill Payne, and drummer Richie Hayward) to form a new band, which they named Little Feat. George usually (but not always) played lead guitar and focused on slide guitar, but Ry Cooder played the slide on "Willin on the debut Little Feat album after George badly injured his hand while working on a powered model airplane, although George rerecorded some of his material and he played the rest of the slide work on the album. Mark Brend wrote that George's "use of compression defined his sound and gave him the means to play his extended melodic lines." George began playing slide with the casing of a Sears, Roebuck and Co. Craftsman 11/16" spark plug socket wrench that was given to him by a friend—Steve, whom he had met from New Hampshire—rather than the traditional glass or steel finger tube. (Spark plugs came in two sizes at the time: 11/16" and, later, 5/8"; the former was universal during George's time.)


title: Lowell George

text: Little Feat signed to Warner Bros. Records through Zappa's efforts and their first album was "Little Feat", produced by Russ Titelman, but it was not a commercial success and only sold 11,000 copies on initial release.


title: Lowell George

text: The follow-up album, "Sailin' Shoes", produced by Ted Templeman, was the band's first record to feature cover artwork by Neon Park, but despite good reviews the album fared no better commercially.


title: Lowell George

text: Estrada left the band in 1972 to join Captain Beefheart's Magic Band as well as to get away from the pollution in Los Angeles and he was replaced on bass by Kenny Gradney. In addition, Little Feat expanded to a sextet by adding a second guitarist Paul Barrere and percussionist Sam Clayton, thus cementing the classic line-up, and they took on a New Orleans funk direction with their next album, "Dixie Chicken", the first to be produced by George.


title: Lowell George

text: Little Feat released several other studio albums in the 1970s, including "Feats Don't Fail Me Now", "The Last Record Album" and "Time Loves a Hero". The group's 1978 live album "Waiting for Columbus" that became their best-selling album to date. "Down on the Farm" was their last album to feature Lowell and it was released shortly after his death in 1979.


title: Lowell George

text: Tensions within the group, especially between George, Payne, and, to a lesser extent, Barrere regarding musical direction and leadership, led to Payne and Barrere's departure from the group in 1979 and the group's subsequent disbandment. In an interview with Bill Flanagan conducted 11 days before his death, George stated that he was keen to re-form Little Feat without Payne and Barrere in order to reassert his full control over the group.


title: Lowell George

text: George was also a producer, and produced the Grateful Dead's 1978 album "Shakedown Street", as well as Little Feat's records and his own 1979 solo album "Thanks, I'll Eat It Here"; he also co-produced a couple of tracks on Valerie Carter's 1977 release "Just A Stone's Throw Away". In 1977 he co-produced John Starling's debut solo album, "Long Time Gone".


title: Lowell George

text: When not playing with Little Feat, George lent his talents as a session player to various artists, most frequently as a slide guitarist. He contributed to Barbara Keith's 1972 self-titled debut, John Cale's "Paris 1919" (1973), Happy End's "Happy End" (1973), Bonnie Raitt's "Takin' My Time" (1973; "I Feel the Same" and "Guilty"), Harry Nilsson's "Son of Schmilsson" (1973; "Take 54"), James Taylor's "Gorilla" (1975; "Angry Blues"), The Meters' "Rejuvenation" (1974; "Just Kissed My Baby"), John Sebastian's "Tarzana Kid" (1974) and Jackson Browne's "The Pretender" (1976).


title: Lowell George

text: Along with The Meters, George's slide work features prominently on Robert Palmer's first solo studio album, "Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley", recorded in New Orleans in 1974. A year later, Palmer's second album ("Pressure Drop") was effectively produced by George, and Little Feat served as the core band on the sessions. However, Palmer kept the producer's credit because of a dispute between Island Records and Warners. Later CDs list Steve Smith as producer.


title: Lowell George

text: George led an overindulgent lifestyle of binge eating, alcoholism and speedballs (heroin and cocaine mixed together), and he became morbidly obese in the last years of his life, weighing 308 pounds (140 kg).


title: Lowell George

text: On June 15, 1979, George began a tour in support of his solo album, "Thanks I'll Eat it Here". On June 29, the morning after an appearance at Washington, D.C.'s Lisner Auditorium, where the bulk of "Waiting for Columbus" had been recorded in 1977, George collapsed and died of a heart attack in his Arlington, Virginia, hotel room at the Twin Bridges Marriott. His heart attack was caused by an accidental cocaine overdose. George's body was cremated in Washington, D.C., on August 2. His ashes were flown back to Los Angeles, where they were scattered from his fishing boat into the Pacific Ocean.


title: Lowell George

text: According to Fred Tackett, "We were driving down the New Jersey Turnpike in this bus and we stopped at this pizza joint off the highway. Everybody in the band shared a cheese pizza but Lowell bought a large pizza with everything on it, carried it to the back of the bus, and he ate the entire pizza by himself. He died two or three days later. So, when people ask me, 'What really killed Lowell?' I say, 'It was a pizza on the New Jersey Turnpike.


title: Lowell George

text: Lowell met Susan Taylor (nickname Jonna) during his days with The Factory. Together they had Lowell's first child, Forrest George, in March 1969. George and his first wife, Pattie Price, had a son, Luke, in April 1970. They later divorced, and he became involved with Elizabeth Levy. Together he and Levy had a daughter, Inara George, in July 1974; the couple married in 1976. Inara is half of the musical duo The Bird and the Bee.


title: Pearl (2022 film)

text: Pearl (subtitled An X-traordinary Origin Story) is a 2022 slasher film directed by Ti West, co-written by West and Mia Goth, who reprises her role as the title character, and featuring David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland, and Emma Jenkins-Purro in supporting roles. A prequel to "X" (2022) and the second installment in the "X" film series, it serves as an origin story for the title villain whose fervent aspiration to become a movie star led her to committing violent acts on her family's Texas homestead in 1918.


title: Pearl (2022 film)

text: "Pearl" had its world premiere at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on September 3, 2022, and was released in theaters in the United States on September 16, 2022, by A24. The film received positive reviews from critics who lauded Goth's performance and its homages to the films of the Golden Age of Hollywood—particularly "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) and "Mary Poppins" (1964). Another film in the series, a sequel to "X" titled "MaXXXine", is currently in development.


title: Pearl (2022 film)

text: In 1918 during the influenza pandemic, Pearl is a young woman living with her German immigrant parents on their Texas homestead while her husband, Howard, is serving in World War I. Pearl's father is infirm and paralyzed, and her domineering mother, Ruth, insists that she help care for both him and the farm. Pearl, longing for a more exciting life, is captivated by the films she sees at the local cinema and aspires to become a chorus girl, much to Ruth's disapproval. However, Pearl also shows signs of being a disturbed individual, such as killing farm animals and physically abusing her father.


title: Pearl (2022 film)

text: At the movie theater, Pearl meets a young projectionist who takes a liking to her. While riding her bicycle home, Pearl stops along a cornfield and begins dancing with a scarecrow, fantasizing about the projectionist, and masturbates with it. When her mother counts that eight cents are missing from an errand Pearl did, Pearl is berated about being careless and has her supper withheld.


title: Pearl (2022 film)

text: Pearl's affluent sister-in-law, Mitsy, tells her of an audition being held to acquire new dancers for a traveling troupe, which Pearl envisions as a way out of her circumstance. She later sneaks out of the house at night and visits the projectionist, who shows her "A Free Ride", an illicit stag film he acquired in Europe. He encourages Pearl to pursue her dreams. Pearl comments that she cannot abandon her family, and that she wishes "they would just die."


title: Pearl (2022 film)

text: When Ruth finds a program Pearl took from the movie theater, the two get into a fierce argument over dinner. A physical altercation erupts, during which Pearl shoves her mother against the kitchen hearth, igniting her dress and resulting in Ruth suffering life-threatening burns. Pearl drags Ruth into the basement and leaves her father seated in the kitchen. She flees to the movie theater, where she has sex with the projectionist.


title: Pearl (2022 film)

text: In the morning, the projectionist drives Pearl back to the farm so she can prepare for the audition. He is perturbed by a now maggot-infested roasted pig Mitsy's mother left for Ruth the day prior, and by inconsistencies Pearl has told him, as well as by her extremely theatrical behavior. When he attempts to leave, Pearl flies into a fit of rage at his abandonment of her, and stabs him to death with a pitchfork before pushing his car—with his corpse in it—into a pond, where an alligator she has nicknamed Theda eats his remains. Pearl dresses herself in one of Ruth's lavish gowns, and dresses up her father before smothering him to death.


title: Pearl (2022 film)

text: Pearl arrives at the church where the audition is being held. She gives a dance performance she feels will win over the talent scouts, but is devastated when she is rejected for not being young, blonde, or "all-American". Mitsy accompanies her home in an attempt to console her. In the kitchen, Pearl makes a lengthy confession to Mitsy about her resentment toward Howard, who came from a privileged background but insisted that the couple remain on her family's farm, and admits she was relieved when she miscarried his child. She further confesses her feelings of alienation and insecurity, her joy in acts of harm, and to taking the lives of her parents and the projectionist. Pearl then manipulates a stunned Mitsy into confessing that she won the audition over Pearl. Jealous that Mitsy won the audition, Pearl chases her down the driveway and kills her with an axe.


title: Pearl (2022 film)

text: Pearl dismembers Mitsy's body and feeds her corpse to Theda, before going into the basement and lying with a deceased Ruth. Having reached the conclusion that her mother was correct and that Pearl should "make the best of what she has", she decides to remediate her wrongdoings by creating a comfortable home for Howard when he returns from the war. The next morning, Howard arrives unexpectedly. In the kitchen, he is horrified to find the bodies of Pearl's parents seated at the dining table around the rotting pig. Pearl greets him with a protracted, pained smile.


title: Pearl (2022 film)

text: Ti West began writing a script for the prequel film during production on "X". He stated that the prequel project had developed from a story he had collaborated on with Mia Goth, and that he had seen it either as becoming a potential film, or simply serving as a backstory for Goth's role as Pearl in the first movie. After the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, seeing its impact on the cinema industry, West stated that he had been inspired to continue working and had decided to begin production of the prequel immediately after wrapping on the previous installment. West stated that he had pitched his idea of a new franchise to A24 and had been surprised when they green-lit his projects. The filmmaker stated that he intends each film to have its own distinct style and genre of horror. Describing his approach to "X", he said he was heavily influenced by "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" franchise and by the works of Mario Bava, which explore how the rise of independent filmmaking affected society. Regarding "Pearl", he described it as Douglas Sirk melodrama meeting the Technicolor style of "Mary Poppins" and "The Wizard of Oz", made as a "demented Disney movie", and said it will explore how Hollywood filmmaking has influenced people. West stated that he intends to continue this trend of exploring diverse styles and genres in future installments. The movie is a joint-venture production between A24 and Little Lamb Productions.


title: Pearl (2022 film)

text: With the release of the first publicity poster, it was announced that West would once again serve as film editor alongside his other production roles, that Eliot Rockett would return as cinematographer, and that Tyler Bates and Tim Williams would serve as co-composers of the film's score.


title: Pearl (2022 film)

text: Mia Goth reprises her role as a younger version of Pearl, the elderly woman from the first movie. In July 2022, it was revealed that David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland, and Emma Jenkins-Purro will feature as the supporting cast.


title: Pearl (2022 film)

text: Principal photography was revealed to have begun in secret immediately following the completed photography on "X". Filming started in New Zealand, took place back-to-back with the first movie and used the same sets that were built for "X". West worked with the production crew of "", who were taking a break from production on that film at the time. West stated that, despite the production taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic, the production crew had already completed their required period of self-isolation, and were therefore able to work safely and efficiently together during the pandemic. He said: "I came out of quarantine and I was like, 'We're already building all of this stuff, it's COVID and we're on the one place on Earth where it's safe to make a movie.'"


title: Pearl (2022 film)

text: In March 2022, having completed filming, West announced that he was currently working on editing the movie, that he would go to Nashville, Tennessee, following the March 2022 SXSW Film Festival, to record the orchestral score for the soundtrack with Tyler Bates and Timothy Williams, and that the film was expected to be finished in May.


title: Pearl (2022 film)

text: A teaser trailer was screened at the SXSW Film Festival, following screening of the first film. The footage accompanied the theatrical release of "X". In July 2022, the first trailer was released with the marketing tagline of "an "X"-traordinary Origin Story", referring to the previous installment.